Many of the posts on Clay Lane are by well known writers such as William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Others are by less well known authors who have something no less important to say.
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Algernon Sidney (1622-1683) was a Parliamentarian in the Civil War and a member of the republican Council of State in 1653 and 1659, but refused to serve under Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate. Pardoned by Charles II in 1677, he nonetheless kept up a vigorous opposition to Charles’s claims (the norm in Europe at the time) of absolute power, and was executed in 1683 for his supposed involvement in the Rye House Plot. Five years later, Charles’s brother James II was deposed in the Glorious Revolution, and a new Constitution brought in that echoed Sidney’s demands for limits on the powers of Government, and for government with the consent of the people. His writings subsequently became popular among radical champions of liberty and independence, and were much admired by those who framed the US Constitution in 1776.
