EMH EarlyModernHistory

 Let me begin by agreeing that the origins of large-scale petitioning on political and religious matters can be found in the records of the movement for a Presbyterian settlement for the Church of England in the 1580s. This was the precedent for the later petitioning activities in the early to mid-Stuart period although petitioning itself was common at all levels of English and Welsh society on local and other matters by then. Recognising that such appeals were one of the common features of bargaining between the Crown, the Privy Council and other organs of the State and Church at that time is appropriate. Charles I's critics in the 1620s and again by 1640 utilised such means. We can see this in the co-ordinated petitions submitted to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640 and later in and after November, 1640 when the Long Parliament met. The leaders of the so-called 'Junto', men like the 2nd Earl of Warwick, Viscount Saye and Sele, the 2nd Lord Brooke, Jo...

  I only ever met Jack Hexter once in September, 1972 when he came to London to deliver the second J.E.Neale lecture at University College, London. He was staying with Valerie Pearl in Holden Road, Finchley. We had lunch in Southampton Row in London. I had expected Hexter to be a witty, engaging, very well informed figure. In fact, he proved to be very short and exceedingly dull as a conversationalist. I was surprised to say the least. It was a great deal later that I learnt of the course of his intellectual alliances in the United States. Valerie Pearl did tell me a few days later that she would never act as his host again.  

  LAWRENCE STONE AND THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE GENTRY CONTROVERSY   The controversy over the economic and social origins of the English Revolution was a topic that excited ferocious debate over sixty years ago. Historians of the calibre of R.H.Tawney and Hugh Trevor-Roper, J.P.Cooper, Christopher Hill and Lawrence Stone advanced radically different interpretations to explain the violent events of the 1640s and 1650s in the British Isles. American scholars, most famously of all, J.H.Hexter, like Willson Coates, Harold Hulme, Judith Shklar and Perez Zagorin also commented with varying degrees of sharpness on the issues at stake. But only one of the major participants, Lawrence Stone, offered an account of the historiography of the dispute, first of all in his introduction to the anthology of academic articles and documentary sources entitled Social Change and Revolution in England 1540-1640 which he edited in 1965 and then, in slightly revised form, in Chapter 2 of ...

For an introduction to Hill's papers now held by the library of Balliol College, Oxford, follow the link  here .

John Rees's new book, Fiery Spirits , arrived by post from Verso Books yesterday morning. I have it to review but was surprised to see my name mentioned in his acknowledgements. Dr Rees will be giving a talk on his work towards the end of this month as the image above indicates. The date for the annual Levellers' Day in Burford has been announced: it will be on 17th May next.