49
Sir Thomas Roe had some difficulty making an impression on Emperor Jehangir.
In 1615, English courtier Sir Thomas Roe was despatched to the court of the Great Mogul, Jehangir, to win his support for the East India Company in the face of Portuguese rivals. Roe presented the Emperor with various presents designed to impress him with the superior cultural advancement of the English, but he might have been better off keeping it simple.
Posted October 31 2024
50
Ivan the Terrible offered free trade to English merchants throughout his dominions.
In 1553, Edward VI gave letters into the hand of Richard Chancellor, to present to the ruler of Moscow should the Englishman’s dangerous voyage of exploration through the icy waters of the northeast passage succeed. Despite grave hardships the English won through, and following year Tsar Ivan IV (‘the Terrible’) wrote a reply — unaware that Edward was dead, and Queen Mary would be reading it.
Posted October 31 2024
51
Rudyard Kipling believed that a better appreciation of ancient Greece and Rome could help the English be less insular.
As the twentieth century progressed, more and more people asked why English schools taught Latin and Greek. Rudyard Kipling was one of those who resisted the trend. The value, he said, lay not in ‘intellectual training’, which can be acquired in other ways, but in the development of humility and respect — like playing cricket long enough to realise just how good Ranjitsinhji was.
Posted October 28 2024
52
Faced with a choice between silence, dungeon or exile, William Cobbett chose exile — and then had to make sense of it.
In March, 1817, English radical William Cobbett fled to the US, in the belief that he was about to arrested for his cheap, popular and highly critical digest of Parliamentary news, the Political Register. A few months later, he wrote back home to his supporters from his Long Island farm explaining how, as an expat, he would balance his divided loyalties.
Posted October 27 2024
53
Leigh Hunt looks back to a memorable event in a long life.
Leigh Hunt first published this delightful poem (which he labelled a Rondeau, though hardly in the technical sense of that term) in The Monthly Chronicle for November 1838. It was inspired by a impulsive greeting from Jane Welsh, wife of Thomas Carlyle.
Posted October 26 2024
54
On a money-spinning pilgrimage to Canterbury, a Pardoner says the quiet part out loud.
Pardoners, in pre-Reformation England, raised funds for the Pope by selling Indulgences, blessings that relieved sinners of some of the punishment they could expect to undergo in Purgatory after death. Naturally a Pardoner attached himself to the pilgrims walking to Canterbury, and he was refreshingly open about his profitable game.
Posted October 25 2024