Brodie Waddell
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brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Brodie Waddell
@brodiewaddell.bsky.social
5.4K followers 660 following 600 posts
Early Modern History at Birkbeck, University of London | Likes: archives, fatherhood, footnotes, the seaside. | Dislikes: Henry VIII, cars, inequity. My research: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/profile/8004317/brodie-waddell
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brodiewaddell.bsky.social
A question for #EarlyModern #skystorians: What does 'exped' mean as a response to a petition, in this case to the 17th-century House of Lords?

I'd assumed 'expedite', but that doesn't quite make sense in some contexts. 🗃️ Examples here:
www.british-history.ac.uk/petitions/ho...
November 5, 2025 at 1:24 PM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
In my first-year #EarlyModern class this week at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social, we did primary source analysis focused on the age-old problems of sex, drugs and rock n roll (comic adultery, disorderly alehouses, and unlicenced musicians).

Still buzzing from such an engaged group of students! 🗃️
Magdalene College - Pepys • 21803 1675-1696 ? The Country Cuckold: / OR, / The Buxome Dames Frollick in a Field of RIE, / with her Lusty Gallant. Complaint to the Norfolk Quarter Sessions, 1622. Norfolk Record Office, C/S 3/23a Personal exceptions against the present alehouse-keepers in Harpley. Against Thomas Laskey: 1. The seventh of September last past, townsmen were drinking in the house most part of the night. 2. The 17th of September were the like company drinking most part of the afternoon: the one of which company committed manslaughter the night following; and another standing by. 3. The smith's man after he had there been drinking was so outrageous as he threatened to beat down his master's shop and to draw his knife. 4. Item some admonishing the wife of Thomas Laskey to keep better order or else that her alehouse-keeping must go down: her answer was: a turd in their teeth that should go about to put it down. Against Bartholomew Collison: 1. In the house of Bartholomew Collison upon the 15th day of September being Sunday were the servants of townsmen drinking and card playing, and that in service time. 2. Also upon another Sabbath before the former was another company drinking. 3. Also upon the Sunday after Candlemas Day last past divers of the town were likewise drinking the most part of the day. Witnesses to the articles abovewritten: To the first can witness Thomas Michell and William Starling. To the second can witness two servants of Anthony Simpson. To the third can the Smith and his wife testify. To the fourth Cicely Seggar and George Gogges. To the articles against B: Collison, James Ingledew can speak to the first and William Wilson. To the second Thomas Bateman can affirm. To the third can testify Jonas Thorpe with the wives of Robert Bateman and Walter Platfoote. 2 October 1678, order of the Norwich Mayor’s Court Norfolk Record Office, NCR Case 16a/25, f. 33. Upon complaint of the Weights [i.e. Waits] of this City against Daniell Hot, George Ellis, Samuel Suffield, Mathew Crotch & Thomas Turner that they notwithstanding they were not bound apprentice to the Science of Musick doe goe from howse to howse & play not onely in the day but at unseasonable times in the night to the great prejudice of severall persons & their friends in this City & also to the Weights of this City, It is ordered for the future that if they or any other person besides such as are the Weights of this City shall in Companyes play in any part of this City eyther in the publique or private houses unless it be in the Assizes weeke, at the Sessions at the Guild time or the choice of parliament men shalbe punished according to the lawe.
November 5, 2025 at 9:14 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
New #EarlyModern hearth tax transcriptions for Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Norwich published #OpenAccess online!

In Offley 1663, Sir Brocket Spencer, baronet, had 24 hearths, while Widow Pilgrim was ‘poore and not able to pay’. 🗃️

Explore 370,406 others here: gams.uni-graz.at/archive/obje...
October 27, 2025 at 3:03 PM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Thank you @lflannigan17.bsky.social for this really thoughtful review of our #PowerOfPetitioning book! doi.org/10.1093/ehr/...

She's right that 16th-century petitions don't get enough attention here, but you can read the 'ambitious' book for yourself to find out more: uclpress.co.uk/book/the-pow...
Screenshot of Laura Flannigan review of The Power of Petitioning in Early Modern Britain, ed. Brodie Waddell and Jason Peacey, The English Historical Review, 2025;, ceaf189, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceaf189
October 20, 2025 at 3:21 PM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
'the importance of petitioning as a prosaic, everyday feature of early modern governance'

Don't have time to read this new article by @allankennedy.bsky.social right now but keen to learn more about the #PowerOfPetitioning in early modern Scotland! 🗃️

#OpenAccess here: doi.org/10.1080/0260...
October 15, 2025 at 12:32 PM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Final reminder about Lyndal Roper's talk on Thursday at the @ihrscb.bsky.social on 'Turbulence and the German Peasants' War of 1524-6'.

Register here for in-person or online attendance: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...
Professor Lyndal Roper will speak on ‘Turbulence and the German Peasants’ War of 1524-6’. She holds the Regius Chair of History at the University of Oxford. Her most recent publications include Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War (2025), Living I Was Your Plague: Martin Luther's World and Legacy (2021) and Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (2012). Lyndal Roper’s talk will be preceded by a brief session marking Michael Hunter’s retirement from active involvement with the seminar. This will commemorate Michael’s inauguration of the seminar in 1979 in conjunction with the late Bob Scribner and its continuous existence since its revival in 1987, when one of its co-founders was Lyndal Roper.
October 14, 2025 at 8:40 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
The world is falling apart and UK higher education is a bin fire, but I've got two first-year BA modules this year at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social and the enthusiasm and curiosity of new Birkbeck students give me life.

They just want to learn about new stuff! And I get to help them do that!
The world according to Henricus Martellus, a German mapmaker working in Florence in the 1480s.
October 8, 2025 at 9:12 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Who did what in early modern England?

New #OpenAccess book, 'The Experience of Work in Early Modern England' by @jwhittle.bsky.social, @markhailwood.bsky.social, @hkrobb.bsky.social & @aucointaylor.bsky.social, based on thousands of #EarlyModern court depositions 🗃️

Read it: doi.org/10.1017/9781...
This book applies the innovative work-task approach to the history of work, which captures the contribution of all workers and types of work to the early modern economy. Drawing on tens of thousands of court depositions, the authors analyse the individual tasks that made up everyday work for women and men, shedding new light on the gender division of labour, and the ways in which time, space, age and marital status shaped sixteenth and seventeenth-century working life. Combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, the book deepens our understanding of the preindustrial economy, and calls for us to rethink not only who did what, but also the implications of these findings for major debates about structural change, the nature and extent of paid work, and what has been lost as well as gained over the past three centuries of economic development. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core. Cover of Whittle, Jane, Mark Hailwood, Hannah Robb, and Taylor Aucoin. The Experience of Work in Early Modern England. of Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.
October 2, 2025 at 8:18 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
What can petitions to magistrates from London apprentices tell us about gendered violence in #EarlyModern England?

New addition from Hilary Taylor to the #PowerOfPetitioning annotated bibliography:
petitioning.history.ac.uk/2019/05/13/p...
Screenshot of the first page of Hilary Taylor, 'The gendered dynamics of violence in English apprenticeship: apprentices’ petitions to the Middlesex and Westminster Sessions, c. 1690–1830' Abstract: This article offers the first systematic analysis of the role that violence played in the management of apprentices, and the gendered dynamics of violence in English apprenticeship more broadly. It does so through an examination of 195 petitions that apprentices or their supporters submitted to the Middlesex and Westminster Sessions, which sought the cancellation of their indentures on grounds of ‘immoderate correction’. It offers a quantitative overview of the surviving petitions, examining the proportion that featured allegations of violence, the terms and level of detail in which violence was described, and its relationship to apprentices’ other stated grievances. It moves on to reconstruct the factors that could prompt masters and mistresses to mete out correction (as well as their commentaries on their perceived right to do so) and the tactics that petitioners used in crafting their complaints to legal authorities. Although female apprentices complained about violence at a disproportionate rate to their male peers, the material considered here suggests that their petitions did so in comparatively formulaic and restricted terms. The final section considers what implications this might have for our understandings of violence, gender and apprenticeship, and a genre of document – the petition – that provides access to these issues.
September 12, 2025 at 10:42 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
New #OpenAccess article from @drjpw.bsky.social in Transactions of the @royalhistsoc.org on 'mad' supplicants in Elizabethan England, showing how 'distressed subjects exercised rhetorical agency when petitioning those in power.' #EarlyModern #PowerOfPetitioning 🗃️
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Screenshot of first page of Jonathan Willis's article '‘your poore distressed suppliant’: ‘Madness’, Emotion and the Archive in Early Modern England'. Abstract: This article explores the relationship(s) between ‘madness’, emotion and the archive in early modern England, taking as its case study the letters of British Library Lansdowne MS vol. 99, sent between c. 1570 and c. 1600 to the government of Elizabethan England and annotated at several stages in their history to describe their authors and contents as ‘mad’. Firstly, by examining the complex history of the archive, it demonstrates the potential for archival practices to bring into focus, and thereby facilitate historical examination of, past emotion. Secondly, it explores some of the ethical and methodological problems of third-party historical descriptions of madness, demonstrating that a focus on emotion – in particular ‘distress’ – offers a more fruitful path to understanding the significance of this material. Thirdly, it explores the Lansdowne 99 authors’ experiences of distress, revealing the ways distressed subjects exercised rhetorical agency when petitioning those in power. It identifies a series of prominent themes: desperation and deservingness; victimhood and persecution; and appeals to status and lineage. Ultimately, I argue that understanding their distress not only brings us closer to marginalised people in the past, but grants us a richer knowledge of past societies and the experience of being human in them.
September 2, 2025 at 9:39 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Thinking about an MA in History, Archaeology or Classical Studies this autumn? Last chance to apply for a scholarship at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social. The Carena scholarships are open to Archaeology applicants and the Peltz scholarships open to all.

Deadline Sept 1st! www.bbk.ac.uk/student-serv...
Screenshots of the information pages for the Peltz Scholarships and the Carena Institute of Sustainable Archaeologies Scholarships.
August 26, 2025 at 11:27 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
#EarlyModern history PhD students around London: the 'Society, Culture and Belief, 1500-1800' seminar
@ihrscb.bsky.social at @ihr.bsky.social is looking for a postgrad convenor for 2025/26. Stipend of £300/yr and a chance to get involved in a great seminar!
The ‘Society, Culture and Belief, 1500-1800’ seminar at the Institute for Historical Research would like to appoint a doctoral student as a stipendiary postgraduate seminar convenor for 2025/26. You would be an active member of our lively, friendly seminar. Your main responsibilities would be to contribute to our social media presence, encourage other postgrads to attend the seminar, and occasionally assist with minor administrative tasks to help the seminar run smoothly. The expectation would be that you would come to the seminar as often as possible. We normally host nine seminar talks over the course of the academic year. In 2024/25, we hosted talks by Rachel Winchcombe (Manchester), Fara Dabhoiwala (Princeton), Will Tullet (York), Tiéphaine Thomason (Cambridge), Nikki Clarke (Birkbeck), and Juliet Atkinson (Leeds). The Institute will provide you with a stipend of £300 (£100/term) and will cover the cost of your meals if you attend post-seminar dinners. The current convenors are Holly Fletcher (UCL), Laura Gowing (KCL), Kate Hodgkin (East London), Eva Johanna Holmberg (Queen Mary), Tiéphaine Thomason (Cambridge), Emily Vine (Exeter), Brodie Waddell (Birkbeck) and Roisin Watson (Open University). To apply, please send a cover letter (max one page) indicating why this opportunity is of interest and a CV (1-2 pages) to b.waddell@bbk.ac.uk by September 1st.
July 24, 2025 at 2:52 PM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Good morning Vancouver Island! My view for the next month or so...
Trees of a temperate west coast rainforest.
July 20, 2025 at 4:25 PM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
At the @socialhistsoc.bsky.social, enjoying excellent papers and even more excellent pig iron. 🐖 #Shsconf2025
July 8, 2025 at 10:12 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
A bunch of historians and friends refreshing themselves after reenacting the procession from Southwark to Wandsworth for the mock election of the Mayor of Garratt. Thanks to @cheeseandpeople.bsky.social & @annacusack.bsky.social for the dose of walking (and drinking) history!
July 6, 2025 at 6:03 PM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Amidst the doom, I'm so excited to be welcoming people to the first annual Medieval and Early Modern Research Day at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social! More than 20 of Birkbeck's staff, students and research fellows will be giving micro-talks about a primary source. www.bbk.ac.uk/research/cen...
Website landing page of the Birkbeck Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Worlds.
July 2, 2025 at 8:29 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Our #OpenAccess collection on the #PowerOfPetitioning in early modern Britain has only been out for a year and amazingly it's been downloaded over 4,000 times from @uclpress.bsky.social. So pleased to see all the interest in petitioning! Get your free copy here:
uclpress.co.uk/book/the-pow...
Title page of Brodie Waddell and Jason Peacey (Editors), The Power of Petitioning in Early Modern Britain Access stats showing 4,239 views/downloads since May 2024.
June 26, 2025 at 8:08 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Sorry, kids. Prepare to be SHOCKED and OFFENDED by the high levels of rural proletarianization in seventeenth-century England.
BBC headline: be ready to be shocked and offended at university, students told.
June 19, 2025 at 12:41 PM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Animals and "smellscapes" in early modern England!

Join us at @ihrscb.bsky.social at @ihr.bsky.social on Thursday at 5:30 to hear @willtullett.bsky.social speaking about #EarlyModern smelly beasts.

Free to attend, but please register here:
www.history.ac.uk/events/anima...
"The wife of Auchtermuchty"; interior of a one-roomed cottage, with cow, calf, pig in the background, chickens on the floor, at right two naked children on a bed looking at a pot which has boiled over and scalded a third child and dog, at the door left a man calls to a woman who is driving a plough in the field Pen and grey ink, with grey wash British Museum, 1857,0613.375
June 17, 2025 at 10:16 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
'keyword searching ... encourages researchers to seek out continuities framed against a backdrop of change; while immersive manuscript research frequently does the opposite'

@timhitchcock.bsky.social in @thelondonjournal.bsky.social:
doi.org/10.1080/0305...
Screenshot of extract from Tim Hitchcock's article: In part, digitisation has led to a retreat from the archive, and the necessity of understanding the structure and hierarchy of each collection before it could be mined for historical meaning. It has been replaced by keyword searching, with scholars ranging across centuries of print and dozens of genres, to pull together shards of thematically linked text into a single overview. The results can be compelling and revealing; but keyword searching, in particular, encourages researchers to seek out continuities framed against a backdrop of change; while immersive manuscript research frequently does the opposite—highlighting change against a backdrop of deep continuities.Footnote6 Traditional archival research forces you to read a series of records as a ‘collection’ and to work through its contents chronologically. A new format, or the first mention of a specific phenomenon, naturally draws attention. By contrast, digital searching generates results that are frequently ordered by relevance rather than chronology. Keyword searching does not determine the kinds of histories we write, but it does facilitate thematic historical writing in a new way.
June 16, 2025 at 12:16 PM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
When did spinsters spin?

Amy Erickson has a handy blogpost explaining how the ubiquity of spinning wool and other textiles in medieval and early modern England related to the marital status meaning of 'spinster': www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/06...
Geertruydt Roghman’s mid-17th century engraving, where the child is holding a reel of yarn: Geertruydt Roghman, ‘Spinnende vrouw’. Rijksmuseum.
June 13, 2025 at 11:47 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Huzzah! Next year I get to teach 'Reading and Writing Microhistories' at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social, likely with contributions from @julialaite.bsky.social and others!

If this sounds like your sort of thing, consider applying for one of our history MAs in 2025-26: search.bbk.ac.uk/search/cours...
Slide depicting 'The World in a Grain of Sand: Reading and Writing Microhistories', MA Option 2025-26, School of Historical Studies, Birkbeck, University of London
June 12, 2025 at 10:33 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Two days of 'Work, Authenticity and Social Identity in Early Modern Britain'! Looking forward to seeing some old friends and hearing about exciting new work.

Well done to @annajpravdica.bsky.social, Angus Crawford & Daniel Muddimer for such a great programme: warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/his...
Poster for conference: We are pleased to announce that the Work, Authenticity, and Social Identity in Early Modern Britain (c.1500-1750) Conference, supported by the Warwick Early Modern and Eighteenth Century Centre, the Doctoral Training Partnership AHRC-Midlands4Cities, the Society for the Study of Labour History, the Social History Society, and the Past & Present Society, will take place in the Scarman Conference Centre at the University of Warwick on 10-11 June 2025. Keynote addresses will be delivered by Professor Steve Hindle (Washington University in St Louis), Professor Jane Whittle (University of Exeter), and jointly by Dr Mark Hailwood (University of Bristol) & Dr Brodie Waddell (Birkbeck, University of London).
June 9, 2025 at 11:01 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Tudor rebellion in the news. 🗃️

Always nice to see sixteenth-century labourers, tailors, fullers and weavers featured in the Guardian: www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...
In advance of the dissolution of monasteries, Wolsey started suppressing some of England’s smaller monasteries to fund his new colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. Bayham Abbey on the Kent/Sussex border was among those targeted, leading to its closure in 1525. Incensed, local people turned to violence, and on 4 June 1525 more than 100 men with painted faces and armed with longbows, crossbows, swords and clubs assembled at the abbey. They stormed the gatehouse and temporarily restored the community. The canons were again removed a week later and 31 men were indicted by the crown for rioting. It is the descendants of these men that English Heritage is hoping to find. They include Thomas Godfowle, a labourer; the tailor William Lamkyn; John Muge, a fuller (cloth worker); and the weaver William Mepam. Among their number are also a possible father and son, John Whitesyde, senior and junior. It is not clear what happened to most of the men but the abbot William Gale, who was among the 31, went on to head an abbey in Buckinghamshire until it was suppressed in 1536.
June 4, 2025 at 7:28 AM
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Always pleased to be able to add to my stock of historically accurate anti-immigrant slurs!

Newest additions: 'false Lombard’, ‘strong French whoreson’, and 'rank Scot'. 🗃️

New #OpenAccess article by Bart Lambert and Josh Ravenhill:
doi.org/10.25162/vsw...
Screenshot of article: ‘Bawd, Traitor, Fleming, Thief and Other Horrible Names’ Immigration and Nationality-Based Insults in Late Medieval and Early Tudor London Lambert, Bart; Ravenhill, Josh Abstract Many people born outside England, defined as aliens, lived in late medieval London. Despite a growing literature on immigration in late medieval England and acceptance that speech was highly significant in premodern societies, studies of native-alien coexistence in London have focused on physical confrontations and have overlooked nationality-based insults. This article analyses these slurs, drawing on the records of English church and equity courts. It argues that there is little evidence supporting the view that late medieval England was characterised by a continuous and generalised anti-alien sentiment. Instead, it concludes that nationality-based insults were time and context-specific and that even the terminology of the abuse was informed by specific political and economic tensions.
June 2, 2025 at 9:43 AM