Stop press – the event details and booking link for the ‘Kent and Europe, 1450–1640: Merchants, Mariners, Shipping and Defence’ FREE study day at Dover Museum in the Community Cinema on Saturday 10 May from 10am is now available at: https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/merchants-mariners-shipping-and-defence and because places are limited, please do book to avoid disappointment for what will be a great day. Moreover, I’m delighted to report that the fabulously re-furbished Maison Dieu in Dover will be re-opening to the public that same weekend, another fantastic treat!

Of course, before that we have the Tudors and Stuarts History Weekend between Friday 25^th and Sunday 27^th April which features numerous fabulous talks by excellent and exciting historians whose topics range across four areas: Social History; Royalty and Nobility; War and Politics, and Literature, Art and Religion. To give a couple of examples from each of these categories is difficult because they each offer up such an exciting range of subjects and the best way is to look at the full programme at: https://ckhh.org.uk/tudors-stuarts but here goes.

Thus, for ‘Social History’ there is Professor Clare Jackson’s fascinating analysis of England’s history between the Spanish Armada and the Glorious Revolution entitled ‘Devil-Land’ and for those looking beyond early modern England, come and find out about how slavery and freedom were experienced by those most deeply involved in the lecture given by Dr Chloe Ireton. Turning to ‘Royalty and Nobility’, why not learn about Henry VII’s court with Professor Steven Gunn and/or find out from Professor Anthony Musson what it was like when Henry VIII went on tour around the country to meet his people. When it comes to ‘War and Politics’, there is the decisive Battle of Pavia explained by Professor Glenn Richardson or nearer to home Dr Joanne Paul will explore what we know about the real Thomas More, the man behind the myth. Moreover, for those interested in the early modern arts, I can think of no better opportunity than investigating the early modern theatre with Dr Astrid Stilma through the role of tyranny on the Stuart stage, to be followed by Dr Rory Loughnane who will uncover Shakespeare’s ‘missing years’. If this sounds fun, please do check out the full programme and I’ll look forward to seeing you on the last weekend in April.

Still just about forthcoming, the CKHH jointly with FCAT and CHAS will be holding the annual Frank Jenkins Lecture this Saturday evening at 6pm in the Michael Berry Lecture Theatre, Old Sessions House. The lecture will be given by Alison Hicks, the Director of CAT, and she will be providing a summary of the Trust’s activities over the last 12 months. If this sounds interesting, please come along and there will be a small charge on the door in aid of these organisations.

So far I have been looking to the future, but I’ll now turn to what has happened this week, which means I have four short reports. Starting with the Lossenham wills group, we had our monthly meeting of this volunteer group who are working on the probate records of parishes on the Rother Levels and Wealden fringe. Each year, three of these meetings are in person, the others being online, which meant we gathered at Rebecca’s house in Frittenden – thanks very much Rebecca – to discuss progress and any issues that have come up, including our ever expanding glossary of regional and historical terms (linked to farming, other trades and industries, household goods and furnishings etc) from the primary sources, as well as how we may be able to aid Sue H’s Tenterden Custumal project. Another very interesting discussion topic yesterday was how we can move from family histories to network analysis to be able to explore how these riverine and Wealden communities functioned through the interactions of their inhabitants, thereby uncovering, for example, the relative magnitude of their spheres of influence, how these functioned over time and space, as well as the role of such matters as social memory, cohesion (or the lack of it) and contemporary ideas relating to the commonweal. For it is by exploring these and similar questions that research groups such as this can move from unearthing interesting ‘facts’ but with the danger of it being ‘so what’ unless one is working on a specific family etc, to valuable and valued investigations that shine a light on late medieval and early modern society below the level of the elite.

As mentioned previously, an example of this approach has been Diane’s two reports for the Lossenham Project newsletter which hopefully will lead to a full article that will explore the likelihood of economic emigration to North America in the early/mid 17^th century primarily through the lens of the Hatch family of Tenterden. Furthermore, to extend such approaches more widely, firstly we are going to investigate examples from the historiography to explore comparable ideas. I’ll keep you updated as this develops.

Next I want to mention that I joined Dr Catriona Cooper and other members of the Castle Studies Trust and Castle Studies Group for a visit to Leybourne castle located next to Leybourne church, the village being to the west of Maidstone. The castle is in private hands and last year the Castle Studies Trust funded a laser scan survey of the gatehouse, the key medieval feature, which has some fascinating architectural aspects. This is the Trust’s blog on the study: https://castlestudiestrust.org/blog/2024/10/06/leybourne-castle-gatehouse-kent-patterns-of-baronial-influence/ and as you can see this is a very useful addition to our understanding of castles in Kent.

It is also worth recording that currently the Trust is funding two further studies on Kent castles, one on Canterbury and another on Dover, Deal and Walmer. For a brief description of these, please see: https://castlestudiestrust.org/blog/2025/02/25/castle-studies-trust-awards-a-record-amount-in-grants/ and for the latter, which involves transcribing and translating part of an early 17^th-century Dutch surveyor’s report on a number of fortifications, this will be a welcome addition to our knowledge of early modern coastal defences. In the meantime, if you are interested in Kent’s maritime defensive capabilities during the early modern period, please do check out Dr Chris Ware’s chapter in Maritime Kent through the Ages which was published by Boydell in 2021.

My last two reports for this week concern lectures that took place in Canterbury, albeit Kent barely featured at all. However, I still think it is important to mark their having taken place because the first was given by CCCU historian Professor Leonie Hicks as her inaugural professorial lecture at a time when matters are very challenging in the higher education sector, especially for the Humanities. Over 70 colleagues, family members and friends gathered to hear Leonie’s fascinating assessment of why it is important, if not vital, for historians in the 21^st century to investigate the history of the Normans through their own writings, as well as to pass on this knowledge of how to study historic texts to the next generation of potential scholars. To exemplify her thesis, Leonie drew on the works of several contemporary or slightly later chroniclers, which meant that we ‘met’ the works of amongst others Amatus of Montecassino, Orderic Vitalis, William of Jumieges, Ibn-al-Athir, Aelred of Rievaulx and that redoubtable writer William of Malmesbury. Consequently, we followed the Normans as they fought their way over much of Europe and even into north Africa and the Middle East, met croaking frogs, Norman cows and tarantulas, thought about trauma and conquest, considered conversion to Christianity and the subsequent deployment of biblical illusions as the Normans came to see themselves as a ‘chosen people’, as well as the role of memory – preserving the past yet also coming to terms with that history.

This stimulating lecture and the ideas that lay behind it were warmly applauded by an appreciative audience. Thereafter, following the vote of thanks, Leonie took a range of questions, and it will be fascinating to read Leonie’s new book on Norman landscapes which hopefully will be published by Boydell towards the end of next year.

The second lecture took place on Thursday evening under the auspices of the Centre for Anglican History and Theology. Dr Ralph Norman (Theology at CCCU) introduced Professor William Whyte (St John’s College, Oxford) and, as he rightly said, the audience was in for an enthralling lecture on the relationship between religious and political thought, and Anglican churches that was mediated through the buildings themselves, specifically interior walls in the later 18^th and 19^th centuries. Hence, he began with David Garrick’s funeral monument (1797) on the wall in Westminster Abbey that those in authority expected would be viewed as an evocative piece of sculpture which cut through the wall as though there was no wall at all. Moreover, this was one of many from the same time, as seen in cathedrals and great churches across England, a response to the idea of what a good Protestant (Anglican) church should be. For in the sense the walls dissolved to metaphorically bring the church (inner space) and the world (outer space) together, the funeral monuments providing in stone and marble portrayals of lives well and righteously lived to encourage viewers, albeit there was a concern felt by some that they should not over-stimulate and therefore they were not suitable for the sick.

Having set up this position, he then explored the reaction that followed from the second decade of the 19^th century and continued throughout much of the century as architects, theologians, and other influential thinkers sought to ‘re-instate’ the walls as being important in their own right. In some cases, this involved displacing the funeral monuments, but another way of ‘bringing the walls back into focus’ was to see them as a palimpsest of the history of the church and its people through time, which meant they should be preserved.

Additionally, there were other ideas and movements that fed into ‘the rise of church walls’, such as an awakening of interest in geology, the arrival in England of continental church furnishing ‘saved’ after the Revolution, the looking back to medieval times and the Gothic revival, the activities of theologians within the Oxford Movement, and the perceived need within the Anglican church hierarchy that far more parish churches were needed as bastions against the rise of non-conformity. As I hope you can appreciate from this summary, this was an exceedingly interesting lecture, and again the highly appreciative audience offered a considerable number of pertinent questions and suggestions.

Thus, this has been another extremely busy week and looking into April and May, I don’t see this changing! And we at CKHH will look forward to seeing some of you at’ Tudors and Stuarts’ in Canterbury ‘Kent and Europe’ in Dover, and the ‘Becket Lecture’ in Canterbury.