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Jochebed hides her baby son from Pharaoh’s soldiers, only for him to be discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter.
The story of Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt begins long ago, perhaps as long ago as the 13th century BC. The children of Jacob have come with Pharaoh’s blessing to Egypt to join their respected brother Joseph, but their descendants have multiplied, and later Pharaohs see them as a burden, even a threat.
Posted January 22 2018
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Abbot Elfric unpacks the meaning of the gifts of the Three Wise Men.
In Anglo-Saxon England, January 6th was named the Epiphany, referring to the showing forth of Christ’s divinity. On this day, Abbot Elfric tells us, the English Church celebrated chiefly the Baptism of Christ, but also the Wedding at Cana, and the visit of the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem.
Posted January 19 2018
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Young Thomas Arne goes to extreme lengths to conceal his musical talent from his family.
Thomas Arne (1710-1778) remains one of England’s greatest composers, though overshadowed now by his contemporary George Frideric Handel. He wrote the music for the National Anthem and ‘Rule Britannia!’ and composed dozens of popular songs and operas, but if his father had had his way, Thomas would have been a bored London attorney.
Posted January 16 2018
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James Hargreaves’s historic invention was not without its critics when it first appeared.
James Hargreaves (?1720-1778) was one of a number of eighteenth-century Lancashire inventors who transformed textile production from a cottage handicraft into a mechanised industry. His ‘Spinning Jenny’ of 1764 cleared a bottleneck in cloth production that proved the social benefits of automation and accelerated the industrial revolution.
Posted January 11 2018
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Samuel Smiles explains how Tudor England was transformed from sleepy backwater to hive of industry.
Samuel Smiles has been writing about England’s sluggish economy early in Elizabeth’s reign, with London acting as little more than a trading post for prosperous merchants in Amsterdam and Antwerp. Something needed to change the culture in England’s declining market towns.
Posted January 10 2018
978
The Pope and the King of Spain decide that the time has come to rid England of her troublesome Queen, Elizabeth I.
In 1558 Mary I of England, a Catholic married to King Philip II of Spain, died. Her crown passed to her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I, dashing the hopes of Philip and of Pope Pius V for a united Catholic Europe. When Elizabeth began helping persecuted Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands, it was the last straw.
Posted January 10 2018