Religious history
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Hugh Oldham, bishop of Exeter, ‘hath more poison in that grete fowle bely of hys then all the Bysshoppes in Englond’: scandalum magnatum in early-sixteenth century England
For the first article of 2025, Dr Simon Payling of our Commons 1461-1504 Section, explores the use of a unique…
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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…
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Two anniversaries, two impeachments and an election
In 2024 the tercentenaries of the deaths of two important 18th-century figures the fell within weeks of each other. Dr…
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A Medieval Monk’s View of Parliament: Thomas Walsingham’s Chronica Maiora and the Parliaments of 1376 to 1410
Thomas Walsingham is best known for his role as a chronicler of his own religious life, but he was also…
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Enter the Dragon: the education of Robert Harley
Robert Harley (1661-1724) was in his late 20s when he was first elected to Parliament as MP for Tregony in…
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The Early Career of Hugh Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh
In the latest blog for the Georgian Lords, Dr Stuart Handley re-examines the early career of Hugh Boulter, briefly bishop…
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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…
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A last roll of the dice? Richard III’s pardon to John Morton, 16 August 1485
On 16 August 1485, King Richard III issued a pardon to an old adversary, John Morton, bishop of Ely. Dr…
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Launching the Letters, Writings, and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Oxford March 2023
An event celebrating the the publication of a new edition of The Letters, Writings, and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell was…
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From Windsor to Westminster: the people of St George’s in Parliament in the later Middle Ages II: Knights vs Canons
In October, Dr Hannes Kleineke, editor of our Commons 1461-1504 project, delivered the ‘Maurice and Shelagh Bond Memorial Lecture’ at…


