The First Elizabethan Age
-
Reframing the political narrative, Tudor-style: the Westminster conference of 1559
The use of social media to influence political opinion has become a contentious issue in the past few years. However,…
-
The 1580 Dover Straits Earthquake
On 6 April 1580, as Queen Elizabeth I was taking the air in the fields around Whitehall, south-east England experienced…
-
When tinsel was only for the rich: dressing to impress in early modern England
Wondering what to wear to a Christmas or New Year party? Deciding how to look one’s best can be a…
-
Richard Bancroft and the English mission to Emden, 1600
Richard Bancroft is well known to students of late Elizabethan and Jacobean England. A relentless enemy to nonconformist puritans, Bancroft…
-
Poison and the Tudor nobility: the De La Warr peerage case
With House of Lords membership once again on the political agenda, Dr Ben Coates of our Lords 1558-1603 section explores…
-
Winchester v. Winchester: rivalries and election-rigging in 1560s Hampshire
Whatever the outcome of a modern election, the process of voting is predictable, reliable, and well-understood. However, in the sixteenth…
-
A prisoner in the Lords: the curious case of William Grey, 13th Lord Grey of Wilton
The first Elizabethan Parliament (1559) famously witnessed the restoration of the royal supremacy and paved the way for the reintroduction…
-
Elizabeth I’s Swedish lady of the privy chamber: Helena Ulfsdotter née Snakenborg, marchioness of Northampton
As we mark Women’s History Month throughout March, here Dr Andrew Thrush, editor of our Lords 1558-1603 project, looks into…
-
‘So far out of order’: the scandalous career of Henry, 2nd Viscount Howard of Bindon
Elizabethan noblemen enjoyed enormous privileges, but generally recognized that there were limits to their freedom of action. However, one particular…
-
The man who would be king (-consort): Henry Fitzalan, earl of Arundel
Many of the leading figures at the Elizabethan court, like the queen’s chief minister, William Cecil, Lord Burghley and the…
-
Bishop Jewel and the lost archdeaconry
Many Elizabethan bills which failed to become Acts of Parliament don’t now survive, and little is known about them except…
-
What if Elizabeth I had Died in 1562?
It is easy to take the long reign of Elizabeth I for granted. But less than four years after Elizabeth…