England

David Mitchell introduces a seventeenth-century politician who hoped to see the art of government reduced to an exact science, free from “the noise and dirt of party strife.”

Neville Williams profiles Thomas Howard, Fourth Duke of Norfolk (1538-1572), a great territorial magnate, commanding fanatical affection and wielding an influence that was little less than absolute.

C.V. Wedgwood recounts the circumstances the Earl of Arundel’s Embassy to Germany in 1636 as recounted in William Crowne’s Diary, the Earl’s letters and other contemporary sources.

Bernard Pool describes how the diarist was determined, in the interests of the Navy and for his own satisfaction, to strike the best possible bargain for the Crown.

Despite being denounced by Huxley as a man who used high gifts to discredit humble seekers after truth, David Newsome writes of how this Victorian prelate has also been acclaimed as the greatest bishop of his age.

R.J. White describes how all sorts and conditions of men, at every stage of transition of a rapidly changing society, crowded the early-nineteenth-century scene.

J.C. Barry looks at how the Thirty-Nine Articles, defining the doctrine of the Church of England, were drawn up by a Convocation that met in London in the 16th century.

By the close of the fourteenth century the English system of surnames had come into general use, many of them deriving from the trades and crafts followed by their bearers.

J.P. Kenyon describes how, in 1688, there were weighty reasons to suppose that the new royal heir was a changeling, smuggled to the Palace in a warming pan.

Esther Moir brings us on a visit to the Nonconformist chapels of England, products of a long tradition in vernacular architecture, and well adapted to the needs of local worshippers.