The Fall of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk and the Revival of Impeachment in the Parliament of 1621

The revival of impeachment in 1621 has tended to be viewed exclusively through the prism of parliament. However, this article, which builds on the work of Professor Allen Horstman, suggests that a key factor in impeachment's revival was the dismissal of Lord Treasurer Suffolk for corruption in 1618. Suffolk's removal caused widespread disquiet, since it was assumed that senior officials held office for life. In order to silence these criticisms it proved necessary for the king not only to put Suffolk on trial but also to justify by precedent the lord treasurer's removal. This latter task was performed by the former lord chief justice, Sir Edward Coke, himself not long disgraced, whose researches in the medieval parliamentary record revealed the following year that errant crown ministers had hitherto been held to account by means of impeachment. Coke subsequently put this discovery to good effect when parliament met in 1621. Against the backdrop of mounting criticism against his hated rival, the lord chancellor, Francis Bacon, Coke revealed the existence of impeachment to the house of commons, whose attention was then focused on finding a way to punish the monopolists, Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Michell. In so doing, Coke not only aided the lower House, which had been struggling since 1610 to find a way of punishing non‐members, but also sought to settle an old score.     

Gendered viewing,childbirth and female authority in the residence of Alice Chaucer,duchess of Suffolk,at Ewelme,Oxfordshire

ABSTRACT

This article examines the visual culture of the late medieval great residence from the perspective of the female gaze. In 1466, the widowed Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk (c.1404–75), moved several items from her London and East Anglian houses to her principal residence at Ewelme, Oxfordshire. A unique set of inventories reveals that the move anticipated the birth and baptism of one of Alice’s grandchildren at that manor house. Focusing on the tapestries displayed in the main rooms of Alice’s residence, this article argues that the rituals surrounding the birth of Alice’s grandchild – and their occurrence within a female-headed household – provided a gendered viewing context, which both informed, and was informed by, their iconography. It considers how the mutually constitutive relationship between space, iconography and ritual would have authorised an event centred on female bodies, whilst also articulating Alice’s authority as household and family matriarch.     

Illustrations of Medieval Manners and Costume from Original Documents

The Coningesby family connection with Guy of Warwick is recorded in a pedigree of the family in the Lincolnshire Record Office. The will of Sir Henry Coningesby, knight, indicates that he built the present house at North Mymms Park, probably in the 1580s. It is suggested that the ‘Warwick’ worthy depicts Sir Henry's thirteenth-century ancestor, Sir Roger Coningesby, knight, Steward of the house to Guy of Warwick. There was a connection by marriage between the house at North Mymms, Hertfordshire and Nether Hall, Essex, where similar wall paintings had existed. The association between the Coningesby family, when at the Manor of Weld and the Cutts family, when at Salisbury Hall, both in the parish of Shenley, Hertfordshire, probably accounts for the similarity of the frieze in the Oak bedroom and the frieze in Childerley Hall, Cambridgeshire.     

Suffolk Place,Southwark, London: a Tudor palace and its terracotta architectural decoration

Suffolk Place (c. 1518–22), Southwark, was the London residence of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. This majestic palace is visible in the foreground of Wyngaerde’s London panorama (c. 1544), from which it can be inferred that it possessed a double courtyard plan. The southern and eastern ranges of the outer courtyard of Suffolk Place were apparently adorned with architectural terracottas at both entablature and parapet level. As the palace was demolished in 1557–58, the finds of ex-situ terracottas are a key source of information concerning the decorative scheme of this vanished palace. Petrological study and other research indicates that the terracottas were locally manufactured, implying the existence of a London-area workshop.     

The excavation of a late-seventeenth-century water-mill at Caldecotte,Bow Brickhill,Bucks

The excavation of a watermill at Caldecotte, on the River Ouzel in the new city of Milton Keynes, Bucks., is described. It was probably a double mill with a central water- house containing two wheels separated by a sluice. On either side of the waterhouse were the mills and to the west a miller's house. Parallels from the lower Ouzel valley and the Netherlands are described.

The excavation was directed and the report written by Martin Petchey, with the exception of the section reconstructing the mills at Willen and Caldecote, Newport Pagnell, which is by Brian Giggins.     

Notice of Documents Preserved in the Record Office,at Malta

The recently found wall-paintings at North Mymms Park, Hertfordshire (a privately owned house, not open to the public), (TL 217042) are introduced, the history of the building and its relevant ownership is discussed, the paintings described, comparisons made, possible sources for the paintings considered, and date ranges suggested. An account of the subsequent conservation work is given.     

Original Documents.-No. I

St Faith’s chapel is situated beyond the south wall of the south transept of the Gothic abbey church, built by King Henry III (r. 1216–72) at Westminster. The chamber’s paintings, corbel heads and the use of Purbeck marble for wall shafts and corbels, together with 13th-century floor tiles, mark it out as a locus of high status. The paper promotes the claims of St Faith’s chapel to have been the sacristy and vestry of the Benedictine church through an examination of its fittings, sculpture and painted decoration.     

Of Male and Female Heirs; of English and Scottish Peerages: The Fine Tuning of the Peerage Bills of 1719

There were two versions of the Peerage Bill in 1719, one which was lost in the house of lords in April when the parliament was prerogued and one in December which was defeated in the house of commons. The first was constructed in debates in the Lords, in conjunction with the judges, based on resolutions introduced into the upper House by the duke of Somerset; the second was introduced into the Lords as a fully formed bill. Both bills underwent changes during their progress through the house of lords. The result was that the second bill differed significantly from the first. Based on the first bill, the second allowed for more peerages to be created, while trying to prevent the problems associated with female succession, particularly in the Scottish peerage, and more closely defining when a peerage had become extinct. This article is based on documents generated by the passage of the two bills through parliament which have not been studied before.     

Lathom House: The Northern Court

Abstract

Thomas Stanley is credited with the creation of a fine new house at Lathom when he was made earl of Derby in 1485. This house, according to the poets and writers if the 16th and 17th centuries, was a sumptuous and well-defended place surrounded by moats and with as marry as eighteen towers. Indeed, it was claimed that Henry VII, stepson if the first earl if Derby, based his design for Richmond Palace on Lathom. After the house had fallen to the Parliamentarians it is usually accepted that the place was razed to the ground and, since the latter years of the 18th century, there has been considerable debate regarding its location. Recent archaeological work at the site if a later house, designed by Giacomo Leoni, is now providing evidence to show that Leoni's building probably lay on the site of the earlier structure and that some if the medieval masonry was incorporated into the rubble fill if the 18th-century walls. This study now examines the evidence for the first earl of Derby's house and argues that Lathom should be considered amongst the most important late 15th-century houses in England and Wales.     

The Tudor Speakers 1485–1601: Choosing,Status, Work*

During the Tudor period the Speaker was nominated by the crown. The house of commons acquiesced with the crown's nomination, but not entirely passively. There is a body of evidence suggesting that the crown's nominee became the focus of disapprobation once his name became known. What hostility there was to the Speaker-designate from the mid 16th century was displayed to better effect outside the House than within.     

The Armada Paintings in the New Palace of Westminster

In June 2008 a team of artists began the gargantuan task of creating the series of Armada mural paintings for the house of lords. They were embarking on a two-year project, which would bring to completion the original decorative scheme planned for the prince's chamber by the Royal Commission on Fine Arts ¹ during the 1840s. This, in turn, would reconnect the original historical association, which the Armada tapestries had held with the house of lords since the mid 17th century until their destruction by fire in 1834. This article places these Armada mural paintings within the historical context of this project at the Palace of Westminster and documents some of the methodology behind the programme of work to re-create this celebrated series for the walls of the house of lords.     

Settlement and Society: A Study of the Early Agrarian History of South Lincolnshire. By H. E. Hallam

Among the most important groups of English sixteenth-century tombs are those of the Howard family in the parish church of St Michael at Framlingham, Suffolk. Their history is extremely complicated and their dating controversial. In 1965 Howard Colvin and Professor Lawrence Stone published an article on the tombs in this journal which, based on exemplary documentary research, remains the most detailed (and best) study of the subject (Stone and Colvin 1965). Since then some new material has been discovered which throws fresh light on the problems surrounding the tombs. Discussion will be confined mainly to the tombs of the second and third Howard Dukes of Norfolk and that of the first two wives of the fourth Duke. The monument to the third Duke's son, Henry Howard, the poet Earl of Surrey, who was beheaded in 1547, is excluded as it was not set up until 1614.     

Notes,Bibliographies, And Documents

The Royal Navy's Blockade in New England Waters, 1812–1815     

Notes,Bibliographies, And Documents

The Activities of Polish Communists as a Source for Stalin's Policy Towards Poland in the Second World War     

Television Programs For Women in The United Arab Emirates and The City Of Milwaukee,U.S.A

To know more about the role of the television in dealing with women's problems in both United Arab Emirates (UAE) television and television in Milwaukee, Wisconsin U.S.A., a comparative analytical study was made for such programs in both countries. The researcher believes that developing local women's programs can benefit from the experiences of others, along with comparative studies between women's programs on UAE television and Milwaukee television. The study covers public television programs during the period from September 15 to October 30, 1997. The investigation relies on the survey and content analysis methods. These methods are usually adopted to survey and compare television programs in studies similar to this one.     

The Origin,Development and Decline of Back-to-Back Houses in Leeds, 1787–1937

This paper traces the development of back-to-back house building in Leeds. It first outlines the origin of the house type, before examining the urban layout, building form and social aspects of back-to-back courts in the first half of the 19th century, and the role of speculative developers, building societies and sanitary reformers. The focus then turns to the bills, acts and by-laws of the later 19th and early 20th century, and the determination of the people of Leeds to retain their preferred house type. Together, these brought improvements to the design and facilities, culminating in a house type that was far superior to that which was condemned by the back-to-back critics, and arguably had overcome all of the criticisms by the time construction of back-to-backs was prohibited in 1909.     

Notes,Documents, and Bibliographies

Princess Lieven's Last Diplomatic Confrontation; Daniel H. Thomas

Faisal Ibn Husairi and the Zionists: A Re-examination with Documents; Neil Caplan     

Resisting the Inevitable? The Parliament Act 1911

The Parliament Act 1911, limiting the veto power of the house of lords, constitutes a major piece of constitutional legislation in the United Kingdom. The vulnerability of the house of lords to major change was long‐standing and to be found in the actions of prime ministers over more than a century. The constitutional crisis leading to the passage of the act was triggered by the rejection of the budget by the Lords in 1909. However, the outcome of the crisis was by no means certain, either in terms of the provisions of the Parliament Bill or its passage. It was neither a product of a clash between peers and people or a principled debate as to the place of the second chamber in the nation's constitutional arrangements. It was the result of the stances taken on the issue that had dominated British politics since the 1880s: Irish home rule. This determined that the house of lords would be subject to change, not in terms of composition but in respect of its powers. In terms of the contemporary relevance of the act, attempts at further changes to the second chamber constitute neither history repeating itself nor unfinished business.     

Changing addresses: social conflict,civic culture,and the politics of house numbering reform in Milwaukee, 1913–1931

House numbering systems are way-finding systems with cultural significance not only by virtue of their quantification of space but because large centralized systems define a center and axes which have symbolic potential. The article briefly traces house numbering systems in American cities, then analyzes the evolution of Milwaukee's system, beginning with rudimentary numbering of a few business and upper-middle class streets, moving to a number of systems, one for each side of town, after prodding by the Post Office, and then to their unification, 1913–1931. It shows how the interests of large citywide businesses and government promoted reform efforts, while the public was largely uninterested and localistic. Reformers concerned about class and ethnic cleavages favored a unified, centralized numbering scheme symbolically centered on downtown business and a new civic center, conferring enhanced legitimacy on business and law; but this was politically unpopular because it required renaming streets on which a majority of voters lived. But the public acquiesced to the idea of reform, and an alternative unified scheme was adopted in the end. This article provides a detailed analysis of the practical interests underlying house numbering and explores the surprising symbolic potential of house numbers.     

The chronology of the Neolithic sequence at Dikili Tash,Macedonia, Greece: TL dating of domestic ovens*

The chronological sequence of a major reference site for Neolithic periods in southeastern Europe and the Aegean, Dikili Tash (Macedonia, Greece), has been reassessed by TL. Baked adobe material samples extracted from domestic ovens, directly associated with specific occupational levels, have been studied. The fine‐grain technique has been used for equivalent dose determination. K, U and Th contents and the equilibrium state of U‐series have been measured by low‐background gamma spectroscopy. Since the archaeological levels were already partly excavated, the environmental dose‐rate was evaluated by a reconstruction technique combining laboratory analysis and on‐site measurements. The TL results (weighted average of multiple age determination, oven 400, middle of the Dikili Tash I (DT‐I) phase, 5500 ± 320 bc ; oven 600, end of DT‐I, 4920 ± 310 bc ; house 3, DT‐II, 4260 ± 280 bc ; house 4, DT‐II, 4510 ± 410 bc ) are in general agreement with the timeframe deduced from previous radiocarbon dates. This convergence strengthens the settlement's chronology, established now by independent dating methods.