Tea at Trianon: Pollution Levels in Medieval England

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

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Pollution Levels in Medieval England

Interesting. From Ancient Origins:

Professor Christopher Loveluck and colleagues from Nottingham University published their full findings in the journal Antiquity. This presented their analysis of the ice core sample from Colle Gnifetti showing a drop and then spike in lead smelting from AD 1169–1170, following the murder of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury in his cathedral in AD 1170. The be-header, King Henry II , was excommunicated by the pope and therefore, he commissioned the construction of several new monasteries attempting to appease the Church, projects requiring huge amounts of lead piping, roofing and for stained glass windows.

All smelted in Britain, traces of the lead pollution from this process floated across Europe and settled in an 800-year-old section of ice, which the researchers bored out of the Colle Gnifetti glacier in 2013. Dr. Loveluck wrote that in the mid-late 12th century lead pollution was at similar levels as it was in the mid 17th century and in 1890, so our notions of atmospheric pollution starting in the Industrial Revolution “are wrong.” (Read more.)