Mid-seventeenth Century Research Articles

A New Copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116: A Cavalier Cover Version

Abstract This article records a new witness of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 in Bodleian MS Ashmole 36, 37. The poem is a copy of Henry Lawes’ song-setting which adds six new lines to the poem. The song-setting can also be found in NYPL Drexel MS 4257, although there are significant variations between the two copies. The sonnet takes on new political relevance when read in the context of the Royalist Elias Ashmole’s miscellany, Bodleian MS Ashmole 36, 37, amongst material from the early 1640s: Shakespeare’s text is transformed from praise of romantic constancy to political constancy. This article provides a transcription of the new witness, reads the text in the local context of Bodleian MS Ashmole 36, 37, and then considers the setting in the wider context of the circulation of Shakespearean songs in manuscript and domestic musical performance during the Interregnum. The text is politicized at a local level in the context of Bodleian MS Ashmole 36, 37 and in the wider context of domestic performance during the Interregnum when the public performance of music was banned. This new copy contributes to our understanding of the circulation of Shakespeare’s poetry in manuscript, Shakespearean reception during the mid-seventeenth century, and Royalist counterculture.

Reception of Danielius Kleinas’s Ideas in Povilas Frydrichas Ruigys’s Grammar Anfangsgründe einer Littauischen Grammatick (1747)

The article analyses the reception of Danielius Kleinas’s ideas in Povilas Frydrichas Ruigys’s grammar Anfangsgründe einer Littauischen Grammatick (1747, hereinafter RG). Two aims were pursued: (1) to single out Kleinas’s ideas that Ruigys found relevant and suitable for describing the language of the mid-eighteenth century and (2) to identify the intentions of Ruigys in adopting them. Using an analytical interpretive approach based on philological analysis, it is shown that Kleinas’s Grammatica Litvanica (1653, hereinafter KG) was a particularly important source. The need of the Age of Enlightenment to learn about the world and to educate society is highlighted in discussing the motives for adopting and adapting ideas. The study of the reception of Kleinas’s ideas leads to the following conclusions: 1. Frequent references to KG, both explicit and implicit, point to a similar school of linguistic thought and the acceptability of its ideas. 2. KG was a particularly important source in two respects: (1) selecting a dialect for grammar and distinguishing it from others and (2) developing an extensive section on syntax. 3. By adopting Kleinas’s key idea of choosing one dialect as the basis for the description of the Lithuanian language, Ruigys expanded its area to two counties: Įsrutis (Ger. Insterburg) and Ragainė (Ger. Ragnit). He considered the other dialects in Prussia and Lithuania Major as secondary. Ruigys was the first to classify Lithuanian dialects by the opposition main : secondary or centre : periphery. 4. By placing emphasis on the stability, universality, and prestige of the main dialect in relation to other dialects, Ruigys continued the tradition of forming standard language on the basis of one dialect, which was initiated by Kleinas. In the eighteenth century, this was relevant for the written form of the language. 5. By introducing secondary dialects, he aimed to facilitate the integration of individuals appointed to priesthood in a new linguistic environment. This was important for the spoken form of the language. 6. In preparing a grammar for learning Lithuanian by non-Lithuanians, Ruigys paid considerable attention to syntax. By adopting Kleinas’s ideas and expanding them, he sought to develop the ability to produce a coherent text. The ability to generate well-formed sentences is important for both written and spoken language. 7. One of the characteristics of the language teaching methodology developed by Ruigys was the development of linguistic communicative competence. In the Age of Enlightenment, this was particularly necessary for the organisation of public education through churches and schools. Taking up earlier ideas and adapting them to the needs of the eighteenth century, Ruigys developed a tool for non-Lithuanians to learn Lithuanian, to develop linguistic competence appropriate to their duties, and to adapt to a new environment. 8. RG is focused not only on setting out the basics of the language but also on reducing the distance between written and spoken language. 9. Since the description of the grammatical structure of the Lithuanian language in the mid-seventeenth century was suitable as a basis for a grammar of the mid-eighteenth century, it evidences the slight change in the language itself.

Burgerdijk’s Institutionem Logicarum and the Freedom to Print Books of the Dutch School Order

After the States of Holland passed the School Order of 1625, which listed the schoolbooks which were to be used in the Latin schools, they refused to grant privileges protecting the books that were being prepared for this purpose. In 1626, however, the States-General granted a privilege to one of the books of the School Order, Burgersdijk’s Institutionum Logicarum. While it is often reported that this privilege was subsequently invalidated by the States of Holland, because it did not match their policy that anyone was allowed to print and publish copies of official textbooks, this article establishes that Burgersdijk’s privilege actually endured until the mid-seventeenth century. It was prolonged on two occasions by the States-General, the second time even with endorsement by the States of Holland through an attache. This means that the persistent myth about the supposed absence of privileges for Dutch schoolbooks is not entirely correct. There was obviously a need to protect some textbooks, a need the Dutch authorities also recognised. This included schoolbooks to which new elements (such as notes or indexes) were added and schoolbooks for which there was also a market outside the Latin schools, as was clearly the case for Burgersdijk’s Institutionum Logicarum.

Essay review: the fictive history of Victorian science and empire.

In 1820 two French scientists-Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Jean Bienaimé Caventou- discovered and named the active alkaloid substance extracted from cinchona bark: quinine. The bark from the 'wondrous' fever tree, and its antimalarial properties, however, had long been known to both colonial scientists and indigenous Peruvians. From the mid-seventeenth century, cinchona bark, taken from trees that grow on the eastern slopes of the Andes, was part of a global circulation of botanical knowledge, practice and profit. By the 1850s, Europeans eager to bypass South American trade routes to access cinchona plants established plantations across the global South in French Algeria, Dutch Java and British India. Wardian cases-plant terrariums named after British physician Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward-would fuel new imperial efforts to curb malaria, contemporaries argued. And yet cinchona trees proved difficult to transport over land and sea, and did not easily or universally thrive in new tropical climates. As a result of the growing demand and uncertainty around cinchona, as Pratik Chakrabarti has argued, from the late eighteenth century there was 'a global scientific obsession' with finding a 'substitute' for cinchona, particularly local alternatives in India and China.

Elusive toleration: the relations between Socinians and Remonstrants in the seventeenth century

ABSTRACT This article presents a general overview of the contacts between Polish Socinians and Dutch Remonstrants during the seventeenth century. Many contemporaries regarded Socinianism and Remonstrantism as similar or related confessions and some worked to forge ties between them. At the same time however the Remonstrant leadership opposed such moves for fear that they would confirm a link that was already being exploited by the Remonstrants’ opponents to smear their reputation. In the circumstances the Remonstrants as a group saw no alternative than to copy the widely prevailing intolerant attitude towards Socinianism. By the mid-seventeenth century fears of an influx of Socinian immigrants and ideas led to calls for measures against Socinian immigration and actual ban on Socinian printing in the Dutch Republic. Nevertheless some immigration took place and Amsterdam and Rotterdam became important centres of Socinian printing for some time.

Recentering the Ming–Qing Transition: beyond the “Seventeenth Century Crisis,” “The Great Divergence,” and “New Qing History”

Abstract The Ming–Qing transition – the final dynastic change in Imperial China – followed the cyclical patterns of rise and fall that had characterized previous dynastic shifts throughout Chinese history. However, its occurrence in the mid-seventeenth century positions it within a broader context of significant transformations in Europe and the Americas. This transition’s most profound impact lay in the culmination of the long-term centralizing processes within Chinese civilization. In its aftermath, the imperial system continued, for a time, to grow stronger, while the economy experienced sustained prosperity driven by both agriculture and commerce. When viewed holistically, this period in Chinese history, while interconnected with European developments, followed a distinct trajectory. Recent scholarship, influenced by the framework of world history, has deepened our understanding of the Ming–Qing transition’s role in broader global changes. However, this approach has sometimes led to an overemphasis on international factors, potentially diminishing the transition’s significance as a particular phase in China’s long-term historical progression. Analyses that predominantly focus on ethnic Manchu–Han dynamics often fail to capture the full historical context. A more nuanced understanding emerges when we examine this period through the lens of the long-term centering process within Chinese civilization. Differences between Chinese and European civilizations extend far beyond comparisons of productive forces. Therefore, discourse around concepts like “convergence” or “divergence” can be misleading without clearly defined comparative frameworks and metrics.

Cuid Ronna a N-Anbhuain ÉIreann: Dán Do Mhaol Muire Mac Suibhne Ó Lár an Seachtú Haois Déag

This paper presents an edition of a mid-seventeenth century poem composed by Pádraig Óg Mac an Bhaird in praise of Maol Muire Mac Suibhne (son of Donnchadh, son of Maol Muire), of the Mac Suibhne na dTuath family of North Donegal. Maol Muire was an active participant in the war that started in 1641 in Ireland. The poet describes the hardship caused by the conflict and praises Maol Muire’s military efforts. An apologue compares him to Cú Chulainn fighting alone to protect Ulster. This is the only extant poem composed for Maol Muire. The poem is edited here from Stonyhurst College MS A II 20, with readings from Trinity College Dublin MS H 6. 7 (1411) and British Library MS Egerton 112. A diplomatic edition of the text from the Trinity College Dublin manuscript has previously been published in ABM (133).

Usage and precept in eighteenth-century English object-clause complementisers

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the use of zero and that as connectors for object clauses in eighteenth-century English. Previous approaches have shown that the use of zero increased in late Middle English and became well-established in the second half of the sixteenth century, especially in speech-based text-types. Our own research, based on the evidence of The Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence, has shown that in the mid-seventeenth century zero was well beyond the mid-range stage of lexical diffusion (73%) with the five high frequency verbs to know, to think, to say, to tell and to hope. Chronologically, it has been shown that progress of the zero innovation was thwarted in the eighteenth century, which has been attributed to the effect of prescriptivism. In this paper, we intend to throw light on this issue by tracking the courses of zero and that during the eighteenth century in both usage and precept. With this purpose we rely on two sources of information. On the one hand, a precept corpus containing a selection of grammars published in Britain in 1681–1800. Usage, on the other, has been surveyed in light of the evidence of The Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension Sampler. Our aim is to assess the existence of a correlation between usage and precept in the expression of object clauses in this period with the following objectives: i) to analyse the use and distribution of zero and that clauses among grammarians; ii) to evaluate the incidence of the phenomenon in correspondence, as an input mirroring the vernacular; and iii) to assess the role of the grammarians’ statements in the propagation of the marked conjunction over the period.

The Meaning of the Patriarch’s Coming from the West: A Study of Triptych of Three Zen Masters: Linji, Bodhidharma, and Deshan

In the mid-seventeenth century, Chinese Chan master Yinyuan Longqi 隱元隆琦 (Jp. Ingen Ryūki, 1592–1673), accompanied by several disciples, traveled to Japan and established Ōbaku Zen, a new sect of Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan. Ōbaku art, particularly portrait paintings of Ōbaku abbots and their spiritual predecessors, became critical representations of the sect and greatly influenced later Japanese Buddhist art. While much of the existing scholarship focuses on the artistic and stylistic aspects of Ōbaku portraiture, this paper emphasizes its religious context and doctrinal dimensions. Building on Elizabeth Horton Sharf’s inquiry into the “meaning and function” of Ōbaku portrait painting, the paper investigates how Ōbaku doctrine is expressed through these images. Using the Triptych of Three Zen Masters: Linji, Bodhidharma, and Deshan as a case study, this paper explores the role of portraiture in visually conveying Ōbaku teachings and the religious aspirations of those Chinese immigrant monks. By examining the integration of image, inscription, and seal as a unified “pictorial trinity”, the paper argues that Ōbaku portraiture embodies the sect’s distinct doctrine, rooted in Ming-era Chan practices such as beating, shouting, and strict dharma transmission. Moreover, the prominence of Bodhidharma in Ōbaku portraits, as illustrated in the triptych, reflects these Chinese immigrant monks’ desire to emulate Bodhidharma in spreading the dharma and expanding their sect’s influence in a new land.

London, Newcastle’s Coal, and the Weaponisation of Energy in the British Civil Wars, 1642–1646

During the British Civil Wars, London suffered a severe energy shortage. By the mid-seventeenth century, the English capital was highly dependent on supplies of coal from the North-East of England. However, during the civil wars, the predominantly Parliamentarian city’s access to coal was restricted when the Royalists secured control of Newcastle and its coal reserves. The constriction of the coal supply of London caused an energy crisis in the capital, forcing the Parliamentarians to introduce price controls and seek alternative supplies of fuel. This article argues that ‘weaponisation of energy’ and ‘energy policy’ are appropriate terms to describe London’s coal supply in this period, given the clear parallels with modern energy policies and conflict. This article will further argue that the use of this term makes historians engage with the importance of energy even in premodern conflicts, and acknowledge that contemporaries were aware of its paramount strategic importance.

Radical Thought and Political Practice: Officeholding and Accountability in Seventeenth-Century Britain

Abstract This article connects changes in administrative and bureaucratic processes that historians associate with state formation in early modern Britain with overlooked developments in thinking about political accountability. It blends the social history of state administration with intellectual history, and involves synoptic analysis as well as striking case studies. It argues that innovative political thinking emerged from new forms of political practice, and from the experiences of humble officials in the localities. Such individuals were increasingly professionalized and specialized, and their work was increasingly described using the language of trust, public interest, and state’s service. The mid-seventeenth century accentuated the process by which they came to be accountable to a centralized state, not least through the routinization and intensification of quotidian practices associated with enhanced communication between center and locality. Ultimately, the article argues that such processes, as well as more regular and direct interactions between political elites and humble officials, encouraged new kinds of political thinking. These were not quite unintended, but they may not have been fully anticipated either, and they involved innovative attempts to subject higher officials to oversight from “below,” and to legitimize their accountability to an adjudicating public, in ways that may even have had a lasting effect on English political culture.

The repair of navy ships in Cartagena de Indies in the mid seventeenth century: The case of the Santiago and her loss in the Caribbean

The Santiago was a galleon of the Armada de la Guarda de las Indias that travelled in convoy with the Tierra Firme fleet in 1658 and was lost in Chinchorro Bank, Mexico, during her returning voyage to Spain. The study of her last repairs carried out in Cartagena de Indias brings the opportunity to understand the infrastructure of the port and its capabilities to face one of the main problems of the Carrera de Indias: the harsh conditions of the transatlantic voyage and the structural deficiencies of some of the Armada ships to accomplish their objectives of defence. Based on historical sources in Spanish and Mexican archives, the authors reconstruct the Santiago’s final repairs in that port, the resources available, and the level of reliance on local society to obtain the materials and labour force needed. This research will help to advance the archaeological identification of her remains among the shipwrecks registered in Chinchorro.

Menasseh ben-Israel and reason of state: the intersection of ideas and politics in the petitions to re-settle Iberian Jewry (1645–1655)

ABSTRACT Menasseh ben-Israel petitioned to re-admit Jews to England in 1655. Historians have been aware that Menasseh utilized the ideas employed by Simone Luzzatto in Luzzatto’s efforts to avoid the expulsion of the Jews from Venice. Luzzatto employed the humanist language of reason of state, while Menasseh’s writings were all exegetical in nature prior to 1655. How did Menasseh, a messianist whose writings focused on explaining Jewish thought, who had shown no interest in humanist political discourse, come to employ the humanist ideas of reason of state popular in the mid-seventeenth century? Furthermore, Luzzatto’s petition is a meek request to allow Jews to continue to reside in the Venetian ghetto, while Menasseh addresses Cromwell as an ambassador of one nation to the leader of another boldly requesting to be admitted to England without disabilities. How can we explain this dramatic change in tone? This paper traces the links, as well as the crucial differences, between these two petitions by examining several other petitions on behalf of Atlantic Jewry as well as the international developments in the intervening period. This paper argues that these factors were critical in the development of Menasseh’s thought as well as his choice of language and tone.

Nature portrayed in images in Dutch Brazil: Tracing the sources of the plant woodcuts in the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (1648).

By the mid-seventeenth century, images of natural elements that originated in Dutch Brazil circulated in Europe. These were often included in art collections (the Libri Picturati) and natural history treatises (the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae and the India Utriesque re Naturale et Medica, 1658). The plant woodcut images in these books constituted (icono) type specimens and played a significant role in disseminating scientific botanical knowledge. We present a systematic analysis of their origins by cross-referencing the visual and textual sources related to Dutch Brazil. To do so, we used our previous botanical identifications of the portrayed plants, published sources, and digital archival material. The plant woodcuts accounted for 529 images, which corresponded to 426 taxa. We created a PDF booklet to visualize the (dis-) similarities of the woodcuts with the Libri Picturati and other visual sources. Substantial differences in the visual-making methodology exist between the two treatises (1648, 1658). In the first book, most of the images were available from Dutch Brazil and carved into the woodcuts, while most of these woodcuts were reused in the second one. The Indigenous Tupi-based plant names accompanying the images were crucial when arranging the sources, and portraying as much botanical information as possible was commonly the goal. Freshly picked, living plants, dried branches, fruits, and seeds were used to represent the megadiverse Brazilian flora, even when these belonged to species originating from other regions. Despite not being recognized for their contribution, Indigenous Brazilians and enslaved Africans were essential in the visual knowledge-making processes that later resulted in these natural history collections. As several sources remain lost and many histories yet untold, further archival studies and collaborative projects are pertinent to reveal the missing pieces of this conundrum.

Distilling the Art of Distillation in an Unstudied Manuscript of “Chymicall Notions”

This article focuses on a curious manuscript treatise in the British Library, Harley MS 6940, which the learned physician Samuel Bispham composed for the English patron and horseman William Cavendish (1593–1676), most likely in the mid-1640s. Sitting somewhere between a practical medical recipe book and theoretical chymical treatise, while being peppered with traditional causal explanations and Galenic precautions, Harley MS 6940 testifies to the erosion of the entrenched dichotomy between chymical and Galenic medicine in the mid-seventeenth century. Harley MS 6940 also lays bare how a learned physician used (and taught the use of) practice to confirm and sometimes challenge his learning, offering a counterpoint to recent scholarship that underscores the learning that apothecaries used to shore up their practice. Produced at the behest of a leading Royalist who sought both to acquire techniques for distilling and fermenting herbs and to advance his knowledge of chymical conceptions of spirits, seeds, and salts, the manuscript allows us to appreciate that the chymical art animated a broader set of individuals than the historiography often implies.

Cheesemaking in Cheshire 1550–1750

This article supports a material turn in agricultural and food history by focusing on the utensils and equipment, along with the embodied practices involved in cheesemaking. The period of interest is the long seventeenth century when rich source material is available in the form of probate inventories—lists of the movable goods owned by deceased persons, mainly adult males, and widows. Our laboratory will be Cheshire, an English county that for 200 years, from the mid-seventeenth century, dominated the cheese supply of London and the industrial towns and cities of the north of England. We use 1600 inventories transcribed by Cheshire local historians, a significant portion of which mention cheese and cheesemaking. We argue that the making and marketing of Cheshire cheese was distinctive but that there was nothing inevitable about its success.

The Safed Genizah: Buried Manuscripts and Kabbalistic Philology in Seventeenth-Century Palestine

Abstract Many Jewish communities around the world have maintained a special site, known as a genizah, for discarding written materials. This article focuses on the genizah of the town of Safed in the Galilee. At the end of the sixteenth century, the Safed Genizah preserved Hebrew manuscripts written by Ḥayyim Vital (d. 1620), foremost student of the influential kabbalist Yitsḥaḳ Luria (d. 1572). These manuscripts were excavated and edited in the mid-seventeenth century and became authoritative texts in the history of Jewish esotericism. My study describes Vital’s burial of his manuscripts and the editorial efforts of the Jewish scholars who followed him, particularly Avraham Azulai (d. 1643) in Hebron and Ya‘akov Tsemaḥ (d. 1666) and his fellowship in Jerusalem. Through analysis of their rhetoric and scribal practices, I explore the ethical, philological, and material aspects of this chapter in the pre-history of Genizah research.

Proto-Endocrinological Theories of Masculinity/Femininity (1490-1904).

From the mid-seventeenth century, resorption of a testicular "ferment" and resorption of some part of the semen constituted reputable accounts of secondary sexual characteristics. Only in the early twentieth century was the latter, "recrementitious secretion" theory, explicitly considered superseded by one of internal secretion, an advance ushering in the hormone era. A reconstruction of these proto-endocrinological concepts is offered onward from the first, 1490 print edition of Galen's On Semen. Early modern physicians picking up from Galen deliberated widely on the medium and pathway of male and female testicular influences on "the entire body," including the mind, causing "femininity" and "masculinity" in physical, mental-temperamental, and behavioral terms. A switch is discernible from "heat and strength" (Galen) to blood-borne "virility" or testicular vapor (such as proposed in 1564 by Tomás Rodrigues da Veiga), to iatrochemical postulations of a "seminal ferment" (suggested in the late 1650s, perhaps independently, by Thomas Willis at Oxford and Lambert van Velthuysen in Utrecht), finally to a "seminal recrement" or "reabsorbed semen" concept soon after (emergent in the posthumous work of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, among others). During the late eighteenth century, mounting controversy surrounded both the very idea of that concept and the involved anatomical pathways, informed by multiple experiments.

The Development of Mutual Aid Tontines in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

A tontine is a shared fund in which surviving investors benefit financially from the deaths of other members. Since the mid-seventeenth century it has been used variously across Europe as a tool to raise state revenue, as a private investment tool, and as a method to raise capital for building projects. In nineteenth-century Ireland, the tontine developed to include a mutual aid scheme directed at the country's working classes and poor. This form of tontine existed within a wider sphere of microcredit and microfinance instruments – including loan funds, pawnbrokers and Mont de Piété banks - directed at Ireland's poorer classes. These provided services to a section of Irish society neglected by the country's banks and other financial institutions. The mutual aid tontine was therefore very much an indigenous financial instrument developed for the needs of Irish society. Like the Irish themselves it travelled. The scheme also proved to be popular in England during the nineteenth century, predominantly in areas of high Irish immigration. This article argues that this was as a direct result of the transplantation of Irish communities and support structures into England.

Postmistresses and the state, 1660–1715

ABSTRACT Women’s place in the post-Restoration Post Office has been overlooked in the existing literature on the mail, 1660–1715. Historians and historical geographers have explored the bureaucratic and administrative history of the Post; the expansion of postal routes; and the importance of change in the postal network to the delivery of letters. There has, however, been no social history of the post. This article reveals the positions occupied by women within the early modern post but focuses principally on postmistresses in the period 1660–1715. It explains why women, particularly widows, were considered suitable for the office. The article defines the role of postmaster and explains the behaviour required of officeholders, combining hospitality, logistics, administration, and the provision of intelligence. The functions and legitimation of postmasters developed considerably from the mid-seventeenth century alongside similar offices within the early modern state. As important cogs in an increasingly complex machine of communication and administration, postmistresses were part of the process of state formation, and their work legitimised the state in the provinces. This article argues for the first time that postmistresses were a significant, and yet unnoticed, presence in the early modern British state at a key stage of its development.