Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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793

The Assassination of Thomas Becket

Four knights thought they were helping their King, but they could not have made a greater mistake.

Henry II (r. 1154-1189) appointed his friend Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury, thinking he would always do as he was told. But Becket proved very independent-minded, and even had to flee to France to escape his King’s anger.

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Picture: From Wikimedia Commons.. Source.

794

Abel Tasman in New Zealand

The Dutch explorer ran across two islands in the Pacific of which Europeans knew nothing, but his chief desire was to get past them.

New Zealand came under British control with the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840; James Cook had charted its coasts in the 1770s, but Dutch explorer Abel Tasman had set the first European eyes on the islands, over a century before. As William Reeves notes, however, he was interested only in getting past them.

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Picture: © Krzysztof Golik, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.

795

The Flight of the Beasts

A dozy rabbit gets an idea into his head and soon all the animals of India are running for their lives.

The following tale from the fourth-century BC Jataka Tales was told to illustrate how Hindu ascetics blindly copied one another’s eye-catching but useless mortifications; but it might just as well be applied to stock-market rumours or ‘project fear’ politics.

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Picture: © Gayatree Tripathy, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.

796

Angels and Men Agree

The birth of Jesus Christ fundamentally changed the relationship between mankind and the angels.

Elfric of Eynsham reminds us that when God’s Son took flesh and was born from the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, he conferred an honour on all human bodies and indeed all creation. After the Nativity, even the angels changed their dealings with us, out of respect for what happened on that night in the inn.

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Picture: The Yorck Project, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

797

Mistris Park

Several English pianists impressed Joseph Haydn on his visits to London, but Maria Hester Park was a particular favourite.

What sort of piano music should we imagine Elizabeth Bennet playing in the drawing rooms of Longbourn and Meryton? The only name dropped in Jane Austen’s novels is John Baptist Cramer, but we do know of other widely published composers of the day; several were women, and one of the most celebrated was Maria Hester Park, née Reynolds.

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Picture: © Geolina163, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.

798

An Appeal to Philip Sober

A woman convicted of a crime she did not commit took her case to a higher power.

Like his famous son Alexander the Great, Philip II, King of Macedon (r. 359-336 BC) was a Philhellene who aspired to the manners and language of the cultivated Greeks; but there remained a barbarian side to Philip which showed in his seven wives and his bouts of drinking.

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Picture: © Nikolai Karaneschev, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.