The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
William Windham MP was appalled at the idea of levying a tax on man’s best friend.
In 1796, a proposal went before Parliament to tax dogs, partly as a rebuke to rich sportsmen, and partly because it was felt that the poor were frittering away their income support on dog-food. Windham was not much bothered about the rich sportsmen, but he leapt to the defence of the poor man and his lurcher.
Businessmen in Liverpool engaged George Stephenson to build one of his new-fangled railways.
The first purpose-built freight and passenger railway line linking two cities was opened in 1830, joining the port of Liverpool with the mills around Manchester. The social and economic impact was instant, bringing more real and tangible benefit to Britain’s common man than he had ever known before.
William Wilberforce told Parliament that the more his opponents slandered him, the more he was sure he was winning.
William Wilberforce, Britain’s leading anti-slavery campaigner, was accused of ‘fanaticism’ for his refusal to accept the prevailing customs of the day. But as he warned Parliament, such jibes only made him more determined to fight on.
Conspiracies and dynastic expectations swirled around James I’s daughter from the age of nine.
When King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England in 1603, he brought his family to London, including a seven-year-old daughter named Elizabeth. Just two years later, she was the unwitting focus of a traitorous plot to assassinate her father and put England back under the dominion of Continental Europe.
It started as an honest mistake, became a diplomatic standoff, and brought down an Empire.
In 680, English bishops gathered at Hatfield sent Pope Agatho a signed copy the Creed in which they declared their belief that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father ‘and the Son’. They would have been horrified to learn that this little phrase was not in the original. Unfortunately, some at Rome had invested so much of their credibility in it that they were prepared to go to any lengths to save face — even if it meant bringing down the Empire.
Dr Watson is looking for rooms in London, and an old colleague suggests someone who might be able to help him.
Dr Watson, an army surgeon invalided out of the Royal Berkshire Regiment in the Second Afghan War (1878-1880), is looking for rooms in London. Fortunately, he runs into young Stamford, a colleague from his days at Barts, and Stamford knows someone wanting a flatmate to go halves on the rent at 221B, Baker Street.