The Copybook

Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.

535

By Charles François Jalabert (1819–1901), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Jibe and Joke Sir Richard Steele

Sir Richard Steele takes up arms against the kind of wit who thinks you can be as nasty as you like provided you make people laugh.

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536

© Herbythyme, Wikimedia Commons. Licenc e: CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Martyrdom of King Edward Roger of Wendover

After the death of King Edgar, powerful court factions struggled for power by hiding behind his two sons, twelve-year-old Edward and his younger step-brother Ethelred.

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537

© Tom Parnell, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 generic.

Dunstan’s Deliverance Roger of Wendover

In 978, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dunstan, was being battered in a stormy meeting when he — along with England’s rich monastic heritage — had a miraculous escape.

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538

© Martin Cigler, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Cuthbert’s Christmas Clay Lane

One Christmas Eve back in the twelfth century, a monk keeping midnight vigil in Lindisfarne priory watched spellbound as two great doors opened all by themselves.

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539

By James William Edmund Doyle (1822–1892), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Edgar and the Ship of Kings Florence of Worcester

Following a very grand coronation at Bath in 973, King Edgar travelled to Chester and showed his people that he had become a mighty lord indeed.

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540

From the British Library, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Short Shrift William of Malmesbury

Kenneth II, tenth-century King of Scots, once cracked a joke about Edgar, King of England, being on the short side. He very soon wished he hadn’t.

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