Embracing the new dimensions of the city: how far was spiritualism tolerated in nineteenth-century Birmingham?

Much like London, Birmingham was known for its rapidly altering social and cultural structure, sparked by the industrial revolution. With this, non-conformity began to flourish in the Midlands, with Birmingham becoming a town where a relatively large number of educated people embraced the new opportunities offered by the city, including religious ones. Between 1800 and…

The Problems of Privilege: Being Exempt in 13th Century England

Ross Kennedy is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at the University of Glasgow. He is supervised by Dr Jochen Schenk and Dr Stephen Marritt. At the Ecclesiastical History Society’s 2018 summer conference, I had the welcome opportunity of presenting on the topic of Templar Attorneys, a group of Templar brethren who were routinely…

The English Bishops, the Deposition of Edward II, and the ‘Articles of Accusation’

The deposition of Edward II was a watershed moment in the constitutional, political, and legal history of later medieval England. Previous kings might have had their difficulties – Stephen had fought a Civil War with Matilda and her son, Henry, which saw England descend into chaos; John’s relations with his baronage were so poor that…

Pity the poor prelate? The case of Thomas Bourchier

Des Atkinson is a PhD candidate in medieval history at the University of Exeter. One churchman whose reputation can only be described as dented is Thomas Bourchier, archbishop of Canterbury from 1454 until his death in 1486. Bourchier (born around 1411) came from a family with royal and aristocratic connections. As a consequence, he gained…

Achilli v. Newman: anti-Catholicism in court

On 24th June 1852, John Henry Newman, the great Catholic convert now being considered for sainthood by the Vatican, was found guilty of libel at the Court of Queen’s Bench in Westminster. In one of his lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England, delivered in Birmingham on 28th July 1850, Newman had accused…

Being a Dyslexic Academic

Phoebe Kearns is working on a PhD in Church History at the University of Winchester. There are a great number of challenges in being an academic, but for some people these are far greater than for most.  Like around 10% of the population, I face the difficulties associated with dyslexia. Dyslexia is a Specific Learning…

Introducing Nicholas Dixon

Unusually for a modern historian, most of my research revolves around two institutions with pre-modern origins: the Church of England and the British monarchy. Above all, I am interested in investigating how – sometimes individually, sometimes in tandem – these institutions have shaped British society as well as territories which were part of the British…

Introducing Conor O’Brien

Dr Conor O’Brien is Solway Fellow in the History of Christianity at the University of Durham and Associate Professor (Research) at the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies there The very first lecture I attended at university was on the conversion of Constantine. It was given by the late Jennifer O’Reilly at University College…

The Church and the Law, Cambridge 2018: First Impressions of the EHS

Tim Yung is a PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong whose research concerns South China Anglican Identity in the early twentieth century.  He shared a paper on canons and constitutions in the South China Diocese at the the 2018 EHS Summer Conference. What do thirteenth century Templar attorneys and the Chinese Anglican Church’s…

Foreign Puppets, Christian Mothers or Revolutionary Martyrs? The Multiple Identities of Missionary School Girls in East China, 1917-1952

On a sunny day in February 1992 a group of McTyeire alumnae, dressed in blue to represent their class colour, gathered to pose for a photo in front of their old dormitory, Lambuth-Clopton Hall, a neo-gothic style building built in 1922, and today known as May First Hall (Wuyi Tang 五一堂). This was an immensely…

Recovering the Anglican Worldview of an Early Nineteenth-Century Lincolnshire Farmer

Nicholas Dixon is an AHRC-funded PhD candidate at Pembroke College, Cambridge. His doctoral research concerns the political and social influence of the Church of England during the early nineteenth century, with a particular focus on Anglican activity in the contexts of Parliament, the National Society and the SPCK. In this post, based on a paper…

Vanity Fair and the Celestial City: Dissenting, Methodist, and Evangelical Literary Culture in England 1720-1800

Isabel Rivers is Professor of Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Culture at Queen Mary University of London. Her book Vanity Fair and the Celestial City: Dissenting, Methodist, and Evangelical Literary Culture in England, 1720-1800 will be published by Oxford University Press in July 2018. Here she describes the questions she set out to answer. When I’m…