Mapping Spain in the Sixteenth Century: The Escorial Atlas and Pedro de Esquivel’s Notebook

ABSTRACT

The twenty-one maps of Spain that comprise the Escorial atlas (El atlas de El Escorial) and the later notebook compiled by Pedro de Esquivel for another map of Spain have long been confused. Recently identified documents in the Royal Library, Stockholm, have allowed us to recognize the two works as completely separate and to shed new light on each. In this article we describe their respective histories, starting with the Escorial atlas, now known to have been commissioned by Emperor Charles V from the Sevillian cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, who between c.1538 and 1545 produced an index map and 20 regional sheets drawn to the scale of 1:400 000. We then go on to show how, later in the century (between c.1552 and 1565), Pedro de Esquivel was using a version of the topographical methods described in Peter Apian’s Cosmographia to assemble data for the map of Spain commissioned by Philip II before and just after he became king in 1556. Esquivel died in 1565 before all the data had been collected, his map was never drawn, and his notebooks, with all his astronomical measurements and calculations of angles and distances, took a curious journey that ended in Stockholm in the archives of the Royal Library of Sweden.     

A Link Between the 1780s Blast Furnaces at Coalbrookdale and Staveley: The Note of Mr Chas. Hornblower

In what appears to be the divulging of trade secrets to a potential rival, a Coalbrookdale Company employee provided the lessors of the Staveley furnace in Derbyshire with an account of blast furnace practice. A hurried draft by Charles Hornblower lists in considerable detail the raw materials and their proportions for charging the furnace, transport and labour costs, and advice about building the furnace hearth. Further analysis of the note provides contemporary information about the preparation of the raw materials, their composition and quality of iron produced.     

House of Lords Committee Accommodation and Its Use: Restoration and Renewal in the 19th and 20th Centuries*

Following the 1834 fire, the work of house of lords committees continued virtually without interruption, at first in temporary accommodation and, from 1846, in rooms in the new palace designed by Charles Barry. This article charts the history of house of lords committee activity and the varied use of its accommodation at Westminster from 1834 to the present. Major committee work immediately following the fire included an inquiry into prison reform. Barry's accommodation was scantily fitted out, and quickly needed technical and other adaptations. Committees themselves changed too, with the heaviest phase of private bill activity needed for the creation of the railways tailing off by the late 1860s. Following a low point in committee activity between 1940 and 1970 committee work has developed in fits and starts from 1971 onwards. The further expansion of committees following the Jellicoe committee report of 1992 was accommodated by the reform of private bill procedure, which helped free up committee rooms, and in October 2009, the establishment of the Supreme Court meant that the law lords no longer sat judicially in the large committee rooms 1 and 2. Since 2012, however, the further expansion of committee activity has not been matched by an increase in its accommodation.     

A Biographical Note on James Maxwell,Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod

This note seeks to clarify the course of the career of James Maxwell, gentleman usher of the black rod in several earlier Stuart parliaments. Maxwell was a Scot who followed James I south in 1603, serving in his household and that of Charles I, first as a gentleman usher daily waiter, and from 1619 as a groom of the bedchamber. In 1620 he secured the office of black rod. In 1642 he failed to follow the king to Oxford but remained with the parliament at Westminster, although largely delegating his duties as black rod to his associate, Alexander Thayne. In 1647, he was allowed by parliament to attend the king at Holdenby House. He died in 1650 as earl of Dirletoun in Scotland, although the circumstances in which he acquired this title are obscure.     

意大利战争与欧洲国家体系的初步形成

1494—1559年的意大利战争是欧洲由中世纪向近代转型时期发生的最重大的历史事件,它直接导致意大利城邦国家体系的覆灭并融入正在形成中的欧洲国家体系。意大利战争的起源、过程和结果表明,战争为正在兴起的欧洲主要大国西班牙、法国、英国、奥地利等提供了竞技场,进而促成了欧洲国际关系中心由地中海向大西洋的转移,为1648年建立的欧洲国家体系——威斯特伐利亚体系——奠定了必要的基础。     

Redefining the Republic of Letters: The Literary Public and Mudie’s Circulating Library

In late 1860, Charles Mudie’s plans to expand his circulating library inspired his detractors and competitors to challenge the validity of his ‘right to selection’ – the process by which he chose which texts he would loan from his library. Over the next few months, prominent periodicals featured correspondence and editorials that decried or supported Mudie’s ostensible monopoly over literary exchange. While the initial argument was economic, the dispute extended beyond economics to religion, literary quality and culture. To connect these disparate fields, writers turned to the politics of interpretation: that is, whether specialists should define literary culture, or if a public comprised of individual, ‘common’ readers should determine their own standards for books. Mudie’s opponents advocated for individual readers’ right to read what they liked, how they liked. His supporters argued that the public needed specialists to guide their literary tastes. The resulting exchange about what I call the ‘literary public’ amplified conversations integral to the burgeoning field of literary studies as it was emerging in the London colleges through the 1850s and 1860s. The contributing authors, publishers and critics justified or refuted ideas foundational to the establishment of English literature as an academic study for the common reader. As part of the mid-century confrontation between popular literary consumption and academic culture, the Mudie debate helped to politicize the reception and circulation of English literature.     

Chancellors,Presidents and Speakers: Presiding Officers in the Scottish Parliament before the Restoration*

As a unicameral assembly for most of its history, the Scottish parliament was presided over by the chief officer of state, the chancellor. Before 1603, he presided in the presence of the monarch, who was an active participant in parliaments, in contrast to the custom in England. After the union of the crowns, the chancellor presided in the presence of the monarch's representative, the king's commissioner. As with the Speaker and the lord chancellor in the English parliament, it was customary for him to operate as an agent of the crown. He also presided over the drafting committee, the lords of the articles. During parliamentary sessions, there were also semi-formal deliberative meetings of the individual estates (prelates, nobles, burgesses and, from 1592, ‘barons’, that is, lairds sitting as commissioners of the shires), each presided over by one of their own number. The Covenanting revolution of 1638 led to radical procedural reform. This included replacing the chancellor with an elected ‘president’ (Latin preses), chosen by the membership at the beginning of each session. With separate meetings of the estates becoming a formal part of parliament's procedures, there was an elected president for each estate, sometimes referred to as ‘Speakers’ for they would speak for their estates in plenary sessions of parliament.     

The ‘Little Palaces’ of St James's: Ladies,Lords, and Political Association under the later Stuarts

Clubs, coffee houses, and taverns, the most widely studied sites of political gathering in later Stuart London, largely excluded women. This essay argues that places of ‘intermixed conversation’ which existed alongside them should also be taken into account, and considers several examples of regular, semi-private assemblies, chiefly hosted by elite women (including duchesse de Mazarin, Lady Pulteney, and Barbara Villiers, Lady Fitzhardinge) and frequented by both sexes for the overt purpose of card playing, which were also significant places of political association at this period.