England

By the close of the fourteenth century the English system of surnames had come into general use, many of them deriving from the trades and crafts followed by their bearers.

J.P. Kenyon describes how, in 1688, there were weighty reasons to suppose that the new royal heir was a changeling, smuggled to the Palace in a warming pan.

Esther Moir brings us on a visit to the Nonconformist chapels of England, products of a long tradition in vernacular architecture, and well adapted to the needs of local worshippers.

J.P. Kenyon describes how the childlessness of the Queen, and the conversion of James, Duke of York, to Roman Catholicism, produced a febrile state of opinion in Restoration London, out of which rumours of a “Popish Plot” naturally arose.

During his lifetime, George II's son accomplished little of note. However, writes Romney Sedgwick, Frederick's propaganda in his own political interests left behind two fictions that profoundly influenced later historians.

How accurate are Shakespeare’s historical plays? Harold F. Hutchison compares the dramatist’s account of Richard’s downfall with the actual course of events.

“Bleak indeed, but blazing,” Prynne was one of the martyrs of the seventeenth-century Puritan movement. Yet, as William M. Lamont notes, even in his own party, his fiercely uncompromising character often aroused hatred and contempt.

J.B. Morrall explains the first hundred years in the history of the French Calvinists, whose loyalty to their faith led to civil turmoil in France.

L.R. Betcherman describes how, early in the seventeenth century, an English royal favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, despatched his Dutch agent to Italy to form a sumptuous art-collection.

Was King Harold slain by a Norman arrow that pierced his eye? Charles H. Gibbs-Smith adduces a powerful argument for correcting the traditional story.