Observations on 6th March, 2025

 

Thursday, 6th March, 2025

I followed up my enquiries via the CORE database on the early colonial histories of Bermuda and Virginia to find some further academic sources. A number turned up including one on the trade to and from Virginia between 1606 and 1660. Admittedly, it was from several decades ago but I was intrigued to see that it had nothing on the claims made by Sir Edwin Sandys and his supporters in 1618 that there had been a sharp diminution in the number of commodities returned from Virginia while Samuel Argall was the acting governor there and Sir Thomas Smith was Treasurer of the Virginia Company in London. This has long been a suspect claim in my view. I was even more interested to find two or three pieces previously unknown to me about the apparent interest of Thomas Hobbes in the colonization of Virginia in the 1628-1631 period. These arguments will require me to assess their validity with some care in the near future. The only response I had to yesterday’s e-mails was from James Horn of the Virginia Preservation Trust.

The other project I undertook in the evening was to search once again for material on Christopher Hill. Most of what I found came from Penelope Corfield’s comments and recollections on Hill who was, in fact, her uncle. Some of his observations on the state of English history in and after 1931 I found surprising: the Levellers and Diggers had attracted academic attention well before that time and his political points about the impact of the Great Depression were apposite for the period from 1929 to 1931 but, as subsequent historical research has shown, the economy of the United Kingdom actually bounced back quite well in the 1930s. The permanent conclusions he drew from this experience were untenable .

 

*I actually applied unsuccessfully for the job Penelope Corfield got at Bedford College in the University of London.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finding out about what is going on in early modern history beyond this country

One of the puzzles I face most days concerns what is going on in early modern history in English-speaking countries beyond these shores. I have a reasonable understanding of the seminar papers being offered here and of the conferences being or about to be held. Most of the websites of relevance are known to me and I am, broadly speaking, aware of the names of historians working in the areas I am interested in. Google alerts and social media help to fill in the gaps. Where I am much less well informed arises from the activities of early modern historians in north America, in Australia and New Zealand. Despite having some regular contacts on the other side of the Atlantic, I have to work hard to search the myriad history departments and learned societies of the U.S.A. and Canada. Oddly enough, this does not appear to be so large an issue with countries in Europe where I conduct regular searches for publications and theses, conferences and seminars of potential interest. It would be good ...
Read more

Simon Healy has died

Image
  I am extremely sorry to report that Simon Healy, who worked for the History of Parliament Trust's 1604-1629 section for many years,  has died. I remember him as a very cheerful and engaging conversationalist. My condolences go to his widow and their two children.
Read more

Centre and Locality: review reflections

  Quite by chance, I was browsing on Twitter last Friday (9 th April) when I spotted on Edward Vallance’s site a reference to a video conference organised by William Clayton of the University of East Anglia at the end of last month. Further searches led me to William Clayton’s review of the book edited by Chris Kyle and Jason Peacey, Connecting Centre and Locality: Communication in early modern England, which appeared under the auspices of the Manchester University Press in 2020 and which Clayton had reviewed for The Seventeenth Century in its most recent issue. [1] This is a subject which interests me and I did give some thought to responding to William Clayton’s largely laudatory comments. However, I was also conscious that I had not read this collection of essays and was thus less well equipped than I should be for assessing either the book or William Clayton’s review. There was, however, one historiographical issue upon which I did feel qualified to comment. Right at the st...
Read more