British History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘British History’
Robert Clive turned seven hundred frightened recruits into crack troops by sheer force of personality.
By the Spring of 1752, the power of the French in India was waning, thanks to young Robert Clive of the East India Company’s militia. Now he was utterly exhausted, and ready for home; but he reckoned he had strength and time enough to capture a couple more forts and still marry Margaret Maskelyne in Madras before his ship sailed.
After the Norman Conquest, thousands of disappointed Englishmen departed for a new life in the Byzantine world.
When William, Duke of Normandy, seized the English crown from Harold Godwinson in 1066, many Englishmen were unwilling to recognise their new Norman overlords. They turned first to friends in Scandinavia; when that failed, some set sail for Constantinople in the hope of enlisting the support of the Roman Empire.
The Cross of Christ speaks, and tells of the amazing transformation from sign of shame to sign of redemption.
‘The Dream of the Rood’ is an Anglo-Saxon poem, possibly composed by the 8th century bishop Cynewulf of Lindisfarne, in the Kingdom of Northumbria. The poet imagines what the Cross of Christ might say of that momentous Friday, when he who hung the earth upon the waters hung upon the cross.
Granville Sharp and his surgeon brother William rescued a young African man from the streets of London.
From the late 1760s, Granville Sharp (1734-1813), a Clerk in the Ordnance Office at the Tower of London, acquired a formidable reputation as an anti-slavery campaigner. By the 1800s, the mere mention of his name brought trembling slave-owners to the negotiating table. It all began quite by accident in 1767, when Granville received a letter from someone called Jonathan Strong, claiming to know him.