EMECC » Early Modern and Eighteenth Century Centre Blog

'Waste, Recycling and Leftovers in Early Modern and Renaissance Europe', a workshop held on November 2025

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 16:46:00 GMT

Scraps, excess, discard... what happens when there's just too much? In our recent workshop "Waste and leftovers in early modern Europe", co-sponsored by the Centre for the study of the Renaissance and the Early Modern and Eighteenth Century Centre, we explored these questions alongside three invited researchers.

Emotions and Labour in the Early Modern World

Wed, 07 May 2025 21:42:00 GMT

On 8 April 2025, Naomi Pullin (University of ��TV) and Charmian Mansell (University of Sheffield) organised a one-day workshop: ‘Emotions and Labour in the Early Modern World’, which set out to explore new methodologies and approaches to studying emotions in histories of early modern work. Generously supported by the Humanities Research Centre Conference Fund and Humanities Research Centre Visiting Speaker Fund, the Early Modern and Eighteenth-Century Centre and the Institute of Advanced Studies, the event was fully international, with keynote presentations and a series of events involving two leading scholars in this field: Professor Katie Barclay (University of Macquarie, Sydney) and Professor Sasha Turner (Johns Hopkins, Baltimore), along with many other emerging and established scholars of early modernity.

Midlands History & Heritage - Collaborative Approaches

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 14:45:14 GMT

‘Midlands History & Heritage – Collaborative Approaches’ took place on Friday afternoon, 17 January 2025. The event was designed to facilitate greater cooperation between the University of ��TV and the Lord Leycester Hospital, the partner organisation for my Collaborative Doctoral Award. The event built upon the highly successful workshop series Dr Naomi Pullin organised last year (which is being repeated this year) at the Lord Leycester Hospital. These workshops brought together University of ��TV academics and PhD students with local volunteers and researchers. Another ambition of the Midlands History & Heritage event was to foster conversation and develop relationships between leading Midlands scholars and key heritage, history, and museum stakeholders, allowing historians and public-facing institutions to interact and learn from one other.

A Royal Family Divided: The Nephews of Charles I and the First English Civil War, by Thomas Pert

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 13:00:32 GMT

Almost every dynasty to hold the English (later, British) throne has experienced considerable family disunity. This has ranged from personal disagreements - such as the well-documented disputes between successive Hanoverian kings and their sons throughout the 18^th century – to open warfare. The ‘Anarchy’ of 1138-53 saw Empress Matilda fight her cousin Stephen of Blois for the English crown; the ‘Wars of the Roses’ tore the Plantagenet dynasty apart; and Mary II and Anne acquiesced in the overthrow of their father James II in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688-9. However, there is one instance of such a schism which is not only largely forgotten, but is also perhaps the most surprising.

Down Under: Reflections on a Wellington Cemetery, by Michael Bycroft

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 09:35:00 GMT

I thought I was done with early modern European history. Not for good, but perhaps for two or three weeks. I was separated from Europe by ten thousand miles and two weeks in a quarantine hotel. I had just finished marking the last batch of Europe in the Making essays for the year. It was June, but the weather was getting colder, not hotter. The pōhutukawa trees in Wellington, the capital city of Aotearoa New Zealand, had lost their red flowers several months previously.

But then I saw this:

Merry Monarchs: Charles II and Charles III, by Mark Knights

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 14:54:00 GMT

Do Charles II (1630-1685) and Charles III (1948-present) have anything in common? Over three hundred years apart, there are, of course, many differences; but are there any parallels between the two monarchs and the two ‘Carolingian’ periods?

Both Charles II and Charles III came to the throne after a long wait. Charles II, whose father Charles I lost the civil wars and was beheaded in 1649, endured a long period of exile, in which he toured the courts of Europe looking for both refuge and support in his bid to regain his kingdom. Although the monarchy was restored in 1660 and Charles came to the throne, the somewhat traumatic experience of his ‘travels’ lived with him for the rest of his life. During his exile, Charles had to swallow distasteful policies foisted on him by his temporary allies, leading to a life-long tendency to disguise his true self. Charles III has waited longer, of course, and though his apprenticeship was less traumatic it may well have as enduring an impact on how he behaves as monarch and he may have to emulate his name-sake by hiding his opinions and his true self. Charles II was a ‘monarch in masquerade’; Charles III may well have to be one too.

Letter by the diplomat Thomas Robinson, Lord Grantham, to his brother in 1779, by Benjamin Jackson

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 16:08:00 GMT

During my PhD, I spent a number of days working through the family correspondence of the Yorkshire lesser nobility family the Robinsons at the ‘Wrest Park Collection’ at Bedfordshire Archives and Record Services. My magical source is a letter sent by the British diplomat in Spain Thomas Robinson, Lord Grantham to his brother Frederick (Fritz) Robinson in London in March 1779. The letter details the social and cultural life of the Spanish court as well as the Robinson family back in England. The conspicuous discussion of material goods in the letter is representative of the brothers’ correspondence generally – this is both in part down to the brothers’ intense personal interest in art and furnishings and a semi-professional interest as Frederick acted as Grantham’s secretary and agent. In the run of 301 Grantham and Frederick’s letters in the archive, hundreds were concerned with material things – this is magical in itself. When reading through the collection, a phrase really stood out to me from this letter discussing Grantham’s ambassadorial gala coach used on formal processions into the Spanish royal palaces. Grantham wrote: “my Coach & Buff Harness are shabby to a degree & I determine whether I can do anything to be merely decent at [the Palace at] Aranjuez. You may think that I have no ambition to make a figure, at the same Time I must keep up appearances.”

Mary Toft's First Confession, by Karen Harvey

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 15:54:00 GMT

In 2012 I was preparing to teach a module on the case of Mary Toft who alleged to have given birth to rabbits in 1726. The module was intended to teach second-year students about source analysis through a discrete and manageable case study. The case caused a media sensation and I knew well many of the primary sources associated, notably the well-known printed pamphlets and engravings. These sources had shaped the studies of the case which focussed on either medical historical perspectives or broader concepts relating to the imagination and the self. In their often satiric reinvention and representation of the case, these printed sources underscored that the case was a hoax.

A Quaker forgery? John Locke’s letter to a Quaker woman preacher, by Naomi Pullin

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 13:32:00 GMT

My magical source is a letter sent from John Locke to a Quaker preacher called Rebecca Collier, in which he outlines some of his thoughts and views on female preaching after he had heard her and her companion, Rachel Brecken, preach at a Quaker meeting in London. There was a short marginal note to say that Locke had altered his views on female preaching on the basis of this encounter with Collier and that he had subsequently revised his Notes and Queries on this subject. There was also a rather baffling story that King William III had been in attendance at the same meeting, dressed incognito.

Thomas Paine: Enemy of Free Speech?, by Charles Walton

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 08:05:00 GMT

The story of free speech during the French Revolution, a recurrent theme in French Revolutionary studies, is often told like this: During the Ancien Régime, there was no such freedom. Publications were subject to censorship, and any expression deemed to have violated ‘religion, morality, the monarchy and the honour of individuals’ was subject to punishment. Authors and printers could find themselves imprisoned in the Bastille, and those accused of uttering seditious speech could have their tongues torn out by the public executioner.