The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
St Bede examines the connection between Passover and Easter, and shows how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ complete a pattern.
‘Easter’ is a peculiarly English name for the annual feast elsewhere called Pascha, the Greek word for Passover. As eighth-century English monk St Bede explains here, Pascha takes the Israelites’ memorial of their escape from slavery in Egypt and turns it into a memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection, by which he broke the sceptre not of one earthly king, but of the dark powers lording it over all mankind.
Harry Paulet was going about his unlawful business when he spotted a French fleet slip quietly out of Brest and into the Atlantic.
Three years into the Seven Years’ War of 1756-63, the Kingdom of France was building up pressure on Britain’s beleaguered North American colonies. Despite a bruising setback at Lagos in August, the French still had hopes of an invasion of Scotland, and by November 14th a fleet was ready to sail; but the story goes that the tides of history were turned by Harry Paulet, a cross-Channel smuggler.
Sir Walter Raleigh was within his rights to experiment with the Native American habit of smoking tobacco, but he should have told his servants first.
In 1585, Walter Raleigh led an ambitious project to found a colony at Roanoke Island in North America. The settlers returned after just one year, bringing with them a habit picked up from the Native Americans of that region: smoking tobacco leaves. His scientific adviser Thomas Harriot (?1560-1621) thought tobacco’s health benefits in our foggy isle so many that to list them ‘would require a volume by it selfe’.
When young Walter Raleigh first came to the court of Queen Elizabeth I he had little more than his wardrobe in his favour, and he wore it wisely.
Walter Raleigh was not always popular in England, as in John Aubrey’s phrase he was ‘damnable proud’, but his gracious demeanour in the weeks preceding his execution in 1618 changed that. One of the best-loved tales of Sir Walter goes back to the early 1580s, when he was still a relative unknown at court with little more than the clothes on his back — though they were all he needed.
Fiery young attorney Thomas Erskine stood up in the House of Commons to denounce a bill aiming to silence critics of the Government.
In December 1795, the Seditious Assemblies Act was passed in Westminster. Aimed at snuffing out sympathy for the French Revolution, the Act banned critics of the King, the Constitution or even Government policy from airing their views in public without prior permission. William Belsham recorded that crusading lawyer Thomas Erskine, MP for Portsmouth, had reacted angrily at this travesty of English liberties.
Unlike some of his fellows in Westminster, Scottish statesman Henry Dundas made no attempt to make himself sound more ‘English’.
Henry Dundas (1742-1811) was one of Georgian Britain’s most influential Scottish statesmen, who served officially in William Pitt’s cabinet as Home Secretary, President of the Board of Control, Secretary of State for War, and First Lord of the Admiralty, but unofficially as ‘The Uncrowned King of Scotland’. Some fellow MPs from north of the Border tried to blend in with our English ways, but not Dundas.