 First of all, thank you very much, Laura, for that introduction, and I'll just quickly say how nice it is to be loud out in public again, especially in surroundings such as these. In 1535 and 1536, civic collections in the orchard town of Beverly caused disorder and violence in the town and constitutional wrangling in the cars of star chamber. Annually, the trade and craft guilds of Beverly elected 12 governors to preserve the town's political, judicial, and economic order. Fating back to at least the mid 14th century, the free election of governors was part of the town's ancient customs and old usages. Yet the 12 governors did not have the ultimate authority in Beverly, which was not an incorporated town, but anarchy episcopal manner within the thief of the archbishops of York. As recently as 1528, Thomas Wolsey, then Cardinal Archbishop of York, had attempted to curtail Beverly's self-governance, which he claimed had wrongfully and unlawfully usurped upon his manorial rights. So by the 1530s, the town's people with Beverly had become used to customary de facto self-government, while the Archbishops of York, including the then incumbent Archbishop Edward Lee, attempted to assert their de jure rights over the town. These tensions manifested in disputed civic elections and star chamber suits that, as KJ Allyson has argued, ultimately ended in the town's achievement of self-government later in the 16th century. So today I'm looking at the emotional language used in the free star chamber suits in order to shed light on how early modern concepts of emotion played out in practice, how they informed and shaped judicial process, and how they interacted with political notions and social status, social role, and civic governance. The Court of Star Chamber was a venue in which political disputes were played out and resolved. It was a prerogative court which technically tried criminal cases involving violence and trespass, but which in reality litigated the political or property disputes underlying those alleged criminal actions. Although it litigated criminal cases, star chamber followed civil law procedure consisting of written pleadings prepared in advance and witness testimony, given not in open court, but behind closed doors. Focusing on the early modern church courts and the Court of Chancery whose procedure was similar to that of star chamber. The court of star chamber found Alberti and Meridy Bailey have shown how indications of passion, anger, and malice were not simply unmediated accounts of social interactions and events, but rather legally constitutive elements of a suit which determined legality and guilt. In particular, referred to a range of mutually reinforcing matters including action, character, emotion, and through disposition. So in legal context, to prove the presence of negative emotions such as malice was to prove the defendant's guilt. So this paper will examine the star chamber bills surrounding each election before analysing the emotional lexicon used in this judicial context and how the study of this language can add to our understanding of the experience of early modern politics. So on the morning of the 25th April, 1535, the burgesses of Beverly assembled in the common hall for the annual election of governors. Although the town ordinance is decreed that only residents and guildsmen could be governors, among those elected was Sir Ralph Ellicott, a member of the rural gentry based at Risby, a couple of miles south west of Beverly. Ellicott and seven of his adherents have already served as governors for the previous year, breaking the ordinance that no individual could be elected governor in successive years. Compounding these issues was the manner of Ellicott's re-election, which had allegedly been carried out by fraud, intimidation and violence. That year, two star chamber bills of complaint were brought against Ellicott, one by several prominent townspeople who supported the Archbishop of York and another by Archbishop Edward Lee himself. Both bills stressed the Archbishop's authority over Beverly and coupled this with accounts of Ellicott's violence and anger at the election and his tyrannous governorship thereafter. Before the election, Ellicott had confiscated the bills of nominees supplied by the guilds and replaced them with those who were, with the names of those who were pursuing re-election. He also forcibly prohibited around 20 prominent townspeople from attending the election, including the former governor Robert Raffles, who led the suits against him. Consequently, according to the Archbishop, great altercations, variances and loud voices were heard amongst those gathered in the hall with the better and greater part of the townspeople firmly standing and affirming that no person ought to be governor two years together. In the face of this opposition, allegedly, Sir Ralph Ellicott and his fellow incumbent governors Richard Brown and Robert Gray rose from the governor's bench and threatened and menaced those present with terrible countenance and great, high, appropriate, unfitting and violent words and threats in order to submit the times people to his will. In great fury and with furious countenance, Ellicott raged and cast off his gown and approached those gathered wearing only his jacket and armed with his wood knife or baga. With furious countenance and appropriate words, Gray allegedly attempted to stir up the commons calling Richard Taylor, who was another complainant in the case, a busy fellow and pulled his clothes while he was letted by the discrete council of some honest persons in the hall. At this point, Roger Londell, an inhabitant of the town, desired Ellicott to be a good master and permit the town the free election it had enjoyed in diverse years past. But Ellicott rebuked him with unfitting words saying openly that he would do him a displeasure if he did meet him in the town. Ellicott also rebuked others with appropriate words, taking one man by the boson and with strength and violence, thrust him and almost cast him on the floor saying that if it were not more for pity than for fear of any man, he would not much dread to strike in half a dozen more such wretches with his dagger. So by force and arms, in riotous manner and against the king's peace, Ellicott and the other governors were re-elected to the great inquiritation and trouble of the townspeople. Following the election, by violence and against all law, reason and conscience, Ellicott revoked the freedom of raffles under the freemen, blocked them from the customary use of common land for their cattle, spent the town's common treasure and hatefully and cruelly threatened the townspeople and put them in daily fear of bodily harm. According to these elite townspeople who described themselves as the quiet and honest inhabitants, Ellicott led the commons under a perverse liberty that had brought rage, raw, murmur, debate, dissension and perturbation to the town. And they requested the cart to return Beverly to peace and quietness. As the commons were those who should govern, should not govern but be governed, this upending of the proper divinely ordained social order is conceptualised and described in emotional terms denoting a troubled and unquiet policy. Above all, they claimed, the cause of this unrest was Ellicott's greedy mind to continue not only a governor but like a lord in the town. Meanwhile, Lee informed Thomas Cromwell, the king's chief minister that Ellicott was a man more meat to be a captain of evil world persons than a governor of the town. So what was focusing on this emotional language in this judicial context, tell us about the experience of politics in early 16th century Beverly. Since our chamber pleadings were drawn up in collaboration with legal counsel and submitted in written form to the cart, this language use was deliberate and strategic. As Natalie's, even Davis and Laura Gowing have shown judicial records and the products. Not only of individuals who profit plausible and credible narratives that conform with commonly shared ideologies and mentalities, as well as of legal procedure and legal language language. In the Archbishop's Bill, Ellicott's rage was provoked by Laundall's humble appeal for him to be a good master. Here, Laundall was making use of public transcripts, by which as Michael Braddock and John Walter have shown. Subordinates could draw on shared discourses and ideologies in order to restore the proper bounds, mutual obligations of interpersonal relationships as part of the constant process of negotiation by which political power was exercised, maintained and legitimised. The so-called weaning force of this transcript of good mastership and its incompatibility with its revocation of the town's free election is evidenced by Ellicott's unfitting outburst of rage. In this judicial context then it was possible to ascribe a furious outburst to a common townsman's imputation, the mastership of a landed night. Another significant moment in the narrative is when Ellicott cast off his gown, most likely a robe of civic office, and great fury and approached the assembled burgesses armed with his short sword. Early modern clothing was imbued with social status, sumtree laws enforced hierarchical distinctions in dress, and in the Beverly town ordinances guildsmen were identifiable by the clothing of the crafts and expected to be properly turned out at elections. As such, Ellicott was shedding both his gown and the external marker of his status in office in an unrestrained and furious outburst. And the judicial record stressed that he was armed and a threat to the peace thus bringing a disputed election into the jurisdiction of the court. However at this point it should be remembered that these accounts of Ellicott and his followers actions consist solely of bills of complaint made against him in an adversarial judicial context by his political opponents, and Ellicott's own voice is noticeably absent as the case material does not survive. However, the combination of Ellicott's legal ineligibility and the pejorative emotional language used to describe his actions clearly persuaded the court. In a decree made on the 30th November 1535 Kings Council solidified the archbishops order and rule over the town's people and forbade Ellicott from becoming a governor at any at any time here after, as well as other gentlemen purchasing landing the town in order to be elected governor. This seemingly definitive settlement merely set the stage further unrest in Beverly the following year. At an interim election held three weeks later on the 20th December, the archbishops officers did not ascend to the town's people's free election, but simply selected such persons as please them. The following month, archbishop Edward Lee claimed to have received a writing under the common seal of Beverly expressing the submission of the 12 governors and 240 substantial burgesses provide his good order and direction for the commonwealth of the town. However, this was denied by others such as John Raffles Alderman of the Bakers Guild, the hotmaker John Newcomb, Christopher Sanderson, William Dent, Richard Wilson and Richard Endyke, all of whom had been sued in Star Chamber as members of Sir Ralph Ellicott's faction in the previous year. Who claimed that the common seal had been taken by farce from Sanderson and illegitimately used in order to revoke the town's customary rights and privileges. But either due to the fear of greater phrase and other inconveniences in Beverly, or merely as a pretext to retain his special friends, incumbent governors who were allegedly more affectionate to the archbishop and the common wheel of the town. Lee ordered the upcoming election of the 25th of April 1536 to be deferred. The incumbent governors announced the deferral in the common hall, ordered its doors to be locked and the rope removed from the common bell. However, on the scheduled day of election, a large number of townspeople of Beverly performed the usual practices of civic elections in the common hall. Whether or not these practices were a free election or a riot depended on two factors. Firstly, it depended on whether the elections were inherent to the town's liberties, either by time honored custom or by direct grants by kings or archbishops past. Secondly, the legality of the election also depended on the violence or emotional intensity of the inhabitant factions. As it had been the previous year, emotional language was used in Star Chamber pleadings to describe the characters, motivations and actions of those involved in the case. The stressing the violence of the riot, as he termed it, Lee claimed that around 100 townspeople riotously assembled at seven o'clock. Four men clambered on to the roof of the house in which the common bell was hung, where they damaged the windows, roof and chimney and made great menaces and frets to those inside. The rioters rang the bell three times with such violence and fury that they knocked it out of frame, then assembling at the doors of the common hall. With great voices, noise and outcries, they urged every true breath to true burgess in a religious procession that was celebrating St Mark's Day to join them, to join their ranks. Although the well-disposed persons did not, they were joined by those willful disposed persons who were more affectionate to the rioters, who were more affectionate to rioters. At the door of the common hall, without any manner of order, the rioters elected 12 governors. They then attempted to break the door open with great force and violence, but instead broke a window and entered the hall, where they administered the accustomed oath, the accustomed oath of office to the supposed new governors. Later, in order to legitimise the election, they went to the house of John Anderson, the common clerk, to enroll the governor's names. However, Anderson, who was of great age, only did so through fear of the false might and great menace of the rioters. Lastly, at four o'clock, the former ally of Ellica, now newly elected governor, Richard Wilson, stood upon a bench in the common hall where he openly and solemnly proclaimed the previous years that he complained against Ellica as a means to procure greater grudge against the substantial inhabitants allied to the archbishop. Against these allegations, the defendants claimed that they were peacefully assembled to hold a free election that would preserve their ancient liberties from being utterly far-fitted into the archbishop's hands. Denying that there was any outcry, they claimed that they only used the ladder to ring the common bell as its rope had been removed from the archbishop's orders to prevent any election being held, and that rather than breaking down the door to the common hall, they merely found an unlocked door around the back. Once in the hall, they elected 12 substantial inhabitants according to their old usages in peaceable and quiet manner. This was done not out of love or favour to any individual, but rather for the good order and conservation of the town before departing home in peaceable and quiet manner. Despite this defence, the archbishop's case was clearly successful. In November 1536, an agreement settled the long-running power struggle decisively in his favour. The agreement confirmed the archbishop's control as chief lord of the town, although out of his tender love and zeal for Beverly and his desire for its good order, rule and common will, the burgesses could retain their free election of governors, albeit only from a body of 36 common councillors selected by the archbishop. Lastly, to ensure a more quiet and peaceable election in the future, the agreement decreed that any person making business or disturbance against the good order, peace or tranquility of the town would lose his birgage and place in the town forever. However, several reasons outside the scope of this paper set them at last. So, in all three cases, the emotional lexicon of Star Chamber included obvious terms such as rage and fury, which most explicitly described both outward display and the intensity of illicit action. The same was true of more implicit descriptions of great, loud, high, terrible, noisy, appropriate and violent words and deeds, as well as the menaces, threats and outcries of Ellicott and the rioters. These terms could easily be read over at first glance, but they also described the disorder and intensity of feeling an action that, in this judicial context, served to delegitimize the elections and brought them within the court's jurisdiction. According to these terms described in action, or added to these terms described in action, Ellicott's motivation was attributed to his hate and cruelty to the so-called substantial burgesses and his greedy mind to be a governor. The terms affectionate, love, and favour were also used by both sides of the free-electional riot debate to pejoratively ascribe motivation. It was you, affection, for example, was used to describe the misplaced affection of those willful inhabitants for the rioters, as well as the claim that the archbishop supporters of moral affection for me in the Commonwealth of Beverly. By contrast, invocations of peace and quiet simultaneously indicated a moderate and restrained state of mind manner of behaviour and an ideal social order demonstrating the links between the physical body and body politic. The self-described quiet and honest inhabitants stressed that Ellicott's favouring of the common above them had brought the town into raw, rude, murmur, debate, dissension and perturbation. Similarly, the archbishop claimed that the Ellicott's election was to the great inquiitation and trouble of the townspeople themselves whom he had a vexed, troubled, inquiated and put in prison after his re-election. Peace and quiet belong to a cluster of socio-political terms referring to the tranquility, good order, rule and commonwealth of Beverly, meaning that passions and affections were implicated in the discourse of common good and society as a whole. I've tried to use the word emotion as little as possible to categorise these terms as this is attempting to be a historicist study that examines the past in and through the terms and concepts used by people at the time. The Star Chamber lexicon just described includes terms that joined feeling, morality, motivation and action in ways that are largely recognisable as the modern emotion, but which also more widely included terms such as emulation, aversion and revenge, which are unlikely to be listed among emotions today. So, in terms of politics, historians such as Derek Hurst, Mark Cishlanski and Richard Cust have described, have discussed predominantly 17th century elections in terms of whether they were contested elections, representing individual voted choice and the discussion and resolution of ideological religious or political questions, or rather if they were uncontested selections, representing the top-down dominance of the gentry or urban oligarch is reflecting localised contestations of authority over authority and status. However, focusing on the 14th to the 16th centuries, Christie and Liddy has shown how civic elections were contested and integral to concepts of citizenship and identity in the late medieval urban context onwards. This paper has brought the history of emotions to bear on these studies of elections. Insights from the history of emotions allow us to understand elections in and through the terms used by early modern people themselves and to see the politicised nature of emotional language. The paper reveals that emotional language was one of the means through which politics was discussed and enacted and that the intense emotional display was a key means through which legitimacy was won or lost turning a free election into a riot. Both the actual displays of emotion and how these displays were later described and utilised were there for essential parts of the dynamics of politics and power. Thank you.