289
In April 1653, Oliver Cromwell learnt that Parliament was planning to prevent him from packing the Commons with yes-men.
In the Spring of 1653, General Oliver Cromwell, England’s commander-in-chief and de facto ruler, was heaping pressure on Parliament to dissolve itself for fresh elections, and so give him an opportunity to pack the Commons with his own men. The Commons, however, guessed his mind, and on April 20th were ready to vote on a Bill of dissolution carefully designed to maintain their independence.
Posted April 19 2022
290
Shortly before Easter, an ivory box went missing from the gifts presented at the shrine of St Cuthbert.
Reginald (?-?1190) was a monk of Durham Priory where St Cuthbert, the seventh-century Bishop of Lindisfarne, lay buried behind the High Altar. Pilgrims came from all over the country with stories of the saint’s miraculous interventions, and Reginald compiled a catalogue of them, and of the miracles reported at Cuthbert’s shrine. Some he witnessed with his own eyes, such as this one.
Picture: From the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted April 15 2022
291
As the Duke of Bedford and other English captains were besieging Orleans, they received a startling letter from a seventeen-year-old girl.
From October 1428 to the following May, an English army besieged the French city of Orléans, southwest of Paris. Invoking the Treaty of Troyes, signed in 1420 on the back of the late Henry V’s victory at Agincourt, the Duke of Bedford claimed the French crown for his young nephew Henry VI, and might have won it but for a defiant teenager named Joan of Arc, who in March sent Bedford this stinging rebuke.
Picture: From ‘Les Vigiles de Charles VII’ (?1484), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted April 13 2022
292
Edmund Burke begged the clergy of England to give us all a break from the twenty-four-hour news cycle.
On November 4th, 1789, not yet five months into the French Revolution, Dr Richard Price delivered a sermon at the Presbyterian Chapel in Old Jewry entitled ‘On the Love of Our Country’, in which he called upon all patriotic Englishmen to support the French rebels as a matter of Christian duty. Writing to a French correspondent, Edmund Burke complained that it was grossly inappropriate.
Picture: © Gary Ullah, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted April 11 2022
293
Mole is enjoying the most wonderful Spring morning, skipping his chores and going for a row with Rat.
The Mole has emerged from his winter burrow one fine morning at the beginning of Spring. After scampering off carelessly, leaving spring-cleaning far behind, he finds himself for the first time in his life at the River. Mole’s expert eye falls on a small round opening near the water’s edge, and he is just thinking that it would make a nice burrow when he realises that there is a small, round face framed in it.
Picture: © Jim Barton, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted April 9 2022
294
In 1573, Sir Francis Drake had two ambitions: to revenge himself on the Spanish, and to see with his own eyes the Pacific Ocean.
In 1567, Francis Drake had been humiliated on an English expedition against Spanish possessions around the Caribbean. Five years later he returned, seeking revenge. With the help of the Cimarrons — Africans escaped from Spanish slavers, and nursing their own grievances — he planned to snatch gold bound for the Spanish Treasury at Nombre de Dios. But first, his chaplain tells us, he had a stop to make.
Picture: © Mónica J. Mora, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted April 7 2022