The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
After James Somerset was loaded onto a British slave-ship bound for Jamaica, Granville Sharp and other committed Christians turned to the courts for justice.
In 1769, Boston merchant Charles Stewart brought James Somerset, whom he had bought as a slave in the Massachusetts Bay colony, to England. James escaped, was recaptured and imprisoned on a slave-ship bound for Jamaica. Anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp issued a writ of Habeas Corpus and in 1772 forced Stewart and the ship’s captain in front of the Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield.
A proud British king, taken to Rome as a trophy of Empire, refused to plead for his life.
Caratacus, King of the Catuvellauni, led the British resistance to Roman invasion in the AD 40s, but he was betrayed and taken to Rome. The Emperor Claudius asked him why his life should be spared, and this was the King’s reply.
The Jay Treaty can be seen as the start of the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and America.
In 1794, America had to choose between France, a new republic like herself, or Britain, whose oppressive rule she had just thrown off. America’s choice was surprising - but wise, as events quickly showed.
When Parliament sent the Army against American colonists, people still calling themselves ‘British’ had to decide very quickly what that meant to them.
Paul Revere, a Massachusetts silversmith and professional courier, was in the city of Concord when news came that Parliament had ordered the Army to move against its own people. With no time to lose, he was despatched on an errand which proved to be the spark that ignited a revolution.
In the time of King George III, Parliament forgot that its job was not to regulate the people, but to represent them.
Ever since the days of King James II, the East India Company had enjoyed a very cosy relationship with the Crown. When King George III came to the throne in 1760, many high-ranking Government officials now owed their salaries to it, and the Exchequer’s entire fiscal policy rested on it. Naturally, Parliament would do anything to protect it.