Another wonderfully concise early modern title:

A Wonder of Wonders. Being A faithful Narrative and true Relation, of one Anne Green, Servant to Sir Tho. Reed in Oxfordshire, who being got with Child by a Gentleman, her child falling from her in the house of Office, being but a span long, and dead born, was condemned on the 14. of December last, and hanged in the Castle-yard in Oxford, for the space of half an hour, receiving many great and heavy blowes on the brests, by the but end of the Souldiers Muskets, and being pul’d down by the leggs, and was afterwards beg’d for an Anatomy, by the Physicians, and carried to Mr. Clarkes house, an Apothecary, where in the presence of many learned Chyrurgions, she breathed, and began to stir; insomuch, that Dr. Petty caused a warm bed to be prepared for her, let her blood, and applyed Oyls to her, so that in 14 hours she recovered, and the first words she spake were these; Behold Gods Providence! Behold his miraculous and loving kindness! VVith the manner of her Tryal, her Speech and Confession at the Gallowes; and a Declaration of the Souldiery touching her recovery. Witnessed by Dr. Petty, and Licensed according to Order.

By W. Burdet, 1651.

The Newgate Calendar reported:

Polygamy, or a man marrying two or more wives — and, vice versa, a woman marrying two or more husbands — is a crime frequently committed; but a woman marrying a woman according to the rites of the Established Church is something strange and unnatural. Yet did this woman, under the outward garb of a man, marry fourteen of her own sex! 

   At the Quarter Sessions held at Taunton, in Somersetshire, this woman was brought before the Court; but under what specific charge, or upon what penal statute she was indicted, we can neither trace by the mention of the circumstance, nor could we frame an indictment to meet the gross offence, because the law never contemplated a marriage among women. She was, however, tried, whether or not her case might have been cognisable, and Mary Price, the fourteenth wife, appeared in evidence (in such a case as this we must be pardoned for ambiguity) against her female husband.
   She swore that she was lawfully married to the prisoner, and that they bedded and lived together as man and wife for more than a quarter of a year; during all which time, so well did the impostor assume the character of man, she still actually believed she had married a fellow-creature of the right and proper sex.
   The learned quorum of justices thus delivered their verdict: ” That the he or she prisoner at the bar is an uncommon, notorious cheat, and we, the Court, do sentence her, or him, whichever he or she may be, to be imprisoned six months, and during that time to be whipped in the towns of Taunton, Glastonbury, Wells and Shipton Mallet, and to find security for good behaviour as long as they, the learned justices aforesaid, shall or may, in their wisdom and judgment, require.” And Mary, the monopoliser of her own sex, was imprisoned and whipped accordingly, in the severity of the winter of the year 1746.

A great and bloudy Fight at Colchester, and The stroming of the Town by the Lord generals Forces, with the manner how they were repulsed and beaten off, and forced to retreat from the Walls, and a great and terrible blow given at the said storm, by Granadoes and Gunpowder. Likewise their Hanging out the Flag of Defiance, and their sallying out upon Tuesday last, all the chief Officers ingaging in the said Fight, and SirCharles Lucas giving the first onset in the Van, with the number killed and taken, and SirCharles Lucas his Declaration. London. Printed for G. Beal, and are to be sold in the Old-Bayley, and neer Temple Bar, 1648.

The siege of Colchester was a notable engagement in the English Civil War. It’s the striking depiction of heads and limbs that most interests me here.

thestuartkings:

The Life of the ‘Lost Prince’

The life and death of Henry Stuart, the “lost prince” who would have been King Henry IX had he survived into adulthood, is the subject of an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Born in 1594, he died in 1612 at the age of 18, struck down by typhoid fever. His younger brother later acceded to the throne, becoming the doomed King Charles I.

During his short life, Henry was a focus for developments in the visual arts, architecture, music and literature. He amassed an impressive art collection and established a court to rival any in Europe.

So beloved was the young prince that his death precipitated a national outpouring of grief.

In scenes that would be echoed almost 400 years later with the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, crowds lined the streets as the cortege travelled to Westminster Abbey and a contemporary record notes:

“There was to bee seene an innumerable multitude of all sorts of ages and degrees of men, women and children… some weeping, crying, howling, wringing of their hands, others halfe dead, sounding, sighing inwardly, others holding up their hands, passionately bewayling so great a losse, with Rivers, nay with an Ocean of teares.”

Yet he is hardly a household name. Catharine MacLeod, curator of the exhibition, said: “The Civil War, that huge rupture in the mid-17th century, overshadowed everything that went before and today Henry is all but forgotten.

“This exhibition gives us a glimpse into the spectacular and culturally rich life of this exceptional prince.”

The Lost Prince: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart runs from October 18 2012 - January 13 2013

Sarah Waters may have led me to misinterpret this at first…

B.E. is actually just referring to French kissing (more often referred to in the 17thC as ‘Florentine kissing’).

From B.E. Gent. A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, in its several Tribes, of Gypsies, Beggers, Thieves, Cheats, &c. with an Addition of some Proverbs, Phrases, Figurative Speeches, &c. Useful for all sorts of People, (especially Foreigners) to secure their Money and preserve their Lives; besides very Diverting and Entertaining, being wholly New. London 1699.

Punishment of a common Bawd. Second offence Felony.

And be it further Enacted by the authority aforesaid, That all and every person and persons who shall from and after the Four and twentieth day of June aforesaid, be convicted as aforesaid, by confession or otherwise, for being a common Bawd, be it man or woman, or wittingly keeping a common Brothel or Bawdy-house, shall for his or her first offence be openly whipped and set in the Pillory, and there marked with a hot Iron in the forehead with the Letter B and afterwards committed to Prison or the House of Correction, there to work for his or her living for the space of three years, without Bail or Mainprize, and until he or she shall put in sufficient Sureties for his or her good behavior during his or her life: And if any person by confession or otherwise shall be convicted of committing, after such Conviction, any of the said last recited offences, every such second offence shall be, and is hereby adjudged Felony; and the person and persons so offending shall suffer death, as in case of Felony, without benefit of Clergy.

The Teares of Ireland. Wherein is lively presented as in a map, a list of the unheard off cruelties and perfidious treacheries of bloud-thirsty Jesuits and the Popish faction.

London, 1642.

(via thestuartkings)

Richard Ames,The Folly of Love. A New Satyr Against Woman.London, 1693.

This is a very bitter one. I’ve often wondered about the woman that must have jilted him before he sat down to write.

The Temple of Venus, designed by John Donowell for Sir Francis Dashwood’s West Wycombe estate, c.1748.

Dashwood was one of the founders of the infamous drinking and whoring ‘Hell Fire Club’, and this vista is a deliberate genital pun: The hill is known as the ‘Mound of Venus’ (in Latin, mons veneris, usual term for the pubic mound), while the oval, vagina-esque door to ‘Venus’ Parlour’ is topped by a clitoral stone sphere and statue of Mercury. John Wilkes, acknowledging the joke, referred to the door as “the same Entrance by which we all come into the World… what some idle Wits have called the Door of Life” (1763).

 A Bawd. A vertuous Bawd, a modest Bawd: As Shee Deserves, reproove, or else applaud. London, 1635.

A paradoxical encomium by John ‘The Water Poet’ Taylor. The ‘bawd’ was the manager of a brothel, or a more freelanced madam. In this period she was sterotypically an ex-whore who took a very ‘hands-on’ approach in luring new girls to the trade.