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[tinyjo]

Things you learn while waiting for a long process to complete, number 1 in a series of, oh gosh, loads, probably.

Queen Elizabeth will surpass Queen Victoria as the UKs longest lived monarch on the shortest day this year, according to the Wikipedia article about Victoria (the article on Elizabeth confirms it).

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things you learn...

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

Gosh. What it is to live in an age of good plumbing and good medical care.

I thought of you whilst reading a little postwar history of the House of Commons, by the way. The author draws a parallel between the Long Parliament chiding Cromwell's general, Hampden, "in much the same fashion as their successors did Neville Chamberlain after his reverses just three hundred years later." (It was the use of the word 'just' which I thought you might appreciate.)

It also has part of Cromwell's dismissal speech (1653) which ends with "Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"(also used against Chamberlain, by Amery). But it has some supreme invective, and you have a fine sense of language, so here is the quotation as i have it:

"It is high Time for Me to put an End to your Sitting in this Place, which you have dishonoured by your Contempt of all Virtue, and defiled by your Practice of every Vice ... Is there a single Virtue now remaining amongst you? is there one Vice ye do not possess? Ye have no more Religion than my Horse! Gold is your God: Which among you have not bartered your Conscience for bribes? Is there a Man amongst you that has the least Care for the Good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid Prostitutes, have you not defiled this sacred Place ... by your immoral Principles and wicked Practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole Nation; You were deputed here to get Grievances redressed; Are not yourselves become the greatest Grievance? I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your Lives, to depart immediately out of this Place... ye venal slaves, begone! So take away that shining Bauble there, and lock up the Doors."

(The bauble was the Mace, which disappeared; the one in use is 'new', from 1660.)

It was Charles I's marching into the House, sitting in the Speaker's chair, and demanding that Speaker Lenthall turn over the five anti-Royalist leaders of the resistance, which led to the law that the monarch is not permitted to enter the House of Commons, and that even Black Rod has to knock three times before entering. The role of the Speaker - which is constitutionally fascinating - was defined by Lenthall when, on his knees, he replied to Charles thus: "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as this House doth direct me, whose servant I am." That seems to me to be very brave, given that Charles could have risked dragging him away and beheading him.

I kind of assume you're republican (?) - so the declaration, one week after Charles's execution, passed by the House that monarchy was "unnecessary, burdensome and dangerous" might come as a refreshing message from the past. They were keen on abolishing the Peers, as well. Funny how much modern history comes from this period, "just three hundred" (and fifty) years ago. And of course Oxford was Catholic, Romantic, and Wrong, where Cambridge was Protestant, Dull, and Right, according to 1066 and All That. Are you allowed to quote from that book for your essay?

Lindsay, M. (1957) The House of Commons. Collins, London.