English History – Page 6 – General History

Commerce in History: the slave trade

Thinking people still get hot under the collar when the subject of the trade in slaves looms. But then, more nonsense is spoken about the slave trade by otherwise intelligent and educated people than one would care to admit. For those determined only to be ‘politically correct’, the trade was perfectly simple, evil of course, and typical of the many important countries which indulged in it. It consisted (for them) of wicked whites landing on the coast of West Africa, driving inland with fire and sword, kidnapping young black people from their homelands, chaining them up, and driving them back to the waiting ships with a whip ever ready in case of complaint. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In the first place, coastal African tribesmen would have taken very badly to any kind of invasion made by white people, unless they knew exactly what the white intruders were in Africa for. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2019-01-15T18:36:33+00:00 September 1st, 2013|A History of North America, African History, British History, Dutch History, English History, French History, History of Egypt, History of Portugal, History of Turkey, South American History, Spanish History, The Arab races, World History|2 Comments

English monarchs from the Norman Line to the Windsors

The Crown of St. Edward / theguardian.com

Before a Norman Duke successfully invaded England, there had been in the Danish or Viking Line six kings including the last two, Edward the Confessor (started building Westminster Abbey) and Harold II (very much a Viking, killed at the Battle of Hastings). Then it goes as follows:-

Norman Line: William the Conquerer 1066-87 – William II known as Rufus, murdered perhaps at the order of Henry I followed by Stephen and then Henry II (first of the Plantagenet dynasty, who had four sons, three of whom were revolting for one reason or other – Richard Lionheart, John and Geoffrey who was never King. After these came Henry III (1216 – 72 fifty-six years in which he did not do much for anybody including himself but was father of Edward I who did a great deal and was one of England’s greatest kings whatever Mel Gibson says. He had a son who became Edward II who did unsuitable things with male favourites such as the Despensers, ancestors of Diana, Princess of Wales, and a Gascon knight called Piers Gaveston. All three favourites were bumped off by the Barons, as was poor Edward, murdered in Berkeley Castle at the orders of his wife and Mortimer. Then came Edward III 1327 – 77, another long reign and a great King, though he was indeed the son of Edward II. After him came twenty-two years of Richard II, who started well by extinguishing the Peasants’ Revolt, but went wrong, made himself disliked by his barons, and got murdered in 1399 just in time for the – (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-24T08:13:13+00:00 August 24th, 2013|British History, Commonwealth of Nations, English History, German History, History of the Low Countries, Scottish history, Spanish History, Today, World History|5 Comments

The International Brigade(s)

A Brigade section training; note the extreme youth of many of the volunteers / iwm.org.uk

Volunteers from countries foreign to Spain rushed from around the world to aid the republican cause during the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1938). Contrary to popular literature’s view, the Brigades were not packed full of European and American playwrights, intellectuals and novelists. Most volunteers came from the working classes. Ernest Hemingway came, but as a war correspondent. Stephen Spender and George Orwell came, but were kept as far away from the front as possible, because the propaganda value of their possible capture to the Nationalist forces would have been great. Poets W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood watched from a safe distance, as indeed they did again, this time from California, during the Second World War. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-22T11:36:13+00:00 August 22nd, 2013|British History, Dutch History, English History, French History, German History, History of Portugal, Italian History, Philosophy, Russian history, Scandinavian history, Spanish History, US History, World History|0 Comments

Protestant

Martin Luther / evangelicancalvinist.blogspot.com

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By Dean Swift| 2013-08-16T11:11:13+00:00 August 16th, 2013|British History, Church history, English History, German History, History of Rome, Philosophy, Scottish history, Today, World History|0 Comments

The Thirty Years War

The death in battle of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden / lookandlearn.com

The British were involved in this nasty episode, though only on the margins. All wars are horribly wasting, but this one could be taken as the best example. It was about religion, which hardly comes as a surprise. It is amazing that most human conflict since the death of Christ has come about because of differences of opinion and dogma, when Christ taught that all men should love each other. How humans have reacted during the centuries after His death is hardly His fault. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-12T09:03:04+00:00 August 12th, 2013|Austrian history, Church history, Czech History, Dutch History, English History, French History, German History, History of Czechoslovakia, History of the Low Countries, Spanish History, World History|0 Comments

Reflections on Bosworth Field

Richard killing Tudor’s standard bearer at Bosworth

Five hundred and twenty-eight years ago, almost to the day, the Wars of the Roses came to an end in beautiful countryside near the town of Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. A man called Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond won a great battle there, ending 331 years of rule by Plantagenets. The date of this post is Sunday, 11 August. The date of this great battle was 22 August, 1485. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-11T18:02:39+00:00 August 11th, 2013|English History, French History, World History|0 Comments

Lords Rampant: how the British nobility won’t lie down

Not very long ago Mr Blair and his henchmen decided that the Upper Chamber of Parliament, where matters of the day were discussed calmly instead of noisily and rudely, as in the Lower House, was obsolete, unnecessary, out-of-date and up for the chop. The House of Lords, as it was called, had benches packed with hereditary lords of every rank, plus many life peers (those who had earned a title but could not pass it on to heirs). The hereditary peers were, in ascending order of rank, barons, viscounts, earls, marquesses and dukes. Quite a lot of these were women, though only a few noble titles pass only in the female line. What they had in common was normally a good and ancient surname, and a tradition (how modernists hate this word) of involvement in politics, for good or bad. Some were sane and very serious; a few were insane but kept out of asylums, one assumes for the sake of the other inmates. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-11T10:57:44+00:00 August 11th, 2013|British History, English History, English Language, History of the Cinema, Philosophy, Today|0 Comments

Reginald Cardinal Pole

Reginald Pole / bbc.co.uk

Pole is one of those ancient English surnames that appear in various forms throughout the history of the British Isles. Reginald, born 1500 rose rapidly from being an ordained priest to Cardinal, and then Archbishop of Canterbury.

He could have been archbishop and/or King, as he had a strong Yorkist claim to the monarchy through his mother, who was Countess of Salisbury. It is very easy, by the way, to confuse de la Pole with Pole, as a close blood relationship exists between these two distinguished Plantagenet families. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-09T09:54:14+00:00 August 9th, 2013|British History, Church history, English History, French History, History of Rome, Spanish History|0 Comments

The National Insurance Act

Herbert Asquith in 1908 / an.wikipedia.org

Britain’s industrial revolution was in the eighteenth century, and followed into the nineteen and twentieth. She became super-powerful and rich, but apart from a handful of mine and factory owners, and those estate owners who had anything left to maintain, most workers lived in indescribably poor circumstances in Britain – worst of all in the nineteenth. Thank God for the reformers, the artist Hogarth and Charles Dickens. They showed the great industrial cities as they were – filthy, over-crowded, smelly, fog-ridden, unhygienic and socially divided.

The National Insurance Act was passed to everyone’s surprise by Asquith’s Liberal administration in 1911. It was the first Act of its kind, but it was soon to be copied by most other countries with a strong enough government to see it through, for it was revolutionary indeed. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-08T16:39:31+00:00 August 8th, 2013|British History, English History, German History, Philosophy, Today, World History|0 Comments

Prime Minister Lord Salisbury

Lord Salisbury / gatesofvienna.blogspot.com

Kind Hearts and Coronets is probably the best and blackest of the British 1950s comedies written for the screen. The film tells the story of an illegitimate boy who grows up determined to become a Duke, because his biological father is an aristocrat who refuses to help or even recognise the boy’s poor mother. And become a Duke Dennis Price does, by killing off eight members of a ducal family (all played by a spectacular Alec Guinness) who must be dispatched for him to acquire the title. Each of his victims is called ‘Gascoyne’. It is very likely that the film’s screenwriter was thinking of a certain marquesate when he wrote this name, precisely the Gascoigne-Cecils, one of whom was called Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoigne-Cecil, 3^rd Marquess of Salisbury. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-04T16:30:37+00:00 August 4th, 2013|African History, Austrian history, British History, English History, German History, History of Japan, History of the Cinema, Italian History, World History|0 Comments