The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Thomas Clarkson believed that Africans were being forced into slavery in the West Indies, but could he prove it to the British public?
In 1790, many people still sincerely believed that African slaves in the West Indies went there voluntarily. Thomas Clarkson did not; and when a friend told him of a sailor who had seen the kidnappings with his own eyes, he set out to get his testimony. Unfortunately, Clarkson did not know this man’s name, his ship, or even his home port.
Hild founded an abbey that poured out a stream of priests and bishops for the revitalised English Church.
Hild or Hilda was a seventh-century Northumbrian princess who at the age of thirty-three became a nun. Taught by St Aidan, she was one of the early English Church’s most respected figures and was given the care of a monastery for men and women at Hartlepool, moving to Whitby in about 657. There she trained clergy to preach the gospel and lead church services for Christians all over the kingdoms of the English.