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Jonas Hock MA

PhD candidate

E-mail: j.d.a.hock@hum.leidenuniv.nl

Area(s) of interest: Early Modern History, Political History, British History

Cohort/Start PhD: 2020-2021

The Amanuensis & His Master: The Secretaries of James I, 1603-1625
Universiteit Leiden
Overarching project: FEATHERS (Fe/Males and their Scribes): Authorship and the Mediation of Voices, c. 1558-1642
Supervisor(s): Dr. N.N.W. Akkerman

My thesis is part of the Feathers project at Leiden University, investigating authorship and the relationships between patron and scribe in the 16th and 17th centuries. The secretariat of James VI / I of Scotland and England has, until now, eluded scholarly attention altogether; my thesis will comprise its first full-scale study. One aim is, to identify individual scribes and their influence, especially with regards to the appointment of new secretaries alongside the potential continuation of old secretaries, when James ascended to the English throne in 1603. Another aim is, to identify James’s personal secretaries and scribes and to investigate whether those overlap with government functionaries. As such this project will also explore the professional relationship between secretary and patron, using individual secretaries as case studies in order to analyse the king’s authorship and, together with my colleague working on the secretariat of Queen Elizabeth, create a working definition of the early modern secretary.