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Christmas Shopping in the Seventeenth Century

By Carys Brown | @HistoryCarys In October 2004, Christians, trade-unionists, and the festively-inclined rejoiced at the introduction of the Christmas Day (Trading) Act. Ever since then it has been illegal for large shops to be open on Christmas Day; workers theoretically have the chance to rest and spend time with loved ones; Christians can celebrate the…
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Absent leeks, lost voices? Cooking and recording in early modern Wales

By Carys Brown | @HistoryCarys My original intention for a blog post for St David’s Day (1 March) had been to cook and write about early modern leeks. Quite apart from being one of my favourite vegetables, the humble leek is one of the national symbols of Wales and features in a number of “traditional” Welsh…
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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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Royal Palace or Hellish Temple? Using Architectural Style as a Source

By Atlanta R. Neudorf // arn26@cam.ac.uk When one pictures the historian undertaking their archival research, it is common to conjure up an image of the scholar poring over sources of the written word: newspapers, letters, pamphlets, or book manuscripts. Few would imagine this dusty figure staring at a building.
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Experiencing the law in sixteenth-century England

By Laura Flannigan (@LFlannigan17) ‘To London once my stepps I bent, Where trouth in no wyse should be faint, To westmynster-ward I forthwith went, To a man of law to make complaint. I sayd, “for marys love, that holy saynt / Pyty the poore that wold proceede.” But, for lack of mony, I cold not spede.…
