Dr Simon Healy

Current Research

Senior Research Fellow Lords 1603-1660

Published Volumes

Senior Research Fellow Commons 1604-1629

History of Parliament Research

During 1990 to 2010 I was a researcher on House of Commons 1604-29, producing 243 articles (550,000 words), all accessible on this website.

From 2010 to 2018 I worked as a researcher on House of Lords 1604-29, writing 81 articles (380,000 words, including many bishops), which will be published in 2020.

I am currently working on the appendix volume to Proceedings in Parliament 1624, researching, collating, transcribing and editing newsletters on parliamentary affairs in 1624.

Research and Publications

Other research interests

My foremost research interest in recent years has been the study of Crown finances 1558-1642, arising from my PhD, Crown Revenues and the Political Culture of early Stuart England (Birkbeck College, London 2015) – available open source from the British Library’s EThOS website.

I am also interested in a wide range of other subjects, including:

State formation in early modern Britain and Europe

The political uses of the early modern English legal system

Early modern Yorkshire, Wales and the Marches, London and urban politics generally

Career paths in the post-Reformation Church of England

Trade and banking in England before the Financial Revolution of the 1690s

 

Academic & public engagement

I have served as a convenor of the Tudor & Stuart seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, London since 2000.

I regularly give talks to academic seminars and conferences, and to amateur groups such as the Historical Association, U3A, local history societies and schools.

 

I have made a podcast for the Historical Association on early Stuart Parliaments

 

 

Publications outside the History of Parliament include:

 

‘The significance (and insignificance) of precedent in early Stuart Parliaments’ in Writing the History of Parliament in early modern England ed. P. Cavill and A. Gajda (Manchester UP, 2018)

'Donne, the patriot cause and war, 1621-9' in Oxford Handbook of John Donne ed. J. Shami &c (Oxford UP, 2010)

'The Tyneside lobby on the Thames, c.1580-1630' in Newcastle and Gateshead before 1700 ed. D. Newton (Phillimore, 2009)

 ‘1636: the unmaking of Oliver Cromwell?’ in Oliver Cromwell: New Perspectives ed. P. Little (Palgrave, 2008)

‘Oh, what a lovely war? War, taxation and public opinion in England 1624-9’ in Canadian Journal of History XXXVIII (2003)