History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘History’
Two frantic parents implore St Nicholas’s help in rescuing their baby boy.
St Nicholas (d. 330), Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, is known as the patron of those at sea. He is not normally given the soubriquet ‘the wet’: that belongs strictly to an icon of St Nicholas, sadly lost during the Second World War, associated with a remarkable miracle from the late 11th century.
Elizabethan adventurer Sir Francis Drake combined sailing round the world with really annoying the King of Spain.
Elizabethan adventurer Sir Francis Drake was only the second man in history to circumnavigate the globe, a feat he achieved in 1580 aboard the famous ‘Golden Hinde’. His attention was not, however, concentrated exclusively on making historic discoveries.
Scandinavian tradition says that the daughter of King Harold was consort to one the great rulers of Kievan Rus’.
After Vladimir I adopted Christianity in the 10th century, the rulers of what would become Russia became prime candidates for dynastic marriage into the great royal houses of Europe. An example of particular interest to the English is the Princess Gytha, daughter of King Harold Godwinson, who married Vladimir’s great-grandson, Vladimir II Monomakh.
William Pitt the Elder doubts the wisdom of letting experts run the country.
In 1769, the colourful John Wilkes MP was repeatedly barred from taking up his seat in the Commons. William Pitt leapt to Wilkes’s defence in the Lords, not concealing his irritation that Lord Justice Mansfield had, in a speech of wit, learning and meticulous argument, completely misunderstood Pitt’s point.
Some people are not more equal than others, nor are they entitled to more life and liberty.
English philosopher John Locke is one of the most influential political thinkers in British history, whose ideas profoundly influenced the American Declaration of Independence. Here, he states his belief that freedom belongs to every man equally.