Katherine Aron-Beller explores the role of the Inquisition in Modena, the status of Jews in the early modern Italian duchy, and the trials of professing Jews between 1598 and 1638, the year of the Jews' enclosure in the ghetto.

During the 17th century unprecedented numbers of people left England. They were on their way to new lives in the Caribbean and the North American colonies – but what were their motivations for undertaking such a perilous transatlantic voyage? Using contemporary letters, diaries and court records, Evans tells the personal stories of men and women who left their homeland in search of a fortune, for political and religious reasons or because their desperate poverty meant they had little to lose.