Brief Lives: Biographies from Early Modernity
George Keith
George Keith was a convert to Quakerism who rose to prominence within the movement before leading a schism within it. After the schism he wrote against the Quakers and their doctrines, later joining the Church of England in 1700 and becoming a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). He produced vast quantities of literature throughout his life, however, he has remained less studied than other leading Quakers such as William Penn, Robert Barclay and George Whitehead.
Nicolas Delamare
Nicolas Delamare authored one of the most influential legal treatises of the early modern French period, La Traité de la Police. While this brief biographic entry by Matthew Jackson touches upon Delamare's oeuvre, its primary focus is to interrogate the fundamental yet historically obscure question, who was Nicolas Delamare? A four minute podcast accompanies this text.
George Berkeley, 8th Baron of Berkeley
George Lord Berkeley was a literary patron, nobleman, occasional sitting peer and fond traveller. Tutored by Dr Philemon Holland, dedicatory of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, heavily in debt through his adult life, and a minor peer through the turbulent 1640s.
John Morgan, as part of his Undergraduate Research Scholarship Scheme, discusses his life, career, and place within the patronage networks of the early seventeenth century.