Tea at Trianon: The Rise of Edward the Confessor

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

Friday, January 19, 2024

The Rise of Edward the Confessor

From novelist Paula Lofting:

Edward, son of Æthelred, must have been one, if not the luckiest Anglo-Saxon king, to take the throne of England. He started out with his chances of succeeding his father looking very hopeful up to the age of about eight. Then his luck ran out with the coming of Danish invaders, Swegn and Cnut. His father Æthelred, chased out of England, returned only to die in the midst of the Danish invasion. With Edward’s older brother Edmund¹ on the throne in Wessex and Cnut in charge of the Danelaw, Edward’s chances of becoming king in the near future looked extremely slim, and they got even slimmer when Edmund, the courageous Ironside, died from battle wounds, or possibly murdered, leaving the kingdom to Cnut as agreed by the treaty the two men had made. As if things couldn’t get any worse, his dear mother, Emma, decided to get into a new bed with Cnut, which was followed by two more children, leaving poor old Edward and his brother, Alfred, out in the cold in Normandy. (Read more.)