King Charles Ii Quotes

Elizabeth II was the best known child in the world when she was BORN. She became the greatest monarch of all times, LATER ON. She will be remembered as the most wonderful queen on the THRONE.

The prince's official job description as king will be 'defender of the faith,' which currently means the state-financed absurdity of the Anglican Church, but he has more than once said publicly that he wants to be anointed as defender of all faiths—another indication of the amazing conceit he has developed in six decades of performing the only job allowed him by the hereditary principle: that of waiting for his mother to expire.

This is what you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII. At a point in the not-too-remote future, the stout heart of Queen Elizabeth II will cease to beat. At that precise moment, her firstborn son will become head of state, head of the armed forces, and head of the Church of England. In strict constitutional terms, this ought not to matter much. The English monarchy, as has been said, reigns but does not rule. From the aesthetic point of view it will matter a bit, because the prospect of a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in royal consorts, is a distinctly lowering one.

Aurangzeb’s contemporaries included such kings as Charles II of England, Louis XIV of France, and Sultan Suleiman II of the Ottoman Empire. No one asserts that these historical figures were ‘good rulers’ under present-day norms because it makes little sense to assess the past by contemporary criteria. The aim of historical study is something else entirely.

Like a horseman who reins in a wild stallion that has borne him, will he, nill he, across several counties; or a ship's captain who, after scudding before a gale through a bad night, hoists sail, and gets underway once more, navigating through unfamiliar seas- thus Dr. Daniel Waterhouse, anno domini 1685, watching King Charles II die at Whitehall Palace.

She saw that supreme dignity - and love - lay in tolerance.

Though Charles II both craved and enjoyed female companionship till the end of his life, there is no question that by the cold, rainy autumn of 1682 his physical appetites had diminshed considerably. The Duchess of Portsmouth was, after all, more than twenty years his junior; and there comes a time in nearly every such relationship when the male partner is simply unable to fully accommodate the female partner. Or as Samuel Pepys tartly noted in his diary, "the king yawns much in council, it is thought he spends himself overmuch in the arms of Madame Louise, who far from being wearied, seems fresher than ever after sporting with the king.

People cannot help their predilections, although they may conceal them.

Taverns were not the safest place to discuss politics or religion. Everybody was armed or drunk, usually both, and proprietors sensibly discouraged heated discussions. Coffeehouses, on the other hand, encouraged political debate, which was precisely why King Charles II banned them in 1675 9 (he withdrew the ban in eleven days)... Intelligent people discussing interesting things in an intelligible manner.

Spleen Je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux, Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très vieux, Qui, de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes, S'ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d'autres bêtes. Rien ne peut l'égayer, ni gibier, ni faucon, Ni son peuple mourant en face du balcon. Du bouffon favori la grotesque ballade Ne distrait plus le front de ce cruel malade; Son lit fleurdelisé se transforme en tombeau, Et les dames d'atour, pour qui tout prince est beau, Ne savent plus trouver d'impudique toilette Pour tirer un souris de ce jeune squelette. Le savant qui lui fait de l'or n'a jamais pu De son être extirper l'élément corrompu, Et dans ces bains de sang qui des Romains nous viennent, Et dont sur leurs vieux jours les puissants se souviennent, II n'a su réchauffer ce cadavre hébété Où coule au lieu de sang l'eau verte du Léthé // I'm like the king of a rain-country, rich but sterile, young but with an old wolf's itch, one who escapes his tutor's monologues, and kills the day in boredom with his dogs; nothing cheers him, darts, tennis, falconry, his people dying by the balcony; the bawdry of the pet hermaphrodite no longer gets him through a single night; his bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb; even the ladies of the court, for whom all kings are beautiful, cannot put on shameful enough dresses for this skeleton; the scholar who makes his gold cannot invent washes to cleanse the poisoned element; even in baths of blood, Rome's legacy, our tyrants' solace in senility, he cannot warm up his shot corpse, whose food is syrup-green Lethean ooze, not blood. — Robert Lowell, from Marthiel & Jackson Matthews, eds., The Flowers of Evil (NY: New Directions, 1963)

An acrimonious dispute between Leslie and Buckingham caused the King to remark to the Lord Talbot somewhat bitterly that although he could not get Leslie's horse to stand by him against the enemy, it seemed that he could not get rid of them now, when he had a mind to it.

He was wearing a suit that appeared to have been constructed by 1) Dressing him in a blouse with twenty-foot long sleeves of the most expensive linen. 2) Bunching the sleeves up in numerous overlapping gathers on his arms. 3) Painting most of him in glue. 4) Shaking and rolling him in a bin containing thousands of black silk doilies. 5) (because king Charles II, who’d mandated a few years earlier that all courtiers wear black and white, was getting bored with it, but had not formally rescinded the order) adding dashes of color here and there primarily in the form of clusters of elaborately gathered and knotted ribbons, enough ribbon all told to stretch all the way to whatever shop in Paris where the Earl had bought all of this stuff.

James’s religion had already generated opposition before he became king. One faction in Parliament, the less radical descendants of the Roundheads, wanted to exclude him from the line of succession due to his religion. This caused Charles II’s biggest dispute with Parliament. The group that opposed James’s eventual succession became known as the Whigs, while those who supported the succession plan, the same faction once called Cavaliers, became known as the Tories.

The Restoration did not so much restore as replace. In restoring the monarchy with King Charles II, it replaced Cromwell's Commonwealth and its Puritan ethos with an almost powerless monarch whose tastes had been formed in France. It replaced the power of the monarchy with the power of a parliamentary system - which was to develop into the two parties, Whigs and Tories - with most of the executive power in the hands of the Prime Minister. Both parties benefited from a system which encouraged social stability rather than opposition. Above all, in systems of thought, the Restoration replaced the probing, exploring, risk-taking intellectual values of the Renaissance. It relied on reason and on facts rather than on speculation. So, in the decades between 1660 and 1700, the basis was set for the growth of a new kind of society. This society was Protestant (apart from the brief reign of the Catholic King James II, 1685-88), middle class, and unthreatened by any repetition of the huge and traumatic upheavals of the first part of the seventeenth century. It is symptomatic that the overthrow of James II in 1688 was called The 'Glorious' or 'Bloodless' Revolution. The 'fever in the blood' which the Renaissance had allowed was now to be contained, subject to reason, and kept under control. With only the brief outburst of Jacobin revolutionary sentiment at the time of the Romantic poets, this was to be the political context in the United Kingdom for two centuries or more. In this context, the concentration of society was on commerce, on respectability, and on institutions. The 'genius of the nation' led to the founding of the Royal Society in 1662 - 'for the improving of Natural Knowledge'. The Royal Society represents the trend towards the institutionalisation of scientific investigation and research in this period. The other highly significant institution, one which was to have considerably more importance in the future, was the Bank of England, founded in 1694.

So on 6 February 1685, the new king, James II, ascended the throne in the face of sustained and organized opposition from Shaftesbury and the Whigs. He was fifty-two years of age and in vigorous health. He had already proved himself to be determined and decisive; he had remained faithful to his Catholic beliefs despite every attempt to persuade him otherwise. He was more resolute and more trustworthy than his brother, but he lacked Charles’s geniality and perceptiveness. He seemed to have no great capacity for compromise and viewed the world about him in the simple terms of light and darkness; there was the monarchy and authority on on side, with republicanism and disorder on the other. His manner was stiff and restrained, his temper short.

Grandeur," said Pangloss, "is extremely dangerous according to the testimony of philosophers. For, in short, Eglon, King of Moab,[Pg 167] was assassinated by Ehud; Absalom was hung by his hair, and pierced with three darts; King Nadab, the son of Jeroboam, was killed by Baasa; King Ela by Zimri; Ahaziah by Jehu; Athaliah by Jehoiada; the Kings Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah, were led into captivity. You know how perished Crœsus, Astyages, Darius, Dionysius of Syracuse, Pyrrhus, Perseus, Hannibal, Jugurtha, Ariovistus, Cæsar, Pompey, Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Domitian, Richard II. of England, Edward II., Henry VI., Richard III., Mary Stuart, Charles I., the three Henrys of France, the Emperor Henry IV.! You know——" "I know also," said Candide, "that we must cultivate our garden.

The history books, which had almost completely ignored the contribution of the Negro in American history, only served to intensify the Negroes’ sense of worthlessness and to augment the anachronistic doctrine of white supremacy. All too many Negroes and whites are unaware of the fact that the first American to shed blood in the revolution which freed this country from British oppression was a black seaman named Crispus Attucks. Negroes and whites are almost totally oblivious of the fact that it was a Negro physician, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who performed the first successful operation on the heart in America. Another Negro physician, Dr. Charles Drew, was largely responsible for developing the method of separating blood plasma and storing it on a large scale, a process that saved thousands of lives in World War II and has made possible many of the important advances in postwar medicine. History books have virtually overlooked the many Negro scientists and inventors who have enriched American life. Although a few refer to George Washington Carver, whose research in agricultural products helped to revive the economy of the South when the throne of King Cotton began to totter, they ignore the contribution of Norbert Rillieux, whose invention of an evaporating pan revolutionized the process of sugar refining. How many people know that the multimillion-dollar United Shoe Machinery Company developed from the shoe-lasting machine invented in the last century by a Negro from Dutch Guiana, Jan Matzeliger; or that Granville T. Woods, an expert in electric motors, whose many patents speeded the growth and improvement of the railroads at the beginning of this century, was a Negro?

Between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution, the Stuart Kings Charles II and James II succeeded in using select militias loyal to them to suppress political dissidents, in part by disarming their opponents. Under the auspices of the 1671 Game Act, for example, the Catholic James II had ordered general disarmaments of regions home to his Protestant enemies. These experiences caused Englishmen to be extremely wary of concentrated military forces run by the state and to be jealous of their arms. They accordingly obtained an assurance from William and Mary, in the Declaration of Right (which was codified as the English Bill of Rights), that Protestants would never be disarmed: “That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.” This right has long been understood to be the predecessor to our Second Amendment. It was clearly an individual right, having nothing whatever to do with service in a militia. To be sure, it was an individual right not available to the whole population, given that it was restricted to Protestants, and like all written English rights it was held only against the Crown, not Parliament. But it was secured to them as individuals, according to “libertarian political principles,” not as members of a fighting force.

Baron, Baroness Originally, the term baron signified a person who owned land as a direct gift from the monarchy or as a descendant of a baron. Now it is an honorary title. The wife of a baron is a baroness. Duke, Duchess, Duchy, Dukedom Originally, a man could become a duke in one of two ways. He could be recognized for owning a lot of land. Or he could be a victorious military commander. Now a man can become a duke simply by being appointed by a monarch. Queen Elizabeth II appointed her husband Philip the Duke of Edinburgh and her son Charles the Duke of Wales. A duchess is the wife or widow of a duke. The territory ruled by a duke is a duchy or a dukedom. Earl, Earldom Earl is the oldest title in the English nobility. It originally signified a chieftan or leader of a tribe. Each earl is identified with a certain area called an earldom. Today the monarchy sometimes confers an earldom on a retiring prime minister. For example, former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is the Earl of Stockton. King A king is a ruling monarch. He inherits this position and retains it until he abdicates or dies. Formerly, a king was an absolute ruler. Today the role of King of England is largely symbolic. The wife of a king is a queen. Knight Originally a knight was a man who performed devoted military service. The title is not hereditary. A king or queen may award a citizen with knighthood. The criterion for the award is devoted service to the country. Lady One may use Lady to refer to the wife of a knight, baron, count, or viscount. It may also be used for the daughter of a duke, marquis, or earl. Marquis, also spelled Marquess. A marquis ranks above an earl and below a duke. Originally marquis signified military men who stood guard on the border of a territory. Now it is a hereditary title. Lord Lord is a general term denoting nobility. It may be used to address any peer (see below) except a duke. The House of Lords is the upper house of the British Parliament. It is a nonelective body with limited powers. The presiding officer for the House of Lords is the Lord Chancellor or Lord High Chancellor. Sometimes a mayor is called lord, such as the Lord Mayor of London. The term lord may also be used informally to show respect. Peer, Peerage A peer is a titled member of the British nobility who may sit in the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament. Peers are ranked in order of their importance. A duke is most important; the others follow in this order: marquis, earl, viscount, baron. A group of peers is called a peerage. Prince, Princess Princes and princesses are sons and daughters of a reigning king and queen. The first-born son of a royal family is first in line for the throne, the second born son is second in line. A princess may become a queen if there is no prince at the time of abdication or death of a king. The wife of a prince is also called a princess. Queen A queen may be the ruler of a monarchy, the wife—or widow—of a king. Viscount, Viscountess The title Viscount originally meant deputy to a count. It has been used most recently to honor British soldiers in World War II. Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery was named a viscount. The title may also be hereditary. The wife of a viscount is a viscountess. (In pronunciation the initial s is silent.) House of Windsor The British royal family has been called the House of Windsor since 1917. Before then, the royal family name was Wettin, a German name derived from Queen Victoria’s husband. In 1917, England was at war with Germany. King George V announced that the royal family name would become the House of Windsor, a name derived from Windsor Castle, a royal residence. The House of Windsor has included Kings George V, Edward VII, George VI, and Queen Elizabeth II.

During the 1660’s King Charles II married Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza. The princess introduced the habit of tea drinking to the U.K. which had earlier been introduced by China to Portuguese priests and merchants.

Machiavelli’s teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith. But it gave an immense impulse to absolutism by silencing the consciences of very religious kings, and made the good and the bad very much alike. Charles V. offered 5000 crowns for the murder of an enemy. Ferdinand I. and Ferdinand II., Henry III. and Louis XIII., each caused his most powerful subject to be treacherously despatched. Elizabeth and Mary Stuart tried to do the same to each other. The way was paved for absolute monarchy to triumph over the spirit and institutions of a better age, not by isolated acts of wickedness, but by a studied philosophy of crime and so thorough a perversion of the moral sense that the like of it had not been since the Stoics reformed the morality of paganism.

The greatest writers of the Whig party, Burke and Macaulay, constantly represented the statesmen of the Revolution as the legitimate ancestors of modern liberty. It is humiliating to trace a political lineage to Algernon Sidney, who was the paid agent of the French king; to Lord Russell, who opposed religious toleration at least as much as absolute monarchy; to Shaftesbury, who dipped his hands in the innocent blood shed by the perjury of Titus Oates; to Halifax, who insisted that the plot must be supported even if untrue; to Marlborough, who sent his comrades to perish on an expedition which he had betrayed to the French; to Locke, whose notion of liberty involves nothing more spiritual than the security of property, and is consistent with slavery and persecution; or even to Addison, who conceived that the right of voting taxes belonged to no country but his own. Defoe affirms that from the time of Charles II. to that of George I. he never knew a politician who truly held the faith of either party; and the perversity of the statesmen who led the assault against the later Stuarts threw back the cause of progress for a century.

The church of England could never become the church of England's Empire. . . The sovereign and his heir [Charles II and James], by policy if not by conviction, were religious tolerationists even more in the empire than in England. In the colonies, the royal brothers were free from the predominance of the church, and they wielded overseas an authority far less fettered than it was in England. The duke and the king therefore ordered their viceroys to tolerate all religions privately practiced and peaceably conducted. Under the later Stuarts, "Greater Britain" became truly tolerant. Great Britain did not. (p193)

Fear of Popery now reached such a peak that a sizeable section of the political nation was no longer prepared to tolerate the prospect of a Catholic king. In January 1679 Charles II dissolved Parliament, but a new one was summoned for the spring and it was clear that when it met, the King would face calls to disinherit his brother. The country became so polarised that political parties emerged, with allegiances divided between those who favoured excluding James from the throne, and those who wished to preserve intact the hereditary succession. The two groupings soon acquired names, originally intended as insults. Those hostile to the Duke of York were known as “Whigs”, short for “Whiggamore”, a term formerly applied to extremist Presbyterian rebels in Scotland. Their more traditionalist opponents were dubbed “Torries”, after the lawless Catholic bandits whom rampaged in Ireland. These labels would outlast the Exclusion Crisis, and bitter divisions along those lines would become so entrenched a feature of political life that when Anne came to the throne, the two parties became her declared “bugbears”.

The Pharaoh involved in the marriage alliance with Solomon would have been either Siamun or his son, Psusennes II.  In either case, Pharaoh Shoshenq I (Shishak) begins a different (the 22nd) dynasty altogether and would not necessarily have honored any alliances made by his predecessors (Kuhrt, 1995, 624). Putting

During World War II, Waterman (1943) highlighted this fact and proposed an interesting theory regarding the original purpose of this structure.  He suggested that the Solomonic temple was not originally a temple at all but actually a treasury building for the administration. According to this theory, it was only later in Judean history that this treasury building was converted into use as a temple. 

The dusty facts are that; Ferdinand II, the Regent of Castile, was 63 years old when he died on January 23, 1516; his wife Queen Isabella was 53 years old when she died on November 26, 1504; and Columbus had passed away almost 10 years prior on May 20, 1506. The earlier death of Isabella and the death of her children changed the normal succession of heirs, forcing Ferdinand to yield the government of Castile to Philip of Habsburg, the husband of his second daughter Joanna. The son of Joanna and her husband Philip I of Castile was Charles I, who would inherit Spain from his maternal grandparents as well as the Habsburg and Burgundian Empires of his paternal family. Thus, the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella became the most powerful ruler in Europe and by 1516 King Charles I of Spain also ruled the Netherlands. In 1519 as Charles V, he became the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, King of Germany, as well as the King of Italy.

But did this matter? No king could do everything himself: kingship was a matter of delegation, but with the king making the major decisions. Effective delegation, however, required, first, choosing competent ministers and, second, a willingness to follow their advice and to back them up when necessary.

At a time when hopelessness and despair loom over the world, Queen Elizabeth torched a candle of hope, and acceptance, helping to show us what was possible.

Faith communities will remember Queen Elizabeth, for their warm relationship with her, with a particular commitment to interfaith dialogue and harmony.

Exceptional exemplary leadership demonstrated by King Charles II during his beloved mother, Queen Elizabeth II, funeral. Long live the King.

Coffee has long been a subject of controversy for humanity. King Charles II of England, Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire, and even Henry Ford have sought to banish coffee from their empires and enterprises, while Pope Clement VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte, and President John Adams championed the beverage.

Many of the issues affecting people of color in the United Kingdom originated in the heart of the British establishment—the institution of the monarchy. It was Queen Elizabeth I who legitimized slavery in 1562 when she allowed naval commander John Hawkins to kidnap Africans in his ship’s cargo hold and sell them in the Caribbean. And, during the reign of King Charles II, the Crown financed the African slave trade by founding and maintaining the Royal African Company of England, a trading operation that shipped more enslaved African men, women, and children than any other single institution during the entire period of the transatlantic slave trade.

An astounding amount of royal history happened during the writing of Endgame. The world was introduced to King Charles III and Queen Camilla; Prince Andrew was stripped of his titles. Prince Harry released an explosive memoir and a revealing Netflix series, and, of course, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II passed away. All

These lawyers agreed to charge the alleged regicides under the ancient law of treason, which made ‘imagining’ the death of the king or his heir punishable by death. ‘Imagining’ could cover a range of acts from direct involvement in a royal death to advocating it. They then agreed to drop the requirement under common law for two witnesses to prove an action. In the forthcoming trials one witness was to be deemed sufficient.

A decision was taken to attach the terrible label ‘regicide’ to those who had been present in the High Court as Charles I’s death sentence was pronounced and from their number to select the death list of seven. Thirty-seven of these men were still alive, and the order went out to sheriffs and other law officers across the country to seize them and seize their property. The seven were deemed to be unpardonable and were wholly ‘excepted’ from the Bill of Indemnity. They could expect the full savagery of a traitor’s death – hanging, castration and disembowelment before the victim was beheaded and the trunk quartered so parts could be displayed across the land.

Twenty-eight men were on trial. If found guilty, they faced death by the grisly form of torture known as hanging, drawing and quartering. The most important of these were twenty-four who had sat as judges at the king’s trial. Most of them had played other key roles in bringing the king to trial.

The accused were to be tried under a three-hundred-year-old Act. The Treason Act of 1351 had come into being during the reign of Edward III, its purpose to define and limit the number of offences classed as treason. It sill exists today. The

After selecting and swearing in a hand-picked jury, the prosecution then lowered the bar for the amount of evidence necessary to convict. Traditionally, in a treason trial, a minimum of two witnesses was required to prove guilt. Bridgeman announced that one witness would now be sufficient.

On the day that the king was delivering his injunction to the Lords, the Prudent Mary was disembarking Edward Whalley and William Goffe in Boston. New England was as yet unaware of the reversal of fortunes in England. No one in America, including the two newcomers, yet knew of the hue and cry unleashed all over England in pursuit of the king’s judges. The two men were war heroes and stars of a revolution of which Massachusetts heartily approved, and the colony’s Puritan establishment opened its arms to them.22

The trial of the regicides was a sensation even before it opened. London talked of nothing else: a mass trial of those who only months before had ruled the land and were now accused of treason for killing the king. Thanks to meticulous preparation behind the scenes, it was to be a political show trial. Medieval law was invoked to frame watertight charges, and ancient rules of evidence were cast aside to ensure convictions. As each prisoner was brought before the court – and before a word of evidence was heard – the public hangman came and stood beside him holding a noose.

A Cavalier Parliament, watched over by the king’s brothers and his parliamentary contacts, had drawn up the list of those to be tried. Charles’s placemen had done their jobs in other ways, too; the highest lawyers in the land, all royal appointees, had designed the trials in such a way that there could only be one possible outcome. Yet

As the trial opened, most of London had thoughts of little else. The king was often otherwise engaged; he was spending increasing amounts of time with his new mistress, the very beautiful and willing Barbara Villiers, with whom he was totally infatuated. It was said that their relationship ‘did so disorder him that often he was not master of himself nor capable of minding business, which in so critical a time, required great application’.3 Hyde, a fastidious man, found Charles’s philandering a considerable irritation. He was also infuriated by the king’s general lack of attention to matters of state; but Charles’s inattentiveness and apparent laziness were traits developed over long years of exile and futility and were to prove fixed within his character.

Attainder was medieval England’s great disincentive to treason. It was seen by many as a punishment equally dire as execution. As well as condemning the individual to a traitor’s death, it condemned his bloodline to ruin by declaring all titles, property and estate held at the time of the treason forfeit to the crown. The

An extant Hittite text, dated to the reign of Mursili II, demonstrates that an Egyptian queen, probably the widow of the young king Tutankhamun, requested Suppiluliuma I to send one of his sons to Egypt for her to wed. The letter read, “While my father was down in the country of Karkamis, he dispatched Lupakkis and Tessub-zalmas to the country of Amqa. They proceeded to attack the country of Amqa and brought deportees, cattle (and) sheep home before my father. When the people of the land of Egypt heard about the attack on Amqa, they became frightened. Because, to make matters worse, their lord Bibhururiyas had just died, the Egyptian queen who had become a widow, sent and envoy to my father and wrote him as follows: ‘My husband died and I               have no son. People say that you have many sons. If you were to send me one of your sons, he might become my husband. I am loath to take a servant of mine and make him my husband.’ . . . When my father heard that, he called the great into council . . . ‘Perhaps they have a prince; they may try to deceive me and do not really want one of my sons to               (take over) the kingship,’ the Egyptian queen answered my father in a letter as follows: ‘Why do you say: ‘They may try to deceive me’? If I had a son, would I write to a foreign country in a manner which is humiliating to myself and my country?” (Pritchard 1992, 319). The letter was most unusual because although Egyptian kings quite frequently married foreign princesses, they never allowed their own princesses to marry foreigners

The first mention of the Hittites in the Bible also came during this period, which was in a context that was a far cry from the days of Suppiluliuma II. The Bible said, “And all the cities of store that Solomon had, and cities for his chariots, and cities for his horsemen, and that which Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, and in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion. And all the people that were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, which were not of the children of Israel, their children that were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel also were not able utterly to destroy, upon those did Solomon levy a tribute of bondservice to this day.” (1 Kings 9:19-21). Although

And yet erewhile, when thou wert in the ear, Even as a (golden) glittering grain, even then The fireflies came to cast on thee their light ^ And aid thy growth, because without their help Thou couldsl not grow nor beautiful become; Therefore thou dost belong unto the race Of witches or of fairies, and because The fireflies do belong unto the sun. . , , Queen of the Fireflies ! hurry apace,-Come to me now as if running a race, Bridle the horse as you hear me now sing! Bridle, O bridle the son of the king ! Come in a hurry and bring him to me! The son of the king will ere long set thee free; ' Theie is an evident association here of [he body of the firefly which much resembles a grain of wheat) wilh the latter. ' The six lines followiDg are oilen heard as 3. nursery rhyme. And because thou for ever art brilliant and fair, Under a glass I will keep thee; while there, With a lens I will study thy secrets concealed, Till all their bright mysteries are fully revealed. Yea, all the wondrous lore perplexed Of this life of our cross and of the next. Thus to all mysteries I shall attain, Yea, even to that at last of the grain; And when this at last I shall truly know. Firefly, freely I'll let thee go! When Earth's dark secrets are known to me. My blessing at last I will give to thee! Here follows the Conjuration of the Salt. Conjuration of the Salt. I do conjure thee, salt, lo! here at noon, Exactly in the middle of a stream I take my place and see the water round, Likewise the sun, and think of nothing else White here besides the water and the sun: For all my soul is turned in truth to them; I do indeed desire no other thought, I yearn to learn the very truth of truths. For I have suffered long with the desire To know my future or my coming fate. If good or evil will prevail in it. Water and sun, be gracious unto me ! Here follows the Conjuration of Cain. AMDU Scongiurasione di Caino. Tuo Caino, tu non possa aver Ne pace e ne bene fino che Dal sole' andaCe non sarai coi piedi Correndo, le mani battendo, E pregarlo per me che mi faccia sapere, II mio destino, se cattiva fosse, Allora me lo faccia cambiare, Se questa grazia mi farete, L' acqua al lo splendor del sol la guardero: E tu Caino colla tua bocca mi diiai II mio destino quale sark: Se questa grazia o Caino non mi farai, Pace e bene non avrai! The

Sir Heneage Finch opened the prosecution with a lesson on the divine right of kings and their sanctity throughout history: ‘We bring before your Lordships into judgment this day the murderers of a King. A man would think the laws of God and men had so fully secured these sacred persons that the sons of violence should never approach to hurt them. For, my Lord, the very thought of such an attempt hath ever been presented by all laws, in all ages, in all nations, as a most unpardonable treason.’ Had Isaac Dorislaus been alive he might have sought to put Sir Heneage right on a few points, chiefly by explaining that the killing of kings and tyrants had an ancient pedigree. Milton, if he had been able, might have pointed out that kings were anything but sacred. Despite his uncertain history, there was nothing shaky about Sir Heneage’s legal acumen. Homing

Ken Wharfe In 1987, Ken Wharfe was appointed a personal protection officer to Diana. In charge of the Princess’s around-the-clock security at home and abroad, in public and in private, Ken Wharfe became a close friend and loyal confidant who shared her most private moments. After Diana’s death, Inspector Wharfe was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and made a Member of the Victorian Order, a personal gift of the sovereign for his loyal service to her family. His book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. He is a regular contributor with the BBC, ITN, Sky News, NBC, CBS, and CNN, participating in numerous outside broadcasts and documentaries for BBC--Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, News 24, and GMTV. My memory of Diana is not her at an official function, dazzling with her looks and clothes and the warmth of her manner, or even of her offering comfort among the sick, the poor, and the dispossessed. What I remember best is a young woman taking a walk in a beautiful place, unrecognized, carefree, and happy. Diana increasingly craved privacy, a chance “to be normal,” to have the opportunity to do what, in her words, “ordinary people” do every day of their lives--go shopping, see friends, go on holiday, and so on--away from the formality and rituals of royal life. As someone responsible for her security, yet understanding her frustration, I was sympathetic. So when in the spring of the year in which she would finally be separated from her husband, Prince Charles, she yet again raised the suggestion of being able to take a walk by herself, I agreed that such a simple idea could be realized. Much of my childhood had been spent on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, a county in southern England approximately 120 miles from London; I remembered the wonderful sandy beaches of Studland Bay, on the approach to Poole Harbour. The idea of walking alone on miles of almost deserted sandy beach was something Diana had not even dared dream about. At this time she was receiving full twenty-four-hour protection, and it was at my discretion how many officers should be assigned to her protection. “How will you manage it, Ken? What about the backup?” she asked. I explained that this venture would require us to trust each other, and she looked at me for a moment and nodded her agreement. And so, early one morning less than a week later, we left Kensington Palace and drove to the Sandbanks ferry at Poole in an ordinary saloon car. As we gazed at the coastline from the shabby viewing deck of the vintage chain ferry, Diana’s excitement was obvious, yet not one of the other passengers recognized her. But then, no one would have expected the most photographed woman in the world to be aboard the Studland chain ferry on a sunny spring morning in May. As the ferry docked after its short journey, we climbed back into the car and then, once the ramp had been lowered, drove off in a line of cars and service trucks heading for Studland and Swanage. Diana was driving, and I asked her to stop in a sand-covered area about half a mile from the ferry landing point. We left the car and walked a short distance across a wooded bridge that spanned a reed bed to the deserted beach of Shell Bay. Her simple pleasure at being somewhere with no one, apart from me, knowing her whereabouts was touching to see. Diana looked out toward the Isle of Wight, anxious by now to set off on her walk to the Old Harry Rocks at the western extremity of Studland Bay. I gave her a personal two-way radio and a sketch map of the shoreline she could expect to see, indicating a landmark near some beach huts at the far end of the bay, a tavern or pub, called the Bankes Arms, where I would meet her.

Zandra Rhodes Zandra Rhodes is a British fashion designer who specializes in innovative textile design. Internationally recognized for her glamorous and dramatic style, she was honored by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997 and made a Commander of the British Empire. Currently in high demand by the rich and famous worldwide, Zandra designed many garments for Diana during the nineties. Princess Diana married very young. She was a perfect, unspoiled flower with a strong, generous inner spirit, which she was probably unaware of when she married Prince Charles. She was thrust unprepared into the position of future queen of England. She had to grow up and mature in front of the public eye. That public eye was hard, judgmental, and unforgiving. Her strong inner spirit guided her to do things that normally someone in her position would not do--it would have been suppressed. Diana acted in a very genuine, caring, and natural way. I was bicycling to work in London along the leafy Bayswater Road in very casual working clothes when a huge official limousine passed me. Against the rear window were two beautiful hats; the car was obviously going to Ascot. The two young girls in the car were waving at me (very enthusiastically), one with golden corn-colored hair and the other one blond. They looked exactly like Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York. I thought, “It cannot be them, they would not be so friendly, casual, and outgoing, and anyway, it’s the wrong side of Kensington Palace, and cars going to Ascot do not come along this road.” I pretended I had not seen them and carried on cycling. A few weeks later, I was fitting the Princess in Kensington Palace and she said to me, “Are you still riding your bike?” “Yes,” I replied. It was not until I left and drove my car out of the palace grounds that I realized the route took me exactly to the Bayswater Road, where I had seen the two waving girls! Princess Diana always tried to make me feel at home when I was fitting her. She would talk about the problems of being recognized: how she came out of her gym in Kensington High Street in the pouring rain and bumped into a famous actor. As he entered the street, he hunched his shoulders and put on dark glasses. Princess Diana said to him, “I hope they disguise you more than they do me!

The Lion of Albion by Stewart Stafford Bell tolls on the second age of Elizabeth, As another reign of Charles commences, The Lion of Albion monitors its domain, With the steadying mending of fences. Acceding to the throne, León Coronado, History's weight on verisimilar shoulders, As the matriarch reflects in absentia, Crown jewel of memory to beholders. Over moor, loch, valley and causeway, Rises the realm of Charles Rex III, Phoenix feathers of noblesse oblige, For the Brexit nesting of a dove bird. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

Duke of Buckingham, a sometime favorite of King Charles II and famously satirized by poet laureate John Dryden: Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong; Was everything by starts, and nothing long: But in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

The next expulsion occurred in 1322, when Philip V died. His successor, Charles IV, expelled the Jews and replaced them with the Lombards as licensed moneylenders until they were also expelled in 1330.41 In 1360, the Jews were invited to resettle in France. At the time, during the Hundred Years’ War, King John II of France was held prisoner in England. As ransom, he had to pay three million gold crowns. To help put together this enormous sum of money, Charles the Dauphin decided to recall the Jews and grant them a new charter for twenty years. On admission, each head of family had to

On 18 April, five days after the passing of the bill, he took his seat in the House of Lords, with Lord Dormer and Lord Clifford, the first Catholics to do so since the reign of Charles II. There were in fact only eight Catholic peers available – one duke, one earl and six barons – whereas 200 years earlier there had been at least twenty-two. The rest of the titles had one way or another slipped out of Catholic hands.

It is interesting to consider that beverages like coffee, chocolate and even sherbet, seemingly innocuous to us (because they are non-alcoholic) began life in England as dangerous, expensive and exciting symbols of dissidence... ---Antonia Fraser, King Charles II

Ashmole was a mathematician, a scientist, a founding member of the Royal Society, a lawyer, an astrologer and an alchemist. And, just like the legendary figure of Merlin, who acted as wizard to King Arthur, and the historical figure of the Druid who was counsellor to kings, at the height of his career Ashmole became the adviser to the court of King Charles II.

Drama was banned in England for nearly twenty years. It returned only with the return of the monarchy. In 1660 the dead king’s son, Charles II, who had been living in exile in France (where drama was plentiful), came home to England. Shortly after his own restoration to the throne, he ordered the restoration of English drama, granting warrants for the creation of new playing companies and the construction of new theaters.

But after 1660, the plays didn’t go to the monarch at court; instead, the monarch went to the plays. Charles II visited the theaters almost daily when he was in London, bringing along his entourage of courtiers. The new theaters—converted at first from old tennis courts—were small, with limited seating and high ticket prices, and so theatergoing became an increasingly aristocratic pastime. The king proposed ideas to the playwrights. He slept with the actresses. Having seen women perform onstage in France, he sanctioned their appearance on England’s public stages.

Bruce Gilley is right, that I was misleading in respect to one quotation I cited from another official, Charles Lemaire. I am sorry about that and it should be corrected. Lemaire was a more complicated case. His early diaries, which I quote elsewhere in the book, unroll a lengthy list of villages he ordered burned to the ground and a triumphant roster of death tolls: “20 natives killed” here, “around 15 blacks killed” there, and many more such boasts. But later in life, to his credit, Lemaire had deep regrets, and in fairness to him I should have referred to them.

Evelyn did more than complain. He also looked for ways to clear the air. He accepted appointment as one of London’s commissioners of sewers. And since he was interested in gardening and in trees, his inventive mind turned to moving industry out of London and perfuming the city’s precincts with flowering plants—reversing, as it were, at least locally, the transition from wood to coal. King Charles II had been restored to the throne on his thirtieth birthday, 29 May 1660,

And I may confidently say, That God's controversie with the Kings of the Earth; is for their Arbitrary and Tyrannical Government.

Born in 1635, Henry Morgan was a Welsh plantation owner and privateer, which was really the same as a pirate, only with the consent of the king who was Charles II of England, Scotland, and Ireland at the time. Little is known about Morgan’s early life or how he got to the Caribbean. He began his career as a privateer in the West Indies and there is evidence that in the 1660’s he was a member of a marauding band of raiders led by Sir Christopher Myngs . Having an engaging personality he soon became a close friend of Sir Thomas Modyford, who was the English Governor of Jamaica. Captain Henry Morgan owned and was the captain of several ships during his lifetime, but his flagship was named the “Satisfaction.” The ship was the largest of Morgan’s fleet and was involved in several profitable conflicts in the waters of the Caribbean and Central America. More recently, on August 8, 2011, near the Lajas Reef, off the coast of Panama, a large section of a wooden hull, that is believed to have been the sail ship “Satisfaction,” was found by Archaeologists from Texas State University. In 1668 Captain Morgan sailed for Lake Maracaibo in modern day Venezuela. There he raided the cities of Maracaibo and Gibraltar and taking the available gold divested the cities of their wealth before destroying a large Spanish naval squadron stationed there. In 1671 Morgan attacked Panama City during which he was arrested and dispatched to London in chains. When he got there, instead of imprisonment he was treated as a hero. Captain Morgan was knighted and in November of 1674 he returned to Jamaica to serve as the territory’s Lieutenant Governor. In 1678 he served as acting governor of Jamaica and again served as such from 1680 to 1682. During his time a governor, the Jamaican legislature passed an anti-piracy law and Morgan even assisted in the prosecution of other pirates. On August 25, 1688 he died on the island, after which he became an inspiration and somewhat of a glorified hero in both pirate stories and in the movies.

John Locke. Now Locke was destroying every trace of his associations and activities in the alleged plot against King Charles II—everything, that is, except a particular manuscript. He took it with him as he left Somerset for the coast. The remaining papers Locke sent to a friend: “What you dislike,” he wrote, “you may burn.

Not surprisingly, it didn’t take the English long to make changes; 2 days after Stuyvesant's surrender, New Amsterdam was once again blessed with a new name. This massive territory was now to be called “New York.” The now crown-owned region traced its borders around present-day New Jersey, Delaware, Vermont, and included portions of Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. The name paid homage to James II, the Duke of York and soon-to-be King of England.