Stuart B Jennings

The significance and contribution of Quaker emigrants to the development of colonial America during the latter years ofthe seventeenth century is axiomatic to most histories of the period. Far less work has been undertaken on quantifying the impact upon Friends meetings and work in the land they left behind. That their absence was significant is generally accepted. Several historians have suggested that a factor in the Quakers' decline in England was the absorption of so many of them into the building and administration of the colonies ofNew Jersey and in particular Pennsylvania. ' This paper presents a picture ofthe effect ofthis emigration upon the county ofNottinghamshire and also to a certain extent its consequence upon neighbouring counties. Inmany respects Nottinghamshire was not a significant stronghold for Quakerism, both in terms of the overall numbers of society members or in the number of emigrants it provided. The results of this analysis therefore cannot be said to be distorted by being unrepresentative of the national scene. They do provide a useful point of reference for further county and regional assessments. Just as Nottinghamshire was to provide the Quakermovement with some ofits first converts, so it also supplied a few ofits earliestmissionaries to the NewWorld. Between 1661-1665, Elizabeth Hooton ofSkegby went to the Americas on two separate occasions, accompanied by her daughter Elizabeth on one of these.2 During her first preaching itinerary that began at Massachusetts Bay, shewas whipped at the towns ofCambridge, Watertown and Dedham because of her Quaker activities.3 In 1666 Elizabeth's son Samuel Hooton went to America and by 1 670 her other son Oliver appears to have settled in Barbados. Elizabeth died in Jamaica in 1 672 at the start of another preaching tour of the Americas. A letter to George Fox from Barbados in 1682 and signed "O Hooton" outlined the writer's plans to see "ye new countreys of new Jarsey and Pensilvania."4 In between their journeys, the Hootons were active preachers and leaders amongst Nottinghamshire Friends. Their accounts and experiences probably brought both the potential and the dangers of the Americas to the attention of local Quakers. Thus whenWilliam Penn began his "holy experiment" ofPennsyl-

ABSTRACT Although two relatively equal sized armies (Parliamentarian and Scottish) besieged Newark on Trent 1645-1646, it was the Scottish army that attracted numerous complaints and petitions to the House of Commons. This paper explores what logistic, military and social factors might explain this

... Typhus or 'camp fever' had first been noted in Europe at the end of the fifteenth century and Girolamo Fracastoro wrote the first ... 1645-46 two armies, the English Northern Association Army and the Scottish Army of the Solemn League and Covenant invested the garrison right up ...

The year 2009 marked the eight hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the Franciscan order, and it is fitting that in this year there should be published this third and final volume tracing the history and contribution of the Franciscan friars in Ireland to this ongoing story. This volume consists of eighteen essays by fourteen authors and is divided into two distinct sections. The first (consisting of eight essays) charts the history of the Irish friars chronologically over the years 1534 to 1990, a period of considerable trauma for the people of Ireland encompassing the establishment of plantations, wars of religion, famine, and mass emigration. The second section of the volume celebrates the legacy of the Franciscans in Ireland by exploring a range of topics from historical and hagiographic writings to architecture, chalices, and missionary activities. As with many collections of independently authored essays, there are elements of repetition and overlap (especially in relation to the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries), but the overriding sense conveyed by the book is of the courage and adaptability of the movement to meet and overcome, often at considerable personal cost, these many fluctuations in fortune. The essays are well served by extensive footnotes, and an excellent bibliography and index at the end of the book direct readers to both primary and secondary sources for further research. The book would probably benefit, though, from a short glossary of terms to help general readers quickly navigate their way through some of the ecclesiological terms used throughout the essays.

The Quaker impulse to reform and regulate both their meetings and wider society according to their religious experience of "the light within" lay at the heart of the movement’s missionary zeal from its earliest days. Yet for both the social and political historian, the question of how a spontaneous, individualist, experiential, and dissenting religious tradition in revolutionary England evolved into a structured, bureaucratic system that was firstly turned inward upon its members to preserve a unity amongst themselves and later outward toward civil society and government has generated much discussion. Within an American context, in particular the Pennsylvania experiment, this development raises further questions about how this process amongst Friends was to feed and inform the evolution of federal ideas across the other colonies.

The religious landscape of England was to change profoundly over the course of the seventeenth century as a single state church was to first be challenged and later fragment into a number of dissenting churches. The county of Nottinghamshire was not only to be a microcosm of this development, but also over the course of the century contribute much towards its progress as it both generated reforming leaders and was also visited by many of the significant personalities of the emerging denominations.

With the surrender of the king in May 1646 the country looked
forward to the ending of the civil war and the social disruption it
caused. It was hoped that commerce and trade would improve
and travel restrictions be ended. Unfortunately, from 1645
onwards virulent pestilence and infection inflicted many of the
formerly besieged towns and garrisons. The ending of the war
allowed both discharged soldiers and civilians to wander across
the country carrying the infections with them.
Building upon previous published research, this paper explores
the impact of pestilence upon commerce, trade and reconstruction
across the county with special reference to the shire’s famous
Goose Fair. In many ways, Nottinghamshire's, failed attempt to
halt the spread of infection was a microcosm of a wider national
phenomenon. As this article will demonstrate for many communities
1646 proved to be one of the most difficult years of the
conflict.

An exploration of the demographic, economic, religious and social consequences of living in a major Royalist garrison for the citizens of Newark over the period 1640-1660. This is based around a newly available range of primary sources recently deposited and catalogued in the Nottinghamshire Archives Office

In November 1645, Parliament coordinated the arrival of two armies before the Nottinghamshire town of Newark on Trent to besiege this major royalist garrison. To the north of the town was the Scottish army under the Earl of Leven and to the south English forces under the command of Colonel-General Poyntz of the Northern Association. Situated at the meeting of two great highways, and commanding the crossing nearest to the Humber on the river Trent, Newark had provided a major link between the king’s headquarters at Oxford and the northern towns of Newcastle and York. Although the besieging armies were of comparable strength, the Scottish army alone was to generate extensive discontent and numerous petitions from parishes in the immediate vicinity of the town about the behaviour of its troops. Using both state papers and surviving local records, this paper seeks to explore the impact and logistics of both armies and examine whether the complaints against the Scots reflected major differences in their circumstances or was simply a coordination of local xenophobia by the parliamentarian gentry of the region seeking to influence wider political struggles at Westminster.

This paper, whilst exploring the phenomenon of Protestant religious dissent in Nottinghamshire, seeks to provide empirical data about the importance of landscape in shaping settlement types, agricultural practice and administrative oversight.  These together can have considerable long term impact upon the reception, germination and perpetuation of ideas within a parish.