San Antonio College Library

The Gunpowder Plot, the Civil Wars, Charles I's execution, the Plague, the Great Fire, the Restoration, and then the Glorious Revolution: the seventeenth century was one of the most momentous times in the history of Britain, and Londoners took center stage. In this fascinating account, Margarette Lincoln charts the impact of national events on an ever-growing citizenry with its love of pageantry, spectacle, and enterprise. Lincoln looks at how religious,...

This program shows London as an overcrowded, filthy city ripe for the two disastrous events destined to strike at its heart within one year's time. In the first part of the program, set in 1665, a live actor uses vivid descriptions by period character Dr. Nathaniel Hodges, and readings from Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, to show a society stretched to its limits by raging disease. Superstitions surrounding the disease are discussed, along...

Between the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the population of London grew from 50,000 to 200,000-despite the popular spectator sport of watching executions. The program covers the uses of the dungeons in the Tower, quotes from the last words of Thomas More and Anne Boleyn, explains the niceties of the private execution ground on the Tower Green, and shows the changes in London's appearance as Tudor houses and Elizabethan dress and jewelry made...