England

A Maidservant's Lot in Early Modern England

R.C. Richardson describes the fortunes of young women driven by poverty into domestic service. A number fell victim to predatory masters and ended up with illegitimate children, only to be ejected from households.

Tudor England: Let’s Kill All the Lawyers

The rise of the legal profession in late medieval and early Tudor England was greeted with disdain by the wider population. Anthony Musson asks whether the reputation of lawyers and judges as scavengers and social climbers was deserved.

The First English Family Letters

Maurice Keen chronicles a set of 15th century letters - the product of everyday communication between English gentry and officialdom - and suggests how their contents may change the reader's views of the late middle ages. Helen Castor offered her own contemporary historiographical account in 2010.

Flights of Georgian Fancy

Lucy Worsley reveals the strange stories of the cast of characters on the King’s Grand Staircase at Kensington Palace, painted by William Kent for George I in the 1720s.

The Strange Case of the Chevalier d’Eon

In the mid-18th century – at the height of the power struggle between France and England and the political ferment of both nations – a French spy with a peculiar personal agenda came to prominence in London. Jonathan Conlin tells his story.

Captain Jennings Causes Chaos

Early 17th century England saw the emergence of pirates, much romanticised creatures whose lives were often nasty, brutish and short. Adrian Tinniswood examines one such career.

Making of a Martyr: William of Norwich and the Jews

The murder of a 12-year-old boy in Norwich in 1144 inspired Thomas of Monmouth, a monk from the city's cathedral, to create an anti-semitic account of the incident. His influential work reveals much about life and belief in medieval England, argues Miri Rubin.