The Paper Parish: The parish register and the reformation of parish memory in early modern London

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Communal Memory ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Early Modern London ◽  
Changing Practices ◽  
Parish Registers

This essay explores the development of parish record-keeping in early modern London, examining the implications of changing practices for communal memory. Building on the study of more than 50 parish registers, it investigates who wrote the parish records, how they were kept and how they were used. Many of the extant records are the product of a ‘memorial moment’ at the turn of the seventeenth century, involving a concerted attempt to re-order and re-present parish papers as memorial objects: the material representations of parish memory. These registers highlight the emergence of an ongoing communal investment in and oversight of record-keeping practices, while the evidence of annotations and corrections in parish registers demonstrates the persistence of oral forms of communal memory, contesting the textual record. The development of the parish register in the period thus emerges as a key site for renegotiating the forms and habits of parish memory.

Meeting Lydgate’s Ghost: Building Medieval History in Seventeenth-Century England

2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (299) ◽  
pp. 251-271
Author(s):  
Mimi Ensley
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
British Library ◽  
John Lydgate ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
English History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Historical Resources

Abstract This article examines a manuscript poem composed by the seventeenth-century author John Lane. Writing in what is now London, British Library, Harley MS 5243, Lane revives the medieval poet John Lydgate in order to re-tell the story of Guy of Warwick, famous from medieval romance. In Lane’s poem, Lydgate returns from beyond the grave to proclaim the historicity of Guy’s legend and simultaneously preserve his own reputation as a chronicler of English history. While some scholars suggest that Lydgate’s popularity declined in the post-Reformation period due to his reputation as the ‘Monk of Bury’, and while it is true that significantly fewer editions of Lydgate’s poems were published in the decades after the Reformation, Lane’s poem offers another window into Lydgate’s early modern reputation. I argue that Lane’s historiographic technique in his Guy of Warwick narrative mirrors Lydgate’s own poetic histories. Both Lane and Lydgate grapple with existing historical resources and compose their narratives by compiling the accreted traditions of the past, supplementing these traditions with documentary sources and artefacts. This article, thus, complicates existing scholarly narratives that align Lydgate with medieval or monastic traditions, traditions perceived to be irrecoverably transformed by the events of the Reformation in England.

“Constructing the Poor in Early Seventeenth-Century London”1

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-463
Author(s):  
Claire S. Schen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Demographic Pressure ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Undeserving Poor

Historians of early modern Europe have become accustomed to the dichotomy of the deserving and undeserving poor, though they still debate the origins of the transformation of attitudes toward the poor and poverty. Historians have studied less carefully the ways in which these presumably static categories flexed, as individuals and officials worked out poor relief and charity on the local level. Military, religious, and social exigencies, precipitated by war, the Reformation, and demographic pressure, allowed churchwardens and vestrymen to redraw the contours of the deserving and undeserving poor within the broader frame of the infirm, aged, and sick. International conflicts of the early seventeenth century created circumstances and refugees not anticipated by the poor law innovators of the sixteenth century. London’s responses to these unexpected developments illustrate how inhabitants constructed the categories of die deserving and undeserving poor. This construction depended upon the discretion of churchwardens and their fellow officers, who listened to the accounts and read the official documents of the poor making claims on parish relief and charity.

Episcopal Tombs in Early Modern England

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 654-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER SHERLOCK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The Reformation simultaneously transformed the identity and role of bishops in the Church of England, and the function of monuments to the dead. This article considers the extent to which tombs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bishops represented a set of episcopal ideals distinct from those conveyed by the monuments of earlier bishops on the one hand and contemporary laity and clergy on the other. It argues that in death bishops were increasingly undifferentiated from other groups such as the gentry in the dress, posture, location and inscriptions of their monuments. As a result of the inherent tension between tradition and reform which surrounded both bishops and tombs, episcopal monuments were unsuccessful as a means of enhancing the status or preserving the memory and teachings of their subjects in the wake of the Reformation.

Architecture, Anatomy, and the New Science in Early Modern London

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Walker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
New Science ◽  
Early Modern London

Focuses on an important but overlooked building in late seventeenth-century London: the College of Physicians on Warwick Lane designed by the scientist and architect Robert Hooke in the 1670s. The building, which was commissioned in response to the previous college’s destruction in the Great Fire of London in 1666, was itself demolished in the nineteenth century. In this article, Matthew Walker argues that the conception and design of Hooke’s college had close links with the early Royal Society and its broader experimental philosophical program. This came about through the agency of Hooke—the society’s curator—as well as the prominence of the college’s physicians in the experimental philosophical group in its early years. By analyzing Hooke’s design for the college, and its prominent anatomy theater in particular, this article thus raises broader questions about architecture’s relationship with medicine and experimental science in early modern London.

Lord Deputy Chichester and the English Government’s ‘Mandates Policy’ in Ireland, 1605–1607

1991 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
John McCavitt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Protestant Clergy ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Church Of Ireland ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

One of the liveliest debates in recent early modern Irish historiography has concerned the ‘failure’ of the Reformation in Ireland and when this occurred. Originally Professor Canny took issue with Dr. Brendan Bradshaw on this topic. Canny rejected Bradshaw’s thesis that the Reformation had failed in Ireland by 1558 and argued that counter-reformation catholicism only triumphed in the nineteenth century. Other contributions were then made to the debate by Dr. Alan Ford and later Karl Bottigheimer. Ford considered the 1590–1641 period as crucial, while Bottigheimer favoured the early seventeenth century as the key era. In the light of the work of Ford and Bottigheimer, Canny reconsidered the issue in an article published in 1986. He rejected what he believed to be Ford’s overly-pessimistic assessment that the Church of Ireland clergy soon despaired of the Reformation’s success in the seventeenth century. Instead, it is contended, Protestant clergy and laymen alike were optimistic that penal prosecution might still pave the way for considerable advances at this time. Moreover, Canny further argued that Ford was ‘mistaken in treating the clergy as an autonomous group and mistaken also in allowing excessive influence to ideology as the determinant of policy’.

“Saucy Stink”: Smells, Sanitation, and Conflict in Early Modern London

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-86
Author(s):  
Alexandra Logue
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Waste Management ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Demographic Changes ◽  
Urban Rivers ◽  
Kitchen Waste ◽  
Early Modern London ◽  
The City ◽  
Seasonal Weather

This article examines olfactory offenses in early modern London. It explores how inhabitants managed causes of malodorous air, focusing on common nuisances stemming from everyday household practices like laundry and waste management. Clotheslines were hung up between lodgings, households disposed of kitchen waste in gutters overflowing with garbage, and neighbours used stinking, communal privies. Seasonal weather intensified the city’s poor air quality, and rainwater washed refuse into urban rivers. In the early seventeenth century, the growing awareness of the effects of air quality on health coincided with significant demographic changes in the city. Insalubrious air was intrinsically linked to increased migration, overcrowded neighbourhoods, and the spread of diseases. The improvement of the city’s air quality became a more immediate concern for Londoners, civic authorities, and the early Stuart monarchs, who deployed a range of sanitation strategies. As London grew, so too did concern for its inhabitants and the dwellings they occupied.

Early Modern Pietism

2015 ◽  
pp. 401-435
Author(s):  
Jonathan Strom ◽  
Hartmut Lehmann
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Biblical Authority ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Renewal Movement

Pietism became the most important Protestant renewal movement in central Europe after the Reformation. This essay surveys the origins and theological consequences of the movement in the context of the crises of the seventeenth century and the rise of the Enlightenment. Pietists concerned themselves primarily with reform of the Christian life rather than doctrine, but Pietism presented new challenges for ecclesiology, Biblical authority, eschatology, regeneration, and the conception of theology. The various streams of Pietism remained heterogeneous and could differ significantly on issues such as millenarianism, prophecy, and ecclesiology. Where early Pietists could be innovative and progressive, later Pietists reacted strongly against the rise of rationalism and the Enlightenment, increasingly emphasizing Biblicism and allying themselves with conservative tendencies.

Theatrical cultures in early modern London

Urban History ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Boulton
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Early Modern London

London's cultural and social life is the focus of four recent books which, with the exception of a few forays by Manley, concentrate mostly on the late sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century.

Intra-Confessional Polemics in the Reformation

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 629-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Keen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Mutual Antagonism ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Religious Polemic

Although religious polemic is typically understood and studied as a phenomenon of mutual antagonism across the confessions—Protestant against Catholic and Catholic against Protestant—the growth of the early modern polemic traditions was the product of heated internal controversy. In a series of theses intended to point to rhetorical aspects of conflicts within the Lutheran and Catholic confessions, this paper brings forward features of polemical writings from the disputes between Gnesio-Lutherans and Philippists in the wake of the Augsburg Interim of 1548 and those between and among Jesuits and Jansenists in the seventeenth century. Early modern religious thought, I suggest, cannot be understood without attention to the fissures within the Lutheran and Roman Catholic traditions.

“Ye Lovers of Physick, come lend me your Ear”: Dangerous Doctors in Early Modern London

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jillian Linster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Title Page ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Early Modern London ◽  
Thomas Browne ◽  
Textual Records

The highly recognizable title-page illustration from Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus was also used in the printing of a ballad to commemorate the death of “Doctor” John Lambe in 1628. This paper explores rhetorical, historical, visual, and bibliographic connections between the two works as well as the cultural significance of their relationship and the stories they tell, which are fraught with warnings regarding the inherent dangers of magic practiced by purported healers. The correspondence of the ballad and the play highlights challenges and changes in the medical marketplace of early modern London, demonstrating the complexity and consequence of the connections among historical events, textual records, and fictional literary representations. Finally, comparing the shared woodcut with an engraved frontispiece from a book written by a more reputable physician, Sir Thomas Browne, traces the rise of more trustworthy medical practitioners in mid-seventeenth-century England.

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