On July 5th, 1535, the night before he was to be executed by order of King
Henry VIII, it seemed that Sir Thomas More was the only man in the Tower of London who was happy.
Amid the Don Pacifico Affair, William Gladstone told Lord Palmerston that
pride in his own country did not excuse bossing others about like a global schoolmaster.
Letitia Barbauld called Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel Pamela
‘a new experiment’ in English literature, and to judge by its reception
it was very successful.
A few weeks after a large French raiding party had been driven away from
the Isle of Wight, another flotilla arrived from across the Channel demanding money with menaces.