British History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘British History’
It started as an honest mistake, became a diplomatic standoff, and brought down an Empire.
In 680, English bishops gathered at Hatfield sent Pope Agatho a signed copy the Creed in which they declared their belief that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father ‘and the Son’. They would have been horrified to learn that this little phrase was not in the original. Unfortunately, some at Rome had invested so much of their credibility in it that they were prepared to go to any lengths to save face — even if it meant bringing down the Empire.
John Stuart Mill reminds us that governments and the courts must never be allowed to criminalise matters of belief or opinion.
We often see those in power trying to use the courts to silence views they find objectionable, rather than tolerate them or engage with them. But Victorian philosopher John Stuart Mill recalled that many centuries ago, such supposedly high-minded legislation resulted in one of history’s worst miscarriages of justice – the execution of Socrates.
To the poor of England, the Worcestershire man gave affordable pots and pans, and to all the world he gave the industrial revolution.
Seventeenth-century England’s industrial productivity had stalled. Her forests could no longer supply charcoal for smelting; iron was mostly imported from Russia and Sweden; fine metal kitchenware was a luxury of the rich. Government funded various barren initiatives, but Worcestershire entrepreneur Abraham Darby (1678-1717) made the breakthrough.
After Louis XIV’s grandson Philip inherited the throne of Spain, the ‘Sun King’ began to entertain dreams of Europe-wide dominion.
The War of the Spanish Succession dragged on from 1702 to 1713, as the states of Europe scrambled to prevent France acquiring control not only over Spain but over territories and trade from Italy to the Netherlands. Indeed, the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV tried to add England to his bag, which proved to be a serious mistake.
Charles Dickens believed that Britain’s Saxon invaders gained power by force of arms – but not by weapons.
Whether or not the fifth-century Saxon warlords Hengist and Horsa were historical figures (St Bede and JRR Tolkien both thought so), the Saxon invasions, and General Flavius Aetius’s failure to respond to Roman Britain’s heartbreaking appeals in the late 440s, were quite real.
Adam Smith asks employers to pay the most generous wages their finances will allow.
Adam Smith would not have liked the so-called Living Wage. ‘Law can never regulate wages properly,’ he wrote, ‘though it has often pretended to do so.’ But he did like generous wages, out of hard-headed business sense - an argument much more likely actually to raise wages than merely cost jobs.