This chapter highlights how careful and rigorous thinking through of the research questions at an early stage gives confidence in the methodology and justification for using the object or collection as key primary sources. This chapter will show how object-specific questions create important and vital studies in and of themselves, but also how they can contribute to overarching research questions with wider historical significance.

This chapter starts with an inquiry into the role played by language in the declining fortunes of pilgrimages and crusades. To begin with 'A Pilgrimage for Religion's Sake' is to start with a tale in which religious ideals are expressed in a language that may help readers better to understand the incipient decline of pilgrimages as a form of lay solidarity. It is true that Erasmus was a man who sought to reform current religious practice by subjecting it to satirical review, the laughter-inducing specifics of which were intended to encourage other Christians to mend their ways. And within this context relics had obvious potential in so far as almost every religious foundation owned not a few of them, some of which could, in the hands of the right author, be made to appear ridiculous.

The rapid growth in popularity of the Protestant, Nonconformist missionary movement among the Cape Colony’s indigenous population, the Khoesan, coincided with Britain’s efforts to remould the Cape into a territory which exhibited British characteristics. Cape society had already been structured according to a racial hierarchy, though race was not yet the sole determinant of belonging as it was to become from the 1840s onwards. Christian identity held important sway in the Cape Colony during the early nineteenth century and was an important marker of social status and inclusion. For Khoesan descended from distinct, precolonial ethnic lineages, biblical literacy offered a language through which a new, Christian ‘nation’ could be imagined and articulated, and which could challenge settler–colonial hierarchies of power. This chapter explores how the Bible became a site of contestation in the struggle over the ownership of Protestant Christianity in the Cape Colony during the early nineteenth century. Khoesan acceptance of the Bible did not simply amount to submission to Western domination. Rather, Khoesan interpretations of scripture positioned the Bible as a disruptive, anti-colonial text. By confirming the Bible as a potent repository of symbolism and imagery, Khoesan sought to challenge racially based notions of Christian identity.

By examining the links between English nationalism, Brexit and the Anglosphere we can start to offer an explanation of Brexit that pushes us beyond accounts that give greatest causal force to a protest by those ‘left behind’ from the benefits of globalisation. The ‘left behind’ explanation helps explain what people were voting against, but is less helpful in seeking to understand what they might have been voting for and which frames helped inform such a decision. With Brexit seen as a protracted event that pre- and post-dated the 2016 referendum, we can see that England’s wider categories of belonging operated not only as a point of intellectual departure for addressing a political dilemma, but suggested a political destination too.

Face-to-face encounters between rulers stood at the heart of the medieval peacemaking process, yet considerable effort also went into negotiations in the lead up to, during and after such meetings. Much work has been done by historians on envoys and negotiators in the later medieval period. Most notably, Pierre Chaplais has worked on the English diplomatic personnel, and Donald E. Queller has published several studies on the nature of the ambassadorial office in Europe, fore-mostly in Venice. According to Chaplais and Queller, the diplomatic personnel of the later Middle Ages generally fell into two categories: nuncii and procuratores. Both Chaplais and Queller have noted that in letters of procuration the essential clause was that of the de rato, whereby the ruler confirmed that he would ratify everything that his envoys had negotiated and concluded.

Recounting the historic referendum results announced on Saturday 23 May 2015, this chapter introduces how Ireland shot onto the global stage as the first country to extend civil marriage to same-sex couples through a popular vote. Televisions across the world beamed images of people taking to the streets of the capital city and across the twenty-six counties in celebration, in tears and in solidarity.