This volume forms the second element of the fourth volume of the new history of the Isle of Man, produced under the auspices of the Centre for Manx Studies at the University of Liverpool. It covers the period from the early fifteenth century to 1830 and is focused on social and economic aspects of the Island's history. Companion volumes covering the evolution of the natural landscape (edited by Richard Chiverrell and Geoffrey Thomas), the medieval period (edited by Seán Duffy and Harold Mytum), and the modern period (edited by John Belchem) have previously been published by Liverpool University Press.

As will immediately be clear, this volume and its companion are a collaborative effort involving a large group of scholars from the Island and beyond. In some cases, their contributions are worthy of particular note as we record with sadness that they did not live to enjoy the publication of their work: William Cain, Ulla Corkill, Nigel Crowe, Jennifer Platten, J.R. Roscow, R.L. Thomson and Nigel Yates. This preface also allows for recognition to be given to those who have helped coordinate the efforts of the contributors, especially amongst the editorial team: Professor Harold Mytum has deftly maintained the momentum of the project overall; Dr Mike Hoy has taken particular trouble to support the development of the Island-based contributions and played a pivotal role in coordinating support for the project there, including working with Charles Guard (formerly Administrator of the Manx Heritage Foundation, now Culture Vannin, whose generosity and commitment to the project is also acknowledged) on the identification of the extensive range of illustrations which support the text and ensuring the necessary permissions were secured;

It has been suggested that the year 1660 marked the beginning of a period during which the Manx people were ‘almost constantly in collision with their Stanley rulers’. According to A.W. Moore, a principal cause of this conflict was the Stanley policy of attempting to convert the customary tenure of the Island into leasehold.1 This is, however, something of an oversimplification of the history of the later years of the Stanley lordship, in which the problem of land tenure in the Island and its eventual resolution at the beginning of the eighteenth century in the Act of Settlement were important elements, though only one part of a more complex picture. The early years of the restored Stanley regime under Charles, eighth earl of Derby, were dominated by the earl's determination to bring to justice the leader of the rebellion against the authority of Earl James and Countess Charlotte in 1651. Like the events of the 1640s, the trial of William Christian had considerable, long-term repercussions for the Island and its lord. Perhaps few were more significant than the apparent growth in the influence of the Keys in the course of the seventeenth century, partly in response to these incidents and no doubt partly encouraged by contemporary events in England and elsewhere. The reaction of the governor and other officers to an evident change in the dynamics of politics within the Island was equally crucial in shaping the future development of the Island's government. In addition, changing trading patterns and restrictive practices outside the Isle of Man had a fundamental impact on the Island's economy after the 1680s.

Henry Sharpe's journal was begun in 1830, the last year of the reign of George IV, when Henry was twenty-seven and living with his sister Catharine in New Ormond Street. In ‘a spirit of youthful enthusiasm and resolution, a young man takes stock of himself and considers his prospects’. He had just started his own business in the City of London, H & D Sharpe, in partnership with his youngest brother Dan, as merchants trading with Portugal from their office at Pinners’ Hall, Broad Street. We are gradually introduced to his family and their circle of friends who reappear in the journal over the years. However, his initial enthusiasm for the journal petered out after a few months and it was not until 1840 that he returned to it, by then married with a growing family, living “over the shop” in a house in Broad Street Buildings. This time he maintained the journal until 1847.

The journal covers a period of only nine years, but the text is rich with observations about national and international events, the great political and social concerns of the time, and commentary on life in London. In the ten years between Henry's first entry in 1830 and his resumption in 1840 there had been momentous developments: parliamentary reform, the abolition of slavery, the destruction by fire of both the Palace of Westminster and the Royal Exchange, and of course Queen Victoria began her reign. The Brunels and the Stephensons were at the height of their powers, providing the machinery that continued to power the Industrial Revolution; the new railways, steamboats, waterworks, gasworks, and the Thames Tunnel, provide the backdrop to Henry's world in the 1840s.

Vol. IV

5 January. Sunday. I have not been able to begin my year till today, but I ought to begin by dating it Hampstead, where we have now been living for three years and a half and every day more pleased with our move here. The four children, Ellen, Harry, Kate and Sutton, are all in excellent health, each a picture in his way; and Eliza too is stronger than she has been for a long time. I am much pleased too, at our having succeeded in getting to some extent out of the narrow Presbyterian set, which we started in life amongst; very worthy people, but very limited and bigoted in their self-lauding liberality. Our great friend of all is King, the Puseyite curate who is in and out of the house at all hours of the day; Cockerell the Royal Academician, most accomplished and amiable gentleman; Evans the surgeon, a high churchman, and well informed man; the Kilburns where the young men are very agreeable; and just now the Wings have called on Eliza, but we hardly know them yet. Altogether a very pleasant change from the former Hampstead tea parties, the very essence of dullness. My own health is most excellent, the riding outside in all weathers agrees capitally with me; and every winter I have less of the rheumatism which troubled me so the last winter in Broad Street.

Our business continues to flourish … not exactly at this moment when it is dull, but comparing one year with another, the increase is very perceptible; and I hope Dan's present visit to Portugal and Spain will do us good. Our office has increased to 6 clerks working hard and costing us four hundred a year.

Henry Purcell's early life is obscure. His birth date is unknown, though he was 24 in 1683 according to his portrait in Sonnata's of III Parts, and he was in his 37th year when he died on 21 November 1695. Thus he was born in 1659 or possibly late 1658. When the court musician John Hingeston made his will in 1683, he named Henry Purcell, son of Elizabeth, as his godson. This must be the Elizabeth named as relict in the probate of Henry Purcell, Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and Master of the Boys at Westminster Abbey, who died on 11 August 1664. Henry senior and Elizabeth had six children, of whom Henry junior was third, probably born in the house the couple shared in Great Almonry near the Abbey; Daniel, the youngest, may have been born after his father's death. Henry senior had sung in The Siege of Rhodes, the first English opera, in 1656, and received a place in the court Lutes and Voices in 1662.

After Henry's death Elizabeth moved, presumably with her children, from Great Almonry to a dwelling leased from Westminster Abbey in nearby Tothill Street. She must have benefitted from the support of her brother-in-law Thomas, a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal like his brother, as well as composer to the Twenty-Four Violins. No string music survives by him, and it was probably a sinecure: court posts were often allocated just because they fell vacant at a convenient moment. No document mentions Henry junior before 1673, the year his voice broke and he left the Chapel; boys were normally about eight when they joined.

How the reconstructed Sutton Hoo (Mound 1) ship came to be proposed, initiated and funded is a somewhat entangled tale. The principal players of the early days were the Sutton Hoo Research Trust, the National Trust at Sutton Hoo and the Woodbridge Riverside Trust, all fercely independent local organisations. They were also particular in their aims: some saw the reconstruction as an international research project, aligned with comparable ventures by other maritime nations, notably Denmark, Norway and Greece; while others saw it as an addition to the Sutton Hoo story designed to serve a wider public, and others again as a local initiative celebrating Woodbridge and its maritime heritage. Ideally these aims should be combined, and it was this that would become the mission of the Sutton Hoo Ship's Company.

The reconstruction of the ship from Mound 1 was certainly an enterprise with multiple objectives: to boost the cultural identity of the locality, to relive the earliest days of English seafaring, to promote an adventure that could be shared by the nation and to provide a fulflling experience for a host of dedicated volunteers. But underpinning all these were the research objectives, the search for new knowledge which would last longest and have the greatest net impact for people of all ages in the future.

To ensure their long term value, research projects have a particular structure: defning the research questions (what we would like to know), evaluating the evidence (what's available), isolating the objectives (what we want to do), designing a programme to deliver them, carrying it out and publishing the results for the public, the participants, the sponsors and the academic community, custodians of the long-term memory of what was done and why.

Medieval Laudes Regiae in Chronological Order

In this volume's call for papers (cfp), applicants were invited to submit “feature articles of 6,000–12,000 words (including notes) on any postmedieval responses to the Middle Ages” or 3,000-word essays that respond to one or more of the following questions:

Even though foreign crime fiction has been available in translation in Brazil since the 1930s, Brazilian crime fiction did not become a part of the nation's cultural landscape until the 1980s. The most popular international representatives of the genre, notes Amelia Simpson in 1990, have ‘been widely distributed and read in Brazil. Bookstores regularly carry detective titles, usually a substantial selection of British classics and, especially more recently, hard-boiled works’. However, Simpson continues, until at least the end of the 1980s, crime fiction ‘remains a relatively unassimilated product, receiving little attention either as a foreign ingredient of Brazilian culture, as a set of conventions of formal, critical interest, or as a form to be cultivated’ (62). The genre had little prestige within the Brazilian literary field. Brazilian modernism specifically, since the 1920s, was characterised by a critical revision of national cultural traditions and an attitude of distancing from the influence of foreign cultural values. This was not a context conducive to adapt the genre to a local context. An additional factor contributing to the lack of intellectual prestige of the genre in Brazil was ‘a linha regionalista que propunha uma identidade do pais baseada na natureza e no campo’ (the trend of regionalist literature that proposed an identity of the country based on nature and the countryside), while the detective genre, for the most part, reflected the vicissi-tudes of the modern individual in the modern city.

Most cardinals were Italians. They found themselves far from home, far from their networks, and far from their resources, which left them in a vulnerable position. Still, they were considered to be powerful lords, and as such, they wielded significant power. Not only might legates have anticipated the adventus with unease, recipients of cardinal-legates might have felt likewise. Recipients, especially if they were minor players, needed to live up to expectations, executing the adventus successfully, lest they wanted to risk the ire of one of the most powerful ecclesiastical lords in Europe.

Numerous adventus ceremonies have left no written evidence beyond the casual note. Many have undoubtedly been lost to the passage of time, leaving no trace whatsoever. In many instances, the preparations for and the performance of the ceremony likely depended on collective experience and tradition. Medieval authors only showed interest in the specifics of a reception if something particularly significant was at stake or if a reception held a special meaning. In like manner, some authors composed treatises on the appropriate way to welcome a dignitary with an adventus, often in response to some form of monastic reassessment or reform. The titles of these treatises vary in the medieval sources – sometimes there are no titles – but I have labelled them collectively as ‘adventus instructions’ for the sake of convenience.

As dermatologists recognise, skin is one of the most extensive and important organs of the human body. As a mechanism for protection, it serves as a barrier, shielding people from external impacts and variations in pressure, while as an instrument of regulation, it ensures that body temperature remains within acceptable parameters. With its network of nerve cells, skin is the most widely distributed of the sense organs and the only one that is essential for life. As it detects and relays changes in external environments, skin functions as a universal, an anatomically essential component of the body that – in the absence of injury, disease, or acts of self-inflicted transformation – serves as a leveller, uniting beings in a common evolutionary bond. Yet from a socio-cultural perspective, skin is one of the most complex and ambivalent parts of the body. Appraised in some contexts as a stand-in for the individual, a synecdoche, or pars pro toto of human identity, it is viewed in others as a mask, a barrier, a form of protective armour that impedes contact with the individual artificially trapped within. It stands thus, paradoxically, both as a representation of the true and authentic self, and as the facade that conceals it. This process, which is further complicated by the curious and controlling operation of the gaze, which imposes identities through procedures of scopic surveillance, ensures that just as the skin of the individual projects an identity outwards towards the observer, it serves simultaneously as a canvas, a text, a receptacle for the imposition – whether warranted or not – of a range of culturally significant meanings.

The story of British choral music up to around the time of the Black Death (1348) is essentially that of activity in its monasteries and cathedrals, after which, up to the Reformation in the middle of the sixteenth century, other institutions also begin to play a significant part. The liturgies of the early church started to take systematic shape in the fourth to sixth centuries, although it was not until the era of Charlemagne in the eighth and ninth centuries that standard forms emerged from many diverse local practices. With references to psalms and hymns being sung in Christian worship from the earliest days, music in one form or another has always played an important role, and the 150 psalms of the Hebrew Bible were eventually to form a backbone of worship throughout the Western church. Chanting – at its simplest, essentially the use of heightened speech – is a natural feature of many religions, serving principally as a means of elevating words from the realm of the everyday. Sung liturgy also came to have the practical benefits of aiding clarity in large buildings, and of preventing the words being rushed – you cannot easily gabble when chanting! For the whole of the Middle Ages, communal services (as opposed to private Masses) appear to have been more or less sung throughout, except for any sermon – certainly in monasteries and cathedrals. In the twenty-first century we are accustomed to much of the liturgy (and especially the lessons) being spoken, even in the most musical of establishments. The continuous singing still found in the Orthodox churches perhaps offers the closest impression of the atmosphere of Western medieval practice, as does the fact that their liturgy is celebrated in an area closed off from the laity, as was the case both in the quire of a cathedral or monastic church, and (to a lesser extent) the chancel of a parish church.