The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Loyal subjects of King James II continued to fight his corner after he, and any real hope of success, had gone.
The ‘Jacobites’ were loyal to King James II (who was also James VII of Scotland), the Roman Catholic king deposed by the English Parliament in 1688. James took refuge with Louis XIV in France, who saw restoring a grateful James to the English throne as a way to gain control of the world’s most powerful navy.
No one is more dangerous than the man who thinks that it is his destiny to direct things for the common good.
The revolutionary Scottish philosopher Adam Smith did not like to hear politicians speaking of managing the national economy ‘for the common good’. Leaving ordinary people to manage their own affairs was, he said, far more beneficial to society at large, and much less of a temptation to susceptible politicians.
Queen Victoria assured her subjects that there were no second-class citizens in her eyes.
After the Indian Mutiny in 1857, some Indians were concerned that Britain intended to force them to convert to Christianity. However, Victoria reassured them that (in contrast to some Indian religions and laws) forcible conversion and ‘second-class citizen’ are both concepts alien to the British constitution.
Abdul Karim’s rapid rise in Victoria’s household made him enemies.
When Queen Victoria (r. 1837-1901) acquired a motherly affection for a lowly Indian clerk, her servants and her ministers were united in their resentment. But for a lonely widow weary of the flattery of courtiers and fascinated by the ‘jewel’ in Britain’s crown, Abdul Karim was a godsend.
The grand-daughter of Queen Victoria was as close to the poor of Moscow’s slums as she was to the Russian Tsar.
Elizabeth (1864-1918) was the grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. Her husband Sergei was Tsar Nicholas II’s uncle and the Governor-General of Moscow; her younger sister Alix was the Tsar’s wife. Steadfastly opposed to violence and the abuse of power, she dedicated her life to peace-making and charity.
King Philip V of Spain sent a second Spanish Armada against Britain, but it suffered much the same fate as the first.
The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 forbade Philip V of Spain, grandson of Louis XIV of France, to claim the French throne. But his chief minister, Italian cardinal Giulio Alberoni, egged him on, triggering the ‘War of the Quadruple Alliance’.