Clay Lane

Peter de Brus and his tenants agreed to work together after King John ordered a crackdown on unpaid rents.

About six years before King John reluctantly signed ‘Magna Carta’ in 1215, some of those who made him sign it had already begun enacting its principles of liberty and honest government up in Yorkshire.

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Parted from his beloved Julia, Proteus follows his friend Valentine to Milan, where he meets the bewitching Silvia.

Valentine and Proteus are the two gentlemen in question, from Verona in northern Italy. However, as Elizabeth Bennet might say, one had got all the gentlemanliness, and the other all the appearance of it...

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One of the Emperor Galerius’s most trusted generals openly defied him.

At the end of the 3rd century, Christians of the pagan Roman Empire were comparatively free: they built churches, founded schools, and established networks of charity and goodwill that the authorities both envied and feared. One Emperor sent in the army to nip the flower in the bud, but George, one of his most senior military commanders, would have no part in it.

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For centuries, northern countries from Russia to England have laid the catkins of the willow tree before Jesus as he enters Jerusalem.

Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter Day and the start of Holy Week, has been celebrated with willow branches in colder climes, including England, for centuries.

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One had natural talent but no discipline, the other had discipline but no natural talent.

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Despite setback after setback, Stanford was determined to hear his music played in public.

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford had to wait five resolute years to hear his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor played in public, a disappointment bound up with the tragedy of the ‘Lusitania’.

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