bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Low Countries
Authors: Blickle Peter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The Low Countries have been a highly urbanized region ever since the eleventh century. This makes it particularly appropriate to consider this region as one of the cases where the tension between the self-created public sphere of the cities conflicted with the state-making efforts of monarchs. Here, the interaction between cities and states obviously contributed substantially to the ultimate shape of the early modern state, both in the United Provinces and in the Habsburg-ruled Southern Netherlands. Until the end of the sixteenth century, the core of the economic system of north-western Europe was located in Flanders and Brabant; afterwards it shifted to Holland. Therefore, it seems logical to focus on the Dutch Republic for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and on the southern and western territories for the earlier period
Italy
Authors: Blickle Peter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
If we observe processes of state formation from an Italian vantage point, and most particularly if we wish to examine the part which citizens, peasants, commoners, and their organizations played in state formation, we must first necessarily pause to define terms. Italy represents an extreme case, so extreme as to cast doubt on widely accepted schemes, or general narratives, of European history. That this is so—rather than that parts of Italy (as Germany, the Low Countries, Catalonia, and other ‘atypical’ areas) are exceptions to a clear course of events taking place elsewhere—cannot be proved here. None the less we hope to show that an analysis of the Italian situation may help to clarify underlying issues of general import.
Conclusion
Authors: Blickle Peter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The relationships between autonomous cities and state building in Europe conformed to a general rhythm of urban political life. From the original communalism of the high Middle Ages, this path led through an era of internal devolution and external expansion in the later Middle Ages to an era of contraction, concentration, and oligarchy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. While common to many sectors of ‘the urban belt’, however, this pattern was by no means universal. Italy, in particular, shows exceptional features: the formation of states founded on cities; the political representation of an entire kingdom by the élites of one large city, Naples; the subjection of city-based power to an alliance between central government and rural communes at Milan; and the centralized federation of urban élites that constituted the Venetian state.
Marriage and Catastrophe, 1805-1816
Authors: Mitchell L G 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The marriage between William Lamb and Caroline Ponsonby was one of the most extraordinary unions of the whole nineteenth century. It was a catastrophe for both parties. It generated so much heat and noise that it became the stock-in trade of novelists. Benjamin Disraeli, Mrs Humphry Ward, Bulwer Lytton and his wife, and Thomas Lister were just a few of the writers, who allegedly drew on the Lamb marriage for copy. Notoriously, Lady Caroline Lamb did the same thing. The pain of this marriage was never private, therefore. Over and over again, Melbourne was confronted by its failure. Newspaper owners and booksellers ensured that his marriage was always in the public eye. For a man of fastidious sensitivities, such publicity was odious. In response to it, his instinct was to retire from public view. Any thought of a career in politics had to be abandoned. Lamb simply withdrew into himself When he once again became a public figure, after Caroline’s death, he was a changed man. A carapace of cynicism shielded him from any further emotional commitments. He was in many ways damaged beyond repair.
Prime Minister:, 1834-1841
Authors: Mitchell L G 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
William Lamb became Prime Minister only as the result of an extended, political crisis that so muddled loyalties and affiliations that he found himself in charge of the government. Difficulties started in May 1834 with the resignation of four members of Grey’s Cabinet over Irish policies. In July, Melbourne was appointed Prime Minister. In November, he was dismissed even though he still enjoyed a majority in the House of Commons. For five months, Peel attempted to lead a minority government, but, when this experiment failed, Melbourne was reinstated in office in April 1835. For nearly a year, there was turmoil right across the political spectrum. The confusion of 1829 30 was re-enacted. Many Tories had never forgiven Peel and Wellington for their role in Catholic Emancipation, and the antipathy was reciprocated.
Robin’s Reign, 1727-1742
Authors: Langford Paul 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Though the accession of George II aroused wide spread expectations of change, both at home and abroad, the new King eventually endorsed the men and measures of his predecessor. The reign began in remarkably tranquil circumstances, with no suggestion of a reviving Jacobite threat. It confirmed the growing stature of Sir Robert Walpole, and simultaneously served to identify him with the ills of contemporary society. A galaxy of literary talents exposed the faults of his ‘system’ and created an enduring image of corruption as the prime characteristic of the ‘Robin ocracy’. Yet Walpole’s supremacy showed increasing signs of strain in the mid-173os. His excise scheme proved a major miscalculation, and caused a crisis at court, as well as exposing him to severe criticism inside and outside Parliament. It enabled his opponents to appeal to ‘Country’ sentiment rather than to narrow party prejudices. Divisions within the royal family provided a focus for aristocratic opposition. Episcopal unrest at the deistic tendencies visible in court life endangered the alliance of Whig politicians and Whig Churchmen. An outbreak of anticlericalism in the House of Commons made it easier for Dissenters to challenge the privileges of the Church, and the con sequent religious tensions, added an element of instability to ministerial politics. Above all there was growing
New Improvements
Authors: Langford Paul 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Parliamentary sovereignty was employed for commercial benefit and material improvement, as well as in constitutional controversy. Turnpike legislation created a national transport network, which, in addition to its economic effects, was perceived to have social and cultural consequences. A series of inland navigation acts made the 1760s and 1770s the first, formative decades of the canal age, and added to the wonders of the English world. ‘Improvement Acts’ were used on a wide scale to transform the amenities of towns and cities. On the land there was a great increase in the use of parliamentary enclosure bills. The entrepreneurial activity with which this mass of legislation was associated caused considerable heart searching, complacent though much of the commercial spirit of the age may seem in retrospect. The rapid growth of towns, and especially the suburban expansion of the metropolis, gave rise to debate about the social and moral repercussions of urban change. Agricultural investment, praised for its impact on productivity, was also criticized for its corrosive effect on rural paternalism. The traditional economy of the open-field village, and the old sense of harmony which bound together hierarchical communities, seemed to be vanishing together. Such concern was increased by the food shortages and price inflation of the period.
Britannia’s Distress, 1770-1783
Authors: Langford Paul 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Lord North’S ministry began propitiously. Much of its success derived from North’s gifts as a parliamentarian, much too from the confidence which he inspired among the back-bench country gentlemen. It was clear, however, that the ferments of the 1760s had had permanent consequences, not least in the searching scrutiny to which the traditional assumptions of the eigheenth-century constitution were subjected by critics of the regime. These included Dissenters in matters of Church as well as State. North’s handling of imperial affairs, in India, in Canada, and in America, suggested resourcefulness and firmness. His decision to use force against the American colonies was widely supported and positively strengthened his political position. But when the war began to go badly in 1777, a crisis of unpre cedented dimensions unfolded. Recognition of American independence came to be seen as unavoidable. Something of the same sort threatened in Ireland with the appearance of the Volunteer movement. In England a campaign in favour of’ economical reform’, and to a lesser extent parliamentary reform, made itself felt. The Gordon Riots of 1780 heightened the sense of impending catastrophe. North’s survival until the surrender at Yorktown nearly two years later only postponed a resolution of these conflicts. The Peace was unpopular, though less humiliating than had been feared.
This Happy Constitution
Authors: Langford Paul 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The changes which marked eighteenth-century life were sometimes difficult to absorb, not least in political matters, where tradition and the ‘ancient constitution’ were much prized. Different interpretations of the Revolution of I688 rested on the assumption that its function had been to restore old laws and liberties rather than introduce new ones. The contemporary achievement was often thought of as one of preservation, especially the maintenance of balanced government against the encroachments of the Crown and the nobility. But there was also clear evidence that the State was undergoing a transformation, as the requirements of war, the growth of deficit financing, and the expansion of government took effect. It was not, by Continental standards, an authoritarian State; it was, however, an extremely flexible and resilient one. Public administration was relatively decentralized, and a marked degree of particularism and provincialism suggested almost a federal structure. But at its core was the consolidated power of Parliament and the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. The very prominence of Parliament laid it open to criticism in the late eighteenth century. Yet in terms of its primary function, the representation of a diverse and increasingly prosperous society, it proved both efficient and adaptable. The result was not oligarchy in any meaningful sense, but neither did it have any tendency to democracy.
Introduction: Problem and method
Authors: Saul Nigel 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Cobham is a picturesque little village set on a ridge of the North Downs near Rochester. Its single narrow street is rich in vernacular architecture. On the north side, at the western end, is the celebrated Leather Bottle, where Charles Dickens’s Mr Pickwick discovered the curiously inscribed stone. A little to the east is the eighteenth-century Darnley Arms, and further on Mr Gander’s shop, a fine timber-framed dwelling of the fifteenth century. A mile or so beyond the village, set deep in a wooded park is Cobham Hall, the seventeenth-century seat of the dukes of Lennox and later of the earls of Darnley. At the opposite end of the village, on rising ground, is an older set of buildings. Fronting straight onto the street is the fourteenth- and seventeenth-century Stone House, a mainly flint structure which was once a school. Further up, and set back, are the buildings of the chantry college founded in 1362 by John, Lord Cobham. Adjacent to the college, and at the highest point, is the church of St Mary Magdalene. This large, dignified building, dating mainly from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, spreads long and low among the trees. Externally, it exudes aristocratic presence as it stands high above the street Internally, it disappoints a little: the design is austere, and the nineteenth-century fittings and stained glass are unworthy. Yet to many this church is a place of pilgrimage. Visitors are drawn here from all over the world. For stretching impressively across the chancel floor is the largest and most spectacular collection of brasses in Britain.
The Market for Brasses
Authors: Saul Nigel 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In the 1380s, when the 3rd Lord Cobham was commmissioning the fittings for the Cobham chancel, the art of brass engraving in England was already a century old. There is evidence that brasses were being produced in London by the 1280s or earlier, and that effigial incised slabs were being made well before that. By Lord Cobham’s time brasses had become much the most popular form of funerary monument, and in the marblers’ workshops around St Paul’s churchyard in London there was something approaching mass production.
The Brasses at Cobham
Authors: Saul Nigel 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Cobham boasts a collection of no fewer than twenty medieval brasses, the majority of them, mainly those of the Cobham family and their kin, in the chancel, and the remainder in the nave aisles. There is one important Renaissance monument, the splendid alabaster and marble tomb of the Cobhams’ descendant George Brooke, Lord Cobham (d. 1558), in front of the high altar. There are also memorials to the Brookes’ successors, the Bligh earls of Darnley, in the vault beneath the chancel.
Why Did Eadfrith Write the Lindisfarne Gospels?
Authors: Gameson Richard 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The Lindisfarne Gospels is—thanks to the colophon that was added to it in the tenth century—one of the few relatively secure footholds in the shifting sands of Insular book production, palaeography, and illumination (pls. 3-5). Written, we are told, by Eadfrith, ‘bishop of the Lindisfarne Church’, bound by l Ethelwald, ‘bishop of the Lindisfarne islanders’, and (subsequently) encased in precious metal and gems by Billfrith the anchorite, this deservedly famous manuscript establishes Lind isfarne at the end of the seventh century as a supremely accomplished scriptorium. It shows, moreover, something of the resources and activities of that centre at the time. The scriptorium evidently had access, for instance, to a good Italian Vulgate text, and to a set of evangelist portraits.
Thomas Becket: Martyr, Saint-and Friend?
Authors: Haseldine Julian 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Thomas Becket, arriving more than half a century too late for the investiture contest, has fired devotion and kindled confusion since his abrupt and complete conversion to the cause of the Church in n62. The immediate issues of the conflict he engendered were obviously different. For many his claims were questionable and his stance provocative, yet his devotees included one of the most erudite and politically sophisticated scholars of the day, John of Salisbury. His cult rapidly overwhelmed Canterbury, the church whose resources his actions had so depleted.
The Picturesque Face of the Past: The 1840s Novels of William Harrison Ainsworth
Authors: Mitchell Rosemary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Among all the objects of art [wrote the eighteenth-century theorist of the picturesque, William Gilpin], the picturesque eye is perhaps most inquisitive after the elegant relics of ancient architecture; the ruined tower, the Gothic arch, the remains of castles and abbeys ... They are consecrated by time, and almost deserve the veneration we pay to works of nature itself.
John Lingard’s History of England: A Catholic History
Authors: Mitchell Rosemary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Nineteenth-century Catholic writers of history faced an audience potentially more hostile than that met by women historians; like women historians, they aimed to subvert, adapt, and revise the dominant historical discourse. In this narrative, however, Protestantism had been enshrined since at least the seventeenth century as an important element in the formation and expression of English national identity.
Thackeray, A’Beckett, and Leech: ‘The Dignity of History’
Authors: Mitchell Rosemary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The dignity of history sadly diminishes as we grow better acquainted with the materials which compose it. In our orthodox history-books the characters move on as a gaudy playhouse procession, a glittering pageant of kings and warriors, and stately ladies ... Only he who sits very near to the stage can discover of what stuff the spectacle is made. The kings are poor creatures, taken from the dregs of the company; the noble knights are dirty dwarfs in tin foil; the fair ladies are painted hags with cracked feathers and soiled trains. One wonders how gas and distance could ever have rendered them so enchanting ...
The Abuse of Antiquity and the Uses of Myth: The Illustrated Historical Novel after 1850
Authors: Mitchell Rosemary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
‘I hope it’s not historical Mr Trollope? ... whatever you do, don’t be historical, your historical novel is not worth a damn [La Vendee (1850) ]. Thus the foreman of Hurst and Blackett to Anthony Trollope in 1857, when the novelist presented the manuscript of The Three Clerks (1858) to him. Trollope achieved great literary success in the 1860s and 1870s partially because he had abandoned historical fiction in favour of novels about English contemporary life.
Policing the Night Streets
Authors: Beattie J M 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Constables were not regularly drawn into daytime surveillance. Night was a different matter. It had been recognized for centuries that the coming of darkness to the unlit streets of a town brought a heightened threat of danger, that the night gave cover to the disorderly and immoral, and to those bent on robbery or burglary or who in other ways threatened physical harm to people in the streets and in their houses.
The Old Bailey in the Late Seventeenth Century
Authors: Beattie J M 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
We have seen some of the ways in which alterations in the policing of the City of London in the century after the restoration of Charles II reflected changes in the society and economy of the metropolis as well as contemporary anxieties about crime. The following four chapters take up the parallel story of the variety of responses to the crime problem in the criminal justice system more narrowly, centring on the changing nature of the law and the work of the most important criminal court in England, the Old Bailey. We begin with a chapter on the way trials were conducted in the late seventeenth century. with the nature of juries, the verdicts reached in property cases, the penal options available to the courts at the beginning of our period, and the way the criminal law was put into practice.
Conclusion
Authors: Beattie J M 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Numerous changes took place in the way the City of London dealt with crimes against property in the years between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the middle of the eighteenth century, some of them planned, others more the outcome of changing practice or the consequences of broader developments in the social and cultural character of the metropolis. The changes in policing and punishment we have discussed can be summarized under four heads that express their intentions-or at least their effects, whether intended or not: measures to improve the prevention of crime; to encourage detection and the prosecution of offenders; to ensure the conviction of guilty offenders; and to make punishments more effective.
A New History Of Ireland
Authors: Hill J R 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
A New History of Ireland, Volume I marks the culmination of the largest scholarly project in modern Irish history. It consists of nine volumes, by over a hundred contributors, mainly historians but including also historical geographers and specialists in other disciplines, such as language and literature, the visual arts, and music. Seven of the volumes are text, and deal not only with politics but also with economic, social, and cultural history. The other volumes contain maps and reference material. As the final volume to appear in this multi-volume series, A New History of Ireland Volume I brings to a close the project initiated by T. W. Moody and R. Dudley-Edwards in the 1960s, to provide a comprehensive new synthesis of modern scholarship on every aspect of Irish history and prehistory, from the earliest geological and archaeological evidence, through the Middle Ages, and down to the present day. Volume I begins by looking at geography and the physical environment. Chapters follow which examine pre-3000, neolithic, bronze-age and iron-age Ireland and Ireland up to 800. Society, laws, church and politics are all analysed separately as are architecture, literature, manuscripts, language, coins and music. The volume is brought up to 1166 with chapters, amongst others, on the Vikings, Ireland and its neighbours, and opposition to the High-Kings. A final chapter moves further on in time, examining Latin learning and literature in Ireland to 1500.
Neolithic Ireland
Authors: Kelly M J O’ 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Despite the fact that this is open to a number of interpretations besides the straightforward ones that elm shoots may have been used as cattle fodder and that, since these trees usually grew on good ground, they were removed to provide pasture, the alteration in the hitherto prevailing ecological pattern must signify a corresponding change in man’s behavioural pattern. These pollen changes antedate 3000 b. c. in many cases.
Language and literature to 1169
Authors: Carney James 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In the prehistoric period in Ireland all learning (including law and religion) was controlled by the druidic order. The druids were an institution of great antiquity and common to all the Celtic peoples; the earliest reference to them is that of Sotion of Alexandria (c.200 b. c.). Posidonius refers to three learned classes among the Celts: druids, seers, and bards; but it seems certain that ‘seers’ and ‘bards’ were, at least in some sense, druids.
Ireland c.800: aspects of society
Authors: Cróinín Donnchadh Ó 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The woodlands were not stable: they advanced and retreated in response to human activity, prehistoric and historic. Most woods were privately owned, managed for large timbers, and coppiced and pollarded for small ones. They provided many products: timbers of many kinds (for buildings, carpentry, basketry, and domestic vessels), pannage and rough grazing for animals, wild fruit and nuts for human consumption. The bogs were used for peat and summer pasture. Literary and legal sources convey the impression that large woods were scarce. Scots pine may have been harvested to virtual extinction.
The Visionaries and their World
Authors: Blackbourn David 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Margaretha Kunz, Katharina Hubertus, and Susanna Leist took no part in the haymaking that was occupying Marpingen at the beginning of July 1876. All three were 8-year-olds with older brothers and sisters to carry out this and other physically demanding jobs: Kunz was the youngest of ten, Leist the secondyoungest of nine, Hubertus the middle child of five. But they had been entrusted on 3 July with another task often given to younger peasant children. As Susanna’s father later remarked: ‘I let the child go into the woods because she couldn’t help me with my work; she could pick berries there.’ The social status of their families is difficult to establish precisely. ‘Poor, but with enough to live on’ was how the parish priest later described their circumstances. What scraps of evidence we have suggest that the girls came from middling Kuhbauer families, although (as we shall see) the Kunz family was more ambiguously placed. They certainly owned meadows and barns, while Johann Leist was known to be in funds at the beginning of 1877 after selling a pair of draught oxen and a cow.