Tea at Trianon: Document Signed by Robert the Bruce

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

Thursday, December 26, 2019

Document Signed by Robert the Bruce

From The Scotsman:

An original document signed 700 years ago by Robert the Bruce which granted a Scottish city powerful rights in return for its loyalty to the King of Scot is to go on show. Written in Latin, the Stocket Charter was addressed to the “burgesses and community of our burgh of Aberdeen” by Robert the Bruce on 10 December 1319 and is one of the pivotal documents in the city’s history. As a reward for its loyalty, the burgh received several grants from Robert the Bruce, including custody of the forest of Stocket. The reward of power culminated in the Stocket Charter which gave all revenues from the burgh courts, market tolls and fishing to the burgesses in perpetuity, in return for an annual payment of £213 6s 8d. (Read more.)