There are so many great history articles coming out each week that I can’t manage to share them all on Thursdays. So I’m trying out a new feature. Each Thursday I will post links to the articles I have read and shared for the week in the hopes that you all might  enjoy them as well.

In the comments let me know which ones you like best and what is your favorite newly learned ‘fact of the week’.

This week I got to post at English Historical Fiction Authors:

Vicars and curates and livings…oh my!

By Maria Grace

In the 1800’s the English laws of primogenitor, intended to preserve the integrity of large landed estates, made it a challenge for younger sons of the landed gentry to establish themselves in life. If their family did not possess an additional estate for them to inherit or they lacked some other relative to provide an inheritance, younger sons had little choice but to make their own way in the world. The question was how.

Traditional ‘learned’ professions: the church, the law and medicine had a respectable character as ‘liberal professions’ befitting gentlemen. So these, together with the armed forces formed the primary options for gentlemen’s younger sons. The church was a particularly attractive option if a family had a living they could bestow as they chose. A living meant a guaranteed income and home for the lifetime of the clergyman lucky enough to be appointed to one.

via English Historical Fiction Authors: Vicars and curates and livings…oh my!.

Other great articles that caught my eye this week:

• The rise of English farming
• 17th century Recipes
• How did Anno Domini come into being?
• Hidden historical heroines
• 19th Century French post cards of their view of the 21st Century
• Underwater Civil war iron clad near Galveston Island
• Dawn of Forensic Science
• Childbirth in early modern England
• Comparing the husbands of Sister Queens
• Have they found the bones of Richard III?