History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | seventeenth century

Plague_scene;_woodcut_Wellcome_M0010437 cropped

Coping with epidemic disease in the seventeenth century

Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower [1] One of the first school history projects I can remember doing, before leaving Australia at the age of fourteen, was to create my own facsimile newspaper reporting on the great plague of 1665. Who would have thought at that stage that I would have ended up as a seventeenth-century historian? I spent hours poring over a London bill of mortality, copying the forms of 17th century handwriting and the strange unfamiliar fatal diseases: ‘apoplexie’, ‘ague’, ‘chrisomes’, ‘dropsie’, ‘griping’ in the […]

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Women in Totnes church 620 x 320

New conference: Disruptions and Continuities in Gender Roles and Authority, 1450-1750

The new Disrupted Authority research group at the University of Portsmouth – SASHPL are organising an interdisciplinary conference linking issues of gender and authority in the early modern period, to be held at Portsmouth on the 29-30 June 2020.  One keynote speaker will be Professor Ann Hughes, from Keele University, whose book Gender and the English Revolution is essential reading for those wanting to understand issues of gender in the seventeenth century.  There is a call for papers for academics and postgraduates, across a range of disciplines, to send in abstracts for potential twenty-minute papers to present at the conference. If you want to know more, see the conference webpage […]

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st thomas cathedral

Students tour seventeenth-century Portsmouth

In this blog, Dr Fiona McCall, senior lecturer in early modern history at the University of Portsmouth, reports on a field trip undertaken as part of her Special Subject Module ‘Britain Divided: The impact of the Civil War 1637-1662’. Fiona teaches units on the British Civil Wars, and Crime, Sin and Punishment in early modern Britain, amongst others.  Her current research project investigates religion in the English parish during the period of Godly rule of the 1640s and 1650s. On the 18th October, as part of their special subject on the British Civil Wars, third year history students went on a walking tour of Old Portsmouth, taking in the house […]

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milldam

History Research Seminars Autumn 2017

Every year, the History team at Portsmouth organise a series of research seminars that take place across the autumn and spring terms. Historians are invited from a range of institutions, both in Britain and abroad, to talk about their latest research projects. The subjects presented cover a broad historical timespan and offer insight into a diverse range of topics. This autumn features talks on society’s visions of future warfare, the representation of the 1549 Western Rebellion, and the role of clothing consumption in seventeenth century Sussex. All are welcome to attend. Autumn 2017 Wednesday 18th October, 3:30-5:00pm. Room: Burnaby Building 1.25 Sleepwalking to the Precipice: The failure to predict the nature of future […]

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Image taken from Miskito Hatchet in British Museum collection httpwww.britishmuseum.orgresearchcollection_onlinecollection_object_details.aspxobjectId=669732&partId=1.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend: An examination of the relationship between the Miskito and the British.

“Abigail based her study on engagement with, and critical examination of, a wide range of sources, from secondary ones to printed Calendars of government records and original Treasury Papers which revealed expenses for gifts to the Miskito to ensure a positive relationship. Extant artefact and pictorial evidence, though scant, was also employed. There was adept use of cartography and consideration of the three Miskito rulers brought to England – ‘The Prince’ brought to England at some point in the 1630s by Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, ‘Oldman’ here in 1655 and George, in England c. 1774 –November 1776, before becoming King of the Miskito. Written in a clear, confident […]

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