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10. A Ticket for the Gift of the King’s Cure
By Christopher Whittell (@ChrisWhittell) The object for today’s calendar is this entry ticket to the ceremony of the Healing of the King’s Evil, issued during the reign of Charles II. Due to the very high demand to attend the ceremony, it was given to invited guests, whom were sufferers from a disease called scrofula, as…
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Collecting for Good Causes in Seventeenth-Century England
By Jacob F. Field (@jakeishistory) Charitable giving is an intrinsic part of contemporary British society. In 2017 the total amount given to charity in the United Kingdom was £10.3 billion, with the most popular causes being medical research, animal welfare, children or young people, hospitals and hospices, and overseas aid and disaster relief.[i] Early modern…
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3. The Salamander
By Kate McGregor (https://katemcgregor.academia.edu/) As wedding presents go a ship is certainly the pièce de résistance. A gift from the French King François I to his new son-in-law James V, King of Scots, it represented the renewal of the Franco-Scots ‘Auld alliance’. [1] At its helm was a glistening salamander, a ‘dragon in flames of…
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5. Lieve Verschuier’s ‘Tail Star (Comet) over Rotterdam’
By Lavinia Gambini (https://cambridge.academia.edu/LaviniaGambini) For early modern contemporaries, comets were not only associated with the birth of Christ. Comets possessed an eschatological dimension and had often been considered signs of imminent catastrophes, such as the Thirty Years’ War.[1] The celestial phenomenon also retained its apocalyptic dimension in the ‘Scientific Revolution’, when in Cambridge the Lucasian…
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14. The Petition and Pardon of Elizabeth Wright
By Emily Rhodes (@elrhodes96) In the early modern era, women had a direct way to contact their king or queen: a petition. Women could and did take their complaints and pleas to the highest authority in the realm. While the petition would go through various secretaries and court officials — such as Gervase Holles, Master of…
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