Tea at Trianon: History of Magna Carta

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

Monday, August 3, 2015

History of Magna Carta

From Smithsonian:

If we had stood beside the younger, smaller Ankerwycke Yew on Monday, June 15, 1215, we would have witnessed a busier and more dangerous Runnymede. The treaty was struck on the brink of civil war. The conference that produced it was tense. Dozens of earls, barons and bishops attended, all with their own military followings. The chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall wrote that these rebels “gathered with a multitude of most famous knights, armed well at all points.” They camped in tents on one side of the meadow. On the other side stood large royal pavilions, which would have soared into the air with John’s standards depicting three lions embroidered in gold fluttering above. When the king came down to the conference he traveled, probably by barge, from his fiercely defended castle upriver at Windsor. He didn’t want to come. It was said by another chronicler that although he may have been charming during negotiations, behind the scenes “he gnashed his teeth, rolled his eyes, grabbed sticks and straws and gnawed them like a madman.” The tantrums did him no good. Although John did not know it at the time, when he agreed to put his seal to Magna Carta, he was both limiting forever the rights of kings to place themselves above the law and creating the most famous constitutional document in the English-speaking world. (Read more.)