The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
On July 5th, 1535, the night before he was to be executed by order of King Henry VIII, it seemed that Sir Thomas More was the only man in the Tower of London who was happy.
So highly did Henry VIII regard Sir Thomas More (1477-1535) that he made him Chancellor in 1529, even though More took Catherine of Aragon’s part in the divorce saga. Three years later the opening moves in the Protestant Reformation drove More to resign, and in 1534 he was confined to the Tower, awaiting execution. There on July 5th, 1535, Sir Thomas Pope paid him a farewell visit.
Amid the Don Pacifico Affair, William Gladstone told Lord Palmerston that pride in his own country did not excuse bossing others about like a global schoolmaster.
In 1850, Foreign Secretary Viscount Palmerston sent the British fleet to Athens, to force the Greek Government into paying compensation to David ‘Don’ Pacifico, a British subject, for losses suffered during a riot. In a stormy session on June 25th Palmerston won over the Commons by asserting that a British subject should enjoy all the security once enjoyed by Roman citizens. William Gladstone disagreed.
When Sir Rodbert became Brother Martin, he found the change so difficult that he began to wonder if even the saints were against him.
The following story is paraphrased from The Little Book of the Wonderful Virtues of St Cuthbert, compiled by Reginald of Durham, a monk at the Benedictine Abbey in Durham in the latter half of the twelfth century. It tells of monk Martin, who in the world had been Sir Rodbert, a prosperous knight, but who found the simple life of the Abbey challenging and exasperated his tutors with his oddly sluggish wits.
Letitia Barbauld called Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel Pamela ‘a new experiment’ in English literature, and to judge by its reception it was very successful.
In November 1740, printer Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) brought out a novel of his own, a series of letters entitled Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded. He promised boldly ‘to cultivate the Principles of Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of both Sexes’, but trod a fine line and brought many a blush to the cheek of modesty before virtue was triumphant. It made him a celebrity overnight.
A few years before the Battle of Agincourt, the Duke of Orléans challenged King Henry IV to meet him in Bordeaux for a winner-takes-all joust.
In 1404, during an uneasy peace in the Hundred Years’ War, the Duke of Orléans invited King Henry IV of England to Bordeaux, then in English hands. There they were to do combat — with a few men, or single combat if Henry liked — and the winner would ransom the loser back to his people. Henry played for time, the two princes traded insults and Louis lost his temper.
A few weeks after a large French raiding party had been driven away from the Isle of Wight, another flotilla arrived from across the Channel demanding money with menaces.
Shortly before Christmas 1403, French pirates landed a thousand men on the Isle of Wight only to be scared off by irate islanders. In the New Year more ships came. Since Henry Bolingbroke (said their captains) had seen fit to depose his cousin King Richard II, and call himself Henry IV, some recompense was surely due for the humiliation of Richard’s young French wife, Isabella of Valois.