211
It rankled with Henry II that Wales did not pay to him the honour she had paid to his great-grandfather, William the Conqueror.
When Henry II came to the throne in 1154, Welsh princes no longer paid England the respect they had paid to his great-grandfather, William the Conqueror. But then one of them, Cadwallader, came and begged Henry to help win back his lands from his brother Owen Gwyneth. Henry saw his chance, and at a council in Northampton in July, 1157, resolved to march on North Wales.
Posted July 22 2022
212
Charles Darwin was on hand in 1836 to witness the catastrophic effects of a series of earthquakes in Chile.
On March 4th, 1836, HMS Beagle arrived at Talcahuano Bay by the city of Concepcion in Chile. With that instinct that marks out the hero (and the scientist) Captain Robert Fitz-Roy had sailed there as soon as he felt a series of earth tremors disturb his ship, anchored at nearby Mocha. Naturalist Charles Darwin was on board, and left us his impressions of the impact of the earthquake.
Posted July 22 2022
213
Thorold Rogers looks at how Governments have tried to make trade ‘fair’, and concludes that they would have been better ensuring it was free.
To Sir Francis Bacon, writing in 1625, it was self-evident that one man’s gain is always another man’s loss — that if Paul is doing well Peter must be doing correspondingly badly. He wanted Governments to step in and even things up, but Victorian economist Thorold Rogers warned that Bacon had fallen prey to a delusion which has nursed wars and corruption, but brought no justice.
Posted July 22 2022
214
Adam Smith contrasted the Government’s handling of the national economy with the way most families handled theirs.
By 1776, the long-standing policy of favouring British producers and blocking overseas competitors had raised prices, cost jobs, and only last year driven the American colonies to revolution. Adam Smith thought it both damaging and insulting, for the humblest tailor or cobbler could have told the Government that this was no way to run a budget.
Posted July 22 2022
215
During his Welsh campaign, Henry II asked one of his allies what he thought the future of Wales would look like.
In 1157, Henry II of England opened a determined campaign to subdue Wales to the English crown. Resistance was strong: so much so that Wales was not finally subdued until 1282. According to Gerald de Barri (1146-1223), Bishop of St David’s, by 1163 Henry still felt sufficiently unsure of himself to ask one of his few Welsh allies what he thought of England’s chances.
Posted July 22 2022
216
Vige was the inseparable companion of swashbuckling Viking warlord Olaf Tryggvason, who picked him up in Ireland.
During the reign of Ethelred the Unready (r. 978-1016) the coasts of the British Isles were plagued by Viking warlords, none of whom was more trouble than Norwegian prince Olaf Tryggvason. In 988 he became a Christian and married Gyda, an Anglo-Irish heiress, but he did not settle down. Olaf and his Viking band continued to sail around the coasts, taking whatever they needed or wanted.
Posted July 16 2022