Event Calendar
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Lecture
‘Lived religion’ in eighteenth-century England: the education of poor children
Lambeth Palace Library Lambeth Palace Road, LondonThe Church of England Record Society Annual Lecture 2022 Speaker: W.M. Jacob Drawing on the insights of ‘lived religion’ this paper investigates evidence from a wide range of eighteenth century archival sources, including diocesan parochial and borough records, to illustrate the religious commitment of Anglican lay people of the ‘middling sort’ in a wide geographical […]
Breakspear: the unknown English pope
Lambeth Palace Library Lambeth Palace Road, LondonSpeaker: Adrian Waddingham Nicholas Breakspear has been overlooked for centuries, even though his achievements outshone those of his contemporary, Thomas Becket. Born in poverty and probably illegitimate, Breakspear rose to become the only Englishman to ascend the throne of Saint Peter, ruling over the papal states as Adrian IV. His life is not a tale […]
Dr Andrew Smith (University of Liverpool): Responding to Historic Organisation Misconduct Accusations: the Campaign for Corporate Reparations for Black Slavery
Lambeth Palace Library Lambeth Palace Road, LondonAbout thirty UK and US firms have been accused by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists of having profited from black slavery before its abolition in the British Empire and the United States. There were calls for these companies to pay compensation to the descendants of enslaved people. The responses of the accused firms were diverse: […]
Dr John Maddicott (University of Oxford): ‘John Prideaux (1578-1650): A Scholar at Large’
Lambeth Palace Library Lambeth Palace Road, LondonJohn Prideaux was Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford from 1615 to 1642, a highly successful head of his Oxford college, bishop of Worcester during the Civil War, and one of Europe's leading scholars. John Maddicott will assess his role in the ecclesiastical politics of his day against the broader background of his social ascent, […]
Dr Christopher de Hamel (University of Cambridge): The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscript Club
Lambeth Palace Library Lambeth Palace Road, LondonThe illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. We are dazzled by them and recognize their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge. But we generally think much less about the countless men and women who made, collected and preserved them through the centuries, and to […]
Professor Catherine Hall (UCL): ‘Making White and Black: Edward Long slave-owner and historian of Jamaica’
Lambeth Palace Library Lambeth Palace Road, LondonThis talk will introduce Edward Long, whose History of Jamaica published in 1774 (and in print ever since) aimed to convince a metropolitan audience that slavery was essential to the wealth of Britain and that black people were naturally born to serve those who were white. Long’s account of Jamaica provides an extraordinarily detailed picture […]
Dr Helen Paul (University of Southampton): ‘The South Sea Company and Enslavement’
Lambeth Palace Library Lambeth Palace Road, LondonThe South Sea Company is famous for giving its name to an early financial crash, the South Sea Bubble of 1720. This event has overshadowed the company’s involvement in Britain’s transatlantic slave trade. In popular histories, the importance of the company’s trading arm has been downplayed in order to highlight the supposed foolishness of investors. […]
Professor Raluca Radulescu (Bangor University): ‘What do we need to know about the Prose Brut tradition and why? A medieval best-seller and modern scholarly silence’
This talk will focus on the appeal of the Prose Brut tradition in the Middle Ages with a view to examining the relationship between the large number of manuscripts it survives in (over 200) and relatively little scholarly interest from modern scholars. It takes a broad view of how the text was presented to modern […]
Professor James Walvin (University of York): ‘The Black Presence in Transatlantic Slavery Archives’
Lambeth Palace Library Lambeth Palace Road, London*Please note change of speaker* The distinguished social historian James Walvin, author of many books on slavery and the slave trade in the Atlantic world, will discuss ‘The Black Presence in Transatlantic Slavery Archives’ with Desirée Baptiste, author of a new play, Incidents in the Life of an Anglican Slave, Written by Herself (2023), inspired by a document […]
Joanna Story, University of Leicester: ‘Insular Manuscripts – some new approaches to some old questions.’
Lambeth Palace Library Lambeth Palace Road, LondonMore than 600 manuscripts survive that were written between c. 600–850 in the Irish or Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, or in continental monasteries founded by missionaries from the islands of Britain or Ireland in the seventh or eighth centuries. Defined by characteristic script, as well as decoration, these manuscripts are graphic testimony to the contribution of the […]
Dr Harry Spillane (University of Cambridge): ‘The Bishops’ Bible, Archbishop Matthew Parker, and the Elizabethan Church’
Lambeth Palace Library Lambeth Palace Road, LondonThe Bishops’ Bible, which was first printed in 1568, has frequently been cast as a useless and widely unpopular translation of the Bible into English. However, by exploring what the intended purposes of the Bishops’ Bible were, and by paying attention to the wealth of images, prefaces, maps, diagrams and heraldic devices within it, a […]
British Records Association 2023 Maurice Bond Lecture and Harley Prize Presentation
Lambeth Palace Library Lambeth Palace Road, LondonThe 2023 Maurice Bond lecture will be given by Dr Andrew Flinn of the Department of Information Studies, University College London. The lecture will explore the work of community archivists in identifying, preserving and making accessible community generated archives and heritage material. Employing Sven Lindqvist's Dig Where You Stand (1978 & 2023) metaphor and method, […]
