This diploma thesis is studying population dynamics of endangered species Silene acaulis in the High Tatra Mountains in Slovakia. Silene acaulis is a species of extreme alpine habitats creating cushions that provide a microclimate acting as a facilitator of establishment of other species in the alpine communities. This dome-like structure has one woody taproot making it easier to distinguish each individual. It is thus a perfect model species for determining the population dynamics drivers. The findings help in understanding future behaviour of the species and whole alpine ecosystems. Population data have been collected since 2013 or 2014 in two valleys in the High Tatras providing a database suitable to study various effects on species performance. Data collection includes marking, measuring, counting of flowers and capsules, viability and new seedlings recording, gender identification and comparison of vegetation structure within and in close proximity of a cushion. The data on vegetation were analysed using CCA ordination and the population data were analysed using Integral Projection Models. The results show that the breeding system of Slovak S. acaulis is gynodioecious and the gender affects the size of cushions, individuals with both female and hermaphrodite flowers being the biggest. The...

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This thesis develops an analytical approach to the instrumental music of Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) based on close readings of historical theory sources, primarily by Thomas Morley, John Coprario and Thomas Campion. Music of the early seventeenth century can be difficult to analyse, since it falls between the more extensively studied and theorised practices of classic vocal polyphony and common-practice tonality. Although English music theory of this period is recognised as strikingly modern in many respects, innovative aspects of English compositions from the same period receive little attention in standard accounts of the seventeenth century. I argue that concepts taken from this body of historical theory provide the basic terms of a technical vocabulary for analysis, which should be further refined through application to real compositions. Successive chapters deal with common counterpoint models or patterns, imitative invention and disposition, cadential progressions, and overall tonal structure. I argue that these analyses show Gibbons's music to be a contribution to new ways of conceiving of instrumental polyphony and tonal structure, which deserves re-evaluation in the context of broader seventeenth-century trends. In particular, Gibbons's use of extended cadential expectations as an expressive element, fascination with sequential progressions, and sectional structuring by harmonic area have clear parallels with later practices. At the same time, early seventeenth century style allows the composer considerably more freedom of harmonic procedures and implications than the musical styles which immediately followed it. Analysis grounded in historical theory provides the best approach to understanding and appreciating this unique musical language.

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Early modern English Catholic eschatology, the belief that the present was the last age and an associated concern with mankind’s destiny, has been overlooked in the historiography. Historians have established that early modern Protestants had an eschatological understanding of the present. This thesis seeks to balance the picture and the sources indicate that there was an early modern English Catholic counter narrative. This thesis suggests that the Catholic eschatological understanding of contemporary events affected political action. It investigates early modern English Catholic eschatology in the context of proscription and persecution of Catholicism between 1558 and 1603. Devotional eschatology was the corner stone of individual Catholic eschatology and placed earthly life in an apocalyptic time-frame. Catholic devotional works challenged the regime and questioned Protestantism. Devotional eschatology is suggestive of a worldview which expected an impending apocalypse but there was a reluctance to date the End. With an eschatological outlook normalised by daily devotional eschatology the Reformation and contemporary events were interpreted apocalyptically. An apocalyptic understanding of the break with Rome was not exclusively Protestant. Indeed, the identification of Antichrist was not just a Protestant concern but rather the linchpin of Reformation debates between Catholics and Protestants. Some identified Elizabeth as Jezebel, the Whore of Babylon. The Bull of Excommunication of 1570 and its language provided papal authority for identifications of Elizabeth as the Whore. The execution of Mary Queen of Scots was a flashpoint which enabled previously hidden ideas to burst into public discourse. This was dangerous as eschatology and apocalypticism was a language of political action. An eschatological understanding of contemporary events encouraged conspiracy. The divine plan required human agents. Catholic prophecy and conspiracy show that eschatology did not just affect how the future was thought about but also had implications for the present. This thesis raises questions about Catholic loyalism which other scholars have also begun to challenge. Yet attempts to depose or murder the monarch was not the only response which could be adopted. Belief that one was living in the End also supported what this thesis terms ‘militant passivity’. Martyrs understood their suffering as a form of eschatological agency which revealed and confirmed the identities of the Antichrist and the Whore. The Book of the Apocalypse promised that they would be rewarded at God’s approaching Judgement and the debates of the Reformation would be settled by the ultimate Judge. As martyrs came to symbolise the English Catholic community, it came to understand itself eschatologically. This thesis argues that acknowledging the eschatological dimensions of Catholic perception and action helps us to re-think the nature of early modern English Catholicism.

<div>When, each holiday season, William Shakespeare’s newest plays were presented for King James I of England and his court, they shared the stage with propagandistic performances and ceremonies intended to glorify the monarch and legitimate his political ideals. Between 1608 and 1613, however, the King’s son, Prince Henry Frederick, sought to use the court stage to advance his own, oppositional ideology. By examining the entertainments through which James and Henry openly competed to control this crucial mythmaking mechanism, the present investigation recreates the increasingly unstable conditions surrounding and transforming each of Shakespeare’s last plays as they were first performed at court. I demonstrate that, once read in their original courtly contexts, these plays speak directly to each stage of that escalating rivalry and interrogate the power of ceremonial display, the relationship between fiction and statecraft, and the destabilization of monarchically imposed meaning, just as they would have then.<br></div>