Clay Lane
Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Clay Lane’
Edward Stone wondered if the willow tree might have more in common with the Peruvian cinchona tree than just its damp habitat.
Edward Stone was a mathematician and a Fellow of the Royal Society, so when he discovered something interesting about willow bark, he thought he would write to the President and tell him about it.
The Jay Treaty can be seen as the start of the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and America.
In 1794, America had to choose between France, a new republic like herself, or Britain, whose oppressive rule she had just thrown off. America’s choice was surprising - but wise, as events quickly showed.
When Parliament sent the Army against American colonists, people still calling themselves ‘British’ had to decide very quickly what that meant to them.
Paul Revere, a Massachusetts silversmith and professional courier, was in the city of Concord when news came that Parliament had ordered the Army to move against its own people. With no time to lose, he was despatched on an errand which proved to be the spark that ignited a revolution.
In the time of King George III, Parliament forgot that its job was not to regulate the people, but to represent them.
Ever since the days of King James II, the East India Company had enjoyed a very cosy relationship with the Crown. When King George III came to the throne in 1760, many high-ranking Government officials now owed their salaries to it, and the Exchequer’s entire fiscal policy rested on it. Naturally, Parliament would do anything to protect it.
A gifted composer of classical music in the romantic tradition, admired by Stanford, Elgar, and Sullivan.
Daniel Taylor, a medical doctor who was later a coroner and magistrate in the Gambia, had a brief affair with an unmarried woman in London named Alice Martin. The result was a boy she named Samuel Coleridge Taylor, after the famous poet (it was Samuel who hyphenated it as Coleridge-Taylor).