Abstract In the period 1650–1715, a growing consensus emerged that educational culture in England did not meet the needs of the population, and that change was required—change in what was taught, how, and to whom. This article argues for a conception of an English ‘educational economy’ in which fragmenting institutions and a patchy licensing regime made space for substantial private educational provision. This educational economy gave rise to debates about the appropriate education for learners of different backgrounds and social status, and prompted teachers to new defences of their own value, authority and competence. It was shaped in public, making education the business not only of schoolrooms or private homes, but also of coffeehouses, taverns and the press. This article argues that printed advertisements are the best archive for this educational economy, providing crucial information about its shape—from the subjects on offer to the students it served. Advertisements help to illuminate the venues of early modern education, and show how educational activity was woven through the public and semi-public spaces of the period’s cities and towns. They offer new ways of thinking about educational labour: who was doing it, what it consisted of, how it fitted into the urban knowledge economy, and how authority and prestige were debated and discussed in this transformative phase in England’s educational history.

Abstract This article examines English primers, bibles and prayer books which were passed down within families and preserved as heirlooms between c.1450 and 1850. Such books attest to the evolution of memorial practices before and after the Reformation, and to the continuities which enabled people to navigate the theological, ecclesiastical and cultural upheavals that fundamentally reconstituted the function and meaning of these texts. Used to record births, marriages and deaths, the books illuminate neglected features of the early modern genealogical imagination and suggest its expanding social reach. Their migration into libraries and public repositories highlights the agency of the family in the social history of the archive, demonstrating the vital role played by domestic cultures of record-keeping and generational transmission in its creation, transformation and use over time.

Abstract Late medieval diplomacy relied on informal networks to remedy administrative and governmental deficiencies in the management of international affairs. This article examines the case of the Aragonese merchant Peter Seseres and his associates, who acted as informal diplomatic agents, and possibly spies, in England between 1333 and 1339, and especially in plans for an Anglo-Aragonese alliance soon after the outbreak of the Hundred Years War. Significantly, Seseres’s activity in England appears from the counsel (consilium) he presented to Edward III and his council between March and May 1338, recorded in an unedited and hitherto overlooked document preserved at The National Archives. Putting himself forward as an international negotiator, in his counsel Seseres showed how, alongside his mercantile business on the south-east coast of England, he had gathered confidential information and rumours, and exploited them to build political arguments in favour of an Anglo-Aragonese alliance. In particular, Seseres focused on the importance for the English of forging international alliances, especially on the Franco-Iberian borders, which would allow them to surround the French kingdom and reconquer the duchy of Aquitaine. Seseres also addresses the importance for the English of exploiting the presence of Robert of Artois in England and using his French connections to establish new continental alliances. Finally, the last section of the counsel sheds new light on how unofficial diplomatic missions were organised, highlighting aspects of fourteenth-century diplomatic and administrative practices which have been overlooked because of lack of surviving evidence. The conclusion engages with established scholarly debates on the international dimension of the Hundred Years War and the formation of diplomatic and administrative practices in the late medieval period.