Stuart

Dire straits: Beggars are depicted in a woodcut. In the 16th century, waves of crop failures persuaded the government to place poor relief on the statute book. (Image by Bridgeman)

Taxing the rich to feed the poor in the 17th century: the world’s first welfare state

1935: Two men making a fireworks set piece with the slogan 'God Save The King' for despatch abroad, for the Silver Jubilee celebrations of King George V. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Q&A ‘God Save The Queen’: how old is the British national anthem?

For our forebears, the secret to a good night's sleep lay in the contents of your gut. (Photo by Leemage/UIG via Getty Images)

6 sleeping tips and tricks from history

A portrait of 17th-century scholar John Wilkins

Ye final frontier: the 17th-century space race

Chatsworth House, where Elizabeth I ordered for Mary, Queen of Scots to be imprisoned after she abdicated and fled from Scotland to England in 1567. (Photo by Chatsworth House Trust)

Britain’s 7 most amazing stately homes

Illustrations by Ian Morris.

The Civil War cross-dressers: the women who swapped dresses for breeches

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The ruins of Dunluce Castle, which sit on the coastal cliffs of North Antrim in Northern Ireland. They are thought to have been the inspiration for CS Lewis’s castle Cair Paravel in ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ (1950–56). (Photo by Andrea Ricordi/Contributor/Getty Images)

9 of Britain’s best castles . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Charles I. (Photo by World History Archive/Alamy)

King killers in America . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria. (Photo by Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

9 eccentric monarchs through history

Men enjoying a drink and a chat in a coffee house, 1674. Coffee houses became known as ‘schools of the wise’, where people would gossip, argue and discuss the breaking news of the day. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A drink for the devil: 8 facts about the history of coffee

A 16th-century woodcut by Albrecht Dürer entitled 'The true and false apostles of Christ'. As the Reformation recast Europe's spiritual landscape, many believers fretted that their religion no longer felt true to them. (Photo by Alamy)

The fury that fuelled the rise of atheism

Scottish nobles gathering in the 17th century

Scotland on the brink: the nation’s final years of independence

Blenheim Palace in a c1880 print from ‘A Series of Picturesque Views of Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland’, edited by Reverend FO Morris, Volume I, William Mackenzie, London. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

10 things you might not know about Blenheim Palace

A joint Franco-Native Indian raid left 56 residents of Deerfield, a small township in north-western Massachusetts, dead. (Alamy)

America: Brave new world or accident?

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This 16th-century woodcut depicts King James VI at the North Berwick witch trials, the case that first sparked his obsession with hunting. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

James VI and I: the king who hunted witches . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.