#1600s britain

[digitalfashionmuseum]

Red velvet mittens, 1595-1603, English.

Victoria and Albert Museum.

[diemelusine]

Portrait of Queen Mary II of England (1690) by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.

[jeannepompadour]

Portrait of a couple, artist from the circle of William Larkin (fl. 1609-1619)

[crepegosette]

Can we get something with Canada and Uruguay? Heard they're similar in historical aspects

they'd be a funky duo

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Willem Wissing (Dutch, active in Britain, 1656-1687) Mary of Modena, Queen consort to James II, ca.1685 Yale Center for British Art

[nickysfacts]

The romantic origins behind spooning!🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

😊🥄🥰

[wardrobeoftime]

Good Omens + Costumes

Aziraphale's silver, blue & golden doublet and pants in Season 01, Episode 03.

// requested by @foul-z-fowl

[tanadrin]

medieval monks and accountants start using Italian millione ("one thousand" + augmentative suffix) to mean 10^6 by the 1200s; this spreads to other languages

Jehan Adam coins bymillion and trimillion to mean 10^12 and 10^18 in 1475

Nicolas Chuquet extends this scale up to nonyllion (10^54), with every step being another six orders of magnitude (million, byllion, tryllion, quadrillion, quyllion, sixlion, septyllion, ottylion, nonyllion) in 1484. Note that in this period, it was common to put the digit separator every six digits instead of every three.

Guillaume Budé refers to 10^9 as milliart in 1516, in a Latin text

But in 1549, Jacques Pelletier du Mans uses milliard to mean 10^12, citing Budé as a source

In the 1600s, people start putting digit separators every three digits. But some scientists and mathematicians define the numerical scale according to how digits are grouped, rather than the actual order of magnitude: thus, one billion becomes 10^9, one trillion becomes 10^12, etc, creating the short scale.

"Milliard" is eventually added to the long scale, meaning 10^9 (in keeping with Budé's usage); the first published example is from 1676

By 1729, the short-scale meaning of "billion" (10^9) has already crept into American usage

This is in keeping with French usage at the time: in 1762, the Académie Française dictionary cites billion as meaning 10^9.

By the early 19th century, France has almost completely converted to the short scale, and U.S. usage follows France; the long scale is referred to in some sources as "obsolete." But Britain is still using the long scale (and I assume Germany and most other European countries)

Over the course of the 20th century, the long scale begins to become more influential in France, presumably due to the influence of continental usage; while the short scale becomes more influential in Britain, presumably due to the influence of American English. Notably the SI system very specifically uses unique prefixes that are the same across languages, to prevent confusion!

In 1961, the French Government confirms that they're going to officially use the long scale from now on; in 1974, Britain officially switches over to the short scale, and many other English-speaking countries follow.

In 1975, the terms "short scale" and "long scale" are actually coined, by mathematician Geneviève Guitel.

One reason large number names could be so unstable for so long is, of course, that outside specialized usage they are rare, and were even more rare before modern science and large modern monetary amounts became commonplace points of discussion. Wikipedia says "milliard" wasn't common in German until 1923, when bank notes had to be overstamped during Weimar-era hyperinflation.

As it currently stands, English, Indonesian, Hebrew, Russian, Turkish, and most varieties of Arabic use the short scale; continental Europe and most varieties of Spanish outside Europe use the long scale. A few countries use both, usually in different languages, like South African English (short scale) and Afrikaans (long scale) or Canadian English (short scale) and Canadian French (long scale) . Puerto Rico uses the short scale in economic and technical usage, but the long scale in publications aimed at export.

Notably some languages use neither, having their own names for large numbers--South Asian languages have the Indian numbering system, and Bhutan, Cambodia, and various East Asian languages also have their own numbering systems. Greek, exceptionally, uses a native calque of the short scale rather than a borrowing.

[werewolfetone]

"A tweet would kill someone from the past" is NOT true because the intertwined religion and politics and monarchy in the 1600s in Britain was literally 100x more toxic than any social media fandom discourse. you think that you could kill a puritan with twitter? fools. it wouldn't even faze them and then they would tell you their thoughts on the divine right of kings and those would kill YOU

[diemelusine]

Portrait of King James VI and I of Scotland and England (c. 1606) by John de Critz. Dulwich Picture Gallery.

[neil-gaiman]

Hello, Neil. I did not think I’d ever try your lottery of an Ask box (despite having enjoyed reading your answers for a decade!) but I feel the need to, well, complain. Can this be a complaints box, too?

I ask in all politeness that you be more careful reblogging posts that make controversial statements of fact, because these are all too often wrong. I speak of the one about “It's a lie that the US Pilgrims were fleeing oppression”, which ten seconds on Wikipedia will show you is itself a lie. I know you know fact checking is important! tumblr isn’t a book, but when you have a zillion readers that implies a certain responsibility. Thanks for listening.

…also I love your books and was so happy at how the Sandman show came out and thanks for signing my copy of American Gods back in 2003 and who will play the archdemon Stolas in GO Season 2? ;)

With something like that I'm very happy to reblog contentious statements that make people think, because, as history professors will tell you, it's not as simple as that. I remember my son coming home from school once, aged about twelve, and saying "my teacher says you're a liar". And I said mildly "why?" And he explained it was because I had told him about people being transported to America for years as indentured servants for petty crimes, and he'd been told that wasn't true*, his teacher had explained people came to America seeking religious freedom. And that was the only reason people came here.

Did the Puritans leave Britain because they were being persecuted? Yup. Were they seeking the freedom to persecute others? Absolutely.

Here's a quote from a terrific article from the Smithsonian:

The much-ballyhooed arrival of the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England in the early 1600s was indeed a response to persecution that these religious dissenters had experienced in England. But the Puritan fathers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony did not countenance tolerance of opposing religious views. Their “city upon a hill�� was a theocracy that brooked no dissent, religious or political.

Read the rest of it here:

*It is true. I shook my head, then wrote a chapter in American Gods to explain it to future potential history teachers.

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Sir Peter Lely (Dutch/active in England, 1618-1680) Portrait of Charles II, King of Great Britain and Ireland, n.d.

[vox-anglosphere]

Possington Manor - once the home of Camilla's great-grandmother.

[mintaikk]

Zestial's Death Theory

Okay I was rewatching episode 3 cuz I love that episode, and I am still SO curious about Zestial. Mostly about his death. Because seriously, WHAT IS THIS???

BUT, here is a theory I have.

Zestial speaks in Shakespearean English, so he probably died in the 1500s or 1600s. He is a bat spider thing, and I think he also has aspects of a vampire, so he probably died when it was really dark at night. I don't think he was an actual vampire when he was alive, but vampires, I think, stem from the fear of rabies, so perhaps he got rabies and died from that. I'd say the plague as a secondary option, but I don't really think that.

I think we can find clues of what he was in his design.

He seems to have the outfit of what you'd think an upperclassmen at the time would wear (from what country? Idk. I assumed it was Romania or Britain). But, his hat seems a bit torn and ratty and reminds me a bit of a scarecrow, so perhaps he was a farmer when he was alive.

Why is he in Hell? Well, being a farmer, especially one who farms animals, gives you a lot of tools you'd use to kill. I think that he was a farmer by day, and by night, he was a murderer. Pretty good one too, being sneaky and always knowing how to avoid getting caught.

But, one day, a rabid bat bit him, and he contracted rabies. We all know what rabies does to a guy, right? So, at the beginning, he ended up becoming more and more sloppy with his murders, until he slowly became more and more deranged, and as his rabies got worse, so did his aggression. Instead of his calculated murders he was so used to, he would run up to people and bite them (on the neck?), like a rabid bat or a vampire.

There are 2 ways he could've died. The first one is that he died when he succumbed to the disease, and the second one is the people killed him out of fear. Either one could work, but if I think it's the second one, I like to believe that they put a stake through his heart. But man, him dying by himself in an empty field also sounds nice.

Anyways, do y'all have any theories about his death? I love talking about him.

[wardrobeoftime]

Good Omens + Costumes

Crowley's black doublet and pants in Season 01, Episode 03.

// requested by @foul-z-fowl

[orangerosebush]

Recently, I did a re-read of the AF series, and I am working through some thoughts I have on the Fowls and what allowed them to maintain power -- especially in the sense of being landed -- in Ireland after arriving during the Norman conquest in the 12th century.

Colfer establishes that Hugo de Folé and Virgil Butler arrived in Ireland during the first Norman crusades in the 12th century (1169).

“The first record of this unusual arrangement [between the Fowls and Butlers] was when Virgil Butler had been contracted as servant, bodyguard, and cook to Lord Hugo de Folé for one of the first great Norman crusades.” From: Artemis Fowl. By Eoin Colfer.

At once, these origins of the Fowls would make them ambiguously part of the Old English, a term from the modern period (post-1600) used to describe the descendants of the first Anglo-Norman conquerors who largely inhabited the Pale (Dublin and surrounding areas) and surrounding towns. Hugo de Folé and Virgil Butler would have likely been Catholic.

However, the origins of Fowl Manor complicate this.

The original Fowl castle had been built by Aodhán Fowl in the fifteenth century overlooking low-lying country on all sides. A tactic borrowed from the Normans. From: The Arctic Incident. By Eoin Colfer

In the 15th (c. 1401-1500) century, Aodhán Fowl acquired land for Fowl Manor in the Pale (Dublin and its surrounding areas); the estate has remained in the Fowls' possession ever since, which is important to note.

The Fowls' historical proximity to the Pale likely was what allowed them to maintain power over the centuries.

Between the 12th and 16th centuries, the Lordship of Ireland (1177-1542) placed swaths of Ireland under the control of Anglo-Norman lords loyal to the King of England.

However, by the 14th century (1300s), English rule of Ireland beyond the Pale (Dublin and its surrounding areas) was weakening. Beyond the Pale, (Catholic) Hiberno-Norman lords' fiefdoms had a degree of independence from the English, often adopting elements of Gaelic language and culture.

This changes around the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation and the Tudor conquest of Ireland. In 1536, Henry VIII of England decided to reconquer Ireland and bring it under crown control. Charles II, Henry VII's son, made the re-established Church of England even more explicitly Protestant.

Between the 16th and 17th centuries (c.1550s-1620s), Irish land was transferred to a new wave of (Protestant) settlers from Great Britain and Scotland to strengthen the Crown's weakening control over Ireland and Anglicize (and thus "civilize") the island; the land transfer was facilitated through the creation of plantations, such as the plantation of Ulster.

The Old English, which would have included descendants of de Folé and Virgil Butler, were supplanted by the New English, the Protestant landowners introduced by the Tudors in a number of ventures at plantations.

It is important to note the historical nuance that:

There was no equivalent in Ireland to the English Test Act of 1672, and there were plenty of precedents for exemptions to the Act of Supremacy. The legal position of Irish Catholics was, in many practical respects, better than that of English Catholics; many fines and penalties fell into abeyance under Charles [II], and the Catholic hierarchy co-operated openly with the Dublin administration. From James's [James VI and I] accession, the Church's position was obviously improved; priests emerged into the public eye and were allowed salaries, though they were not as yet endowed. Protestant superiority remained, in many areas, axiomatic; Catholics continued to occupy a curiously edgy position of formal inferiority combined with tacit toleration. But the ambiguities of their situation reflected the logic of local conditions just as much as the shifts in central policy. [...] But the 'Test clause in the 1704 [Popery] Act, obliging holders of public office to take sacraments according to the usage of the Church of Ireland, gradually excluded Presbyterians from town corporations even in Ulster. Despite the regium donum and the Toleration Act, their equivocal relationship with the civil power remained, and would provide a key theme in the radicalization of the Irish political world after 1780, when the threat of Catholic disaffection apparently receded. [From: Modern Ireland, 1600–1972. By R.F. Foster]

Still, the Popery Act would have had consequences for the historical Fowls and Butlers as Old English families. Beyond the Test clause in the Popery Act, it also limited Catholics' ability to buy/lease land, as well as limited inheritance from a Catholic to be by gavelkind i.e., divided equally, and thus shrinking with each generation, the estate between all sons, rather than according to Primogeniture.

It begs the question of how Fowl Manor remained in the hands of the family, rather than becoming the estate of a member of the New English.

As anti-Catholic sentiment was largely grounded in the political context of loyalty to the Crown (as opposed to the Pope), certain members of the Old English gentry could have (and did!) find ways to join the wave of the Protestant Ascendancy.

"The Anglo-Ireland of the day in fact encompassed sizable middle and lower classes -- a heterogeneity that Foster finds "exemplified by that quintessential Ascendancy institution, Trinity College: defined by Anglicanism but containing sons of peers, of shoemakers, of distillers, of butchers, of surgeons, and of builders" (Foster 1989, 173). And not all the "Anglo-Irish" were, strictly speaking, "Anglo." Early in Bowen's Court, Bowen's historical account of her family's Cork home, we learn that "Bowen" derives from the Welsh "ab Owen" or "ap Owen" (Bowen 1942a, 33). Other Anglo-Irish men and women traced their ancestry to the Old English and to Catholics who converted to Protestantism in order to reap the accompanying social, political and material rewards. Violet Martin (better known as Martin Ross) descended from the Old English Martins of Ross, who had owned land in Galway and had converted to Protestantism in the eighteenth century (McMahon 1968, 123). As Thomas Flanagan concludes, "there were many ways of being Anglo-Irish" (Flanagan 1966, 59). So what, then, defined Anglo-Irishness? In [R.F. ] Foster's view, it was Anglicanism. Anglicanism "defined a social elite, professional as well as landed, whose descent could be Norman, Old English, Cromwellian or even (in a very few cases) ancient Gaelic. Anglicanism conferred exclusivity, in Ireland as in contemporary England; and exclusivity defined the [Protestant] Ascendancy, not ethnic origin" From: An Anarchy in the Mind And in the Heart: Narrating Anglo-Ireland. By Ellen M. Wolff

And what do we find out in the first book of Artemis Fowl?

"Beside [Angeline] was a facsimile of [Artemis'] father, constructed from the morning suit he'd worn on that glorious day in Christchurch Cathedral fourteen years ago." From: Artemis Fowl. By Eoin Colfer

Christchurch Cathedral (in Dublin) is Anglican in denomination!

I just think it is so cool that across a few sentences from Artemis Fowl and The Arctic Incident, it is possible to situate the Fowl family within a semi-realistic history of Ireland.