scholarly journals A NEW MAGNA CARTA FOR THE EARLY MODERN COMMON LAW: AN 800TH ANNIVERSARY ESSAY

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 428-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Witte
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
King John

AbstractThis article examines the influence of the Magna Carta on the development of rights and liberties in the Anglo-American common law tradition, especially in the seventeenth century. Originally issued by King John of England in 1215, the Magna Carta set forth numerous prototypical rights and liberties that helped to shape subsequent legal developments in England, America, and the broader Commonwealth. The Magna Carta served as an inspiration for seventeenth-century English jurists, like Sir Edward Coke, and Puritan pamphleteers, like John Lilburne, who advocated sweeping new rights reforms on the strength of the charter. It also inspired more directly the new bills of rights and liberties of several American colonies, most notably the expansive 1641 Body of Liberties of Massachusetts crafted by Nathaniel Ward, which anticipated many of the constitutional rights formulations of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America.

scholarly journals Transatlantic Lifelines: Anne Bradstreet’s “Elegie upon That Honorable and Renowned Knight, Sir Philip Sidney”

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Sauer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Sir Philip Sidney ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
English Identity ◽  
British North American ◽  
Poetic Creation

The legacy of Sir Philip Sidney, the distinguished Elizabethan courtier-poet, was the subject of numerous claims to memorialization. On 17 October 1586 Sidney died in battle at Arnhem in the United Netherlands. Less than a week later, his corpse was transported to Flushing, of which Sidney had been Governor, and in the following year Sidney’s body was “interr’d in stately Pauls”, as recorded by Anne Dudley Bradstreet—the first known poet of the British North American colonies. While Bradstreet is omitted from most early modern and contemporary literary accounts of Sidney’s legacy, this article demonstrates that Bradstreet’s commemoration of Sidney from across the Atlantic presents new insights into his afterlife and the female poet’s formulations of early modern nationhood. Bradstreet’s first formal poem, “An Elegie upon that Honorable and renowned Knight, Sir Philip Sidney” (comp. 1637–8), was a tribute to Sidney as well as to her own Anglo-American literary heritage and England’s rolls. Bradstreet exhibits her complex relationship to Sidney along the same lines that she reconceives her English identity. A comparison of the two published seventeenth-century editions of Bradstreet’s elegiac poem (1650, 1678) shows how she translates descent and lineage from kinship (and kingship) into poetic creation. In the process, Bradstreet takes her place not only as a “semi-Sidney”, as Josuah Sylvester characterized Sidney’s descendants, but also as a Sidneian Muse—in America.

scholarly journals The Historical Role of Leviticus 25 in Naturalizing Anti-Black Racism

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 570
Author(s):  
James W. Watts
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
High Probability ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
Permanent Property

Leviticus 25:39–46 describes a two-tier model of slavery that distinguishes Israelites from foreign slaves. It requires that Israelites be indentured only temporarily while foreigners can be enslaved as chattel (permanent property). This model resembles the distinction between White indentured slaves and Black chattel slaves in the American colonies. However, the biblical influence on these early modern practices has been obscured by the rarity of citations of Lev. 25:39–46 in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources about slavery. This article reviews the history of slavery from ancient Middle Eastern antiquity through the seventeenth century to show the unique degree to which early modern institutions resembled the biblical model. It then exposes widespread knowledge of Leviticus 25 in early modern political and economic debates. Demonstrating this awareness shows with high probability that colonial cultures presupposed the two-tier model of slavery in Leviticus 25:39–46 to naturalize and justify their different treatment of White indentured slaves and Black chattel slaves.

scholarly journals Zemskii Sobor: Historiographies and Mythologies of a Russian “Parliament”

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Sablin ◽  
Kuzma Kukushkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Russian Civil War ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Modern Russian

Focusing on the term zemskii sobor, this study explored the historiographies of the early modern Russian assemblies, which the term denoted, as well as the autocratic and democratic mythologies connected to it. Historians have discussed whether the individual assemblies in the sixteenth and seventeenth century could be seen as a consistent institution, what constituencies were represented there, what role they played in the relations of the Tsar with his subjects, and if they were similar to the early modern assemblies elsewhere. The growing historiographic consensus does not see the early modern Russian assemblies as an institution. In the nineteenth–early twentieth century, history writing and myth-making integrated the zemskii sobor into the argumentations of both the opponents and the proponents of parliamentarism in Russia. The autocratic mythology, perpetuated by the Slavophiles in the second half of the nineteenth century, proved more coherent yet did not achieve the recognition from the Tsars. The democratic mythology was more heterogeneous and, despite occasionally fading to the background of the debates, lasted for some hundred years between the 1820s and the 1920s. Initially, the autocratic approach to the zemskii sobor was idealistic, but it became more practical at the summit of its popularity during the Revolution of 1905–1907, when the zemskii sobor was discussed by the government as a way to avoid bigger concessions. Regionalist approaches to Russia’s past and future became formative for the democratic mythology of the zemskii sobor, which persisted as part of the romantic nationalist imagery well into the Russian Civil War of 1918–1922. The zemskii sobor came to represent a Russian constituent assembly, destined to mend the post-imperial crisis. The two mythologies converged in the Priamur Zemskii Sobor, which assembled in Vladivostok in 1922 and became the first assembly to include the term into its official name.

1. The English origins

2021 ◽  
pp. 7-17
Author(s):  
Amanda L. Tyler
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Simple Idea ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
The Common

This chapter traces the origins of the common law writ of habeas corpus, finding that it was born out of a simple idea: the need to serve the king and demand justification for the detention of one of his subjects. It was not so much for those courts to question the king himself, for he could do no wrong. This chapter details how all of this changed over the course of the seventeenth century, and specifically the important role that the English Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 played in this shift. As is also explored, Parliament’s objectives in passing the Habeas Corpus Act sprang from its intention to expand its power at the expense of the king much more so than a desire to protect individual liberty. But in time, Blackstone and others came to praise the Act as a “second Magna Carta” for curtailing the detention of so-called “state prisoners.”

The Authority of the Administration

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
Janet McLean
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
The Common ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

The authority claims of the administration have undergone radical change with consequences for the shape and content of administrative law. In the seventeenth century, authority was claimed in office, as a means to limit the imposition of the King’s will and to secure the independence of officials, especially the judges. In the eighteenth century, virtue, property, and independence became the basis for office, and the common law sought to enhance such authority through notions of public trust. After the nineteenth-century transition to more centralised and bureaucratic hierarchy, democracy became the new source of authority for the administration, reinforced by the ultra vires doctrine. In each era, the authority claims of the administration have been reflected in the frameworks for judicial supervision. In this way the common law has simultaneously constituted and controlled authority. In the present day we are in the process of rethinking whence administrators derive their legitimate authority and the theoretical foundations of judicial review. Beginning with the authority claims of the administration and framing a juridical response which reflects and tests such claims would be a good place to start.

“NOTHING IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE”: GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE TIME REGIME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 821-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEBASTIAN CONRAD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Technology ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Time Regime ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

When European clocks first arrived in seventeenth-century Japan they generated a commotion. The highly complex but also very precise instruments had been brought to Nagasaki by the Dutch East India Company that monopolized the sparse and highly regulated trade between Japan and Europe for more than two centuries. As an expression of the technological sophistication achieved in early modern Europe, mechanical clocks were hi-tech products of their time. They operated with a spring to store the energy, and their making required highly developed skills in casting and metalwork. The new technology made it possible to emancipate the measurement of time from sunshine and to achieve an evenness of temporal rhythms, not only during the day, but also at night.

Early Modern Jansenism

2015 ◽  
pp. 435-450
Author(s):  
Ephraim Radner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Reformation Movement

This chapter presents Jansenism as an originally seventeenth-century Counter-Reformation movement with a key commitment to a certain theology of grace. This had several pastoral consequences that were broadly influential among both Catholics and Protestants, especially in the areas of scriptural study and devotion. Jansenist interest in the Augustinian tradition, however, proved a losing cause within the evolving modern church. Three papal bulls condemned certain Jansenist ideas and provided the impetus for the conflict with Rome, the French monarchy, and other institutions. The major political aspects associated with the movement in the eighteenth century eventually overwhelmed its theology and hopes. By the nineteenth century, the movement’s final political phase was seen as an amalgam of anti-papalism, anti-Jesuitism, conciliarism, republicanism, and nationalism.

Architecture, Anatomy, and the New Science in Early Modern London

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Walker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
New Science ◽  
Early Modern London

Focuses on an important but overlooked building in late seventeenth-century London: the College of Physicians on Warwick Lane designed by the scientist and architect Robert Hooke in the 1670s. The building, which was commissioned in response to the previous college’s destruction in the Great Fire of London in 1666, was itself demolished in the nineteenth century. In this article, Matthew Walker argues that the conception and design of Hooke’s college had close links with the early Royal Society and its broader experimental philosophical program. This came about through the agency of Hooke—the society’s curator—as well as the prominence of the college’s physicians in the experimental philosophical group in its early years. By analyzing Hooke’s design for the college, and its prominent anatomy theater in particular, this article thus raises broader questions about architecture’s relationship with medicine and experimental science in early modern London.

scholarly journals England’s “Bloody Code” in Crisis and Transition: Executions at the Old Bailey, 1760–1837

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Devereaux
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old Bailey ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Execution Rates ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

The most celebrated and influential history of execution in England, V.A.C. Gatrell’s The Hanging Tree (Oxford, 1994), uses a survey of execution rates to make two very striking and seemingly persuasive assertions. First, more people were being hanged in early nineteenth-century England than at any time since the early modern era; and second, that the end of capital punishment came far more suddenly than previous studies have recognized. This article acknowledges and extends the importance of Gatrell’s first insight, while arguing that he nevertheless both understates the complexity of developments and overstates the suddenness with which both the letter and the practice of capital punishment were abandoned. It does so through a careful recalculation and analysis of execution rates at London’s Old Bailey courthouse, where execution was practiced on a far larger scale than in any other jurisdiction in the Anglo-American world, and whose practice most profoundly shaped the perceptions of both critics and proponents of capital punishment alike.

Lord Deputy Chichester and the English Government’s ‘Mandates Policy’ in Ireland, 1605–1607

1991 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
John McCavitt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Protestant Clergy ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Church Of Ireland ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

One of the liveliest debates in recent early modern Irish historiography has concerned the ‘failure’ of the Reformation in Ireland and when this occurred. Originally Professor Canny took issue with Dr. Brendan Bradshaw on this topic. Canny rejected Bradshaw’s thesis that the Reformation had failed in Ireland by 1558 and argued that counter-reformation catholicism only triumphed in the nineteenth century. Other contributions were then made to the debate by Dr. Alan Ford and later Karl Bottigheimer. Ford considered the 1590–1641 period as crucial, while Bottigheimer favoured the early seventeenth century as the key era. In the light of the work of Ford and Bottigheimer, Canny reconsidered the issue in an article published in 1986. He rejected what he believed to be Ford’s overly-pessimistic assessment that the Church of Ireland clergy soon despaired of the Reformation’s success in the seventeenth century. Instead, it is contended, Protestant clergy and laymen alike were optimistic that penal prosecution might still pave the way for considerable advances at this time. Moreover, Canny further argued that Ford was ‘mistaken in treating the clergy as an autonomous group and mistaken also in allowing excessive influence to ideology as the determinant of policy’.

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