This article presents evidence that an anonymous publication of 1573, aLetter sent by a gentleman of England [concerning …] the myraculous starre nowe shyning, was written by Thomas Digges, England's first Copernican. It tells the story of how it arose out of research commissioned by Elizabeth I's privy counsellors in response to the conventional argument of Jean Gosselin, librarian to Henri III of France, that the star was a comet which presaged wars. The text is significant because it seems to (...) contain the observations and opinions that Digges held before he completed his other astronomical treatise, the groundbreakingAlae seu scalae mathematicae. It also casts some light on the development of Digges's radical and puritan views about the star, Copernican astronomy, the infinity of the universe and a belief that the ‘latter days’ of the world had arrived. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to show how the doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies formulated by lawyer Edmund Plowden influenced political practice and its artistic representation. It is worth emphasising that the image of the king as a one-man corporation includes an immanent conflict resulting not only from the coexistence of conflicting identities in one person, but also from the need to constantly negotiate relations between them. Therefore, the concept of two bodies could simultaneously serve as a tool (...) for legitimising and contesting power. This paradox is well illustrated by Queen Elizabeth I’s famous declaration “Richard II is Me”, which has been intriguing researchers for decades and receiving extensive comments. So far it has not been placed in the context of the doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies, in which it sounds probably most fully. The perspective of abolished temporality inscribed in it sheds a new light on the queen’s identification with Richard II: both the historical ruler and the hero of the Shakespearean chronicle. (shrink)