The British archaeological association: its foundation and split

The thesis investigates the foundation of the British Archaeological Association (BAA) at the end of 1843, and its development over the next couple of years. In September 1844 the BAA held a week-long archaeological congress at Canterbury, the details of which are discussed. Although it was deemed a great success by those who participated, a number of influential antiquarians on the BAA's Central Committee did not attend. By the end of the year, a controversy had arisen amongst members of the Central Committee. This led to the Association splitting into two factions and ultimately resulted in the formation of the rival Archaeological Institute (AI) in 1845. The development of the split is followed in detail and the causes behind it assessed. In order to put the BAA's foundation into perspective, other aspects of the antiquarian community in the 1840s are considered, together with wider movements in society. Particular attention is paid to parallels between the antiquarian and scientific communities in early Victorian Britain and the organisation of institutional bodies within them. Analogies are drawn between the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society, and between the establishment of the BAA and that of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS). Details of the formation of provincial and metropolitan learned societies and printing clubs in the first half of the nineteenth century are also considered. In particular, the Numismatic Society (founded 1836) and the Cambridge Camden Society (founded 1839) are looked at in order to throw light on factors behind the BAA's popularity. The appendices include information about the BAA's Central Committee in 1844, and data on the membership of the BAA and AI in their first few years

Joseph Holland and the Idea of the Chaucerian Book

The antiquarian Joseph Holland (d. 1605) owned a large, but damaged, Chaucerian manuscript from the early fifteenth century (now Cambridge University Library Gg.4.27). Holland recognized in the manuscript an effort to construct a collection based on Chaucerian authorship, and he repaired and added to it using a copy of the 1598 printed edition of Chaucer\u27s collected Works. From this edition, he took not only the text of Chaucer\u27s poems, but paratextual materials as well, including a glossary, biographical information, and a frontispiece. His activities reveal how a distinctly post-medieval understanding of what the collected works of Chaucer should look like shaped the history of this fifteenth-century manuscript, and underscore impact of later stages of transmission can have on the way medieval books are read and preserved

<i>"And can it be"</i>: analysing the words, music and contexts of an iconic Methodist hymn

This paper interrogates the iconic status of Charles Wesley's hymn "And can it be" within British Methodism. It examines words, music and context, arguing that it is the combination of these that is crucial to understanding the hymn's status, and that such an approach may be more widely useful in hymnology. Through examination of the literary characteristics of the text, the musical settings associated with it throughout its history, and the ways in which it has been used within British Methodism, it reflects upon the hymn's peculiar place in the spiritual life of the denomination, and how this reflects upon Methodism's attitude to its heritage of hymnody

Yearning for the Unhistorical: Nietzsche on Triumph and Coronation

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

Some aspects of the contribution to British archaeology of Charles Roach Smith (1806-90)

From around 1838 to 1861, Charles Roach Smith played a central role in the revival and development of British archaeology. Among the first to whom archaeology was no longer subservient to history. Smith adopted and encouraged a strongly positivist approach and, influenced by Douglas and the comte de Caylus, effectively inaugurated the study of minor antiquities within Britain. His comparative artifact research, regional and international in scope, led to the development of Dark Age archaeology as an international field of study. Smith's ideas on the organisation of British archaeology were derived from Northern France, where the democratisation of knowledge was more advanced. His aims were to extend to the middle classes the opportunity for involvement in archaeological research and publication (which was vital in view of the rising scale of archaeological destruction), to obtain government support (since they had little by way of private funds), and to improve standards by emphasising meritocracy rather than aristocracy in the ruling bodies of the discipline. Modelled on the Societe Frangaise pour la Conservation des Monuments Historiques, the British Archaeological Association, which Smith jointly inaugurated, was one tangible result. The campaign to induce the British Museum's aristocratic trustees to purchase his Museum of London Antiquities as the core of the national archaeological collection was another. This thesis comprises an outline of Smith's life and career to 1861, with a detailed discussion of his contributions to the archaeology of Roman and medieval London and Anglo-Saxon England, and the developing institutions of British archaeology. In view of the centrality of Smith's position, it constitutes a logical first step towards a general history of early Victorian archaeology. This may be further advanced by the summary catalogue of Smith's manuscripts (some as yet untraced), which comprise an hitherto unrecognised archive of international importance

William Peckitt’s Great West Window At Exeter Cathedral

Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictions.This thesis examines the Great West Window at Exeter Cathedral designed by William Peckitt of York (1731-95). Peckitt was arguably the most important glass designer of the eighteenth century and undertook prestigious commissions at York, Oxford and elsewhere. In 1764 he was contracted by the Dean of Exeter, Jeremiah Milles, to supply glass to complete the restoration of the Cathedral’s glazing and to make the new window, which has often been considered to be his masterpiece. Peckitt’s Great West Window is no longer extant (although portions of it have been salvaged), having been replaced in 1904 with a window, designed by Messrs Burlison and Grylls, which was itself destroyed by enemy action in 1942. The Burlison and Grylls window was more in keeping with the Gothic revival aesthetic typical of the later nineteenth century and its proponents had argued forcefully that Peckitt’s Great West Window was an aberration that needed to be removed. The thesis provides initially an account of the debate that raged in the national press and beyond about the propriety of replacing Peckitt’s window. This documentary evidence gives a valuable insight into attitudes towards the adornment of churches at the turn of the century: should respect for the extant fabric include Peckitt’s one-hundred-and-fifty year-old contribution or should the building be renovated with a modern medieval-revival window. Until recent times it was largely the case that eighteenth-century glass was regarded as wholly inferior to the medieval glass that preceded it and it is widely accepted that glass making in Britain only recovered with the nineteenth-century Gothic revival and the modern glass that followed it. In this thesis it is suggested that the denigration of eighteenth-century glass and in particular that of William Peckitt at Exeter, ignores its qualities, practical and intellectual, and the Great West Window is used to reveal the seriousness of such endeavours. Peckitt’s work is positioned within the context of the particular circumstances of the restoration of Exeter Cathedral in the mid-eighteenth century under two successive Deans, Charles Lyttelton and the aforementioned Jeremiah Milles, both of whom were nationally significant antiquarian scholars. Peckitt was knowledgeable about medieval glass techniques, worked sensitively in restoring medieval glass and when designing a completely new window for the Cathedral worked closely with Milles to provide an iconographical scheme that was appropriate for the Cathedral, its history and its patrons. The evidence brought forward suggests that it is wrong to presume that glass designers like Peckitt had little understanding of medieval glass manufacture nor any interest in using the medium of glass appropriately in the context of a medieval building

Cathedrals and the Church of England, c.1660-1714

Early modern cathedrals have often found themselves falling between the historiographical cracks. While antiquarians and art historians have seen their early modern pasts as nothing more than periods of ‘desecration and pillage’, early modern historians have dismissed cathedrals as medieval ‘fossils’, irrelevant and impermeable to the religious upheavals of the English Reformation. Recent scholarship, however, has sought to address this view of cathedrals by reconsidering them within their religious, social, political and cultural contexts, thereby re-assessing the Reformation’s impact on cathedrals. Such work, however, has been mainly confined to the period before 1660, and has indeed seen the Restoration as a turning point, after which cathedrals’ once contested and controversial place within the Church and society was secured, as ‘Anglicanism’ flourished after the turmoil of Civil War. Focusing on the period between the Restoration in 1660 and the death of Queen Anne in 1714, this thesis seeks to reassess this understanding of cathedrals’ later Stuart history as one of peaceful monotony, by considering how cathedrals fitted into debates about religious settlement, moral reformation, and the nature of the Church of England. While an understanding of cathedrals as centres of ceremonial worship arose with the Laudian ascendency in the 1630s, it is assumed this became the sole model for cathedrals after the Restoration. Although Restoration ‘high’ churchmen did indeed reassert this Laudian ideal, this did not go unchallenged. Earlier, competing visions of cathedrals survived into the Restoration period, notably as locales for evangelical reform. This study will suggest that the continued controversy surrounding their place and role within the Church of England raises doubts about the coherence and certainty of an ‘Anglican’ identity before the Act of Toleration. The significance of cathedrals evolved after 1689 in ways that also complicate our understanding of ‘Anglicanism’ in the long eighteenth century