British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
RALEIGH LECTURE ON HISTORY
Deities, Devils, and Dams: Elizabeth I, Dover Harbour, and the Family of Love
Professor David Wootton, Anniversary Professor of History, University of York
Wednesday 16 April 2008
This lecture is an invitation to re-examine long-held and deeply entrenched assumptions about Elizabethan England. It presents evidence suggesting that Elizabeth I was neither Protestant nor Catholic, but a member of the Family of Love. It draws on twenty seven recently discovered stanzas in French, and Reginald Scot's account of the rebuilding of Dover Harbour to argue that Familism encouraged egalitarianism. These texts suggest that Elizabeth herself inhabited a very different world from the one traditionally described by historians and literary critics, a world in which men and women can be gods; in which heaven and hell are here and now; and in which technology promises a more prosperous future for all.
Professor David Wootton works on the intellectual and cultural history of the English speaking countries, Italy and France 1500-1800. He is author of 'Bad Medicine: Doctors doing harm since Hippocrates'