History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | sixteenth century

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Criminal punishments in Devon, 1598-1638

By on January 31, 2024 in Learning in Focus

In the second-year UoP history module, Underworlds:  Crime, Deviance & Punishment in Britain, 1500-1900, taught by Dr Fiona McCall and Professor Brad Beaven, students study the history of crime and punishment between 1500 and 1900. Students can take this option on a range of courses at Portsmouth, including History, Criminology and English Literature.  In this blog post, based on his work for the module, second year UoP history student Edward Sainsbury discusses what can be learned from a detailed table of statistics on sentences given to criminals at the Devonshire assizes and quarter sessions courts between 1598 and 1638. Over the course of an almost 30-year period almost 10,000 punishments […]

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The challenges faced by Catholics under Queen Elizabeth I

By on November 20, 2023 in New Publications, Research in Focus

  UoP History’s Katy Gibbons has recently published a chapter in volume 1 of the Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism. This major multivolume work seeks to explore the complex and contested stories and experiences of Catholic communities in Britain and Ireland across 5 centuries, and to bring together aspects of their stories that are often approached separately.  Katy’s contribution explores the many challenges faced by Catholics in England, Wales and Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth, and how their responses were shaped by the specific local, national and international context. In particular, it considers the linguistic, political, ecclesiastical and legal frameworks in which Catholics negotiated their existence as […]

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Telling tales about the Past

By on November 16, 2023 in Learning in Focus

The celebrated historian Natalie Zemon Davis died recently.  In this post, our own Dr Katy Gibbons looks at how second-year students studying the ‘Debating the Past’ module, translated her most famous work into other media: emojis, memes and poetry! What role does story telling play in history writing? How far can historians use their own imagination when discovering and relaying the stories of people in the past? This is one of the many questions that we engage our students with as they look in depth at historiography, and think about how historians ‘do’ history.  In our second year core module, ‘Debating the Past’, one of the texts that might be […]

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An inventory of Henry VIII’s navy

By on September 8, 2023 in Public History, Research in Focus

UoP second-year history student Francesca Raine has recently had a guest blog published for the Mary Rose collections, discussing the Anthony Roll.  This list of Henry VIII’s ships was presented to King Henry VIII in 1546 by its creator Anthony Anthony, an official of the Ordnance.  Beneath each ship is an individual inventory detailing information on the weaponry, crew, and tonnage, an in-depth Tudor catalogue. This document holds the only illustration and final report of the Mary Rose from its active life.  Click here to read more.

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Suggestions for summer reading, listening and thinking

By on August 12, 2022 in Learning in Focus, News

One of the questions we’re most frequently asked by students who will be joining us as first years in the autumn term is ‘”What reading do we need to do to prepare for the course?” All of the modules that you will be taking in the first year have reading lists, of course, but the vast majority of material on them is part of a publishers’ package purchased by the university library that you will only have access to after you start university. So, to get you going, our Admissions Tutor Dr Katy Gibbons has written the following blog offering guidance on things you can read or listen to to […]

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Empire and its Afterlives 1: Applying the skills of the historian to the present

By on August 9, 2021 in Learning in Focus, Uncategorized

This is the first post in a series of four showcasing the work of second year students from across the University of Portsmouth Faculty of Social Sciences Click this link to see a video of George the Poet on the Benin Bronzes Empire and its Afterlives is a module available for second year students across History, Politics, International Development, International Relations and Languages. Newly created for the 2020/2021 academic year by Natalya Vince and Tony Chafer, it encouraged students to draw on research from a range of disciplines in order to better understand empires from a historical perspective, their legacies, and the way they are present and represented around us […]

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