Religious history
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Oliver Cromwell’s ‘Other House’ and the perils of Lords ‘reform’
In this guest post, Dr Jonathan Fitzgibbons of Lincoln University, looks at a constitutional issue from the 1650s with obvious…
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The Last of the Jacobites: Henry Benedict
Henry Benedict, Cardinal York (1725-1807), born 300 years ago this March, was the last member of the royal family to…
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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…
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Lord Saye and Sele and the Battle for Oxford
In our first ‘Revolutionary Stuart Parliaments‘ article of 2025, Editor of the 1640-60 House of Lords section, Dr David Scott,…
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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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The day Parliament was invaded
In the summer of 1780 London, and several other cities across England, experienced some of the worst rioting they had…
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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…