265
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.
Posted April 9 2022
266
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.
Posted April 7 2022
267
William Dampier describes the hand-to-mouth existence of the aborigines of northwest Australia, and reveals a people far advanced in charity.
From January 5th to March 12th 1688, Englishman William Dampier, on the first of his record-breaking three circumnavigations of the globe, explored the northwest coast of Australia (or as he knew it, New Holland) aboard the ‘Cygnet’. He declared the natives ‘the miserablest people in the world’, but testified to their remarkable unselfishness.
Posted April 4 2022
268
Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow, finally stood up to the Great Horde and their opportunistic Western allies.
Back in 1238-1240, Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, had swept across Rus’ with his Tartar ‘Golden Horde’, laying waste to Kiev and forcing other cities to pay tribute. For years the extortion went on, while neighbouring Poland and Lithuania either sided with the Horde or threatened a conquest of their own. In 1480 Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow, decided enough was enough.
Posted April 3 2022
269
By the Great Charter of 1215, King John promised that his ministers would not meddle in the Church or stuff his Treasury with taxes on trade.
The Great Charter of England was signed under duress by King John (r. 1199-1216) at Runnymede in June 1215. It has inspired critics of Government overreach ever since, and the Provisions of Oxford (1258), the Petition of Right (1628) and the US Declaration of Independence (1776) owe much to it. Below is a selection of provisions that speak to every generation.
Posted April 2 2022
270
Edmund Burke urged Englishmen not to congratulate the French revolutionaries on their new-found liberty until they knew what they would do with it.
In 1789, the French Parliament relieved King Louis XVI of his constitutional privileges, and amidst chaotic scenes proclaimed that henceforth ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ would define their Government. Some believed that France was becoming more like England, and that Louis would be retained to add, like England’s George III, regal pomp to a liberal democracy. Edmund Burke wasn’t convinced.
Posted March 31 2022