Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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1423

The Wars of the Roses

A struggle between rival Royal Houses begins in 1455, after questions are raised about King Henry VI’s capacity to rule.

The ‘Wars of the Roses’ was coined by Sir Walter Scott as a romantic name for an off-and-on struggle for the English crown between 1455 and 1485. The rivals were the ‘white rose’ Dukes of York and the ‘red rose’ Dukes of Lancaster, and both traced their right to the crown to the sons of King Edward III.

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Picture: By Henry Arthur Payne (1868-1940), Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

1424

Elisha and Naaman the Syrian

Naaman had very fixed ideas about what it takes to get a miracle.

Joram was King of Israel (i.e. the ten northern tribes) in the middle of the ninth century BC.

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Picture: © Jim Gordon, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

1425

Noah’s Flood

God’s love proved to be bigger and stronger than all man’s wickedness.

In the 6th century BC, Jerusalem was captured by the Babylonians, and her nobility were deported to Babylon. In their exile, they studied their oppressor’s heathen mythology of a great flood, and turned it quite brilliantly into an allegory of Israel’s sins, the ‘flood’ of invasion, and their own Noah-like role in keeping Judaism alive until God restored Israel to her land.

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

1426

St Wilfrid’s Debt

The Blessed Virgin Mary adds four years to the life of Bishop Wilfrid, and an angel suggests a suitable thank-you.

Wilfrid, bishop of Hexham, visited Rome in 703-704, to resolve an ongoing dispute with the King of Northumbria. On his way back, he fell ill.

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Picture: © Cocowiki28, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.. Source.

1427

The Siege of Troy

Paris, prince of Troy, takes the not unwilling Queen of Sparta back home with him, and sparks ten years of diplomatic tension and ten of war.

The Siege of Troy is the heart of two of the greatest works of classical literature, Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid. The details, especially the squabbles, sulks and strategems of the gods, are pure myth of course, but the strife between the Greeks of Achaia and the city of Troy may be rooted in fact; if so, a date around 1200-1180 BC is possible — just after the Exodus, in fact.

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Picture: © Jastrow, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

1428

Silver Swan

Mark Twain’s attention was drawn off people-watching for a moment by an extraordinarily lifelike machine.

At the World’s Fair in Paris in 1867, American novelist Mark Twain saw a remarkable ‘automaton’, a silver swan that seemed for all the world like a living thing. But the incorrigible people-watcher could not keep his attention fixed even on that.

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Picture: © Alden Chadwick, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.. Source.