Hello and welcome to the inaugural episode of the Renaissance English History podcast.

I am hoping to create a regular weekly episode of all things dealing with English history, focusing on the Renaissance.

Before I get started, though, I want to give a thank you to two podcasts in particular that have

inspired me to create this series. The first is the Ancient and Medieval History podcast, which does not seem to be kept up to date

any longer after only about eight excellent episodes. The second is the History of Rome,

which is a great series, and I highly recommend it. Ancient and medieval history especially

showed me that you don't have to be a professional historian to have an informative and entertaining

podcast, which leads me to a little introduction about myself. I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,

a very historically rich area with a lot of Revolutionary War and Civil War signposts. My summer

job when I was in high school was working as a docent at the

Rockford Foundation, the Georgian home of General Edward Hand, adjutant to George Washington.

His home dates from 1794, and some of my happiest memories include giving candlelight

tours at Christmas and wandering around the grounds with my friend Darren,

both of us dressed in our docent costumes, pretending to be the children of General Hand,

and pontificating on what father might bring back for us when he came home from Philadelphia next.

After graduation, yep, I was a history major, which was coincidentally right about the time that the internet started

taking off and everyone had unlimited AOL dial-up service, I decided to learn how to build a website

and thought the perfect subject to use to learn HTML would be colonial America. That website

really took off much to my surprise and delight. It no longer exists,

but if you're really curious about it, I suggest using the Wayback Machine on the web archive at

www.archive.org and putting in the address, colonialamerica.org. I do have a copy of it on a

CD somewhere, but I'm not particularly

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