England

Leonard W. Cowie traces the development of a peculilarly English legal institution, from the pre-Reformation era, into Dickensian times.

Michael Paffard opens for the visitor Thomas Tusser’s books on husbandry, which expounded the practical virtues of ‘thrift’ to Tudor farmers.

Four years after William I's conquest of England, writes J.J.N. McGurk, a Lincolnshire thegn named Hereward led a fierce resistance movement against Norman rule.

Joseph M. Levine introduces the modern historians' forerunners; the men who invented the techniques and defined the problems of studying the past.

Howard Shaw introduces Henry Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law, a regicide, and a man with principles and temper of a Cassius, who “stuck at nothing.”

Robert A. Draffan describes how contemporary reviewers of Jane Austen took a moralistic view of her heroines’ adventures.

Since the reign of James I, writes C. Leo Berry, members of the Royal House have been variously prayed for in the Services of the Church of England.

No marriage has been documented so assiduously as that of Thomas and Jane Carlyle. Ronald Pearsall describes how a famous Victorian historian was the first who attempted to unveil its secrets.

Geoffrey Keynes describes how the reception accorded to Harvey’s great book in 1628 proved him to have a creative genius that could leap ahead of his contemporaries.

Prudence Hannay introduces Lady Granville, the younger daughter of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. She bridges the gulf between two very different social periods. Brought up among the most dashing personalities of ‘the Devonshire House set’, she died in the great age of mid-Victorian respectability.