History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘History’
Nineteenth-century Britain had busy industrial cities and a prosperous middle class, but no MPs to represent them.
The Industrial Revolution changed the face of Britain. It depopulated the countryside, spawned crowded cities, and gave real economic power to an ever-growing middle class. At last, Parliament realised that it had to represent these people to Government, and the Great Reform Act was passed.
Athelstan confirmed himself as King of the English, and also reawakened a feeling that all Britain should be a united people.
The Battle of Brunanburh in 937 - location unknown — confirmed Athelstan, a grandson of Alfred the Great, as the first King of a united England. It also saw him accorded (albeit rather grudgingly) an almost imperial authority across Great Britain, and for the first time since the Romans left in 410 people began to think of Britain as a single political entity again.
Chad, the seventh-century Bishop of Mercia, seemed to be making a lot of music for one man.
After St Chad was consecrated Bishop of Mercia in 669, he took up residence in Lichfield at a monastery of his own foundation, and soon people were coming from miles around for his advice and healing prayers. He also built himself a little private chapel, and spent many hours there alone.
Nicodemus did not allow intellectual doubts to get in the way of what he knew in his heart.
Nicodemus is remembered as the man whom Jesus urged to be ‘born again’. Some scold him for his hesitation, much as they scold Thomas for his ‘doubt’; but the Byzantine churches honour both for letting love carry them through, and remember Nicodemus on the second Sunday after Easter, together with the women who brought spices to Christ’s tomb.
The Princely State of Mysore (today in Karnataka) was hailed as an example of good governance to all the world.
The Indian Kingdom of Mysore is associated with two remarkable figures, Tipu Sultan (1750-1799), ‘the Tiger of Mysore’, and Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV (1884-1940). Tipu fought the British and anyone else for nearly twenty years of unrelenting bloodshed; Krishnaraja made Mysore a world leader in industrial, artistic and social advancement.
John Milton (of ‘Paradise Lost’ fame) urged Parliament not to fall into bad old habits of censorship, whatever their fears may be.
In 1643, early in the Civil War, Parliament passed a law allowing it to censor and license pamphlets, hoping to silence critics. John Milton protested, reminding Parliament that in their campaign against Charles I’s tyranny they themselves had begotten the country’s love of free speech. Would they now take it away, like pagan fathers who slay their newborn child?