Writing early modern history: Ireland, britain, and the wider world

Historical Journal

Volumn 46, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 723-747

  Canny, Nicholas ^a  

^a NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND   (Ireland)

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EID: 84961145518     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X03003224     Document Type: Article

References (183)

1. R. Dudley Edwards, ‘History of penal laws against Catholics in Ireland from 1534 to 1691’ (PhD thesis, London, 1933)
2. T. W. Moody, ‘The Londonderry plantation, with special reference to the resulting relations between the crown and the city, 1609–1641’ (PhD thesis, London, 1934)
3. D. B. Quinn, ‘Tudor rule in Ireland in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, with special reference to the Anglo-Irish financial administration’ (PhD thesis, London, 1934)
4. G. A. Hayes-McCoy, ‘Scots mercenary forces in Ireland, 1565–1603’ (PhD thesis, Edinburgh, 1934).
5. Ciaran Brady suggests that History also served as a model for Irish Historical Studies, in Ciaran Brady, ed., Interpreting Irish history: the debate on historical revisionism (Dublin, 1994), p. 19.
6. For admiring comments, especially on Moody, and even more so on F. S. L. Lyons who was one of Moody's star pupils, see R. F. Foster, The Irish story: telling tales and making it up in Ireland (London, 2001), pp. 26–7, 37–57
7. for a critical appraisal see Brendan Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism and historical scholarship in modern Ireland’, originally published in Irish Historical Studies, 26 (1988–1989), pp. 329–351
8. reprinted in Brady, ed., Interpreting Irish history, pp. 191–216, at pp. 197–9
9. see also Ciaran Brady, “‘Constructive and instrumental”: the dilemma of Ireland's first “new historians”’, in Brady, ed., Interpreting Irish history, pp. 3–31, which treats of the prescriptions that Edwards and Moody, together and separately, laid down for history-writing in Ireland at various moments in their careers
10. Brady, however, devotes scant attention to the historical works they wrote.
11. R. Dudley Edwards, Church and state in Tudor Ireland: a history of penal laws against Irish Catholics, 1534–1603 (Dublin, 1935), at p. 202.
12. T. W. Moody, The Londonderry plantation, 1609–1641: the city of London and the plantation in Ulster (Belfast, 1939), pp. 23, 45, 47, 48, 39.
13. Only medieval history resisted the rush to the nineteenth century, possibly because there were independent chairs of medieval history in some Irish universities. For the early modern period, James Hogan, who had been professor of history at University College, Cork, since 1922, remained largely immune to the developments being described here, and, in a projected multi-volume enterprise that did not go beyond the first volume, he strove to locate developments in early modern Ireland in a European context
14. see James Hogan, Ireland in the European system, 1500–1557 (London, 1920).
15. G. A. Hayes-McCoy, Scots mercenary forces in Ireland, 1565–1603 (Dublin, 1937)
16. see also idem, ‘Strategy and tactics in Irish warfare, 1593–1601’, Irish Historical Studies, 2 (1940–1941), pp. 255–279.
17. D. B. Quinn, ‘Anglo-Irish local government, 1485–1534’, Irish Historical Studies, 1 (1938–1939), pp. 354–381
18. idem, ‘The early interpretation of Poynings's law, 1494–1534’, Irish Historical Studies, 2 (1940–1941), pp. 241–254
19. idem, ‘Parliaments and great councils in Ireland, 1461–1586’, Irish Historical Studies, 3 (1942–1943), pp. 60–77.
20. D. B. Quinn, ‘Agenda for Irish history: Ireland from 1461–1603’, Irish Historical Studies, 4 (1944–1945), pp. 258–269.
21. D. B. Quinn, ed., The voyages and colonising enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (2 vols., Hakluyt society, London, 1940).
22. The substance of this is based on conversations with Quinn, and on K.R.A., N.P.C., P.E.H.H., ‘Preface: David Beers Quinn’, in K. R. Andrews, N. P. Canny, and P. E. H. Hair, eds., The Westward enterprise: English activities in Ireland, the Atlantic and America, 1480–1650 (Liverpool, 1978).
23. D. B. Quinn, ‘Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577) and the beginnings of English colonial theory’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 89 (1945), pp. 543–560
24. idem, Raleigh and the British empire (London, 1947)
25. idem, ‘Ireland and sixteenth-century European expansion’, in T. D. Williams, ed., Historical Studies, I (London, 1958), pp. 20–32
26. idem, ‘The Munster plantation: problems and opportunities’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 71 (1966), pp. 19–40
27. idem, The Elizabethans and the Irish (Ithaca, NY, 1966)
28. on Evans, see ‘Estyn: a biographical memory by Gwyneth Evans’, in E. Estyn Evans, Ireland and the Atlantic heritage (Dublin, 1996), pp. 1–19.
29. Hugh F. Kearney, Strafford in Ireland, 1633–1641: a study in absolutism (Manchester, 1959; repr. Cambridge, 1989)
30. Terence O. Ranger, ‘Strafford in Ireland: a revaluation’, in Trevor Aston, ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660 (New York, 1967), pp. 271–293
31. J. P. Cooper, ‘The fortune of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford’, Economic History Review, 2 (1958), pp. 227–248
32. C. V. Wedgwood, Strafford (London, 1935)
33. idem, Thomas Wentworth, first earl of Strafford, 1593–1641: a revaluation (London, 1964).
34. Aidan Clarke, The Old English in Ireland, 1625–1642 (London, 1966)
35. idem, ‘Ireland and the general crisis’, Past and Present, 48 (1970), pp. 79–99.
36. See especially Conrad Russell, The causes of the English civil war (Oxford, 1990)
37. idem, The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991), at pp. 373–399
38. the neutrality aspect was best illustrated in John Morrill, The revolt of the provinces: conservatives and revolutionaries in the English civil war (Harlow, 1976).
39. See especially David Stevenson, Scottish covenanters and Irish confederates: Scottish-Irish relations in the mid-seventeenth-century (Belfast, 1981)
40. ch. 3, of J. C. Beckett, The making of modern Ireland (London, 1966), was entitled ‘The war of the three kingdoms’.
41. 1912 was the publication date of R. H. Tawney, The agrarian problem in the sixteenth century (London, 1912), from which this debate emanated.
42. J. G. Simms, The Williamite confiscation of Ireland, 1690–1703 (London, 1956)
43. idem, Jacobite Ireland, 1685–1691 (London, 1969)
44. an exception to this generalization is Caroline Robbins, The eighteenth-century commonwealth man (Cambridge, MA, 1959), which gave much attention to Scottish and to Irish events and publications.
45. Newport B. White, The extents of Irish monastic possessions, 1540–1541 (Dublin, 1943)
46. Brendan Bradshaw, The dissolution of the religious orders in Ireland (Cambridge, 1974)
47. Ciaran Brady, ‘The government of Ireland, 1540–1583’ (PhD thesis, University of Dublin, 1980)
48. the earlier section of the Brady thesis, treating of the distribution of Irish monastic possessions, does not feature in the revised work published as Ciaran Brady, The chief governors: the rise and fall of reform government in Tudor Ireland, 1536–1588 (Cambridge, 1994).
49. Brendan Bradshaw, ‘Cromwellian reform and the origins of the Kildare rebellion’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 27 (1977), pp. 69–93
50. S. G. Ellis, ‘Thomas Cromwell and Ireland, 1532–1540’, Historical Journal, 23 (1980), pp. 497–519
51. G. R. Elton, The Tudor revolution in government (Cambridge, 1953)
52. Brendan Bradshaw, The Irish constitutional revolution of the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979).
53. Ciaran Brady, ‘Spenser's Irish crisis: humanism and experience in the 1590s’, Past and Present, 111 (1986), pp. 17–49
54. Colm Lennon, Sixteenth-century Ireland: the incomplete conquest (Dublin, 1994).
55. See, for example, the extensive treatment of events in Ireland in Susan Brigden, New worlds, lost worlds: the rule of the Tudors, 1485–1603 (London, 2000).
56. Elton, Tudor revolution
57. D. B. Quinn, ‘Henry VIII and Ireland, 1529–34’, Irish Historical Studies, 12 (1960–1961), pp. 318–344
58. G. L. Harris and Penry Williams, ‘A revolution in Tudor history?’, Past and Present, 25 (1963), pp. 3–58
59. J. P. Cooper, ‘A revolution in Tudor history?’, Past and Present, 26 (1963), pp. 110–112
60. G. R. Elton, ‘The Tudor revolution: a reply’, Past and Present, 29 (1964), pp. 26–49
61. G. L. Harris and Penry Williams, ‘A revolution in Tudor history?’, Past and Present, 31 (1965), pp. 87–96
62. G. R. Elton, ‘A revolution in Tudor history’, Past and Present, no. 32 (1965), pp. 103–109
63. C. Coleman and D. Starkey, eds., Revolution reassessed: revisions in the history of Tudor government and administration (Oxford, 1986).
64. J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan house of commons (London, 1949)
65. idem, Elizabeth I and her parliaments (London, 1953)
66. idem, The age of Catherine de Medici, and other Elizabethan essays (London, 1965).
67. G. R. Elton, Policy and police: the enforcement of the reformation in the age of Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972)
68. idem, Reform and reformation: England, 1509–1558 (London, 1977)
69. idem, The Tudor constitution: documents and commentary (Cambridge, 1960)
70. E. W. Ives, Faction in Tudor England (London, 1986)
71. David Starkey, et al., eds., The English court from the wars of the roses to the civil war (Harlow, 1987)
72. note also the popularity among historians, at the time of its publication, of Alan Macfarlane, The origins of English individualism: the family, property and social transition (Oxford, 1978), a work of historical anthropology.
73. Besides the work of Terence Ranger and J. P. Cooper already mentioned, see T. C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: English government and reform in Ireland, 1649–1660 (Oxford, 1975)
74. Stevenson, Scottish covenanters and Irish confederates.
75. For the most influential work from the ‘Imperial School’ see Charles M. Andrews, The colonial period of American history (4 vols., New Haven, CT, 1934–1938)
76. for New England links with English puritanism see Perry Miller, The New England mind: the seventeenth century (New York, 1939)
77. idem, The New England mind: from colony to province (New York, 1953).
78. The culmination of the demographic effort was E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The population history of England and Wales, 1541–1871: a reconstruction (London, 1981)
79. for the most influential study of the functioning of early modern society see Keith Wrightson, English Society: 1580–1680 (London, 1982).
80. Peter Laslett, The world we have lost (London, 1965), p. 253
81. the most frequently cited examples of New England community studies are John Demos, A little commonwealth: family life in Plymouth colony (Oxford, 1970)
82. Philip J. Greven, Four generations: population, land and family in colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, NY, 1970)
83. Kenneth Lockridge, A New England town: the first hundred years: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1736 (New York, 1970)
84. Michael Zuckerman, Peaceable kingdoms: New England towns in the eighteenth century (New York, 1970)
85. more generally on historiographical developments, with associated bibliographic citations, see Nicholas Canny, ‘Writing Atlantic history, or reconfiguring the history of colonial British America’, Journal of American History, 86 (1999), pp. 1093–1114.
86. See, for example, Peter Clark, English provincial society from the reformation to the revolution: religion, politics and society in Kent, 1500–1640 (Hassocks, 1977)
87. here, in what set out to be a comprehensive study of Kentish society at home and abroad, no reference was made to Richard Boyle, subsequent earl of Cork, who was not only the person who became the wealthiest Kentish person of his generation but was one who maintained regular correspondence with several of the Kentish characters who feature prominently in the book. For more recent silence on the Irish dimension see Keith Wrightson, Earthly necessities: economic lives in early modern Britain (New Haven, CT, 2000)
88. this latter broke new ground in measuring English against Scottish conditions but it ignored Ireland despite the altogether closer integration of the Irish with the English economy, and despite the fact that Ireland was the most popular destination for British emigrants during the centuries that Wrightson studies. This oversight has been partly repaired by the essays, including one by Keith Wrightson, in David Armitage and Michael. J. Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic world, 1500–1800 (London, 2002), at pp. 133–153.
89. Nicholas Canny, ed., Europeans on the move: studies on European migration, 1500–1800 (Oxford, 1994)
90. idem, Making Ireland British, 1580–1640 (Oxford, 2001).
91. Among those following in the tradition of Kearney and Clarke are Stevenson, Scottish covenanters and Irish confederates
92. Michael Perceval Maxwell, The outbreak of the Irish rebellion of 1641 (Dublin, 1994)
93. Jane Ohlmeyer, ed., Ireland: from independence to occupation, 1641–1660 (Cambridge, 1995).
94. D. B. Quinn, England and the discovery of America (London and New York, 1974).
95. Note the attention to Spanish documentation in D. B. Quinn, with Alison Quinn and Susan Hilliard, eds., New American world: a documentary history of north America to 1612 (5 vols., New York, 1979).
96. Paul Hulton and D. B. Quinn, eds., The American drawings of John White, 1577–1590 (London, 1964)
97. D. B. Quinn, ‘Set faire for Roanoke’: voyages and colonies, 1584–1606 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985).
98. There is a comprehensive bibliography of the publications of David Quinn previous to 1976 and an appraisal of his career to that date in K. R. Andrews, N. P. Canny, and P. E. H. Hair, eds., The westward enterprise: English activities in Ireland, the Atlantic, and America, 1480–1650 (Liverpool, 1978).
99. E. S. Morgan, American slavery: American freedom: the ordeal of colonial Virginia (New York, 1976).
100. K. R. Andrews, Elizabethan privateering: English privateering during the Spanish war, 1585–1603 (Cambridge, 1964)
101. see also the subsequent volume by K. R. Andrews, Trade, plunder, and settlement: maritime enterprise and the genesis of the British empire, 1480–1630 (Cambridge, 1984).
102. D. B. Quinn, North America: from earliest discovery to first settlement (New York, 1975).
103. In these respects see the publications of Karen O. Kupperman, a loyal devotee of Quinn, and, more recently, see Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject matter: technology, the body, and science on the American frontier (Cambridge, MA, 2001).
104. Quinn, The Elizabethans and the Irish.
105. See the documentary compilation Collectanea Hibernica: Sources for Irish History (Dublin, 1958)
106. Brendan Jennings, ed., Wild geese in Spanish Flanders, 1582–1700 (Dublin, 1964)
107. Micheline Kerney Walsh, ed., ‘Destruction by peace’: Hugh O'Neill after Kinsale (Armagh, 1986)
108. James Hogan, mentioned in n. 6 above, was exceptional among those who cultivated the continental connection in not being a priest, and Micheline Kerney Walsh in being a woman, albeit one who spent some of her childhood in Franco's Spain to which her father was Irish ambassador.
109. Donal Cregan, ‘The social and cultural background of a counter-reformation episcopate, 1618–60’, in Art Cosgrove and Donal McCartney, eds., Studies in Irish history: presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979)
110. P. J. Corish, ‘The origins of Catholic nationalism’, in P. J. Corish ed., History of Irish Catholicism, III (Dublin, 1968), pp. 1–64
111. J. J. Silke, ‘Primate Peter Lombard and Hugh O'Neill’, Irish Theological Quarterly, 26 (1959), pp. 15–30
112. Jerrold Casway, Owen Roe O'Neill and the struggle for Catholic Ireland (Philadelphia, 1984)
113. Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic reformation in Ireland: the mission of Rinuccini, 1645–1649 (Oxford, 2002)
114. Bernadette Cunningham, The world of Geoffrey Keating: history, myth and religioń in seventeenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 2000)
115. a related work is Breandan Ó Buachalla, Aisling Gheár: naStiobhartaigh agus an t-aos léinn, 1603–1788 (Dublin, 1996).
116. This approach has been attacked even more emphatically in S. J. Connolly, Religion, law, and power: the making of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992).
117. For some pertinent examples, or advocacy, of New British History see Roger A. Mason, ed., Scotland and England, 1286–1815 (Edinburgh, 1987)
118. John Morrill, ed., The Scottish national covenant in its British context (Edinburgh, 1990)
119. Steven Ellis and Sarah Barber, eds., Conquest and union: fashioning a British state, 1485–1725 (London, 1995)
120. Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer, eds., Uniting the kingdom? The making of British history (London, 1995)
121. Brendan Bradshaw and John Morrill, eds., The British problem, c. 1534–1707 (London, 1996)
122. Brendan Bradshaw and Peter Roberts, eds., British consciousness and identity: the making of Britain, 1533–1707 (Cambridge, 1998)
123. most who invoke the subject refer back to J. G. A. Pocock, ‘British history: a plea for a new subject’, New Zealand Journal of History, 8 (1974), pp. 3–21
124. see also Hugh Kearney, The British isles: a history of four nations (Cambridge, 1989)
125. in many respects the recent book that makes the most significant contribution to New British History is one that assumes no such pretensions, Michael J. Braddick, State formation in early modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000).
126. A consideration of Scottish historiography is beyond the scope of this review, but early modern scholars had no excuse to remain ignorant of literature on Scotland after the publication of Jenny Wormald, Court, kirk and community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (London, 1981).
127. L. M. Cullen and T. C. Smout, eds., Comparative aspects of Scottish and Irish economic and social history, 1600–1900 (Edinburgh, 1977)
128. T. M. Devine and David Dickson, eds., Ireland and Scotland, 1600–1850: parallels and contrasts in economic and social development, 1600–1850 (Edinburgh, 1983).
129. The Macinnes quote comes from Allan I. Macinnes, ‘The multiple kingdoms of Britain and Ireland: the “British problem”’, in Barry Coward, ed., A companion to Stuart Britain (Malden, MA, and Oxford, 2003), pp. 3–25, at p. 3
130. for my earlier critique of New British History see Nicholas Canny, ‘Irish, Scottish and Welsh responses to centralization, c. 1530-c. 1640: a comparative perspective’, in Grant and Stringer, eds., Uniting the kingdom?, pp. 147–169.
131. The development of this subject is discussed, and the associated bibliography is detailed, in Nicholas Canny, ‘Atlantic history: what and why?, European Review’, 9 (2001), pp. 399–411.
132. Canny, ‘Atlantic history’.
133. Horst Pietschmann, Geschichte des atlantischen Systems, 1580–1830: Ein historischer Versuch zur Erklärung der ‘Globalisierung’ jenseits nationalgeschichtlicher Perspektiven (Hamburg, 1998)
134. Kenneth Pomeranz, The great divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy (Princeton, 2000), pp. 269–274.
135. Scottish involvement with the Atlantic has now been treated in Alan. J. Karras, Sojourners in the sun: Scottish migrants in Jamaica and the Chesapeake (Ithaca, NY, 1993)
136. David Armitage, The ideological origins of the British empire (Cambridge, 2000)
137. the presence of Irish planters, both Protestant and Catholic, in the Americas, especially in the West Indies, awaits its historian, but see Joyce Lorimer, ed., English and Irish settlement on the river Amazon, 1550–1646 (London, 1989)
138. Thomas M. Truxes, Irish American trade, 1660–1783 (Cambridge, 1988).
139. Nicholas Canny, ‘Asia, the Atlantic, and the subjects of the British monarchy’, in Coward, ed., A companion, pp. 45–66.
140. Quentin Skinner, The foundations of modern political thought (2 vols., Cambridge, 1978), and all his ensuing books
141. Patrick Collinson The Elizabethan puritan movement (London, 1967), and his long succession of books
142. Nicholas Tyack, Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (Oxford, 1987)
143. see also M. Van Gelderen, The political thought of the Dutch revolt, 1555–1590 (Cambridge, 1992).
144. The metaphor comes from Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven, CT, 1992)
145. political historians have also derived benefit from consideration of Dutch influences as, for example, Jonathan Scott, England's troubles: seventeenth-century English political instability in European context (Cambridge, 2000)
146. Stephen Pincus, Protestantism and patriotism: ideologies and the making of English foreign policy (Cambridge, 1996).
147. This point has been made in relation to civic architecture in Tim Wilks, ‘Art, architecture and politics’, in Coward, ed., A companion, pp. 187–213.
148. For Ireland, see Enrique Garcia Hernan, Irelanda y el Rey Prudente (Madrid, 2000)
149. Karin Schüller, Die Beziehungen zwischen Spanien und Irland im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert: Diplomatie, Handel und die soziale Integration katholischer Exultanten (Münster, 1999)
150. Ute Lotz-Heumann, ‘Social control and church discipline in Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in Heinz Schilling, ed., Institutionen, Instrumente und Akteure sozialer Kontrolle und Diziplinierung im früheneuzeitlichen Europa (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), pp. 275–304
151. Bianca Ross, Britannia et Hibernia: Nationale und Kulturelle Identitäten im Irland des 17. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1998)
152. Geoffrey Parker, The grand strategy of Philip II (New Haven, CT, 1998)
153. Paul C. Allen, Philip III and the Pax Hispanica, 1598–1621: the failure of grand strategy (New Haven, CT 2000).
154. Jonathan Brown and John Elliott, eds., La almoneda del siglo: relaciones artisticas entre Espanã y Gran Bretanã, 1604–1655 (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2002)
155. for a more general purview of continental influence on English art see Wilks, ‘Art, architecture and politics’.
156. The significant numbers who migrated from England to the continent is evident from Alison Games, Migration and the origins of the English Atlantic world (Cambridge, MA, 1999)
157. idem, ‘Migration’, in Armitage and Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic world, pp. 31–50.
158. See, for example, the interesting essays, albeit of variable quality, in Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton, eds., From strangers to citizens: the integration of immigrant communities in Britain, Ireland, and colonial America, 1550–1750 (Brighton, 2001)
159. more particularly, Raingard Eβer, Niederländische Exulanten im England des 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1996).
160. Quinn, The Elizabethans and the Irish, pp. 143–61; the Irish presence in London from 1400 to 1650 is being investigated systematically by David Edwards through a close study of surnames, and he is approaching the conclusion that, until 1600, the Irish community that had established itself there was not only significant numerically but included people who had achieved material success and guild membership; I am grateful to Dr Edwards for this information on a phenomenon that is scarcely mentioned even by specialists on London
161. see, for example, Susan Brigden, London and the reformation (Oxford, 1991).
162. This is one of the themes of Canny, Making Ireland British, in which also see the bibliography.
163. This was evident to the poet Edmund Spenser on whose political perspective see Canny, Making Ireland British, pp. 1–58
164. on the 1590s see Hiram Morgan, Tyrone's rebellion: the outbreak of the nine years war in Tudor Ireland (Woodbridge, 1993).
165. Stevenson, Scottish covenanters and Irish confederates, pp. 177–179
166. Pádraig Lenihan, Confederate Catholics at war, 1641–1649 (Cork, 2001), pp. 197–220
167. John R. Young, ed., Celtic dimensions of the British civil wars (Edinburgh, 1997)
168. Martyn Bennett, The civil wars in Britain and Ireland, 1638–1651 (Oxford, 1997)
169. Charles Carlton, Going to the wars: the experience of the British civil wars, 1638–1651 (London, 1992).
170. Simms, Jacobite Ireland, pp. 217–229.
171. See, for example, A. B. Worden, The sound of virtue: Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Elizabethan politics (New Haven, CT, 1996)
172. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake, eds., Culture and politics in early Stuart England (London, 1994).
173. Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic: studies in popular belief in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England (London, 1971)
174. early leads for studies of mental worlds were provided by Alan Macfarlane, The diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683 (Oxford, 1976)
175. Paul Seaver, Wallington's world: a puritan artisan in seventeenth-century London (Stanford, CA, 1985)
176. the closest analogy in history writing on colonial British America was John Demos, Entertaining Satan: witchcraft and the culture of early New England (New York, 1982)
177. the sources for early modern Ireland did not readily lend themselves to such reconstructions but we have now had Raymond Gillespie, Devoted people: belief and religion in early modern Ireland (Manchester, 1997)
178. Clodagh Tait, Death, burial, and commemoration of the dead in Ireland, 1550–1650 (London, 2002).
179. See, for example, Michael J. Braddick and John Walter, eds., Negotiating power in early modern society: order, hierarchy and subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 2001).
180. Thus the special issue of the William and Mary Quarterly, 60, no. 1 (2003), devoted to the theme ‘Sexuality in early America’, is, in my opinion, redeemed by the inclusion of Jennifer M. Spear, ‘Colonial intimacies: legislating sex in French Louisiana’, pp. 75–98.
181. Armitage, Origins.
182. An excellent example of this approach for a slightly later period is Richard Drayton, Nature's government: science, imperial Britain and the ‘improvement’ of the world (New Haven, CT, 2000)
183. the essential lead for all such work comes from Joan Thirsk, ed., The agrarian history of England and Wales, IV: 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967).