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Tudor historian Sir John Neale (University College, London)

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      J.E.Neale was in the mid-twentieth century one of the leading historians of Elizabethan England. His studies of the period's Parliaments were fundamental for undergraduate and postgraduate students of that time. He was also a formidable figure in the world of academic history and was greatly respected by his peers. I did actually see him once at the Tudor-Stuart seminar in the Institute of Historical Research then presided over by his successor as Astor Professor at UCL. To my surprise, Neale was very short and had an extremely red face. But, apart from that, I had no other contact with him. 
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EMH Document 2020

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  2020 Wednesday 1 st January, 2020 The first thing that caught my attention this morning was Jesse Child’s review in The Guardian of Paul Lay’s new book, Providence Lost: the Rise and Fall of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate published by Zeus Books. Her own writing has been largely upon the Tudor period but she found Lay’s work a highly rewarding discussion of a complex and intriguing period. Oliver Cromwell believed that God’s providence had raised him from the ranks of the lesser gentry in Huntingdonshire and the isle of Ely to Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1653. He was the de facto ruler of all three realms with the fundamental aims of preserving good order, ensuring a high degree of liberty of conscience and of preparing these islands for the return of Christ. These aims entailed repressing royalist insurrections, the moral reformation of the ungodly by banning drunkenness, fornication and gambling, and carrying into effect the assault on the Spanish in ...
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