So on this blog today, first we had torture, now we have plague. It's a really cheerful day today. And, as we'll see, a topical one; you would not think, necessarily, that a 1604 pamphlet about the plague and the government's response to it would be topical to an audience of today, except that nowadays, you probably would. Anyway ( Read more... )

The Gunpowder Plot arose in the following way: the King had recently invented a new table called Avoirduroi, which said:

I New Presbyter = I OLD PRIEST.
o Bishop = o King.James was always repeating 'No Bishop, No King', to himself, and one day a certain loyal citizen called Sir Guyfawkes, a very active and conscientious man, overheard him, and ( Read more... )

A few more examples of the generally unsettling illustrations:

Edward II (with mini-Gaveston)

James I (I opened the book to this one when I got it and nearly dropped it on the floor)

Williamanmary (perhaps the most terrifying of all)

Edward VIII (because it's not only pre-constitutional-monarchy monarchs who are scary)

Also, anent this book, lnhammer ( Read more... )

I have had this debate with both my sister and jucundushomo recently, and I find their disagreement on the topic baffling.

NB that choices of icon and music do not necessarily indicate my opinion on The Obvious Right Answer.

Poll Lea

ETA: The poll title should be "Lea's Big Book of You-Know-What Poll," but it got screwed up in the coding. Blast.

ETA: commodorified, while we're ( Read more... )

Dear Self:

It would behoove you, as one who aspires to call herself a competent early modernist, to learn to tell the difference between the Basilikon Doron, the Eikon Basilike, and Eikonoklastes. As far as Eikonoklastes especially goes, there's no excuse for it. In particular, transposing any of these names in papers you've submitted to ( Read more... )

EMLS, an online journal which actually doesn't make you shell out money to read it, has a new issue out now which contains many nifty things, including a review of the Liverpool Faustus which the Hornblower and/or Galactica fans out there may enjoy reading, and an article on the popular voice in Richard II which is sometimes interesting and ( Read more... )

I was going to post a link to the one online version of Polemo-Middinia I found (as mentioned in the previous post), but on further review, besides the censorship of some lines, it's really just not a very good text, with lots of weird variants. I'll have to transcribe it later ( Read more... )

For no reason, just because.

This was written on James VI's departure from Scotland to assume the English crown.

On the River Tweed
Sir Robert AytonFaire famous flood, which sometyme did devyde ( Read more... )

Well, the Jacobean court, but that's more or less the same thing -- you know those Stuarts. Anyway, another bit of trivia for you which amused me a great deal.

In 1618, the Venetian ambassador and his entourage attended a performance of Ben Jonson's masque Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, and chaplain Orazio Busino was good enough to write about it ( Read more... )

So last night I went to sleep right after reading The True Law of Free Monarchies and it caused me to dream weird things. Except I don't remember exactly what they were. I have the vague sense Milton was somehow involved. *is alarmed*

(The True Law was an odd read, incidentally, since I'd not read it before, yet pretty much everything in it was ( Read more... )