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Can Historians Study the Mind?
By Carys Brown Carys is a studying for an MPhil in Early Modern History. Her current research is on trust, Catholicism, and confessional co-existence, c. 1688-1750. Looking into the minds of people who have been dead for 300 years may seem like something of an impossible task. Since the 1970s, however, historians have increasingly attempted…
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Elizabeth Sculthorp and the Embodiments of Unbelief
By Patrick Seamus McGhee Patrick is an MPhil student in Early Modern History at the University of Cambridge. He is currently researching atheism and unbelief in post-Reformation England. In 1519, Elizabeth Sculthorp was brought before the church courts in the diocese of Lincoln to explain her faltering religious belief. The court book reports that: “First she…
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Wealth, status, and power: is the franchise the same as the vote?
By Carys Brown @HistoryCarys Wealth and status were at the heart of eighteenth century politics, so much so that those with enough of both could have significant political influence even without enfranchisement. Such was the rather peculiar position of British Catholic gentlemen, who could not vote or hold political office until 1829 because of their religion.…
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The (not so) Secret Vatican Archives: A Practical Guide for Researchers
In the first of our posts on doing research abroad, Fred Smith (@Fred_E_Smith) explores the Secret Vatican Archives. Aliens? Illuminati secrets? Devices that can see into the future? It seems that no conspiracy theory is too far-fetched for those who speculate what may be hidden within the vaults of the Archivum Segretum Vaticanum. [1] Indeed, the…
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Catholic murderers in your area put loyal Protestants at risk, SAD! – Benjamin Harris, fake news, and the Popish Plot
By Alex Wakelam – @A_Wakelam Anyone with even a passing awareness of western politics over the last year will have been bombarded with the phrase “Fake News”, whether to describe genuine falsehood circulated as fact or as the rallying cry of bombastic autocrats denying the validity of news sources that disagree with them. While the phrase seems like…
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