Utopia, you are standing in it!

The turbulent eleven years known as the “Interregnum” (from the Latin for inter “between” and regnum “reign”) was the only period in English history to not have a ruling monarch. It was an age of suspicion and paranoia. A king had been executed, Parliament and the New Model Army jockeyed for power, and Puritanical fanaticism took hold. The Interregnum took place in two effective periods: the Commonwealth (1649-1653) wherein power was largely concentrated in the hands of Parliament, and the Protectorate (153-1659) wherein Oliver Cromwell and his son Richard took power with the support of the military as the Lords Protectorate.

After the shocking beheading of Charles I, England became a nominal republic. Abroad on the Continent, the monarchs of Europe looked on in horror as England committed regicide, but not a single European monarch offered military support to Charles. In London, a statue of Charles was cast down with…

Most of us probably think of pubs as informal spaces for leisure and socialising. In the period we research for the House of Commons 1832-1868 project, however, things were rather different. Public houses played a central role in many of the formal routines of public life, providing meeting places and temporary offices for a range of civic and commercial activities. These more formal functions were especially apparent when it came to the business of organising and running election campaigns. The idea of the pub as a suitable venue for electioneering might seem rather alien to us today, but our research shows that they continued to play a significant part in British political life well beyond the 1832 Reform Act.

Unused ‘refreshment’ ticket, 1841

The traditional view of the pub in early Victorian elections, of course, is as providers of drink. Vast quantities of alcohol were often given away in the…

When James VI left Edinburgh to become King James I of England, his frail younger son, Charles, was left behind in Scotland. “Baby Charles” was a sickly child who had unfortunately inherited his father’s lack of confidence. He was never supposed to be king. That honor was conferred upon Charles’s elder brother, Prince Henry, a vigorous and confident young man who many embraced as successor to the crown. However, he tragically died of an illness early in 1612. Charles was further isolated when his older sister, Elizabeth, departed to marry the King of Bohemia in 1613. At that point all eyes turned toward Charles for the succession of the crown. To fulfill his solemn duty, Charles grew into a proud, pious, and ultimately pathetic figure. He continued his father’s delusions about the “divine right of kings” and exacerbated hostilities between King and Parliament, and Church and State. His failures and…

Posted by Krista J. Kesselring, 20 April 2021.

‘Justice’ comes in many forms. Women mired in violent marriages in early modern England had little hope of formal, legal escape but might try for justice of a rougher sort. A woman might seek a separation authorized by the church courts if her very life was in danger, or at least ask a justice of the peace to take bonds for her husband’s good behaviour, but that was about all the law offered, and even that only sparingly. That’s not to say that women in abusive relationships had no other options, though. Early modern wives, and their friends, sometimes tried rather less licit ways to improve their situations. This post tells the story of one woman whose complaints about her drunken brute of a spouse prompted a sympathetic vicar to sneak into her husband’s house at night, whip in hand and wearing…