Tudor-Stuart seminar at the IHR tomorrow (10th February, 2025): attendance needs to be booked via the IHR's website

 Investigating two mid-Jacobean Court Scandals: the Lake-Roos case and the fall of Lord Treasurer Suffolk
This paper approaches the 'scandalous' mid-Jacobean Court from a fresh perspective by zooming in on two extraordinary, yet understudied, cases – the Lake-Roos feud, c. 1616-19, and the dismissal and arrest of Lord Treasurer, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk in 1618-19. A close examination and contextualisation of contemporary responses and allusions to these events in newsletters, manuscript libels, sermons, and other and other texts, enriches our understandings of ‘popular’ sentiments, perceptions of King James and his court, and political awareness. The key themes that emerged in such responses - namely fears concerning religious and gender inversion - echo the more blatant arguments made at the time against the Spanish Match, in texts such as Thomas Alured’s ‘Letter to the Marquess of Buckingham’. This investigation facilitates a re-examination of the ‘scandalous’ period under James, and leaves us with a more sophisticated sense of what 'scandal' meant at that political moment.


‘“Sundrie uther young nobils that are about his highness”: Esther Inglis and Jacobean gift-giving
The calligrapher Esther Inglis (c. 1570-1625) traversed boundaries throughout her life: between the Jacobean court and its margins; between her French birthplace and her Scottish and English homes; between her Calvinist belief and her engagement with earlier religio-textual traditions. Her miniature manuscripts offer material entry-points to the politics of Jacobean gift-giving. This paper will focus on the relationship Inglis establishes with the circle surrounding Prince Henry between 1606 and 1612, through her books, her words, and her artistry. Illuminated, polygraphic, and devotional, Inglis' manuscripts establish her name within royal circles, while also embodying the post-reformation endurance of scribal and artistic traditions otherwise associated with older forms of manuscript-making and religious practice. 


Amilia Gillies and Anna-Nadine Pike are both PhD students at the  Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Kent

 

Contents have been pasted from the IHR's notice of the seminar.

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