The Plague and the Hope
By now we are all familiar with the experience of walking into a crowded place and worrying whether it is safe to be there, whether the number of people breathing in that space correlates to the higher possibility of infection and disease. Finally, we decide that the pleasures of social interaction or entertainment are not … Continue reading The Plague and the Hope
‘To Know the Sick from the Whole’: Sixteenth-Century Plague Records from the Southampton Book of Fines
A painter’s wife makes crosses on doors to mark the houses of those suffering from the plague. A man called John Lorde puts white rods in the hands of the infected ‘to know the syke from the whole.’ Men and women bear the sick to church. Sick people cry out for help. These evocative accounts … Continue reading ‘To Know the Sick from the Whole’: Sixteenth-Century Plague Records from the Southampton Book of Fines
The Drama of Recusancy in Yorkshire’s North Riding
Recusancy – the refusal to attend regular services of the newly-founded Church of England (usually in favour of attendance at the celebration of a Catholic mass) – was prohibited by the 1559 Act of Uniformity, with harsh penalties for non-compliance. The fines could be crippling: an initial fine of twelve shillings for non-attendance was soon … Continue reading The Drama of Recusancy in Yorkshire’s North Riding
Real-life drama in Yorkshire’s North Riding: Sir Thomas Hoby and the Protestant North
It is a commonplace that Tudor and Stuart societies were among the most litigious in history, and that the courts were regularly used to settle scores, advance personal wealth, and control relationships. Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby (1566–1640) is a particularly egregious example of this mindset; his name appears frequently in the court records of the … Continue reading Real-life drama in Yorkshire’s North Riding: Sir Thomas Hoby and the Protestant North
Playing Companies in Yorkshire’s North Riding
The North Riding collection of documents provides evidence of playing companies on a number of levels, ranging from local companies based in the Riding to touring companies from London. London companies would have travelled under the patronage of a member of the aristocracy or gentry, avoiding the severe penalties under Elizabeth’s Poor Laws of 1572 … Continue reading Playing Companies in Yorkshire’s North Riding
Playing Places in Yorkshire’s North Riding
Gouthwaite Hall Gouthwaite Hall in Nidderdale was likely built by Sir John Yorke in the early seventeenth century, and was the site of the notorious performance at Candlemas in 1609 of an anti-Protestant play performed by the North Riding company of Christopher Simpson of Egton. Gouthwaite Hall as it was in the early seventeenth … Continue reading Playing Places in Yorkshire’s North Riding
Plays in Yorkshire’s North Riding
Perhaps the most exciting discovery for a REED editor is a document that not only identifies a company of performers, their patron, their fee, and the date of their performance, but also the play they performed. Most of these records lie in household accounts, which were kept by the steward of the gentry estate that … Continue reading Plays in Yorkshire’s North Riding
Music in Yorkshire’s North Riding
Viols By the early sixteenth century, the term ‘viola’ had come to designate a wide variety of bowed string instruments. To distinguish one type from another, the playing position was generally indicated as well. The viola da gamba is held between the legs (gamba). The middle member of the violin family, played with the instrument … Continue reading Music in Yorkshire’s North Riding
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