Early Modern Britain

Biographical Entry for Denis Daly (c.1638-1721)

by Eoin Kinsella

Publsihed in James McGuire and James Quinn (eds), Dictionary of Irish Biography (9 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)

'Dividing the Bear's Skin Before She Is Taken': Irish Catholics and Land in the Late Stuart Monarchy, 1683-91

by Eoin Kinsella

Published in Coleman A. Dennehy (ed.), Restoration Ireland: Always Settling And Never Settled (London: Ashgate, 2008), pp 161-78

The articles of surrender and the Williamite settlement of Ireland: A case study of Colonel John Browne (1640-1711)

by Eoin Kinsella

Ph.D. thesis, University College Dublin, 2011

This thesis examines the articles of surrender signed to conclude the Williamite war in Ireland, and the ways in which... more This thesis examines the articles of surrender signed to conclude the Williamite war in Ireland, and the ways in which they were implemented, ignored or repudiated during the reign of William III. The articles of surrender were negotiated and signed at Drogheda, Waterford, Galway, Inis Boffin, Sligo and Limerick between July 1690 and October 1691. Chapters II to III consider lobbying by the ‘articlemen’ (as the claimants were known) for the ratification and implementation of the articles by the Irish and English authorities. Royal, official and parliamentary interpretations of the articles are examined, as is opposition to the articles by Irish Protestants. Legislative measures, both failed and enacted, relating to the articles are considered, as are the consequences of this legislation for Irish Catholics.

Chapters IV to VIII are a case study of an articleman, Colonel John Browne of Westport, and the articles of Limerick. Browne was the beneficiary of Limerick’s article 13, which proved highly contentious during the 1690s. Several topics are considered in this case study: Browne’s position as a ‘new interest’ landowner (i.e. a Catholic who had acquired an interest in the Restoration land settlement); his supply of ordnance and provisions to the Jacobite army, and the debts he incurred; the negotiation and implementation of article 13 of Limerick, which provided for the payment by Catholic landowners of part of Browne’s debts; aspects of a landowner’s finances in the late seventeenth century, including large-scale land sales to pay debts; the promotion of private acts of parliament; and alleged Jacobite activity by Browne and other notable articlemen. Several prominent former Irish Jacobites, also members of the ‘new interest’, who elected to remain in Ireland are also considered.

In search of a positive construction: Irish Catholics and the Williamite articles of surrender, 1690-1701

by Eoin Kinsella

Published in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xxiv (2009), pp 11-35

Souveränität ohne Autorität. Zur Verfassungskultur der englischen Republik, in: Kommunikation und Konfliktaustragung. Verfassungskultur als Faktor politischer und gesellschaftlicher Machtverhältnisse, hrsg. v. Werner Daum / Kathrin S. Hartmann / Simon Palaoro / Bärbel Sunderbrink, Berlin 2010, S. 35-76.

by Andre Krischer

Das Verfahren als Rollenspiel? Englische Hochverratsprozesse im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, in: Herstellung und Darstellung verbindlicher Entscheidungen. Verhandeln, Verfahren und Verwalten in der Vormoderne, hrsg. zusammen mit Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Berlin 2010, S. 211-251.

by Andre Krischer

Noble Honour and the Force of Law. Trial by Peers, Aristocracy and Criminal Law in England from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century, in: What makes the Nobility Noble? Comparative Perspectives from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, hrsg. v. Christian Wieland / Jörn Leonhard (Schriftenreihe der FRIAS School of History 2), Göttingen 2011, S. 67 - 89.

by Andre Krischer

Politische Kommunikation und Öffentlichkeit in London. Zur Entwicklung einer Großstadt im 17. Jahrhundert aus mediengeschichtlicher Perspektive, in: Die Stadt als Kommunikationsraum. Reden, Schreiben und Schauen in Großstädten des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, hrsg. v. Irmgard Ch. Becker (Stadt in der Geschichte 36), Ostfildern 2011, S. 55-87.

by Andre Krischer

“Note su Francesco Terriesi (1635-1715). Mercante, diplomatico e funzionario mediceo tra Londra e Livorno,” Nuovi Studi Livornesi, X (2002-2003): 59-80.

by Stefano Villani

[Notes on Francesco Terriesi (1635-1715). Merchant, diplomatic and civil servant of the Medici between London and... more [Notes on Francesco Terriesi (1635-1715). Merchant, diplomatic and civil servant of the Medici between London and Leghorn]. The article reconstructs for the first time the biography of Francesco Terriesi, whose diplomatic newsletters from London were often used as a source for reconstructing the history of the Catholic restoration of James II and the Glorious Revolution. Presumably Francesco Terriesi moved to London around the spring of 1668, most likely to promote a project of the Grand Duke of Tuscany to set up in the English capital a Florentine silk trading house. Between 1670 and 1679 Terriesi was frequently employed to carry out sensitive tasks for the Medici court, obviating the inability always shown by the official Tuscan diplomatic representative Giovanni Salvetti Antelminelli to meet demands that went beyond the handling of ordinary administration. Terriesi was asked to perform tasks that could be defined in modern terms, with an anachronism, those of a cultural attaché. It was chiefly through him that famous intellectuals such as Henry Neville, the mathematician Samuel Morland and the diplomat and historian William Temple maintained close ties with the Grand Ducal court of Florence. Terriesi was frequently commissioned by the Grand Duke to buy English books, and he himself pointed out in Florence the most interesting things published in England. It was through him that Neville’s English translation of Machiavelli and several books of John Milton arrived in Italy along with controversial religious works in English, dictionaries, and antiquarian works, among others. He was regularly commissioned by the Grand Duke to purchase medals, paintings, and maintain contact with artists such as Samuel Cooper and Richard Gibson. Demonstrating the trust he was vested with it was through him that presents and gifts were delivered to court figures. Since 1670 Terriesi was also tasked with providing Florence with regular information on “public affairs” to enrich the insipid weekly newsletters sent by the official resident Giovanni Salvetti Antelminelli. After being away from England for over a year in October 1678 Terriesi was formally accredited in London as an agent eventually taking over Salvetti Antelminelli’s diplomatic functions. From 23 February 1680 he also replaced him the informer to the State Secretariat of Florence. On the well established model for the Tuscan diplomats in England, he started sending a weekly newsletter, written impersonally and unsigned always accompanied by a short cover letter addressed directly to the First Secretary of State, Francesco Panciatichi, usually consisting of a few lines of concise service communications. After the Glorious Revolution, Tuscany decided to proceed with only an informal recognition of the new regime. It was clearly a compromise and Terriesi’s situation became very precarious. He asked permission to return to Italy and sent his last dispatch from London on 13 March 1691. Significantly, in February 1695, less than four years after his return to Tuscany, Terriesi was appointed Customs Supervisor (provveditore della dogana) of Livorno. In his new function Terriesi was able to capitalize on the knowledge gained over many years in London; it was not coincidental that someone with twenty years of experience in England was chosen for this position The port of Livorno was the central node for the English trade in the Levant with a thriving and vibrant British community that dated to the end of the 1500s. A superintendent of customs who could interact without intermediaries with the merchants of the British Factory of Livorno and the captains of the British ships calling at the port was clearly a plus. In accordance with his testament Francesco Terriesi was buried in the church of San Ferdinando at Livorno. The church was built to house the barefooted Trinitarian Fathers della Crocetta, a religious order dedicated to the redemption of Christian captives of the Turks, active in Livorno in the second half of 1600s. The article, which also describes Terriesi’s relationship with Gregorio Leti, highlights how to interpret the cultural, political and economic relations between England and Italy in the seventeenth century. In this context it is essential to investigate the role of such mediating figures as Terriesi who shows how in Baroque Italy, in the mercantile milieu, there functioned intellectuals attentive to European cultural and political novelties, often overlooked by the professional “intellectuals.”

“Seventeenth-Century Italy and English Radical Movements,” in ARIEL HESSAYON, DAVID FINNEGAN (eds.), Varieties of Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century English Radicalism in Context (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 145-159.

by Stefano Villani

Villani’s essay examines some of the many seventeenth-century Italian accounts on the political activity and ideas of the contemporary English radical political movements to understand how these ideas and activity were perceived in such a different cultural, religious, and political context. The concept of “radical,” both in the theological and political sphere, has a very different meaning for Italian culture in the late 1600s than it did in England. For an Italian culture, where there was already uneasiness in defining the Church of England, the sectarian world of seventeenth-century English radicalism was substantially incomprehensible. Italy was astonished by the proliferation of the sects that emerged in England in the second half of 1640s. Notwithstanding, it is significant that this topic was very rarely treated in the many seventeenth-century historical narrations of the Civil War and Interregnum that were published in those years. It is significant to note that more or less reliable accounts on the religious debates of those years are found almost exclusively in travel reports and in monographs on England in which the historical aspects have only a secondary importance. Likewise it is interesting to note that these works deliberately emphasize the more outlandish aspects of the English sectarian world. The opinions of the English religious groups of the Seventeenth Century are taken as so manifestly bizarre in order to provoke astonishment rather than genuine interest and very often only described in order to provide an “exotic” accent to the travel narrations. From the theological point of view the sects represented more or less only the perverse effect of the separation from Rome and of freedom of conscience for the Italians who wrote about the religious debates in England.

“Donne quacchere nel XVII secolo,” Studi Storici, 40 (1999): 585-611.

by Stefano Villani

[Quaker Women in the Seventeenth Century]. The article describes the central role of women in the origin and... more [Quaker Women in the Seventeenth Century]. The article describes the central role of women in the origin and development of the Quaker movement from the 1640s to the 1660s, noting how their zealous missionary activity and insistence that women be permitted to preach the gospel met with violent reactions throughout Europe and the New World. Following their persecution and imprisonment in England during the 1650s, many Quakers traveled to New England, where they also faced persecution, arrest, violent penalties, and often expulsion from the colonies. Some Quaker women undertook missions in Ireland and throughout the Mediterranean, undaunted by the violent repression of the Counter-Reformation. A survey of public and theological reactions to the early Quaker movement suggests that the public activity of women was one of the primary reasons for open hostility toward the movement. Following the Restoration, male leaders began to consolidate the movement and restrict women’s activities to more peripheral duties. Despite this shift, the early Quaker emphasis on egalitarianism and the participation of women irrevocably shaped the fundamentals of Quakerism.

“Un Masaniello quacchero: James Nayler,” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, XXXIII (1997): 67-91

by Stefano Villani

[A Quaker Masaniello: James Nayler]. After being released from prison in Exeter, James Nayler, one of the leading... more [A Quaker Masaniello: James Nayler]. After being released from prison in Exeter, James Nayler, one of the leading Quaker preachers of the time, traveled to Bristol and claimed to be the son of God. He was tried by Parliament and imprisoned in London. He was pilloried and whipped through the streets of London, his forehead was marked with the letter B and his tongue pierced with an incandescent iron. Back in Bristol he was whipped through its streets as well. Imprisoned he spent the following two years in prison. The article analytically reconstructs the story of how Nayler’s vicissitudes were followed by the Tuscan and Genoese diplomatic representatives in London in those years. In particular the author highlights how diplomats described the incident only from a political point of view, ignoring any religious issues. For example, a Genoese report noted the danger of Nayler becoming a sort of Quaker Masaniello. The author also points out how this episode, which had significant political implications, seemed strangely marginal to the Venetian envoy in England, in whose dispatches it is never mentioned. This case study thus demonstrates how, on one hand, for scholars of early modern England, the Tuscan and Genovese diplomatic sources are more interesting (compared to the Venetian ones that, because of the English edition of the Calendar of State Papers Venetian, are usually best known by English speaking scholars) and on the other says something about the languages and culture of old regime Italian diplomacy.

“La prima rivoluzione inglese nelle pagine del ‘Mercurio’ di Vittorio Siri,” in L’Informazione politica in Italia (secoli XVI-XVIII). Atti del seminario organizzato dalla Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa e dal Dipartimento di Storia moderna e contemporanea dell’Università di Pisa. Pisa, 23 e 24 giugno 1997, edited by Elena Fasano Guarini e Mario Rosa (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2001), 137-172.

by Stefano Villani

[The First English Revolution in the pages of Vittorio Siri’s Mercurio]. This essay has been published among the... more [The First English Revolution in the pages of Vittorio Siri’s Mercurio]. This essay has been published among the proceedings of the conference on Political Information in Italy (16th-18th Centuries) held at Pisa in May 1999. The Cassinese Monk Vittorio Siri (1608-1685) between 1644 and 1682 published fifteen volumes of the Mercurio which described the history of Europe between 1640 and 1655. In this work the English Revolution received perhaps the most detailed and comprehensive narrative and appeared in print in Italy in the seventeenth century (out of the approximately 16,900 pages that compose this monumental work approximately 2,300 narrate the English vicissitudes). The essay reconstructs Siri’s intellectual profile, the complex publishing history of the Mercurio, the way in which Siri presents English events of the 1640s and 50s to Italian readers and provides an extensive bibliography of Siri’s manuscripts in Italian libraries and archives. In the publishing history of Mercurio one can readily distinguish two blocks: the first comprising the first five volumes of Mercurio, published between 1644 and 1655, in which Siri describes European history up to 1645 using documentary material collected for the most part when he lived in Venice; the second comprising the remaining ten volumes, published between 1667 and 1682, which are essentially based on the French diplomatic material that Siri used in order to describe European events up to 1655 since moving to Paris in 1654. The publishing success of this work, of which many traces remain, was probably due to the very reasons that make them so hard to read today, namely the fact that Siri published a huge amount of documents, letters, and broadsheets in their entirety without even attempting to merge them into an organic narrative. Siri’s working method, however, apparently corresponded to a specific programmatic purpose: to provide the reader historical and political information while minimizing the mediation of the author. Often accused by contemporary (and nineteenth century) literary scholars and historians of being a chaotic hoarder of documents, Siri, in fact, should be noted among the many seventeenth-century Italian historians for his attitude that, with a straining anachronism, could be defined as “positivist.” He identifyed historical truth only in documented facts and recognizing that the only function of the historian was meticulously and precisely recording events, eschewing any ambitions to build an interpretative framework. The main purpose of Siri’s work was therefore more than to give his personal assessment of historical events; it was to provide easy access to as many documents as possible for a wide audience. From this point of view, the interest of the pages dedicated to the English Revolution in the Mercurio has more to do with the circulation of political information than with straight historiography

Raymond D. Tumbleson,'Catholicism in the English Protestant Imagination'

by Jodi A. Campbell

Christopher Highley, Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2008. 248 pp.# 59.00 hardback. …

by Jodi A. Campbell

Afflicted Children: Supernatural Illness, Fear, and Anxiety in Early Modern England

by Judith Bonzol

published in "Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period," ed. Yasmin Haskell (Brepols, 2012)

Unruly women and the world turned upside down: the politics of gender in early modern England

by Julia Landweber

Governing England Through the Manor Courts, 1550-1850

by Brodie Waddell

Historical Journal, 55:2 (June, 2012)

Using records from 113 manors in Yorkshire and elsewhere, this article surveys the changing role of manor courts in... more Using records from 113 manors in Yorkshire and elsewhere, this article surveys the changing role of manor courts in English local government over three centuries. These institutions allowed juries of established tenants to deal cheaply and easily with a variety of chronic concerns, including crime, migration, retailing, common lands, and infrastructure. Their focus varied significantly according to region, topography, settlement size, and time period, but active courts existed in most parts of the country throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ultimately, they had many valuable functions which historians have barely begun to explore. This article thus offers the most systematic analysis to date of the role of these institutions in making and enforcing by-laws in this period, showing that many of the courts evolved to suit the changing priorities of local tenants rather than falling rapidly into ruin as has sometimes been assumed.

Note su conflitti di religione e machiavellismo nella cultura politica inglese della seconda metà del Seicento

by Alessandro Arienzo

in atti del convegno, "MACHIAVELLISMO E GUERRE DI RELIGIONE NELL'EUROPA DELL'ETA' MODERNA - Convegno in onore di Corrado Vivanti (26-27 settembre 2008), Roma, Edizioni di storia e Letteratura, forthcoming

Durante tutto il diciassettesimo secolo il conflitto tra cattolici e protestanti, e più in generale lo scontro tra... more Durante tutto il diciassettesimo secolo il conflitto tra cattolici e protestanti, e più in generale lo scontro tra Riforma e Controriforma, costituì per l’Inghilterra uno degli assi entro cui si svolse sia la riflessione politica – in connessione a temi quali il diritto di resistenza, i fondamenti dell’autorità regia e dell’obbedienza al sovrano, il ruolo e la collocazione della chiesa anglicana – quanto gli sforzi di definire assetti politici e istituzionali per una nazione che, attraverso un importate passaggio rivoluzionario, repubblicano e parlamentare, aveva visto lentamente rafforzarsi le proprie istituzioni parlamentari e aveva vissuto una stagione di attivismo religioso e politico dai tratti fortemente contraddittori. A fine secolo il consolidarsi di un ruolo decisivo della camera bassa e la più netta separazione tra schieramenti whig e tories, resero la tenuta del governo monarchico sempre più il risultato di effettiva ma precaria mediazione tra organi istituzionali – in particolare tra corona e parlamento – e sempre meno il prodotto di logiche patronali.F F Peraltro, il ruolo di mediazione della camera bassa, legato ad una sua natura rappresentativa, se contribuì a stemperare il contrasto tra dissenso religioso e anglicanesimo, si reggeva però sui delicati equilibri connessi alle politiche di esclusione tanto delle anime più radicali del protestantesimo, quanto della componente cattolica ancora fortemente presente in un largo strato delle aristocrazie inglese, gallese e irlandese. Nell’Inghilterra dell’epoca, le lotte tra le confessioni religiose che avevano squassato l’Europa nel secolo precedente mostravano quindi un carattere specifico e relativamente autonomo dalle dinamiche continentali, seppure nel contatto diretto e costante con quanto avveniva nel resto d’Europa. Un carattere fortemente segnato da un protagonismo commerciale vincolato nelle sue alleanze dalle necessità di posizionamenti economici e politici, nonché dalle trame interne allo scontro tra parti diverse dello schieramento protestante.

Cultivating kin in Lancashire: The Stansfields of Long Clough, Littleborough, c.1697-1861

by Robert E. Stansfield

(2011)