Preaching to Princes: John Burgess and George Hakewill in the Royal Pulpit

This article examines a previously unnoticed link between the Puritan John Burgess and the Calvinist conformist George Hakewill. In 1604 Burgess preached a court sermon so outspoken and critical of James I’s religious policy that he was imprisoned. Nearly twenty years later, however, Hakewill chose to incorporate extended passages from Burgess’s sermon into the series of sermons, King David’s vow (1621), preached to Prince Charles’s household. This article considers why Burgess’s sermon became so resonant for Hakewill in the early 1620s and also demonstrates how Hakewill deliberately sought to moderate Burgess’s strident polemic. In so doing the article provides important new evidence for the politically attuned sermon culture at Prince Charles’s court in the early 1620s and also suggests how, as the parameters for clerical conformity shifted in the latter years of James’s reign, Calvinist conformists found a new appeal in the works of moderate Puritans. I

Struell Wells: pagan past and Christian present

The complex of buildings at Struell Wells, near Downpatrick, Co. Down, is the most extensive at a holy well in Ireland. It comprises two wells, two bath-houses and the ruins of a church. Nearby is a natural rock feature known as St Patrick’s Chair. The earliest reference to the wells is likely to be in the 8th century Fíacc’s Hymn which records the site being visited by St Patrick. The earliest reference to their healing powers can be dated to the 11th/12th century and the site continued to be a focus of pilgrimage at midsummer until its suppression in the nineteenth century. The site seems to be unique in that bathing in the wells constituted an integral part of the rituals performed by pilgrims. A recent study of the holy well phenomenon in Ireland has suggested that the rituals associated with them have their origins in the Counter-Reformation (Carroll 1999). The evidence from Struell, however, strongly suggests that it was an important sacred site in pre-Christian times.

Unlocking synergies between business units: internal value creation at Royal Vopak.

This paper examines the process of creating and exploiting synergies between business units of a multi-unit corporation and the creation of internal value by combining and exploiting knowledge. It offers a framework to create and manage such synergies and undertakes an empirical test through in-depth study across three business units of Royal Vopak, a Dutch-based global multi-unit corporation. Finally, it offers lessons for corporate managers trying to create and manage cross-unit synergies.

Tracing Inspiration in Proverbial Material: From 'The Royal Dictionary' (1699 & 1729) of Abel Boyer to 'The English-Irish Dictionary' (1732) of Begley-McCurtin.

This metalexicographic study examines the relationship between the proverbial material in The English-Irish Dictionary (1732) of Begley and McCurtin, Abel Boyer’s The Royal Dictionary (First edition 1699, second edition 1729), and Nathaniel Bailey’s An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721). It will show, for the first time, that both the English macrostructure and microstructure of the proverbial entries in Begley and McCurtin (1732) were reproduced directly from Boyer’s dictionary and, in spite of claims to the contrary, the impact of Bailey’s (1721) dictionary was negligible. Furthermore, empirical data gleaned from a comparative linguistic analysis of the various editions of The Royal Dictionary prior to 1732, will prove that it was the second official edition (1729) that was used as the framework for The English-Irish Dictionary. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the nature of the proverbial entries will also outline the various translation strategies that were used to compose the Irish material— particularly literal translation—and show that there are extremely high-levels of borrowings from Boyer (1729), both in terms of the English entries under the lemma, and the French entries in the comment.