LibGuides: Early Modern Britain: Web Resources on Early Modern Britain

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Resources A - L

The Acts and Monuments Online - John Foxe Protestant martyrologies that include 1563, 1570, 1576 and 1583 editions.
American Colonist's Library Historical works which contributed to the formation and shaping the American Colonies politics, culture, and ideals.
BHO - British History Online A digital library of key printed primary and secondary sources for the history of Britain and Ireland, with a primary focus on the period between 1300 and 1800. We aim to support the learning, teaching and research of our users from around the world.
Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads Presents a digital collection of English printed ballad-sheets from between the 16th and 20th centuries, linked to other resources for the study of the English ballad tradition.
bpi1700: British Printed Images to 1700 This is a database of thousands of prints and book illustrations from early modern Britain in fully-searchable form. The image records have been organized in such a way that copies and variations of the same print are gathered together within a single record. Prints can be searched for by producer, by name of person depicted, and by subject, and it is possible to combine various search criteria. The subject search is based on a systematically organized thesaurus arranged by topic, based on and largely compatible with ICONCLASS. Other information included: links to other websites of historical prints and information on history, genres, and techniques of print-making. Led by Professor Michael Hunter from the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London, bpi1700 is a collaboration between Birkbeck and technical staff at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College, London. The project has also involved the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, and the Department of Word and Image at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Clergy of the Church of England Database Contains the principal records of clerical careers from archives in England and Wales. Covers clerical lives from the Reformation to the mid-nineteenth century.
Cobbett's Parliamentary History Is part of the larger Bodleian Libraries’ collections are extraordinary and significant—both from a scholarly point of view and as material that has an historic and aesthetic richness that holds value for non-academic users. In an effort to make portions of our collections open to a wide variety of users from around the world for learning, teaching and research, the Bodleian Libraries have been digitizing library content for nearly twenty years. The result is over 650,000 freely available digital objects and almost another 1 million images awaiting release.
Codrington Papers, West Indies Correspondence Copies of correspondence and other records of the Codrington family pertaining to the West Indies and numerous estates owned by the family throughout the Caribbean region. Records date from 1272 to 1899.
Crace Collection of Maps of London This is the essential guide through the history of London: some 1200 printed and hand-drawn maps charting the development of the city and its immediate vicinity from around 1570 to 1860. The maps were collected, mainly during the first half of the nineteenth century, by the fashionable society designer, Frederick Crace.
Diary of Samuel Pepys In 1660 Samuel Pepys, an increasingly-important 26 year-old civil servant in London, began writing his diary. He stopped a decade later. This site contains the full text of his diary, along with several letters sent or received by Pepys, plus thousands of pages of further information about the people, places and things in his world. The diary entries were published on this site daily, in real time, from January 2003 until May 2012, with readers discussing events each day. From January 2013 the diary entries will again appear on the front page at the end of the day (London time), starting with 1 January 1660.
The Diplomatic Correspondence of Thomas Bodley, 1585-1597 Welcome to the Diplomatic Correspondence of Thomas Bodley (1585-1597) project at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, in partnership with the Bodleian Library. This project is built on open source data, all of which is freely available here. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Thomas Bodley's letters, previously unedited and unpublished, are a valuable interdisciplinary resource to scholars of religious, social, cultural, geographical, military and political history. The letters also offer an important understanding of the information networks and patronage structures between official and semi-official diplomatic agents and their patrons in the later sixteenth-century.
Dying Speeches and Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides Collected by the Harvard Law School Library This collection of nearly 600 broadsides highlights crime and capital punishment, primarily in England, as seen through the popular press in the 18th and 19th century. The examples digitized span the years 1707 to 1891 and include accounts of such crimes as arson, assault, counterfeiting, horse stealing, murder, rape, robbery, and treason.
Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP) through U. of Michigan The Text Creation Partnership is quickly arriving at a major milestone: starting January 1, 2015, all restrictions will be lifted from EEBO-TCP Phase I, which consists of the first 25,000 texts transcribed and encoded by the TCP from 2000-2009. These 25,000 (plus a few hundred) texts will be freely available to anyone wishing to use them, and there will no longer be any restrictions on sharing these files. They will be licensed under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0 Universal), which will be indicated in the header of each text.
Early Modern Map of London Is comprised of four distinct, interoperable projects: a digital edition of the 1561 Agas woodcut map of London; an Encyclopedia and Descriptive Gazetteer of London people, places, topics, and terms; a Library of marked-up texts rich in London toponyms; and a versioned edition of John Stow’s Survey of London. These four projects draw data from MoEML’s five databases: a Placeography of locations (e.g., streets, sites, playhouses, taverns, churches, wards, and topographical features); a Personography of early modern Londoners, both historical and literary; an Orgography of organizations (e.g., livery companies and other corporations); a Bibliography of primary and secondary sources; and a Glossary of terms relevant to early modern London. All of the files in our databases use a common TEI tagset that enables us to work with primary and secondary texts simultaneously.
Early Modern Resources A gateway site for any one interested in studying the early modern period (c.1500-1800CE)
Eighteenth Century Collections Online - Text Creation Partnership (ECCO-TCP) through the U. of Michigan The Text Creation Partnership is quickly arriving at a major milestone: starting January 1, 2015, all restrictions will be lifted from EEBO-TCP Phase I, which consists of the first 25,000 texts transcribed and encoded by the TCP from 2000-2009. These 25,000 (plus a few hundred) texts will be freely available to anyone wishing to use them, and there will no longer be any restrictions on sharing these files. They will be licensed under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0 Universal), which will be indicated in the header of each text.
European History Primary Sources - United Kingdom Provides access to scholarly digital repositories and other portals dealing with all facts of European history, from ancient to modern times. Browse by country, language, subject, time period, type of resources. Types of resources: dictionaries, drawings, interviews, letters, maps, pamphlets, photos, posters, sheet music, more.
European State Finance Database Represents the outcome of an international collaborative research project for the collection, archiving and dissemination of data on European fiscal history across the medieval, early modern and modern periods. This material is available free of charge to academics and students, in order to fulfil three main aims: To conserve the data underlying previous published and unpublished research, in order that subsequent researchers do not have to re-collect data in order to verify older calculations; to disseminate this data and in doing so encourage new research, and to continue to preserve new data relating to state finance as it becomes available.
History of Ireland: Primary Documents Euro Docs are an open access sources through BYU. All links are connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. In addition you will find video or sound files, maps, photographs or other imagery, databases, and other documentation. The sources cover a broad range of historical happenings (political, economic, social and cultural). The order of documents is chronological wherever possible.
The History of Parliament A research project creating a comprehensive account of parliamentary politics in England, then Britain, from their origins in the thirteenth century. Unparalleled in the comprehensiveness of its treatment, the History is generally regarded as one of the most ambitious, authoritative and well-researched projects in British history.
History of Scotland: Primary Documents Euro Docs are an open access sources through BYU. All links are connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. In addition you will find video or sound files, maps, photographs or other imagery, databases, and other documentation. The sources cover a broad range of historical happenings (political, economic, social and cultural). The order of documents is chronological wherever possible.
History of the United Kingdom: Primary Documents Euro Docs are an open access sources through BYU. All links are connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. In addition you will find video or sound files, maps, photographs or other imagery, databases, and other documentation. The sources cover a broad range of historical happenings (political, economic, social and cultural). The order of documents is chronological wherever possible.
History Online Provides information about and for historians. It publishes details of university lecturers in the UK and the Republic of Ireland (Teachers), current and past historical research (Theses), digital history projects (Projects), new books and journals from a range of leading publishers (Books, Journals) and sources of funding available for researchers (Grants). The database also provides details of history libraries and collections and digital research tools for historians. It currently holds more than 75,000 records, and new material is added regularly.
Intoxicants and Early Modernity: England, 1580-1740 Project explores significance of intoxicants such as tobacco, alcohol, coffee, tea, and opium to "the economic, social, political, material, and culture life of England from 16th-18th centuries." Showcases 5 themes. Link to beta version of their database where readers can browse sources. Collaboration between University of Sheffield and the Victoria and Albert Museum. PI is Phil Withington, Prof. Univ. of Sheffield.
John Strype's Survey of London A full-text electronic version of John Strype’s enormous two-volume edition of 1720, with its celebrated maps and plates, depicting the prominent buildings, street plans and ward boundaries of the late Stuart capital.
Letters of William Herle The letters of William Herle, intelligencer and diplomat for the Elizabethan court, offer a unique resource for Early Modern studies. Written over the period 1559-88, Herle's previously unedited, unpublished and overlooked letters are richly textured. They offer a fascinating insight into the information networks and patronage systems of the political administration, as well as valuable material for religious, social, economic and cultural history. This edition has been designed as a hypertext archive in order to maximise the ability to access and retrieve information from the corpus.
London Lives 1600 to 1800:Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis This site includes a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London in a fully digitised and searchable format.

Resources M - Z

Manuscripts Online: Written Culture 1000 - 1500 British History Online contains primary and secondary sources for the history of the British Isles. To date, British History Online has digitised more than 1,000 volumes, including such central resources as the Journals of the Houses of Commons and Lords and The National Archives' Calendars of State Papers (including the State Papers Domestic, Foreign and Colonial, the Treasury Books and Papers and the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII). The majority of this material is freely available, but there is an element of subscription content (principally the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, the Calendar of Close Rolls and the Parliament Rolls of Medieval England).
Mapping the Republic of Letters This is a digital humanites project from Stanford University's Humanities Center in collaboration with international partners (including Oxford University and CNRS in France) that sheds light on how historical scientific networks contributed to the spread of knowledge from the age of Erasmus through the time of Benjamin Franklin. Through letters, sociability, and travel people traded information, thought, books, criticism, ideas in the early modern period.
Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Collection Contains 215 medieval or Renaissance manuscripts that date between the 11th and 17th centuries. This database contains item-level descriptions for each of the manuscripts and enables keyword searching as well as several different ways to browse the collection contents.
Sources for Missionary and Church Archives Web-based guide to more than four hundred collections of overseas missionary materials held in the United Kingdom. These materials, comprising the archives of British missionary societies, collections of personal papers, printed matter, photographs, other visual materials and artefacts, are held in a large number of libraries, record offices and other institutions in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The Mundus Gateway makes it easier for researchers to locate these collections and obtain sufficient information about their contents to enable effective planning of research visits.
National Archives (U.K.) List of online exhibitions; browse by name or historical period. Includes selections dating from 1066 through the 20th century.
National Archives of Scotland Main archive for sources of the history of Scotland as a separate kingdom, her role in the British Isles, and the links between Scotland and other countries over the centuries.
Newton Papers Isaac Newton, 1642-1727, was a noted chair of mathematics at Cambridge University, which holds many of his papers. The Cambridge Digital Library project has made what they have available online.
Parks and Gardens U.K. Website dedicated to historic designed landscapes and will include records of over 7,000 historic gardens in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales as well as articles and features on historical styles and designs. Browse by period. Summary, description, references, some images for individual properties.
Parliament and the British Slave Trade, 1600-1807 Online exhibit from the Parliamentary archives explores some of the issues through primary documents and other records.
Parliamentary Archives of the U.K. Parliamentary Archives of the United Kingdom holds several million historical records relating to Parliament. This Archive web sites offers access to Portcullis, an online catalog describing 3 million items. These include records of the Houses of Lords and Commons: acts of Parliament, committee papers, Hansard, journals, judicial records, peerage claim records, etc. A fire in 1834 burned down the Houses of Parliament; consequently, this archive has no House of Commons records prior to this date, except for manuscript journals and minutes and printed journals of this House. They also do not have records of government departments; these are at the National Archives/Public Records Office.
Perry Casteneda Map Collection through U. of Texas Austin At the University of Texas Austin. A large map collection with digitized historical maps of Europe.
Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects (1773) The University of South Carolina has acquired a first edition of Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London, 1773), the first book published by an African-American author, and has made it available online and fully searchable. This freely accessible facsimile is provided as both a research tool and a resource for teachers and students worldwide.
Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,752 trials held at London's central criminal court, and 475 Ordinary’s Accounts of the lives of executed convicts.
Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History "An online exploration of the intellectual, cultural, and political history of reading." A thematically based open-access collection of texts and other digitized materials produced under auspices of Harvard University Library and selected from its collections. Focus is Western Europe and U.S. from the 16th-early 20th centuries. Historical textbooks, library records from early Harvard U., records of missions to native North Americans, lists of recommended books, memoirs of collectors, commonplace books, diaries and scrapbooks, and books annotated by some famous authors, altogether some 800 published books and 400 manuscript collections. Search by catalog record or OCR generated text (for printed books) or browse by topic or genre, by one of 14 languages, or by century.
Reading Experience Database A ‘reading experience’ means a recorded engagement with a written or printed text - beyond the mere fact of possession. A database containing as much information as possible about what British people read, where and when they read it and what they thought of it will form an invaluable resource for researchers of book history, cultural studies, sociology and family history, to name but a few. The mission is to accumulate as much data as possible about the reading experiences of British subjects from 1450 to 1945.
Reed Patrons and Performances Professional performers of all kinds in England and Wales toured to provincial towns, monasteries and private residences before 1642. The Records of Early English Drama (REED) project is discovering fresh evidence about medieval and renaissance entertainment for publication in volumes for all English, Scottish and Welsh counties.
Reviews in History Reviews in History was launched in 1996, and publishes reviews and reappraisals of significant work in all fields of historical interest.
Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States The six-volume set entitled The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, from House Miscellaneous Document No. 603 of the U.S. Serial Set, was compiled by Dr. Francis Wharton and promulgated on August 13, 1888, by both houses of Congress. The preface to volume 1 explains the usefulness of these documents for comprehending: (1) our revolutionary history and (2) the treaties executed during and at the close of the Revolution, which form in a large measure the basis of our international law (p. iii). Other editions of the correspondence include those edited by Jared Sparks and Francis Preston Blair.
Runaway Slaves in Britain: Bondage, Freedom, and Race in the Eighteenth Century Little is known about slavery in 18th-Century Britain. This project at University of Glasgow will create a database of searchable information about those who sought to escape bondage. Not all of the the people who ran away from their masters in Georgian Britain were of African descent, and a small number were Native Americans or were from the Indian sub-continent. While some were not slaves, many were described by their masters in terms of slavery.
Site for Research on William Hogarth (1697-1764) Biographies, online essays, image gallery, links to other Hogarth sites. He's a famous 18th c. English artist.
Spectator Project: a Hypermedia Research Archive of Eighteenth-Century Periodicals The Spectator Project is an interactive hypermedia environment for the study of The Tatler (1709-1711), The Spectator (1711-14), and the eighteenth-century periodical in general.
Sunk in Lucre's Sordid Charms: South Sea Bubble Resources in the Kress Collection at Baker Library The South Sea Bubble Collection is a group of specialized research resources within the Kress Collection at Baker Library, Harvard Business School. The collection focuses on the South Sea Bubble stock market crisis in the early part of the eighteenth century and the speculative mania surrounding it. The collection includes more than 300 books, broadsides, pamphlets, Parliamentary documents, manuscripts, prints, and ephemera.
Survey of Scottish Witcraft 1563-1736 Database contains all people known to have been accused of witchcraft in early modern Scotland, nearly 4,000, where, when accused, how tried, what their fate was, and info on a wide range of themese relating to social and cultural history. Supporting material with introduction to the topic, further reading section, links to other sites.
Timelines: Sources from History Several hundred images from the British Library's collections arranged by decade in this interactive resource. One to 10 images per decade from 1215-2008. Thumbnails enlarge and have introductions that describe images briefly and place them in historical context. Five thematic timelines, in addition: politics/power/rebellion; literature/music/entertainment; everyday life; sacred texts; medicine/science/technology. Can select two time lines at once and compare them. Create your own customized timelines.
Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database From Emory University, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, this offers both quantitative and qualitative information about the slave trade in Spain, Uruguay, Portugal, Brazil, Great Britain, the Netherlands, the United States, Denmark, and the Baltic, from the 16th through the 19th centuries. Three sections: searchable database of voyages, statistics/estimates of the slave trade by nation and ports of em and disembarkation, and African names database. Bibliography of documentary sources and archival materials. Overview essays on the Atlantic slave trade, racial/ethnic fallout, abolition movement. Lesson plans and educational resources. Images from 19th c. archival materials. Maps. Timeline/chronology. Searchable in both English and Portuguese.
Trial of Sir Thomas More Welcome to Famous Trials, the Web’s largest and most visited collection of original essays, trial transcripts and exhibits, maps, images, and other materials relating to the greatest trials in world history.
Visiting Bethlem in the Long Eighteenth Century 1247 Bethlem Royal Hospital was founded. It is one of the oldest institutions designed for treating mental illness. Their Museum of the Mind preserves information and material on how mental illness has been perceived and treated throughout British history. Interactive timeline covers 1676-1815 and can be explored by six categories: the hospital, attitudes to mental health, visitors, staff, patients, outside events. Within each category find primary documents and short videos in which scholars answer frequently asked questions about the history of Bethlem.
Vive la Difference: the English and French Stereotype in Satirical Prints, 1720-1815 Online exhbition from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Witchcraft Collection - Cornell University Contains more than 3,000 books, manuscripts, and related materials. The collection focuses on witchcraft as as theology and as religious heresy.
Witches in Early Modern England WEME is a digital exploration of the nano-histories: a way to study the history of early English witching. Using WEME’s resources, you can use a time line, map, search box, or filter to explore almost three thousand individual multi-dimensional nano-histories of and align them, using digital technologies, to create a composite of the true and terrible stories of the early English witches.
World Digital Library: Browse by Time Collection of manuscripts, books and visual resources. Select a date range of interest, then use limiters to focus search on a specific geography, date range, topic or type of resource.