Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall’
In The Copybook
Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall’
In The Copybook
William the Conqueror’s chaplain used to tell this story to those who doubted his master’s claim to the English crown.
In 1063, against the advice of King Edward the Confessor, Harold, son of Earl Godwin, crossed the Channel to Normandy. There, young Duke William welcomed him with a degree of warmth that was faintly troubling. William made of Harold his especial friend, and shared with him his ambition to be named Edward’s heir. Would Harold help him? William asked, and Harold mumbled something vague.
As Rome’s grip on Gaul tightened, one man still dared to defy them.
In 55 BC, the Roman general Julius Caesar paid a brief and not altogether satisfying visit to Britain, and on his return to Gaul found everything in uproar there too. Slowly he restored order, but in 52 he was confronted with an especially stubborn rebel whom he named simply Vercingetorix, ‘the Commander’. That September, however, Caesar had the Gauls pinned down in Alesia, now Alise-Sainte-Reine.
The British Empire may be said to have started when Elizabethan importers got into a fight with the Dutch over the price of pepper.
The English were more interested in war than trade in the days of Henry VIII, but in the reigns of Henry’s daughters Mary I (1553-1558) and Elizabeth I (1558-1603) English mariners began to imitate their Continental neighbours and reach out to the Far East. This did not greatly please their neighbours, who resented the competition.
The Sultan of Aceh in northern Sumatra welcomed his guests from Christian England with an unexpected gesture of friendship.
In 1601, Sir James Lancaster set out in four ships for India and the Far East, seeking trading partners for England on behalf Queen Elizabeth I and the newly-formed East India Company. He visited the Kingdom of Achin (Aceh) in the north of Sumatra the following year, where the Sultan was graciously pleased to receive this emissary from a backward, cold and infidel land far, far away.