EMH EarlyModernHistory

 Photo by Sandy Solomon on her Facebook page.

 I began reading Robert Ashton's book again last evening after a gap of many years. I had forgotten the high quality of his writing in his later years at the UEA and his acute appreciation of the contours of Court and Country culture in the early Stuart period. Interestingly, he had some sharp points to make about the excessive attention given to the Levellers and Diggers in the historiography of the 1640s, attention inspired in part, he suggested, by modern political apprehensions. There is something in this observation in my view but I should be interested to learn what others think on thi s issue.

 

 

 

  Speech, stereotypes and the making of political division in England, 1641-42 Date 14 May 2026, 17:30 to 14 May 2026, 19:00 Venue Hybrid | Online & IHR Pollard Seminar Room, N301, Third Floor, IHR, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

 Melissa Glass's forthcoming seminar paper at the Institute of Historical Research on 30th April, 2026 'Major George Strangways versus John Fussell, Attorney at Law: A Tale of Sequestration, Litigation, and Murder in Interregnum England Date 30 Apr 2026, 17:30 to 30 Apr 2026, 19:00 Venue Hybrid | Online & IHR Seminar Room N304, Third Floor, IHR, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU   

 I was more than suprised to see an article by this journalist in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday. It argued that Dr Chris Laoutaris and Dr Yasmin Arshad had identified the sitter as Lady Penelope Rich the wife of the 3rd Lord Rich and sister of the 2nd Earl of Essex, using the clues in the portrait's emblems, including its cartouche with its reference to Penelope, the wife of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. I found this claim hard to understand since the case for this attribution was made as long ago as 26th October, 2013 in a seminar at the University of Sheffield. Let me quote a report made by one of those attending this seminar: "  Whilst all of the papers demonstrated a high quality of new research and were each fascinating, the final paper of the day was, for me, the icing on a very rich cake. Chris Laoutaris (Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham) and Yasmin Arshad University College London) presented their theory surrounding Marcus Gheeraerts’ portrait of a P...

  Peter Lake will probably be there.

 A couple of posts are currently being advertised: (a) a Stipendiary Lectureship at St Hughes College, University of Oxford and (b) an Associate Professorship in Early Modern British History at the University of Warwick. The details can be found via the jobs.ac.uk site.

 I have been contemplating writing an essay on the Short Parliament of 1640 for a considerable period of time. My interest was first aroused when Esther Cope was kind enough to show me the draft copy of the edition of the sources she later edited for the Camden Society, sources which have been amplimented by the later work of Judith Maltby on the Aston Diary. In the process, I have read the analyses of John Adamson, Mark Kishlansky, Kevin Sharpe and Conrad Russell, the last three of whom have passed away. John Adamson's piece in his book, The Noble Revolt, seems the most lucid of these while I was surprised to note that Kishlanky's defence of King Charles I's handling of the Parliament failed to mention his contemporaneous negotiations with the Spanish Habsburgs: contemporaries would, I suspect, not have regarded these overtures as contingency-planning but as duplicitous. The one I had real trouble with was that by Conrad Russell, much of which was a precis of the surviving...

  2025/26 Programme Event date: 30 Apr 26 'Major George Strangways versus John Fussell, Attorney at Law: A Tale of Sequestration, Litigation, and Murder in Interregnum England Institute of Historical Research Event date: 30 Apr 26 ...

 The seminar's programme from 30th April, 2026 can be seen  here  .

Seminar at Stanford University on Thursday, 23rd April, 2026. Anil Menon on the birth of the Modern State in Britain. Details  here .