Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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217

The Parable of the Talents

Three servants are engaged to invest their master’s money in the markets.

Jesus, now in Jerusalem, has been telling his disciples about the kingdom of heaven, perhaps better translated as ‘the reign of heaven’. He reminds them that this heavenly reign has begun and is getting wider, and that at some point in the future — he never says exactly when — God will require us to produce something to show for the errands he has sent us on, however small.

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Picture: © A. N. Mironov, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.

218

One Vast Heap of Booty

Embarrassed by the behaviour of his Norman bishops and abbots, King William I asked monk Guitmond to come over and set an example.

After seizing the English crown in 1066, William the Conqueror appointed French clergyman as bishops and abbots across England. Many were contemptuous and greedy, few spoke English and some used gendarmes to enforce their French ways. William begged Guitmond of the Abbey of St Leufroi in Normandy to set a better example, but Guitmond said the problem went deeper than that.

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Picture: © Ethan Doyle White, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.

219

Hereward the Wake

Charles Dickens tells the story of Hereward the Wake, the last Englishman to stand up to William the Conqueror.

After seizing King Harold’s crown at Hastings in 1066, William of Normandy had to face a series of challengers from among the English and their friends in Ireland and Scotland. William crushed the revolt of Harold’s sons Edmund and Godwin, visited slaughter and burning on Durham, bought off the Danes and the Earls Edwin and Morcar — and left one man to lead the rebels in a last desperate stand.

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Picture: . Source.

220

Not Worth a Shilling

Jack Curran’s career as a defender of victims of political prejudice got off to a stuttering start.

John Philpot Curran (1750-1817) was a eloquent campaigner for civil rights in Ireland, then governed from London. Small, ungainly and plagued by a stammer, Curran overcame his inhibitions and impediments by a strenuous regimen of reading aloud, behaviour changes and mental rehearsal that transformed him into a fluent speaker, a clear thinker and a persuasive advocate.

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Picture: By Anonymous, via the National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: ?Public domain.. Source.

221

Cuthbert and Sheriff John

The Sheriff of Northumberland allows wealth and power to go to his head — and his digestion.

In the 680s, St Cuthbert was Bishop of Lindisfarne, an island just off the Northumberland coast, though he lived alone on neighbouring Inner Farne. His remains were later brought to Durham, where in 1093 a large priory was begun in his honour. Reginald, a monk in the priory, recorded dozens of miracles at Cuthbert’s Durham shrine, but some still went to Farne to seek his help.

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Picture: © Andrew Curtis, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

222

The Best Laid Plans

Louis XIV picked up the reins of power in France vowing to drive the national economy in the common interest, not his own.

Louis XIV of France (r. 1643-1715) ruled France for seventy-two years, and as Victor Duruy records here, his intentions were good. He aspired to be a father to his subjects, to better their lives by skilfully-crafted legislation, to support their daily needs and to narrow the gap between rich and poor. He also records that the king’s well-meant management of other people’s lives ended as it usually does.

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Picture: Attributed to Charles Le Brun (1619–1690). Source.