Joyce Youings – författare

Colonisation by the European powers has always had its seamier side and the first attempt to settle English people on the North American mainland - by one of Queen Elizabeth's favourite courtiers, Sir Walter Raleigh - was no exception. The hunt for prize ships and cargoes was a major attraction for the sea-captains and their crews who sailed across the Atlantic in the years 1584-7. For the promoters, including Raleigh, it was usually the prime consideration, the only way of making the voyages financially viable. But for many generation of Americans, especially the people of North Carolina, Raleigh's colonising efforts, however immediately unavailing, sowed seeds of endeavours whose fruits were later gathered by the settlers of Virginia, Maryland and also New England. Englishmen wintered on Roanoke Island a generation before Jamestown.The papers published here, each by an expert in the period, were delivered at a conference held at the University of Exeter in May 1985 to mark the Quadricentennial of the founding of English America. Privateering, ship design, contemporary English society, the Lost Colonists, the drawings of John White and, of course, Sir Walter Raleigh himself and his adoption as one of America's folk heroes, are all dealt with in an authoritative way, each essay embodying the results of the most recent research, and all are eminently readable, making this a book both for the more informed reader and also for the general public.

This edition of the letters of Sir Walter Ralegh will replace the long out-of-print edition of Edward Edwards published in 1868. It contains the full text, in the original spelling, with modern punctuation, of all known surviving letters, 240 in all, compared with Edwards' 160, in most cases taken from the original manuscripts, many never before published. All are extensively annotated, many have been newly dated and corrected; there is a substantial Introduction by Joyce Youings.The letters help to reconcile the family man, never happier than when at home on his estate in the West Country, with one who is revered, especially in North America, as the founder and inspirer of English overseas settlement. They show him drawn both towards his native West Country, where he was not universally admired, and towards the Court at Westminster where lay the determination of the success or failure of his enterprises. Never before have we been able to get as near to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of one of the best-known figures of English history, the man who was both patriot and European; courtier and failed politician; soldier and poet; owner of ships and organiser of privateering ventures yet a reluctant sailor; greedy for personal wealth and social status but apparently ready to plead the case of the poor and disadvantaged.

Originally published in 1971 this book begins with the assumption that the Dissolution of the Monasteries was neither an integral nor an essential part of the English reformation. This book pursues the story chronologically and thus helps students re-discover what contemporaries knew was happening at each successive stage. An important part of this process consists in watching - with the help of a selection of surviving records - how the Court of Augmentation went to work not only centrally but in the field. The part played by Thomas Cromwell, in both the devising and the carrying out of the Dissolution is reassessed and particular attention is paid to the chronological relation between his career and the early stages of the dispersal of the crown's new resources among the King’s subjects.

Originally published in 1971 this book begins with the assumption that the Dissolution of the Monasteries was neither an integral nor an essential part of the English reformation. This book pursues the story chronologically and thus helps students re-discover what contemporaries knew was happening at each successive stage. An important part of this process consists in watching - with the help of a selection of surviving records - how the Court of Augmentation went to work not only centrally but in the field. The part played by Thomas Cromwell, in both the devising and the carrying out of the Dissolution is reassessed and particular attention is paid to the chronological relation between his career and the early stages of the dispersal of the crown's new resources among the King’s subjects.