<div> <div> <div> <p>This dissertation examines the preservation of the Church of England in Interregnum England. It incorporates a microhistorical analysis of parish life in four Puritanical counties located in East Anglia, namely Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. In the current historiography on the Church of England, scholars of religious history have traditionally associated both Puritan and sectarian activity with the political upheaval, religious reform, and the collapse of cultural norms that accompanied the English Interregnum. Absent from this scholarship, however, are the voices and actions of those devoted parishioners who refused to abandon their parish church after its disestablishment in 1649. These followers, henceforth called “Conformists,” both fostered and maintained a shared cultural system that stabilized their communal interaction in a period exemplified by politico-religious chaos. In a period characterized by bloody conflicts, their instruments were not swords, but sermons. Thus, this project reveals that the perseverance of Conformists amid the persecution of Cromwellian England was not arbitrary, but a disciplined reaction in which spiritual guidance was actively sought and developed. Central to this response were the actions of sequestered Conformist ministers who guided their displaced congregations by administering forbidden sacraments and emboldening communal engagement. </p> </div> </div> </div>

<p>  </p> <p>This dissertation is the first comprehensive biography and study of Richard Allestree. Allestree was a soldier, spy, professor, theologian, a survivor of the plague (1665) and Great Fire (1666) of London, and supposed author of the best-selling Protestant classic, <em>The Whole Duty of Man </em>(1658). Throughout his life, Allestree attempted to protect those institutions through his voice, vocation, and violence. His work contributes to our understanding of the dilemmas faced by the late seventeenth-century clergy, caught between the secular rationalism of the Enlightenment and the wild enthusiasm of Protestant dissenting groups. Using his positions of power and influence, he sought to make Christianity accessible to “the meanest of reader,” moving away from perceptions of a rigid faith and seeking to make Christianity a vibrant, active belief in the lives of everyday people. This work presents a finalized canon of the works of Richard Allestree using new tools in digital humanities. Implementing statistical analysis from data gathered from his personal library at Christ Church, Oxford, clerical records, and marginalia, this dissertation settles the three hundred- and sixty-five-year dilemma of Allestree’s uncertain authorship.</p>

The aim of the present study has been to investigate how titles of social rank used in Tudor and Stuart England are modified by attributive adjectives in pre-adjacent position and the implications that become possible to observe. Using the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler (CEECS) the present work set out to examine adjectival modification, gender perspectives and MI (Mutual Information) scores in order to gain a deeper understanding of how and why titles were modified in certain ways. The titles under scrutiny are Lord, Lady, Sir, Dame, Madam, Master and Mistress and these have been analysed following theories and frameworks pertaining to the scientific discipline of sociohistorical linguistics.    The findings of the present study suggest that male titles were modified more frequently than, and differently from, female titles. The adjectives used as pre-modifiers, in turn, stem from different semantic domains which reveals differences in attitudes from the language producers towards the referents and in what traits are described regarding the holders of the titles. Additionally, a type/token ratio investigation reveals that the language producers were keener on using a more varied vocabulary when modifying female titles and less so when modifying male titles. The male terms proved to be used more formulaically than the female terms, as well. Lastly, an analysis of MI scores concludes that the most frequent collocations are not necessarily the most relevant ones.    A discussion regarding similarities and differences to other studies is carried out, as well, which, further, is accompanied by suggestions for future research.