legal history |

Not so merry England: a Swiss visitor comments on Elizabethan criminal justice

By Fiona McCall on March 25, 2021 in Learning in Focus

English people tend to think highly of our long-established legal system. But as second-year student Liam Fisher explains, visitors from Europe didn’t always see things the same way. Liam’s blog is based on work he did for the second-year module: Underworlds: Crime Deviance and Punishment: 1500-1900, taught by Fiona McCall and Brad Beaven. The English justice system during the early-modern period was iconic both socially and politically, ingrained into English culture and minds as something to be proud of. While the wider European population were no strangers to barbaric forms of punishment, the extent of English glorification and creativity of punishment would no doubt come as a shock to outsiders. […]

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Cut-throat communities, angry noblemen, and a noseless pirate! My journey through the joys and horrors of writing a dissertation

By Fiona McCall on June 16, 2020 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Below, the first of a series on this year’s bumper crop of student dissertations, from my own supervisee Tom Underwood. Tom was one of the most prepared and organised students I’ve ever supervised, but as he mentions below, also still honing his dissertation down to the wire, and we were blown away with the results. Tom is planning to continue onto an MRes, where his impressive skills at reading early modern handwriting, and patience with sifting his way through basement archives should come to further good use. – ed Whether its Errol Flynn’s smooth-talking Captain Blood, or Johnny Depp’s rum-soaked Jack Sparrow, the pirate occupies a special place within popular […]

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