415
Harry Paulet was going about his unlawful business when he spotted a French fleet slip quietly out of Brest and into the Atlantic.
Three years into the Seven Years’ War of 1756-63, the Kingdom of France was building up pressure on Britain’s beleaguered North American colonies. Despite a bruising setback at Lagos in August, the French still had hopes of an invasion of Scotland, and by November 14th a fleet was ready to sail; but the story goes that the tides of history were turned by Harry Paulet, a cross-Channel smuggler.
Posted April 29 2021
416
Sir Walter Raleigh was within his rights to experiment with the Native American habit of smoking tobacco, but he should have told his servants first.
In 1585, Walter Raleigh led an ambitious project to found a colony at Roanoke Island in North America. The settlers returned after just one year, bringing with them a habit picked up from the Native Americans of that region: smoking tobacco leaves. His scientific adviser Thomas Harriot (?1560-1621) thought tobacco’s health benefits in our foggy isle so many that to list them ‘would require a volume by it selfe’.
Posted April 28 2021
417
When young Walter Raleigh first came to the court of Queen Elizabeth I he had little more than his wardrobe in his favour, and he wore it wisely.
Walter Raleigh was not always popular in England, as in John Aubrey’s phrase he was ‘damnable proud’, but his gracious demeanour in the weeks preceding his execution in 1618 changed that. One of the best-loved tales of Sir Walter goes back to the early 1580s, when he was still a relative unknown at court with little more than the clothes on his back — though they were all he needed.
Posted April 27 2021
418
Fiery young attorney Thomas Erskine stood up in the House of Commons to denounce a bill aiming to silence critics of the Government.
In December 1795, the Seditious Assemblies Act was passed in Westminster. Aimed at snuffing out sympathy for the French Revolution, the Act banned critics of the King, the Constitution or even Government policy from airing their views in public without prior permission. William Belsham recorded that crusading lawyer Thomas Erskine, MP for Portsmouth, had reacted angrily at this travesty of English liberties.
Posted April 26 2021
419
Unlike some of his fellows in Westminster, Scottish statesman Henry Dundas made no attempt to make himself sound more ‘English’.
Henry Dundas (1742-1811) was one of Georgian Britain’s most influential Scottish statesmen, who served officially in William Pitt’s cabinet as Home Secretary, President of the Board of Control, Secretary of State for War, and First Lord of the Admiralty, but unofficially as ‘The Uncrowned King of Scotland’. Some fellow MPs from north of the Border tried to blend in with our English ways, but not Dundas.
Posted April 25 2021
420
Among the oldest surviving fragments of Norse poetry are some lines of rugged common sense which any age would do well to heed.
What follows is a selection of proverbs from The Guest’s Wisdom, which Frederick York Powell traced to western Norway in the eighth century. He saw in their spirit something ‘essentially British’: a people steady and sturdy, fast in friendship and fair-minded, but a little grim, neither putting on airs, nor shirking the responsibilities of civilisation.
Posted April 24 2021