Stuart

Cosmetics and Perfumes in Stuart Times

In the Elizabethan Age feminine extravagance was often satirised by English dramatists and poets. During the seventeenth century, writes Brenda Gourgey, it rose to even more fantastic heights.

The Exclusion Crisis, Part II

J.P. Kenyon describes how the Exclusion movement of 1679-81 revealed a widespread frustration among the Parliamentary classes, their distrust of Charles II, and their hatred of Popery. You can find the first part of this article here.

My Friend the Merchant: Thomas Hill and Pepys

Although Pepys often refers in his Diary to Thomas Hill, he remains a somewhat shadowy figure. It is now possible to reconstruct his portrait. Hill emerges as a man after the diarist’s own heart—learned, inquisitive, sociable, garrulous. D. Pepys Whiteley recalls their friendship, which had begun in 1664 and continued until the merchant left England for Portugal.

Ordinary People in Stuart England

Maurice Ashley describes how, divided by a vast gulf from the prospering gentry, seventeenth-century cottagers and labourers lived a poor and harsh life. After 1660, their standard of welfare seems to have declined.

Faith and Reason in Stuart England

The relationship between religion and rationality was an intimate one in 17th-century England. Christopher J. Walker looks at the arguments and controversies of the time, which helped to forge a more open society.

Charles II’s Secretaries of State

D.G.C. Allan introduces the eleven Secretaries of State employed by Charles II, who reflect in the variety of their personalities, the social brilliance and the shifting policies of the Restoration Age.

A Missionary on the Amazon

Derek Severn recounts how, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a priest from Bohemia served the Society of Jesus in the more remote parts of Brazil and Peru.

John Bunyan in Prison

As a ‘common upholder of unlawful meetings and conventicles’, Monica Furlong remembers, the great preacher was imprisoned for twelve years in 1660.

John Evelyn and London Air

Steven R. Smith finds that John Evelyn proposed some drastic remedies to combat the polluted air of London in the seventeenth century.