Brodie Waddell

Feeling unwholesomely pleased with myself after submitting a co-authored article only about two months later than planned.

Civil War Petitions Civil War Petitions contains petitions to the state from veterans and their families for welfare payments as a result of injuries and bereavement sustained during the English Civil Wars. It aims to sh...

The Blazing World by @jonathanhealey.bsky.social is best place to start on the English side. Laura Stewart (York) and/or Karin Bowie (Glasgow) on the Scottish side? I'm sure @englishcivilwar.bsky.social has suggestions. Or dive into the primary sources, e.g. petitions: www.civilwarpetitions.ac.uk

ICYMI yesterday afternoon a fantastic new digital resource pulling together data on the Roman road network has just launched. Explore at:

The Curriers’ Prize The Worshipful Company of Curriers, has established an essay prize on the history of London, in association with The London Journal Trust and the IHR.

The Curriers' Prize is now open! Submit your best unpublished essay on any aspect of London's history, and you could get a £1,000 award!

Full details: 👇 w ww.history.ac.uk/funding/awards-bursaries-prizes/curriers-prize

A question for #EarlyModern #skystorians: What does 'exped' mean as a response to a petition, in this case to the 17th-century House of Lords?

I'd assumed 'expedite', but that doesn't quite make sense in some contexts. 🗃️ Examples here:
www.british-history.ac.uk/petitions/ho...

A surprisingly common insult in this period. Definitely gets the point across!

240,000 pages of manuscript and printed sources at your fingertips, now with much improved usability! 🗃️📜

Meet the first recipients of the Carena Institute of Sustainable Archaeologies scholarships This autumn, three students began their postgraduate degrees at Birkbeck as the first recipients of the new Carena Institute of Sustainable Archaeologies scholarships.

I'm so proud of what we're building!

www.bbk.ac.uk/news/meet-th...

Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone! I've filed them away for future classes because in the end I decided to go for cheap laughs. bsky.app/profile/brod...

Magdalene College - Pepys • 21803 1675-1696 ? The Country Cuckold: / OR, / The Buxome Dames Frollick in a Field of RIE, / with her Lusty Gallant.

Complaint to the Norfolk Quarter Sessions, 1622. Norfolk Record Office, C/S 3/23a Personal exceptions against the present alehouse-keepers in Harpley. Against Thomas Laskey: 1. The seventh of September last past, townsmen were drinking in the house most part of the night. 2. The 17th of September were the like company drinking most part of the afternoon: the one of which company committed manslaughter the night following; and another standing by. 3. The smith's man after he had there been drinking was so outrageous as he threatened to beat down his master's shop and to draw his knife. 4. Item some admonishing the wife of Thomas Laskey to keep better order or else that her alehouse-keeping must go down: her answer was: a turd in their teeth that should go about to put it down. Against Bartholomew Collison: 1. In the house of Bartholomew Collison upon the 15th day of September being Sunday were the servants of townsmen drinking and card playing, and that in service time. 2. Also upon another Sabbath before the former was another company drinking. 3. Also upon the Sunday after Candlemas Day last past divers of the town were likewise drinking the most part of the day. Witnesses to the articles abovewritten: To the first can witness Thomas Michell and William Starling. To the second can witness two servants of Anthony Simpson. To the third can the Smith and his wife testify. To the fourth Cicely Seggar and George Gogges. To the articles against B: Collison, James Ingledew can speak to the first and William Wilson. To the second Thomas Bateman can affirm. To the third can testify Jonas Thorpe with the wives of Robert Bateman and Walter Platfoote.

2 October 1678, order of the Norwich Mayor’s Court Norfolk Record Office, NCR Case 16a/25, f. 33. Upon complaint of the Weights [i.e. Waits] of this City against Daniell Hot, George Ellis, Samuel Suffield, Mathew Crotch & Thomas Turner that they notwithstanding they were not bound apprentice to the Science of Musick doe goe from howse to howse & play not onely in the day but at unseasonable times in the night to the great prejudice of severall persons & their friends in this City & also to the Weights of this City, It is ordered for the future that if they or any other person besides such as are the Weights of this City shall in Companyes play in any part of this City eyther in the publique or private houses unless it be in the Assizes weeke, at the Sessions at the Guild time or the choice of parliament men shalbe punished according to the lawe.

In my first-year #EarlyModern class this week at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social, we did primary source analysis focused on the age-old problems of sex, drugs and rock n roll (comic adultery, disorderly alehouses, and unlicenced musicians).

Still buzzing from such an engaged group of students! 🗃️

Her Story Valerie Margaret Small was born in 1941. In her teens, her domineering father was sick and bedridden, and she was expected to look for work. She trained as a tailor and then, aged 19, took driving …

“If the point is that we need to restore these human stories, why frame them within law's stories first?”

Some thoughts on history, law, storytelling and Mrs Burns

williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2025/11/04/h...

🗃️

HARTFORD SHIRE intermixed with BEDFORD SHIRE The Limits uncertain Mapmaker: Jefferys, Thomas, -1771. Title: The County of Bedford, surveyed anno 1765 and engraved / by Thomas Jefferys. Date: 1765 https://maps.nls.uk/view/262718874

County boundaries weren't always as neat as we'd like them to be. The area around Meppershall in Bedfordshire was particularly complicated giving rise to this cartographical equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders:

HARTFORD SHIRE intermixed with BEDFORD SHIRE
The Limits uncertain

#MappyMonday

I hadn't thought of a jest book but that would be a nice opening to talk about Darton's poor cats. Though all 17th century jest books I've encountered are mostly just brutal misogyny, which might not be too 'fun'?

I rashly promised to bring in a "fun" primary source for our optional extra class on my first-year Early Modern World module tomorrow.

I've got a couple ideas but what's your favorite #EarlyModern source to throw at first-years? Max 1-2 pages. Any topic! 🗃️

The Magiconomy of Early Modern England This post is part of a series marking the print and online Open Access (free) publication of The Experience of Work in Early Modern England. The book is co-authored by Jane Whittle, Mark Hailwood, …

To mark #Halloween & publication of 'The Experience of Work in #EarlyModern England', (now available in print & free online), this blogpost revisits the magiconomy.
🧙🎃
Highlights include a magical service paid for with bacon and pigeons.
🥓🪶
#history
ludicrushistories.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/t...

Birth, Death and Domestic Religion in Early Modern London Society, Culture and Belief, 1500-1800 Seminar- Session 2

A quick reminder that Dr Emily Vine @emilymayvine.bsky.social will be speaking TODAY on 'Birth, Death and Domestic Religion in Early Modern London' from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm in the Wolfson Room (NB02 at the IHR) and online, via Zoom! ✨ www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

New #EarlyModern hearth tax transcriptions for Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Norwich published #OpenAccess online!

In Offley 1663, Sir Brocket Spencer, baronet, had 24 hearths, while Widow Pilgrim was ‘poore and not able to pay’. 🗃️

Explore 370,406 others here: gams.uni-graz.at/archive/obje...

Woodcut of four individuals around a table which has tankards of ale on it and a candle in a candle stick. One individual on the right as you look at the image is smoking a pipe and standing. The others are sitting. They are dressed in late Elizabethan or early Stuart clothings with some hats with feathers. One individual may be a woman the other three are male.

Just your periodic reminder that there is an early modern pub night once a month for PhDs and ECRs and anyone else who'd like to join in London. If you'd like to be added to the mailing list please DM me.

Contested Commons

Formidably erudite, compellingly argued, and dryly humorous, Contested Commons will change the way you think about the politics of space, the "myth of the commons", and the history of England since the eighteenth century: MATTHEW KELLy, author of The Women Who Saved the English Countryside "Starting with Kennington Common, and ranging from Steeple Bumpstead to Sheffield, Stonehenge and Brixton, and with a cast that includes ramblers, ranters, revolutionaries and ravers, this is a superb, sweeping but fine-grained history. It's also a highly necessary, politically urgent reminder of what public space is - places for everyone, owned by everyone, accessible to everyone, whether carefully tended or wild - and what it isn't, the tradition of pseudo-public space that runs from Victorian parks to privatised malls.' OWEN HATHERLEY, author of A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain

A reminder that my book on the history of protest is now published. It is superbly produced with a great cover. Buy it now from @reaktionbooks.bsky.social

too soon!

Graphic shows % of universities undertaking various cost cutting measures, comparing spring 2024 with spring 2025. Course closures, cutting optional modules, compulsory redundancies, and department closures have all surged

I’m old enough to remember when everybody agreed that higher education was a “market” and offering “choice” was how the universities were meant to grow

on.ft.com/3WTwBue

Lovely to get an email marked 'very important' from my employer today, for whom I have worked for 13 years, asking for confirmation of my visa status.

Birth! Death!! Domestic Religion!!!

Come along (or join online) to hear @emilymayvine.bsky.social's talk at the @ihr.bsky.social next Thursday.

Braudel for the win

Screenshot of Laura Flannigan review of The Power of Petitioning in Early Modern Britain, ed. Brodie Waddell and Jason Peacey, The English Historical Review, 2025;, ceaf189, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceaf189

Thank you @lflannigan17.bsky.social for this really thoughtful review of our #PowerOfPetitioning book! doi.org/10.1093/ehr/...

She's right that 16th-century petitions don't get enough attention here, but you can read the 'ambitious' book for yourself to find out more: uclpress.co.uk/book/the-pow...

Why I am not using AI in the classroom Last week I spoke with some of my colleagues about the “challenges” posed by generative AI to our teaching. As anyone who follows me on Bluesky — or followed me on Twitter, prior …

my thoughts on generative AI in the classroom
memoriousblog.com/2025/10/18/w...

The Experience of Work in Early Modern England IV: Harvesters This post is part of a series that marks the publication of The Experience of Work in Early Modern England. The book is co-authored by monster head Mark Hailwood, along with Jane Whittle, Hannah Ro…

Final post in my series on 'The Experience of Work in Early Modern England'. It focuses on the heartbeat of the premodern economy.... the harvest.

manyheadedmonster.com/2025/10/16/t...

Congrats, Mark! And for the record, I genuinely lol'd at the tenderness with which you removed the volume from its little cardboard bed.

'the importance of petitioning as a prosaic, everyday feature of early modern governance'

Don't have time to read this new article by @allankennedy.bsky.social right now but keen to learn more about the #PowerOfPetitioning in early modern Scotland! 🗃️

#OpenAccess here: doi.org/10.1080/0260...