d83b04a961edc72d14767a173b462544

This article is a reassessment of Anne of Kiev as mother and guardian in the early years of the minority reign of her son, Philip I of France. The available chronicle evidence is re-examined and more emphasis is given to documentary sources which have previously been disregarded or overlooked. The article addresses outdated judgements about Anne’s role which are still prevalent in the historiography and aims finally to put them to rest, while arguing that Anne played a far more active role than has been suggested before. [OPEN ACCESS]

Bede’s sources for his references to ‘hides’ in the Ecclesiastical History and the History of the Abbots by Richard Shaw

A comprehensive analysis of Bede’s references to ‘hides’ provides insights into his sources. Bede’s references are of two different types, revealing two different kinds of sources, which might most simply be termed ‘charter type’ and ‘tribute type’. Examining the first set reveals that in writing the Historia Ecclesiastica and especially the Historia Abbatum, Bede had access to documentary sources, some of the language of which is probably preserved in his works. In the absence of separately surviving Northumbrian charters, these elements give hints about the nature and content of such texts. The second group, the ‘tribute type’, points to Bede’s possession of a document along the lines of the ‘Tribal hidage’, probably originating in one of the periods of Northumbrian hegemony in the mid seventh century.

Oliver-Cromwell-as-King-Dutch-satirical-caricature_1

This article explores the problem of recovering early modern utterances by focusing upon the issue of how the ‘kingship debates’ of 1657 between Oliver Cromwell and a committee of ninety-nine M.P.s came to be recorded, reported and printed. Specifically, it investigates the two key records of the kingship debates which, despite being well known to scholars, have extremely shady origins. Not only does this article demonstrate the probable origins of both sources, but by identifying the previously unknown scribe of one of them it points to the possible relationship between the two. It also questions whether the nature of the surviving sources has exacerbated certain interpretations about the kingship debates and their outcome.

War, religion and anti-slavery ideology: Isaac Nelson’s radical abolitionist examination of the American civil war by Daniel Ritchie

Isaac Nelson’s response to the civil war represented the fruit of twenty years’ reflection on the issues of slavery and emancipation. Perhaps surprisingly, he did not support the Federal government’s efforts to restore the Union, even after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Nelson’s analysis of the struggle helpfully illuminates the complexity of radical abolitionist responses to the civil war, while it also serves to correct hasty generalizations concerning British and Irish evangelical support for the Federal government. Thus, by means of a biographical case study of Ulster Presbyterianism’s most zealous abolitionist, a wide number of thematic issues can be freshly examined.