Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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421

The King Who Would Not Turn His Back

When Richard I heard that the town of Verneuil in Normandy was under threat, he made a vow that few could be expected to take so literally.

On March 20th, 1194, Richard I returned to England after two years of captivity to Leopold of Austria, with whom he had quarrelled on the Crusades. Richard’s brother John, who had tried to keep him locked up as long as possible, fled to the protection of Philip II of France; but barely a month had passed before Richard quitted his capital yet again, and was on his way back to Normandy.

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

422

An Unsuitable Job for a Bishop

Richard the Lionheart told Philip, the martial Bishop of Dreux, to decide whether he was a bishop or a knight.

During the Third Crusade, Philip of Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais, spread the rumour that Richard the Lionheart had procured the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat; and after Richard was taken prisoner in Austria in 1192 he tried to make his detention as long and unpleasant as he could. In 1197, three years after his release, Richard stumbled across an opportunity for payback.

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

423

The Lessons of Empire

The British Empire’s hostile breakup with India should have taught everyone two things: money cannot buy love, and power does not command respect.

In his Memoirs (1954) the Aga Khan Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah (1877-1957) regretted the breakdown of esteem between Englishmen and Indians in the early twentieth century. Novelist W. Somerset Maugham found in this a lesson for the emerging Power of the 1950s, the United States of America: a lesson not to make the same mistake the British Empire made.

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

424

The Verdict of History

Two of the Victorian Age’s most distinguished historians locked horns over the question of whether historians should be nice.

In 1887, historian Mandell Creighton published the third volume of his monumental study of the Papacy. Fellow historian Lord Acton, a Roman Catholic troubled by the recent declaration of Papal Infallibility, criticised him for being too soft on the crimes of the Popes: the historian who easily excuses the tyrants of the past, he warned, may also hire himself out to excuse the tyrants of the present.

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Picture: By Franz Seraph von Lenbach (1836-1904), via the National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

425

The Considerate Queen

When the young Aga Khan visited London in 1898 he was presented to Queen Victoria, and found her cultural sensitivity deeply touching.

In February 1898 the Aga Khan, then twenty, left Bombay for Europe. After some days enjoying life on the French Riviera he travelled on to Paris and London, and there in the glorious and bewitching Imperial capital he was presented at Windsor Castle to Queen Victoria herself. It was an intimate affair: only himself, his friend the Duke of Connaught and the Empress, now approaching her eightieth birthday.

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Picture: By W. and D. Downey, via the National Archives of Canada and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

426

The Lord Is My Shepherd

King David expresses his trust in God in terms remembered from his years as a shepherd boy.

The Twenty-Third Psalm is one of the best-known of all Psalms, and one of the best-loved passages of Scripture. The tradition is that David, a shepherd boy who was chosen as King of all Israel late in the eleventh century BC, composed many of the Psalms, and nowhere is this tradition more plausible than in these few verses.

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Picture: © I Love Colour, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.