The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
King James II was forced off the throne in favour of his daughter Mary, and a new English constitution was born.
James II was England’s first Roman Catholic monarch for a hundred and fifty years (if you don’t count his brother Charles II’s deathbed conversion). At any rate, Parliament was determined that he would be the last, and in 1688 they took drastic action to make sure that England did not become a vassal of the powerful and ambitious French King, Louis XIV.
After surviving a terrible storm, a crew-member on St Nicholas’s ship met with a tragic accident.
St Nicholas (d. 343), who became Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, is known as the patron of seamen, and it is a pity that a sea-faring nation such as Britain should have largely forgotten about him. Here is one of many miracles attributed to him.
Cromwell’s killjoys almost silenced the English Christmas, but thanks to a royal family tradition the message is still being proclaimed.
England lost many long-standing folk-traditions during the republican Commonwealth (1649-1660), which banned Christmas celebrations along with music, plays and dancing. Some were reinstated after the Restoration in 1660, but there was plenty of room for fresh ideas.