In early 2025, Routledge will publish a History textbook entitled Exploring Monarchy in Medieval Europe: 1000-1500 (EMME), a work which is currently under construction by Dr Elena (Ellie) Woodacre (University of Winchester), Dr Lucinda...
Motherhood has been inextricable from the experience of royal women across the globe throughout history. In monogamous monarchic systems, the focus of reproductive anxieties and ambitions was traditionally the queen consort. A fecund royal...
In the Jerusalem section of his 1632 travel account, the Scottish adventurer William Lithgow paused to tell a story that had taken place closer to home, in Whitehall. One day in 1612, Lithgow wrote,...
Like most scholars I know, there is very little I can say about my field without immediately wanting to append, “…but that’s not quite right” or “from another perspective, though….”. This post focuses on...
In 1832, Pauline de Tourzel, comtesse de Béarn, composed her memoirs titled Souvenirs de 40 ans (1789-1830): Récit d’une dame de Madame la dauphine (published in 1861), a major portion of which consists in...
In 1648, the Dutch count Willem Frederik of Nassau-Dietz sent one of his courtiers to France in order to find him a bride. In the instructions for his courtier, he explained that it was...
‘To drink drunk is an ordinary matter with them every day in the week’, remarked the English ambassador Giles Fletcher in his reflection on the state of Russia in the sixteenth century.[i] Anthony Jenkinson,...
During the reign of James II (1685-88), Whitehall, Versailles, and The Hague undertook an extraordinary programme of espionage missions on rival courts. This was spurred on by looming war between France and the Netherlands;...
On 13th September 1520 (or 1521 – surviving records give both dates), William Cecil, the future Lord Burghley, was born in the town of Bourne in Lincolnshire. So, whilst 2020 was, almost universally, an...
In 1379, Ramon Guglielmo Moncada approached the residence of the sixteen-year-old queen of Sicily, Maria, with the intention of kidnapping her and taking her to Barcelona. Maria – as a young ruler and the...
