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Two early modern history reviews

Last month's edition of  The Literary Review  had two pieces of interest to early modern historians. The first was by Peter Marshall, Professor of history at the University of Warwick, on Andrew Johnston's study of William Paget (1505/6-1563) during the last  years of Henry VIII's reign and those of his children, Edward VI and Mary I. Paget was evidently an able administrator and diplomat handling Henry's correspondence and military preoccupations during the 1540s. Marshall found Johnston's scepticism about the claims that Paget assisted his allies, Edward Seymóur, Earl of Hertford, and Sir Anthony Denny, in tampering with Henry  VIII's will refreshing but was more doubtful about the Edwardian Protectorate as consonant with the late King's wishes. Paget seems to have been flexible enough on matters of religion to serve both Edward VI and Mary. Even so, he was one of those who "smoothed Henry VIII's path rather than stood in his way." The second...
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Reflections on the July, 2027 conference at the IHR on the English Revolution

I have been thinking about the planned conference at the Institute of Historical Research to be held next July on the subject of the English Revolution. I have no doubt that it will be an extremely interesting event with plenty of new analytical ideas being discussed. But I was and still am puzzled by the references in the notice for this conference to the work of the late Conrad Russell. The issue of the problems arising from the existence of 'multiple monarchies' was already well known well before he began writing on the subject. H.G.Koenigsberger's work is a case in point. Similarly, both C.V.Wedgwood and Hugh Trevor-Roper had considered the impact of the Scots on the events in England in the 1640s long in advance of the 1980s. Trevor-Roper's essay on 'The Union of Britain in the Seventeenth Century' now to be most easily found in his volume on 'Religion, the Reformation and Social Change' dealt directly with the issues faced by the Stuarts in ruling ...
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Mark Stoyle on witchcraft in Exeter and elsewhere

Mark Stoyle (University of Southampton) has an interesting piece on the BBC dealing with concerns in Exeter about witchcraft. It can be read  here  .    
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fullerton

 I'm here today with Samuel Fullerton, Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, to talk about sexual politics in revolutionary England. Originally out in 2024 with Manchester University Press, we're chatting today on the occasion of its release in paper, Her Way, in January of 2026. Hi, Sam, and welcome to the podcast. Hi, Anna. Thanks for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here. Yeah, let's see how it goes today. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So how are you? How's your morning in Texas? It's wonderful. We have been very warm for the last, well, I mean, you know, since last spring, really, but there's this phenomenon in North Texas called second summer where you think the temperatures are dropping about mid-September, and then they come shooting back up. And so up until Saturday, so two days ago, the highs were in the sort of low 90s. And then we had a storm that evening yesterday. The temps dropped to about 72. I got to ...
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Sir Edward Lewkenor's family tomb at Denham in Suffolk, England

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Colchester in Essex

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Van den Keere's 1603 map of Essex

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