The first examination of interconnected manuscript-exchanging coteries as an integral element of literary culture in eighteenth-century Britain. This title is also available as Open Access.

A detailed handbook to the English and Welsh Quarter Sessions records, their background, and how they can be used by genealogists and historians. For over 500 years, between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Justices of the Peace were the embodiment of government for most of our ancestors. The records they and other county officials kept are invaluable sources for local and family historians, and Stuart Raymond's handbook is the first in-depth guide to them. He shows how and why they were created, what information they contain, and how they can be accessed and used. Justices of the Peace met regularly in Quarter Sessions, judging minor criminal matters, licensing alehouses, paying pensions to maimed soldiers, overseeing roads and bridges, and running gaols and hospitals. They supervised the work of parish constables, highway surveyors, poor law overseers, and other officers. And they kept extensive records of their work, which are invaluable to researchers today. As Stuart Raymond explains, the lord lieutenant, the sheriff, the assize judges, the clerk of the peace, and the coroner, together with a variety of subordinate officials, also played important roles in county government. Most of them left records that give us detailed insights into our ancestors’ lives. The wide range of surviving county records deserve to be better known and more widely used, and Stuart Raymond’s book is a fascinating introduction to them. Praise for Tracing Your Ancestors in County Records “This is invaluable stuff: while other books may mention the records, this volume provides a useful understanding of the processes and public philosophies that led to them in the first place. There are plenty of references for further reading, too. . . . An excellent textbook exploring the mechanics of local record-keeping.” —Your Family History (UK) “This great introduction to county records will soon have you chomping at the bit to head to your nearest archive to begin exploring beyond the records available online. Well-known family and local historian (and Family Tree contributor) Stuart A. Raymond provides a concise and easy guide to the rich seam of records you can expect to find (and those you can't), going back 500 years to when Justices of the Peace were the embodiment of local government for our ancestors. There’s a wealth of information to get your teeth into.” —Family Tree (UK)

This prize-winning account of the pre-Reformation church recreates lay people's experience of religion, showing that late-medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but a strong and vigorous tradition. For this edition, Duffy has written a new introduction reflecting on recent developments in our understanding of the period. "A mighty and momentous book: a book to be read and re-read, pondered and revered; a subtle, profound book written with passion and eloquence, and with masterly control."--J. J. Scarisbrick, The Tablet "Revisionist history at its most imaginative and exciting. . . . [An] astonishing and magnificent piece of work."--Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal "A magnificent scholarly achievement, a compelling read, and not a page too long to defend a thesis which will provoke passionate debate."--Patricia Morison, Financial Times "Deeply imaginative, movingly written, and splendidly illustrated."--Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books Winner of the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Award

Though more than four hundred years have elapsed since the Bishops' Bible was first published in 1568, its story has never been adequately told. No book-length evaluation has been published, and no adequate bibliography is available for guidance in studying this least known of the Tudor-period Bibles. This neglect is surprising in that Shakespeare's earlier plays reflect his use of the Bishops' Bible and that the Bishops' Bible was used by the translators of the King James Version as the basis for their revision. This study depicts the religious, literary, and intellectual atmosphere that produced the Bishops' Bible, describes its place in sixteenth-century translations, re-evaluates its contribution to the study of the English Bible, and investigates the history and qualifications of the men invited to participate in the translation project. Attention is given to the artwork, the most elaborate of any in first editions of early English Bibles, and to the notes designed to correct the objectionable Calvinistic notes of the Geneva Bible. A presumption that the bishops would not prepare a better Bible until "a day after domesday" gives the title to this study--The Day after Domesday.