Elizabethan

Christopher Lloyd asserts that the first contacts between Elizabethan England and the Russia of Ivan the Terrible mark the true birth of the British Empire.

Margaret Clitherow, a butcher’s wife from York, was one of only three women martyred by the Elizabethan state. Her execution in 1586 was considered gruesome, even by the standards of the time. 

Anthony Dent examines the lives of English foresters, parkers, warreners, and the preservation of deer and boar for hunting, all in the era of the Bard.

Alan Haynes recounts how Essex and Raleigh attacked the Azores, but failed to destroy the Spanish fleet

Derek Severn explains how the third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, spent his final ten years as a prisoner of state in Denmark.

Stephen Clissold explains how, after twenty years of life as a nun, St Teresa began to experience visions and ecstasies which led her to found a reformed Carmelite convent in Avila.

F.E. Halliday finds that every age, from the first Elizabethan to the present one, has evolved its own methods of producing Shakespeare; sometimes with results that might have surprised the dramatist.

Most of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in or around the City of London. By the time he retired, Greater London – a residential as well as a commercial metropolis – was beginning to spring up beyond its ancient limits.

Shakespeare was born into an England rejoicing in the peace and prospects of a new reign, but anxious about the future, writes Joel Hurstfield.

J. Hurstfield analyses social conditions in the Elizabethan age.