Monday 18 March 2024

Dissertation Prize Winners’ Award Evening 14 March 2024

We were delighted to be able to award certificates to our LAHS dissertation prize winners for 2024. Our chair, Matt Beamish, presented to Susan Hughes, winner of the MA History prize. The citation was read by Liz Tingle. Well done to Susan!

Susan's dissertation is entitled ‘Merchants and Ministers: The Cradock family, trade and Puritanism in seventeenth century England’ (University of Leicester, 2023).

The merchant companies were widely involved in supporting and funding the spread of religious non-conformity in the seventeenth century. This case study, utilising apprentice registers, family wills, family letters and the church court records of the Diocese of Rutland reveals how the Cradock family were involved in the Puritan movement at both the international, national and local level. Two brothers are examined here, Matthew the successful merchant and first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his brother Samuel, a member of a prominent group of non-conformist clergy in the County of Rutland before and during the Civil War. Emphasis is on the brothers’ commitment to the Puritan movement and on the importance of family, business and religious networks in their success and that of their immediate descendants who were to become influential church leaders and academics in the later Stuart period.