Clay Lane

Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Clay Lane’

367
St Patrick of Ireland Clay Lane

After escaping from six years as a slave in Ireland, Patrick wanted only one thing: to go back.

Patrick was born into a well-to-do family in a town somewhere in Roman Britain, perhaps about 410. But however obscure his origins may have been, he was destined to be known everywhere as the man who brought Christianity to Ireland, and in that cause he accepted anything and everything that God asked of him.

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368
Cragside: the Home of Modern Living Clay Lane

Lord Armstrong’s home was an Aladdin’s cave of Victorian technology.

Modern ‘green’ policies cost money and jobs, and blight the environment. Victorian industrialist Lord Armstrong managed to conserve the environment and yet also trial a range of emerging technologies that now bring comfort and prosperity to hundreds of millions of people.

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369
Adam and Eve Clay Lane

Adam and Eve are set in a Garden of carefree delight, but the Snake swears they are victims of a cruel deception.

Early in the 6th century BC, the leaders of Jerusalem were forced out of their land and scattered across the Near East, as a punishment for ignoring God’s laws. It was then that they wrote the story of Adam and Eve, drawing on ancient traditions to fashion a profound reflection on the ongoing story of mankind’s troubled yet hopeful relationship with his Maker.

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370
King Edwin and the Hand of Destiny Clay Lane

Forced from his throne and threatened with murder, Edwin makes a curious bargain for his deliverance.

Deprived of his throne in about 604, King Edwin of Deira and Bernicia — later known as Northumbria — fled York and went south to Mercia, only to find his usurper, brother-in-law and mortal enemy, Æthelfrith, still pursuing him to the death. But a night-time visitor gave him a new hope, and a curious sign to remember it by.

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371
Caedmon Learns to Sing Clay Lane

A shy and unmusical stable-hand suddenly began to sing wise and moving hymns.

In 657, a monastery was founded in Whitby, in the Kingdom of Northumbria. It gave employment to several labourers, including an elderly stable-hand named Caedmon who would do anything to avoid singing.

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372
Elisha and the Fiery Horsemen Clay Lane

The King of Syria goes on a mole-hunt, but Elisha does not seem to mind being his prime suspect.

Naaman, the Syrian general whom the Israelite prophet Elisha cured of leprosy, had not been long back home in Syria when his King was at war with his southern neighbour.

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