Tea at Trianon: Margaret Clement

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Margaret Clement

Stephanie Mann reports on the foster daughter of St. Thomas More, a highly educated and brave lady.

Margaret Giggs Clement, ward of St. Thomas More, died in Mechelen, Belgium on July 6, 1570. She and her husband, Dr. John Clement, lived in the Low Countries in exile from Elizabethan England. She was one of the most learned women of the Renaissance, having benefitted from the fine education Thomas More thought the girls, as well as the boys, in his household should receive. She studied Galen for example and her treatment helped More recover from a tertian fever. (Read entire article.)

Stephanie A. Mann said...: Thank you for the link--I think that both stories, of her care for the Carthusians at the end of their lives and their care for her at the end of hers are beautiful examples of love.; July 12, 2011 at 4:56:00 PM EDT