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Britain: Stuarts

Time Traveller's Guide to Stuart
England
All you need to know to survive the filthy, dangerous streets of Civil War and Restoration London and beyond.

Fire
The story of the Great Fire of London – and its legacy – and how its devastation spread.               

• The British Slave Trade: A chronology
  From the first British slave trader Sir John Hawkins to the Slavery Abolition Act and US Emancipation Proclamation.
• Cities and disaster
  An examination of the calamities that befell seven cities: London (1666), Lisbon (1755), Chicago (1871), San Francisco (1906), Tokyo/Yokohama (1923), Florence (1966), New Orleans (2005).
• Crime Team: A parliamentary killing
  The year is 1682. As MP Thomas Thynn rides in a carriage down Pall Mall, he is shot dead...
• Cromwell
  Historian Blair Worden reviews the 1970 film.
• Cromwell: New Model Englishman – Interviews
  Interviews with historians Angela Anderson and Blair Worden on Oliver Cromwell.
• Cromwell and the English Civil Wars: Ask the expert
  Historian Blair Worden answers questions about the Lord Protector and the Puritans.
• The Devil in Essex: Witch-hunting in Old and New England
  Dr Malcolm Gaskill reveals how witch-hunts in Cromwellian England led to similar atrocities in the New World.
• The Great Fire of London: Ask the experts
  Dr Simon Thurley and the experts at the Museum of London answer questions about the Great Fire of London of 1666.
• The Great Fire of London: Interviews
  Interviews with historians Lisa Jardine and Simon Thurley on the Great Fire and the rebuilding of London.
• The Great Plague: Ask the expert
  Historian Justin Champion answers questions on the Great Plague of 1665.
• The Great Plague: Interviews
  Interviews with historians Justin Champion, Vanessa Harding and Carole Rawcliffe on the Great Plague of 1665.
• The Gunpowder Plot: Ask the experts
  Historians Ronald Hutton and Pauline Croft answer questions about the Gunpowder Plot.
• The Gunpowder Plot: Filling in the gaps
  Historical novelist Christie Dickason shows how the story of the plot isn’t as straightforward as we might have been led to believe.
• Gunpowder, Treason and Plot: Interviews
  Interviews with historians Ronald Hutton and Alison Weir on the Gunpowder Plot.
• An Indian Affair
  The hidden origins of Britain's relationship with India from the 17th century to the religious zealotry and imperial ideology that was the Raj. This website places the interaction into the context of trade and politics and shows the myriad ways that India has suffused the English lifestyle.
• The Legacy of the Levellers
  Tony Benn remembers the contribution of the Levellers to British democracy and socialism.
• London: The greatest city
  Edited transcript of the Channel 4 documentary on the history of Britain's capital, together with many of the computer reconstructions that appeared in it.
• The monarchs we never had
  The death of the heir to the throne has had important consequences throughout British history – sometimes immediately, sometimes obvious only in retrospect.
• Monarchy
  Dynamic timeline that illuminates the lives of the men and women who sat on the English/British throne and the powerful individuals who supported and sometimes fought them.
• Origination
  Brings together the wealth of web resources that record and celebrate the contributions of immigrant cultures to British history.
• Pioneer House
  Modern-day colonists striving to make it in 1628 America. The website reveals why the original pioneers left England, how they set up the first colonies and coped with their demanding daily lives, and examines their troubled relations with the Native Americans.
• Plague
  The story of the Great Plague of 1665, plus an explanation of the disease and its spread in London and the rest of England.
• Restoration
  A fun film that, according to Justin Champion, gives a slightly more plausible account of the culture of Charles II’s court than many others.
• The Scots Detective
  This website challenges historical accounts of the Scottish wars of independence, the Reformation, the Act of Union, Scottish exile and the Irish in Scotland (Channel 4 Learning).
• The Search for the Northwest Passage
  From the 15th century, European mariners sought to find a seaway through the ice-bound Arctic to the Orient. This website examines attempts including the fatal Franklin expedition and Amundsen’s success.
• The Slave Trade and the Industrial Revolution
  How the slave trade helped Britain become the 'workshop of the world' while reinforcing a racist view of Africans.
• The Tower
  Historical nuggets from some of the curators of the Tower of London.
• Treason
  The story of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and what might have happened if it had succeeded.
• War
  The story of the English Civil Wars and the controversy surrounding Cromwell.
• Witchfinder General
  According to Malcolm Gaskill, this 1968 film set in Civil War England – a period-piece about love and loss, exploitation and vengeance – self-consciously manipulates the known facts.
• Witchfinder General: Interview
  Interview with historian Malcolm Gaskill on various aspects of the witchcraft hysteria in 17th-century Essex.
• The Worst Jobs in History: Stuart jobs
  The period produces some exceptionally awful jobs, which fall to the unfortunate poor or the downright deranged.

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