HIST2412: THE BRITISH ISLES, 1450-1750

School of History, Philosophy, Religion & Classics

ForganSmithBuilding

The University of Queensland

Semester One, 2008

Lecture and Tutorial Schedule

Lecturer and Tutor: Marcus Harmes

Elizabeth I by Nicholas Hilliard (?)

The tutorials will be conducted on a weekly basis as indicated on the schedule below. The content and questions fo r the tutorial discussions will come from the course reader, which you are required to purchase (except for tutorial ten, where you need to locate the texts for yourself from Early English Books Online).

It is expected that students will come prepared for class discussions having read and critically evaluated the set sources and will therefore be able to contribute to the in-class verbal analysis of these works. Tutorial participation will account for 10% of your overall grade for this course. Effective participation means that you have read the sources and are able to offer meaningful commentary on them. Useful questions to keep in mind when reading all texts are those relating to the text’s purpose (i.e. why it was written) and the author’s perspective, background and historical context.

These readings provide the subject matter for the two mini-essays which you are required to write. For each essay, select ONE set of weekly readings and critically interpret the texts. The essay is to be submitted at the tutorial to which it pertains.

Week one
Beginning February 25th
Lecture: Course introduction; Lancastrian England 1399-1470

No tutorial

Week two
Beginning March 3rd
Lecture: TheWars of the Roses and the New Monarchy 1470-1509

Tutorial one: Ritual and Religion: the Sacred in Lancastrian England.

The Statute of Treasons (1352)

The anointing and vesting of the king (1377)

The Holy Oil used at the coronation of Henry IV (1399)

The constitutions of Archbishop Arundel against the Lollards (1409)

The burning of John Badby (1410)

The rebellion and execution of Sir John Oldcastle (1414 and 1417)

The Lollard rising (1431)

The condemnation of Eleanor Cobham for witchcraft (1441)

Coronation Anthem: Zadok the Priest (1727)

Points for discussion: What was the connection between Kingship and the sacred? Did Holy Oil really make the King sacred? How did the Church preserve its orthodoxy? What challenges to faith and doctrine did the Church face? What were the chief points of difference between Lollards and Holy Church?

Week three
Beginning March 10th
Lecture:Court and Parliament under Henry VIII 1509 - 1548

Tutorial two:Library/EEBO Tutorial

Week four
Beginning March 17th
Lecture: The Reformation 1500 - 1558

Tutorial three:Thomas Cromwell and the Privy Council

C.S.L. Davies, “The Cromwellian Decade: Authority and Consent”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, no.7 (1997), pp.177-195.

John Guy, "Privy Council: Revolution or Evolution", in David Starkey and Christopher Coleman (eds.), Revolution Reassessed: Revisions in the Histoy of Tudor Government and Administration (1986), pp.59-85.

Points for discussion: Why did the forms or institutions of English government change during the reign of Henry VIII? What was the importance of Thomas Cromwell in enacting reform of Parliament and the Council? Has his influence or importance been overstated by some modern historians?

Week five
Beginning March 24th
Lecture: Mid–Semester Recess

No Tutorial: Mid-Semester Recess

Week six
Beginning March 31st
Lecture: Elizabethan England 1558 - 1603

Tutorial four: The Reformation: Progress and Punishment

Licence for Sir Thomas More to keep and read heretical books (1528)

The Act of Supremacy (1534)

An act for punishment of heresy (1534)

The trial and execution of Anne Boleyn (1536)

The trial of Anne Askewe (1546)

The first Act of Uniformity (1548)

A humble heretic martyred (1557)

Points for discussion: How were religious beliefs and practices controlled? How was heresy defined? On what grounds were people punished for their religion in the Tudor period?

Week seven
Beginning April 7th
Lecture: Britain and Europe in the 17th Century

Tutorial five: The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1959), pp.23-26.

William Camden, The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth, Late Queen of England (1615), ed. Wallace T. MacCaffrey (1970), pp.266-84, 290-300.

Letters between the Secretaries of State and Sir Amyas Paulet, Queen Mary’s jailer, 1-2 Feb 1586/7; from M.M. Maxwell Scott, The Tragedy of Fotheringay (1895), pp.168-171.

Secretary of State William Davison’s account; from Joseph M. Levine (ed), Great Lives Observed: Elizabeth I (1969), pp.124-130.

Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller & Mary Beth Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works(2000), pp.186-204, 286-297.

Points for discussion: Read the letters from Queen Elizabeth I of England to King James VI of Scotland regarding the execution of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots. How does each portray himself or herself to the other? What motivations might they have for doing so?

Week eight
Beginning April 14th
Lecture: Witches, Radicals and the English Apocalypse 1558 - 1650

Tutorial six: The Spanish Match

“King James’s Instructions to Sir John Digby, 14 April 1617”, in Dodd’s Church History of England (5 vols, 1843), vol 5, pp.cclxxxi-iii.

“Conditions proposed by the [Catholic] Theologians, 5/15 Sept 1617”, in S.R. Gardiner (ed.), Narrative of the Spanish Marriage Treaty (1869), pp.298-305.

“King James’s Speech to Parliament, 30 Jan 1621; the Remonstrance of the Commons, 3 Dec 1621; and part of the King’s First Answer, 11 Dec 1621”, in Dodd’s Church History of England (5 vols, 1843), vol.5, pp.cclxxxvi-ccxci.

“King James to the Speaker of the Commons, 3 Dec 1621; and to Sir George Calvert, 16 Dec 1621”, in G.P.V. Akrigg, Letters of King James VI and I (1984), pp.377-381.

“The Commons’ Protestation, 18 Dec 1621;” in J.P. Kenyon (ed.), The Stuart Constitution: Documents and Commentary (1986), pp.42-43.

Elizabeth McClure Thompson (ed.), The Chamberlain Letters (1965), pp.304-311.

“Archbishop Abbot to King James, c. June 1623; Secretary Conway to the Duke of Buckingham, 17 July 1623; and the King’s Protestation on the Subject, c.July 1623”, in Dodd’s Church History of England (5 vols, 1843), vol. 5, pp.cccxv-vi, cccxx-xxii.

“The King’s Speech at the Opening of Parliament, 19 Feb 1624”, in J.P. Kenyon (ed.), The Stuart Constitution: Documents and Commentary (1986), pp.43-45.

“Parliament’s Petitions to the King (proposed, 3 April 1624; and submitted, 23 April 1624); and the king’s reply, 23 April 1624”, in Dodd’s Church History of England (5 vols, 1843), vol.5, pp.ccclxi-xlvi.

Thomas Cogswell, “England and the Spanish Match”, in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds), Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603-1642 (1989), pp.107-133.

Points for discussion: What were the principal objections to the proposed marriage to the Infanta? Why did these complaints anger King James? What do these documents reveal about the extent and limitations of both parliamentary and monarchical power?

Week nine
Beginning April 21st
Lecture: Classes supplanted by ANZAC Day Holiday

No Tutorial: Classes supplanted by ANZAC Day Holiday

Week ten
Beginning April 28th
Lecture: The Civil Wars 1630 -1660

Tutorial seven: Seventeenth-CenturyDissent: Mrs Agnes Beaumont

“The Life of Agnes Beaumont” (1674); from Monica Furlong (ed), The Trial of John Bunyan & the Persecution of the Puritans: Selections from the Writings of John Bunyan & Agnes Beaumont (1978), pp.123-146

Points for discussion: What issues are raised by Agnes Beaumont’s autobiography? What status did her religious community enjoy? What does her account suggest about some of the strengths and weaknesses regarding the place of women in early modern English society?

Week eleven
Beginning May 5th
Lecture: The Restoration 1660 – 1685

Tutorial eight: The Trial of Charles I

J.G. Muddiman, Trial of King Charles the First (1928), pp.75-85, 231-232, 260-264.

Conrad Russell, “The Man Charles Stuart”, in The Origins of the English Civil War (1990), pp.185-211

Points for discussion: Read the excerpts from Muddiman’s Trial of King Charles the First. What did parliament’s prosecutors believe to be the substance of their case against the King? Why did the King deny the validity of the court? Do you think the King’s reply to their charges was convincing?

Week twelve
Beginning May 12th
Lecture: The Origins of the British Empire

Tutorial nine: The Popish Plot

The Trial and Execution of the Five Jesuits, June 1679 (Excepts from Cobbett’s State Trials).

Blundel the Jesuits Letter of Intelligence… (1679).

Samuel Smith, An Account, of the Behaviour of the Fourteen Late Popish Malefactors, whilst in Newgate… (1679).

The Speeches of the Five Jesuits that were Executed at Tyburn… (1679).

The Last Speeches of the Five Notorious Traitors and Jesuits (1679).

Points for discussion: Did the Jesuits receive a fair trial? What does their principal crime seem to have been? What do the texts reveal about the status of Roman Catholics in seventeenth-century England?

Week thirteen
Beginning May 19th
Lecture: Slavery and the Slave Trade c.1650 - 1750

No Tutorial

Week fourteen
Beginning May 26th
Lecture: The Glorious Revolution and the end of the Stuarts 1685 and beyond

Tutorial ten: Substance use and abuse in the Seventeenth Century

Using EEBO, you are asked to prepare at least one of these texts for a class discussion on the perceived virtues and vices of tobacco, coffee and chocolate. These titles will guide you to the full title in EEBO.

- A counterblaste to tobacco

- Nepenthes, or The vertues of tobacco

- Tobacco tortured

- A briefe and accurate treatise, concerning, the taking of the fume of tobacco

- Panacea; or The universal medicine,
- The nature of the drink kauhi, or coffe, and the berry of which it is made,
- The vertues of chocolate East-India drink
- A character of coffee and coffee-houses

- A Cup of coffee, or, Coffee in its colours
- The Maidens complain[t] against coffee (a play)

- The Vertues of coffeeBy: Bacon, Francis,
- Two broad-sides against tobaccoBy: James I, King of England,
- Coffee-houses vindicated in ansvver to the late published Character of a coffee-house

- A Satyr against coffee
- The Mens answer to the womens petition against coffee
- A proclamation for the suppression of coffee-houses By: England and Wales. Sovereign (1660-1685: Charles II)

- The Women's complaint against tobacco, or, An excellent help to multiplication
- An additional proclamation concerning coffee-houses By:England and Wales. Sovereign (1660-1685: Charles II)
- Healths grand preservative: or The womens best doctor.

- The Natural history of coffee, thee, chocolate, tobacco

Points for discussion: On what basis do these authors complain about or revere coffee/tobacco/alcohol/chocolate? What thoughts do these prompt in your mind about similar debates today? How are the debates similar? How are they different?

Left to right – King Henry VIII, King Henry VII, Elizabeth of York and Jane Seymour. Drawing after Hans Holbein's Whitehall Mural.