Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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1531

The Battle of Neville’s Cross

Ralph Neville spoiled David of Scotland’s alliance with France in the Hundred Years’ War

King David II of Scotland tried to help his ally France in the Hundred Years’ War, by knocking boldly on England’s back door. But after he stumbled across Ralph Neville’s defence force in a mist, things went from bad to worse.

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Picture: © Vivienne Smith, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

1532

The Battle of Salamis

As the Persian Empire’s grip tightened by land and sea, it fell to one man to unite Greece in a last desperate bid to break it.

The Battle of Salamis in September 480 BC was the turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars. By comparison with the small city-states of Greece, Xerxes’s highly centralised Persian empire was clumsy and backward, and the Greeks were ready to defend their superior civilisation to the death.

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Picture: © EdSITEment, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

1533

A Battle of Wills

Following an appalling atrocity in fourth-century Thessalonica, two strong and determined men refused to back down.

Theodosius I ruled the Roman Empire from 379 to 395. He was the first to adopt Christianity as the State religion, and an Orthodox believer who rejected Arianism, a heresy that Bede described as a ‘high-road of pestilence’ for every other. But Theodosius was also an absolute ruler, whose word was law, and to be a Bishop in his Imperial Church demanded a great deal of courage.

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

1534

The Battle of Ynys Mon

Suetonius Paulinus, Governor of Britain, hoped to enhance his reputation.

THE Roman Governor of Britain in AD 60 was Gaius Suetonius Paulinus. He relished the task of subduing the natives, as he hoped to surpass the reputation of Corbulo, the man who had just restored order in Armenia.

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Picture: © Hugh Chappell, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

1535

Belshazzar’s Feast

Prince Belshazzar’s disrespectful behaviour left him facing the original ‘writing on the wall’.

Belshazzar was a prince in Babylon (near what is now Baghdad, Iraq) in the 6th century BC. While his father King Nabonidus was away, Belshazzar had the government of the Empire in his father’s stead.

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1536

‘Better Habits, Not Greater Rights’

The extraordinary productivity and social mobility of the Victorian era is to the credit not of the governing class, but of the working man.

Samuel Smiles inspired millions of ordinary workers to achieve their dreams. In this passage, he urges them to rely on their own strength of character rather than on the State’s empty promises.

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Picture: From Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.