Tobias Capwell continues his history of jousting through surviving artefacts at the Royal Armouries. He reveals how the jousts and tournaments of the Renaissance transported knightly combat into a performance art, with demonstrations of aristocratic skill, superhuman strength and cutting-edge equipment.
Explores the sociogenesis and development of the French royal mistress, examining the careers of nine of the most significant holders of that title between 1444 and the final years of the ancien regime.
A Renaissance Treatise on the Healing Properties of Gemstones
In early modern Europe precious and semiprecious stones were valued not only for their beauty and rarity but also for their medical and magical properties. Lorenzo de' Medici, Philip II of Spain, and Popes Leo X and Clement VII were all treated with expensive potions incorporating ground gems such as rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. Medical and ......
First discovered in a Hungarian library in 1838, the Rohonc Codex keeps privileged company with some of the most famous unsolved writing systems in the world, notably the Voynich manuscript, the Phaistos Disk, and Linear A. Written entirely in cipher, this 400-year-old, 450-page-long, richly illustrated manuscript initially gained considerable ......
King Charles II was the father of fourteen illegitimate children (if not more) by seven mistresses. Ironically, his marriage to Queen Catherine, a Portuguese princess, proved childless. The eldest and most notable of his children, James, duke of Monmouth, was effectively excluded from the line of succession. After his father's death the duke ......
Explores the western European idea of the witches' sabbath, based on translations of five texts dating from the 1430s, and examines how these texts went on to influence conceptions of diabolical witchcraft for centuries to come.
The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America
Tells the story of the thousands of Britons who lived and died in bondage in Britain's American colonies. This book demonstrates that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule.
Slavery and Political Conflict in the British Atlantic World
How American slavery engendered a new political vocabulary used on both sides of the Atlantic How is it, Samuel Johnson famously asked on the eve of the Revolution, that Americans could so vociferously demand freedom for themselves while so conspicuously continuing to deny it to those they held in slavery? With Seeking the High Ground, Matthew ......
