TODAY IN HISTORY

5th March 1850 - the Britannia Bridge, connecting the North Wales mainland with the island of Anglesey, over the Menai Strait, is opened. The bridge was destroyed by a fire in 1970 and had to be re-built. The bridge was built because, when Ireland became a part of Britain in 1801, many people used the island of Anglesey to travel across the Irish Sea to Ireland whenever they needed to go there.
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The original Britannia Bridge.


There are several bridges connecting the North West Wales mainland with the isle of Anglesey over the Menai Strait.

The completion of the Menai Bridge was a boon in easing the journey to the island, particularly for travel to Ireland. However, the rapid rise of rail travel later in the 19th century meant that there was soon a need for trains to cross the Strait. When plans were first being made to build a railway to Holyhead it was proposed that the carriages be taken over the Menai Bridge; the carriages would be uncoupled from the locomotive at one end, then drawn across one by one, using horses, to a waiting locomotive at the other end.

This idea was abandoned and plans were drawn up for a new bridge by Robert Stephenson, son of the locomotive pioneer George Stephenson. He faced the challenge of building a bridge rigid and strong enough to carry a heavy train of many carriages. This was done by making the bridge out of two long iron tubes, rectangular in shape, through which the trains would travel.

When first conceived, the tubular bridge was to have been suspended from cables strung through the openings at the tops of the towers. However, after engineering calculations and tests of the finished tubes it was decided that they were strong enough by themselves to carry the trains.

Like the Menai Bridge, the stonework of the Britannia Bridge was constructed of limestone from Penmon, although sandstone from various places was used internally. The tubes themselves were constructed on the banks of the Strait.

Stephenson faced a much greater challenge in raising the 1,500 ton finished tubes than had Telford with his much lighter chains. He too would float the tube into position. However, the process didn't go as smoothly with the first tube as with the Menai Bridge chains and the giant tube came close to being swept out to sea. Fortune prevailed and it did finally end up in place. Then, very slowly, using hydraulic pumps, the tube was raised into position. Stonework was built up under the ends of the tube as it was lifted; this was to support it if the lifting equipment failed. This was fortunate because one pump did indeed fail, but the tube only fell nine inches.

With the tubes in place the final touches were added. These are the four magnificent limestone lions that guard the entrances to the bridge. They were carved by John Thomas, who had also done stone carving for the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace in London. The lions are almost 4 metres high and sit on plinths of equal height. The bridge was opened on 5 March 1850.

The present day bridge has a much different appearance than the original. This is because it has been reconstructed after a disastrous fire in 1970. A group of teenagers looking for bats in the dark tubes accidentally dropped the burning paper they were using as a torch. This eventually started a ferocious fire through the whole tubular structure that caused so much damage to the tubes that they were in danger of falling into the strait.

wikipedia.org

Also on this day -

1625 - Charles I becomes king.
1918 - Moscow becomes the new capital city of Russia
1936 - First Spitfire is flown
1946 - Winston Churchill uses the term 'Iron Curtain' in a speech

MICHELANGELO BORN:
March 6, 1475

Michelangelo Buonarroti, the greatest of the Italian Renaissance artists, is born in the small village of Caprese on March 6, 1475. The son of a government administrator, he grew up in Florence, a center of the early Renaissance movement, and became an artist's apprentice at age 13. Demonstrating obvious talent, he was taken under the wing of Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of the Florentine republic and a great patron of the arts. For two years beginning in 1490, he lived in the Medici palace, where he was a student of the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni and studied the Medici art collection, which included ancient Roman statuary.

With the expulsion of the Medici family from Florence in 1494, Michelangelo traveled to Bologna and Rome, where he was commissioned to do several works. His most important early work was the Pietý (149, a sculpture based on a traditional type of devotional image that showed the body of Christ in the lap of the Virgin Mary. Demonstrating masterful technical skill, he extracted the two perfectly balanced figures of the Pietý from a single block of marble.

With the success of the Pietý, the artist was commissioned to sculpt a monumental statue of the biblical character David for the Florence cathedral. The 17-foot statue, produced in the classical style, demonstrates the artist's exhaustive knowledge of human anatomy and form. In the work, David is shown watching the approach of his foe Goliath, with every muscle tensed and a pose suggesting impending movement. Upon the completion of David in 1504, Michelangelo's reputation was firmly established.

That year, he agreed to paint a mural for the Florence city hall to rest alongside one being painted by Leonardo da Vinci, another leading Renaissance artist and an influence on Michelangelo. These murals, which depicted military scenes, have not survived. In 1505, he began work on a planned group of 12 marble apostles for the Florence cathedral but abandoned the project when he was commissioned to design and sculpt a massive tomb for Pope Julius II in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. There were to have been 40 sculptures made for the tomb, but the pope soon ran out of funds for the project, and Michelangelo left Rome.

In 1508, he was called back to Rome to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel--the chief consecrated space in the Vatican. Michelangelo's epic ceiling frescoes, which took several years to complete, are among his most memorable works. Central in a complex system of decoration featuring numerous figures are nine panels devoted to biblical world history. The most famous of these is The Creation of Adam, a painting in which the arms of God and Adam are outstretched toward each other.

In 1512, Michelangelo completed the Sistine Chapel ceiling and returned to his work on Pope Julius II's tomb. He eventually completed a total of just three statues for the tomb, which was eventually placed in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli. The most notable of the three is Moses (1513-15), a majestic statue made from a block of marble regarded as unmalleable by other sculptors. In Moses, as in David, Michelangelo infused the stone with a powerful sense of tension and movement.

Having revolutionized European sculpture and painting, Michelangelo turned to architecture in the latter half of his life. His first major architectural achievement was the Medici chapel in the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, built to house the tombs of the two young Medici family heirs who had recently died. The chapel, which he worked on until 1534, featured many innovative architectural forms based on classical models. The Laurentian Library, which he built as an annex to the same church, is notable for its stair-hall, known as the ricetto, which is regarded as the first instance of mannerism as an architectural style. Mannerism, a successor to the Renaissance artistic movement, subverted harmonious classical forms in favor of expressiveness.

In 1534, Michelangelo left Florence for the last time and traveled to Rome, where he would work and live for the rest of his life. That year saw his painting of the The Last Judgment on a wall above the altar in the Sistine Chapel for Pope Paul III. The massive painting depicts Christ's damnation of sinners and blessing of the virtuous, and is regarded as a masterpiece of early mannerism. During the last three decades of his life, Michelangelo lent his talents to the design of numerous monuments and buildings for Rome, which the pope and city leaders were determined to restore to the grandeur of its ancient past. The Capitoline Square and the dome of St. Peter's, designed by Michelangelo but not completed in his lifetime, remain two of Rome's most famous visual landmarks.

Michelangelo worked until his death in 1564 at the age of 88. In addition to his major artistic works, he produced numerous other sculptures, frescoes, architectural designs, and drawings, many of which are unfinished and some of which are lost. He was also an accomplished poet, and some 300 of his poems are preserved. In his lifetime, he was celebrated as Europe's greatest living artist, and today he is held up as one of the greatest artists of all time, as exalted in the visual arts as William Shakespeare is in literature or Ludwig van Beethoven is in music.

This computer is annoying me.

6th March 1857 - the Indian Mutiny against the British begins.


Execution by British cannon of Indian soldiers who participated in the Indian rebellion of 1857


Secundra Bagh in 1857 after the slaughter of 2,000 Rebels by the 93rd Highlanders and 4th Punjab Regiment



By the middle of the nineteenth century, the British Empire was the largest and richest empire in the world. This naturally gave rise to the belief that the British themselves were the chosen race chosen to bring the benefits of western civilization to the backward areas of the world. This white supremacy was enforced in Britain's colonies, especially India, and naturally, native opposition was frequent. But most were unsuccessful due to the superior technology and organization of the British army.

In 1857, the Indian Mutiny broke out and with it, the British colonial administration fought its greatest imperial war. Thanks to the efficiency of British media coverage, the development of the mutiny was followed avidly by the British public. The British saw the India Mutiny as a fight against "barbarians who were rejecting the benefits of civilization" but as the suppression developed, the atrocities committed by both sides became obvious. The British armies swept across northern India in an enraged and cruel rampage of rape, murder and savagery, which shocked Victorian society.

The Indian Mutiny was even called the 'epic of the Race' by historian Sir Charles Crostwaithe and though in the modern context, this sounds ridiculous but it was nothing more than an illustration of Victorian British confidence and arrogance.

The Background, 1857
British presence in India stretched all the way from the seventeenth century when the East India Company, EIC, acquired its first territory in Bombay to 1947 when India and Pakistan were granted self rule. Over the years the EIC expanded by both direct (force) and indirect (economic) means eventually, chasing the French out (after the War of Plassey, 1757) and dominating the whole of the Indian sub-continent.

British rule in India rested on its military might and as long as the British army in India was invincible, British rule was assured. This of course depended on the Indian army, which consisted of Indian troops under British officers.

British rule inevitable brought western influences into India. The spread of Christianity was to cause great unease among the Indians. Evangelical Christian missionaries had little understanding and respect for India's ancient faiths, and their efforts to convert many natives brought clashes with the local religious establishments. As the missionaries were often British citizens, the Colonial administration often had to intervene to protect them, which naturally gave an impression of official support for Christianity.

Against this backdrop of uneasiness the mutiny erupted in 1857. But the spark was interestingly not so much of religious clashes, but the grease used in the new Enfield rifle. The cartridge of the Enfield rifle was heavily greased -- with animal fat, to facilitate easier loading into the muzzle. Rumors began to circular among Sepoys that the grease was a mixture of cow (sacred to Hindus) and pig (abhorrent to Moslems) fat. As such, biting such a cartridge would break the caste of the Hindu sepoys and defile the Moslems. Their British officers realized their mistake and changed the grease to beeswax or vegetable oils, but in the atmosphere of distrust, the mutiny seemed inevitable.

Meerut
Meerut witnessed the first serious outbreak of the Indian Mutiny when angry sepoys broke open the town jail and released their comrades, who had refused to bite the new cartridges. Accompanied by a mob from the bazaar, the mutineers then poured into the European settlement and slaughtered any Europeans or Indian Christians there. Whole families, men, women, children and servants, were killed on sight. The cantonment was then burned, and the mutineers fled to Delhi and proclaimed Bahadur Shah, the last of the Moguls emperor.

This, the mutineers had hoped to create a general rising against the British, and they turned to Bahadur Shah to lead them. Forced to cooperate, Bahadur Shah accepted the allegiance of the mutineers and became the titular leader of the Indian Mutiny. Most of the Europeans living in Delhi were murdered along with Indian Christians.

The massacre at Meerut provoked a strong British respond. In mid-August, British forces, reinforced by Gurkhas from Nepal and the Queen's regiments fresh from the Crimea War began a bloody campaign to re-establish British rule in India. After a siege, Delhi fell to the British. The Emperor's three sons, Mizra Moghul, Mizra Khizr Sultan and Mizra Abu Bakr along with the mutineers were executed.

The Aftermath
By the first six months of 1858, the British managed to regain their losses in spite of heavy resistance from the rebels. With the relief of Lucknow, the possibility of British defeat became remote. The British saw themselves as dispensors of divine justice, and given the initial atrocities committed by the mutineers, their cruelties were simply repayment in kind. Every mutineer was a "black-faced, blood-crazed savage" which do not deserve mercy from the British troops. Their fellow countrymen derided some British like the Governor Lord Canning, who spoke of restraint as "weak" and "indifferent to the sufferings of British subjects". In fact, Canning became known contemptuously as 'clemency Canning'.

After the British recovery, few sepoys survived as the British soldiers bayoneted any who survived the battle. Whole villages were hanged for some real or imagined sympathy for the mutineers, and the widespread looting of Indian property, religious or secular, was common and endorsed. Later, convicted mutineers were lashed to the muzzles of cannon and had a roundshot fired through their body. It was a cruel punishment intended to blow the body to pieces, thus depriving the victim of any hope of entering paradise. Indians called this punishment "the devil's wind".

Apart from the fury of the British, another significant impact for India was the abolishment of the EIC. The British Parliament finally realized that it was inappropriate for a private company like the EIC to exercise such enormous powers and control a land the size of India. In 1858, the East India Company was dissolved, despite a valiant defense of its purported achievements by John Stuart Mill, and the administration of India became the responsibility of the Crown. Direct rule on India was exercised through the India Office, a British department of state and till 1947, India became known as the Raj, the Crown Jewel of Queen Victoria's extensive empire.

victorianweb.org

8th March 1702 - Queen Anne took to the Throne of England. She ruled until 1714. Her father, James II, was the last Stuart King, and she was the last Stuart monarch, male or female.
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Anne, born in 1665, was the second daughter of James II (the last Stuart King of England who fled the country because he was a Catholic thus causing the Jacobite Uprisings) and Anne Hyde. She played no part in her father's reign, but sided with her sister and brother-in-law (Mary II and William III) during the Glorious Revolution. She married George, Prince of Denmark, but the pair failed to produce a surviving heir. She died at 49 years of age, after a lifelong battle with the blood disease porphyria.

The untimely death of William III nullified, in effect, the Settlement Act of 1701: Anne was James' daughter through his Protestant marriage, and therefore, presented no conflict with the act. Anne refrained from politically antagonizing Parliament, but was compelled to attend most Cabinet meetings to keep her half-brother, James the Old Pretender, under heel. Anne was the last sovereign to veto an act of Parliament, as well as the final Stuart monarch. The most significant constitutional act in her reign was the Act of Union in 1707, which created Great Britain by finally fully uniting England and Scotland (Ireland joined the Union in 1801).

The Stuart trait of relying on favorites was as pronounced in Anne's reign as it had been in James I's reign. Anne's closest confidant was Sarah Churchill, who exerted great influence over the king. Sarah's husband was the Duke of Marlborough, who masterly led the English to several victories in the War of Spanish Succession. Anne and Sarah were virtually inseparable: no king's mistress had ever wielded the power granted to the duchess, but Sarah became too confident in her position. She developed an overbearing demeanor towards Anne, and berated the Queen in public. In the meantime, Tory leaders had planted one Abigail Hill in the royal household to capture Anne's need for sympathy and affection. As Anne increasingly turned to Abigail, the question of succession rose again, pitting the Queen and the Marlborough against each other in a heated debate. The relationship of Anne and the Churchill's fell asunder. Marlborough, despite his war record, was dismissed from public service and Sarah was shunned in favor of Abigail.

Many of the internal conflicts in English society were simply the birth pains of the two-party system of government. The Whig and Tory Parties, fully enfranchised by the last years of Anne's reign, fought for control of Parliament and influence over the Queen. Anne was torn personally as well as politically by the succession question: her Stuart upbringing compelled her to choose as heir her half-brother, the Old Pretender and favorite of the Tories, but she had already elected to side with Whigs when supporting Mary and William over James II. In the end, Anne abided by the Act of Settlement, and the Whigs paved the way for the succession of their candidate, George of Hanover.

Anne's reign may be considered successful, but somewhat lackluster in comparison to the rest of the Stuart line. 1066 and All That, describes her with its usual tongue-in-cheek manner: "Finally the Orange... was succeeded by the memorable dead queen, Anne. Queen Anne was considered rather a remarkable woman and hence was usually referred to as Great Anna, or Annus Mirabilis. The Queen had many favourites (all women), the most memorable of whom were Sarah Jenkins and Mrs Smashems, who were the first wig and the first Tory... the Whigs being the first to realize that the Queen had been dead all the time chose George I as King."

britannia.com

Also on this day -

1790 - the French government votes to CONTINUE slave trading in her African colonies.

1801 British drive French forces from Abukir, Egypt

1813 1st concerto of Royal Philharmonic

1838 US mint in New Orleans begins operation (producing dimes)

9th March 1566 - David Rizzio, secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, was murdered. He was allegedly stabbed 57 times.
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David Rizzio or David Riccio (approx. 1533 - 9 March 1566) was an Italian courtier and the private secretary of Mary I of Scotland. Mary's husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, is said to have been jealous of their friendship, and joined in a conspiracy of Protestant nobles to murder him.

Rizzio had arrived at the Scottish court in 1561, one of the staff of the ambassador from Savoy. He was handsome (see the detail of his portrait, possibly an unfinished miniature), and a good musician. Towards the end of 1564, he became the Queen's secretary for relations with France. Ambitious, seeing himself as all but a Secretary of State, a Roman Catholic, and a foreigner to boot, Rizzio had too much of the Queen's ear, it was felt. Jealousy precipitated his murder in the Queen's presence, in her supper chamber at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. He was stabbed an alleged 57 times.

Rizzio's murder was only one incident in the larger campaign by Scottish nobles to contain and control the Queen. However, the fact that he was murdered in Mary's presence, when she was heavily pregnant, aged 23, made it a particularly shocking event.

Rizzio is buried at Canongate Kirkyard, Edinburgh.

wikipedia.org


Also on this day -

1562
Kissing in public is banned in Naples, contravention being punishable by death.

1862
American Civil War: the Battle of Hampton Roads - the first battle between ironclad ships.

1932
Eamon de Valera becomes President of the Irish Free State.

1946
33 football fans are killed when a wall collapses at the Bolton Wanderers ground, Blackleaf's home town team.

1950
Timothy Evans is hanged for the murder of his wife at 10 Rillington Place in London.. Three years later John Christie admits to killing her and several other women.

1994
IRA terrorists launch a mortar attack on Heathrow Airport, in London - all the missiles failed to explode.

A slum in a British street in Victorian Times. Houses in big cities were often dangerously overcrowded.

Despite being the world's richest country, life in Victorian Britain was very harsh - life even in Britain's colonies and ex-colonies, such as Canada and America, was much better. Children started work in cotton mills when they were as young as 10 or 11. Young children (and girls and women) even worked down the coal mines from early in the morning till late at night and got paid little. Only wealthy children could afford to go to school.

In Britain's towns and cities, poverty was rife, with many homeless children, their faces blackened with dirt and their clothes nothing but rags, wandering the streets. With no sewage system until late in the 19th Century, big cities such as London and Manchester STANK as raw sewage was often dumped in the streets and cholera epidemics were common. Seeing dead cats floating in rivers was an everyday sight.


This Guardian article from 10th March 1870 describes the harsh city life, and the extreme poverty, of Manchester -

Don Giovanni in the mean streets

Thursday March 10, 1870
The Guardian


How prolific of vice the Deansgate quarter is, a few facts and figures will painfully demonstrate. There are 151 common lodging-houses, affording accommodation for 3,224 persons. There are also 46 houses registered as houses of ill fame, and 73 as the known resort of thieves.

In one house, we saw no fewer than six card sharpers, all of whom had been many times in prison, and who were evidently engaged in the concoction of some new trick.

It was a picture worthy of Teniers. The closely gathered heads, of villainous expression and many shades of dirt, lit by the fire and one guttering candle, were quite worthy of the Dutch master; and we found ourselves involuntarily criticising it as a work of art, till a strong oath woke us up to the reality of our position.

But the most startling feature of Deansgate is the enormous number of its ginshops, its public-houses, and its singing saloons. Here is a place opening out of the main thoroughfare. It is a ginshop and a singing saloon.


Children of the street

It was crowded with men and women - not respectable artizans taking their wives for a little outing, but young men scarcely of age, chiefly apprentices to trades, with here and there a young man from a warehouse, who, with a short stick, short jacket, and short hat, looks quite as great a snob as he thinks himself a gentleman. The women were of Deansgate.

There is a sodden, suffocating air of would-be gaiety in the whole thing, which is most intensely depressing. Song followed song in wearisome monotony. It was only when some particularly rampant chorus could be evoked that anything like a sense of animation exhibited itself.

Not far away is another singing saloon, a saloon boasting a drop scene and proscenium. A grey, dirty, blind old man is strumming away at a cracked piano, and a tolerable voice is singing, with considerable taste, an air from Don Giovanni.

His vocal efforts were not much applauded. They ranged much too high and he was succeeded by a faded, vulgar female, who brought down the house with innuendoes.

A box served as a green-room also. How proud the young fools were of this distinction; the entree to the green-room at the opera never sent the hearts of young shells bounding with more glee. As for the singing, it was admirably criticised by a slightly-inebriated habituee: "Anything," says he, "is good enough for a drunken man, but this is a'most too bad for that."

· This is one of a series of articles from 1870 on life in slum areas

guardian.co.uk

11th March 1794 - The 3rd Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is opened. The present Theatre Royal is the 4th to be built.
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The present-day Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, sketched when it was new, in 1813.


The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a theatre in the West End area of London, officially situated on Catherine Street, but backing onto Drury Lane just to the east of Covent Garden.

A cockpit in that location was converted into a theatre during the reign of James I. After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a splendid new theatre was built to designs by Christopher Wren. Having been razed by fire on January 25, 1672, it was succeeded by a larger and still more elaborate building also designed by Wren, which housed two thousand spectators with the opening attended by Charles II on March 26, 1674.

The great English actor David Garrick managed the theatre during the mid-eighteenth century, during which time he produced many plays, including most of Shakespeare's work.

By the end of the 18th century, the building was in need of updating, and was demolished in 1791. A third theatre was designed by Henry Holland and opened on March 11, 1794, lasting for only 15 years before burning down on February 24, 1809.

The present Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, designed by Benjamin Wyatt, opened on October 10, 1812 with a production of Hamlet. The interior has been substantially redesigned and overhauled many times since then: a contemporary sketch of it when it was new is shown on the right, seen from the point of view of the beau monde in the lower gallery. It is one of the West End's largest, and has been the setting for appearances by Edmund Kean and Sarah Siddons, among others.

With a capacity of 2,205, it has been home to many large productions over the years. It is currently showing a revival of Mel Brooks' musical The Producers.

wikipedia.org

Also on this day -

1302 - Romeo & Juliet's wedding day, according to Shakespeare

1669 Volcano Etna in Italy erupts killing 15,000

1702 1st English daily newspaper, "Daily Courant", is published

12th March 1984 - the start of the miners' strike in Britain, and the start of one of the biggest upheavals in recent British history. 10 people were killed during the strike, and 2 of them are believed, by some people to this day, to have been suspicious. Many "battles" were fought between the miners and the police - some people even believing that British soldiers were drafted in and dressed as policemen to man the picket lines.
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The "Battle of Orgreave", 1984

The miners' strike of 1984-5 was a major piece of industrial action affecting the British coal industry. It was a defining event in the history of industrial relations in the UK. More broadly it was a key political event in late 20th century Britain, the central contest in a dispute as to whether the UK's mixed economy should be mainly capitalist or mainly socialist. The strike ended with the defeat of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) by the Conservative government, which then proceeded to consolidate its free market programme. The political power of the NUM was broken permanently and some years later the Labour Party moved away from its traditional socialist agenda. The dispute exposed deep divisions in British society and caused considerable bitterness.

In 1983, the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher appointed Ian MacGregor as head of the National Coal Board. He had previously been head of British Steel, where he had halved the workforce in two years. This reputation raised expectations that jobs would be cut on a similar scale in mining and confrontations between him and the Marxist leader of the miners, Arthur Scargill, seemed inevitable.

In 1984, the National Coal Board (the UK Public Body which controlled coal mining) announced that an agreement reached after the 1974 miners' strike had become obsolete, and that they intended to close 20 coal mines because they were uneconomical. 20,000 jobs would be lost, and many communities in the north of England and in Wales would lose their primary source of employment. Unbeknown to anybody outside the upper echelons of the executive, the government had been preparing for tortuous industrial action by secretly stock-piling coal for a number of months in order to enable the country to keep running throughout the winter of 1984.

Sensitive to the impact of the proposed closures in their own areas, miners in various coal fields began strike action. In the Yorkshire coal field strike action began when workers at the Manvers complex walked out over the lack of consultation. Over 6,000 miners were already on strike when a local ballot led to strike action from March 5 at Cortonwood Colliery at Brampton, South Yorkshire, and at Bulcliffe Wood colliery, near Ossett. On the next day pickets from the Yorkshire area appeared at pits in the Nottinghamshire coal field (one of those least threatened by pit closures). On March 12, 1984 Arthur Scargill, President of the NUM declared that the strikes in the various coal fields were to be a national strike and called for strike action from NUM members in all coal fields.

The Government mobilised the police in huge numbers to deal with picket lines on the grounds that they represented illegal intimidation and sometimes illegal violence against those miners who wanted to go to work. During the industrial action 11,291 people were arrested and 8,392 charged with offences such as breach of the peace and obstructing the highway. Former striking miners and others have alleged that soldiers of the British Army were dressed as policemen and used on the picket lines. While concrete evidence of this has not been produced (although film footage exists of "policemen" wearing tunics without any identifying numbers on their lapels) it remains a point of contention today, and in many former mining areas antipathy towards the police remains strong. The Government was criticised for abusing its power when it ruled that local police might be too sympathetic to the miners to take action against the strike, and instead brought in forces from distant counties. Occasions where private aeroplanes were hired to fly policemen to tackle pickets was considered by some to be a waste of public money.

At the beginning, the strike was almost universally observed in the coalfields of Yorkshire, South Wales and Kent. It was less strong in areas where there were fewer pits. In Nottinghamshire most of the pits had modern equipment and had large coal reserves; most of the Nottinghamshire miners remained at work and the Nottinghamshire NUM disagreed with the decision to launch a national strike without a ballot. The 1977 industry reforms had given Nottinghamshire miners larger salaries than workers in any of the other counties and they were unwilling to give up their daily pay. Many within the NUM condemned them as strikebreakers, and the Nottinghamshire branch, heavily aided by the Thatcher government, eventually broke away to form the core of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. Since the end of the strike both the UDM and the NUM have been involved in numerous court cases concerning financial irregularities.

A widely reported clash during the Miners' Strike took place at Orgreave near Rotherham on June 18, 1984. This confrontation between striking miners and police, dubbed by some 'The Battle of Orgreave', was the subject of a TV re-enactment in 2001, conceived and organized by artist Jeremy Deller and recorded by Mike Figgis for Channel 4. News footage of the 'Battle of Orgreave' showing the miners initiating disturbances by charging the police has since been proven to be doctored. Violence flared after police on horse-back charged the miners with truncheons drawn and inflicted serious injuries upon several individuals.

The strike ended on March 3, 1985, nearly a year after it had begun. Some workers had returned to work of their own accord, a symbolic victory for the Government, although ministers later admitted that the figures of returnees were inflated. In order to save the union, the NUM voted, by a tiny margin, to return to work without a new agreement with management. Events that prompted the end of the strike included a loss of public support following a severe beating of a working miner in Castleford in November, the manslaughter of a taxi driver escorting a working miner to work in South Wales in December (Hancock and Shankland were originally convicted of murder but this was reduced on appeal to the House of Lords) and the distraction of attention to the famine in Ethiopia. The union's funds had also run too low to pay for pickets' transportation and many miners had been unable to pay for heating over the Winter.

In addition to the manslaughter of taxi driver David Wilkie, six pickets died during the strike and three young men - all less than 16 - died from picking coal in the Winter. The deaths of pickets David Jones and Joe Green continue to this day to be viewed with suspicion; some have claimed that their deaths were caused by the police, but reports at the time conflicted. The N.U.M. names its memorial lectures after the two.

During the strike many pits permanently lost their customers. Much of the immediate problem facing the industry was due to the economic recession in the early 1980s. However, there was also extensive competition within the world coal market as well as a concerted move towards oil and gas for energy production. The Government's own policy, known as the Ridley Plan (after its author Nicholas Ridley) was to reduce Britain's reliance on coal, they also claimed that coal could be imported from Australia, America and Colombia more cheaply than it could be extracted from beneath Britain[2]. The strike subsequently allowed the Government to accelerate the closure of many pits on economic grounds.

wikipedia.org

Also on this day -

1913
Canberra becomes the official capital of Australia.

1935
Britain imposes a 30 mph speed limit in built up urban areas.

GANDHI LEADS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE:
March 12, 1930

On March 12, 1930, Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi begins a defiant march to the sea in protest of the British monopoly on salt, his boldest act of civil disobedience yet against British rule in India.

Britain's Salt Acts prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, a staple in the Indian diet. Citizens were forced to buy the vital mineral from the British, who, in addition to exercising a monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt, also exerted a heavy salt tax. Although India's poor suffered most under the tax, Indians required salt. Defying the Salt Acts, Gandhi reasoned, would be an ingeniously simple way for many Indians to break a British law nonviolently. He declared resistance to British salt policies to be the unifying theme for his new campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience.

On March 12, Gandhi set out from Sabarmati with 78 followers on a 241-mile march to the coastal town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea. There, Gandhi and his supporters were to defy British policy by making salt from seawater. All along the way, Gandhi addressed large crowds, and with each passing day an increasing number of people joined the salt satyagraha. By the time they reached Dandi on April 5, Gandhi was at the head of a crowd of tens of thousands. Gandhi spoke and led prayers and early the next morning walked down to the sea to make salt.

He had planned to work the salt flats on the beach, encrusted with crystallized sea salt at every high tide, but the police had forestalled him by crushing the salt deposits into the mud. Nevertheless, Gandhi reached down and picked up a small lump of natural salt out of the mud--and British law had been defied. At Dandi, thousands more followed his lead, and in the coastal cities of Bombay and Karachi, Indian nationalists led crowds of citizens in making salt. Civil disobedience broke out all across India, soon involving millions of Indians, and British authorities arrested more than 60,000 people. Gandhi himself was arrested on May 5, but the satyagraha continued without him.

On May 21, the poet Sarojini Naidu led 2,500 marchers on the Dharasana Salt Works, some 150 miles north of Bombay. Several hundred British-led Indian policemen met them and viciously beat the peaceful demonstrators. The incident, recorded by American journalist Webb Miller, prompted an international outcry against British policy in India.

In January 1931, Gandhi was released from prison. He later met with Lord Irwin, the viceroy of India, and agreed to call off the satyagraha in exchange for an equal negotiating role at a London conference on India's future. In August, Gandhi traveled to the conference as the sole representative of the nationalist Indian National Congress. The meeting was a disappointment, but British leaders had acknowledged him as a force they could not suppress or ignore.

India's independence was finally granted in August 1947. Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist less than six months later.

Truman Doctrine is announced
March 12 1947

In a dramatic speech to a joint session of Congress, President Harry S. Truman asks for U.S. assistance for Greece and Turkey to forestall communist domination of the two nations. Historians have often cited Truman's address, which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, as the official declaration of the Cold War.

In February 1947, the British government informed the United States that it could no longer furnish the economic and military assistance it had been providing to Greece and Turkey since the end of World War II. The Truman administration believed that both nations were threatened by communism and it jumped at the chance to take a tough stance against the Soviet Union. In Greece, leftist forces had been battling the Greek royal government since the end of World War II. In Turkey, the Soviets were demanding some manner of control over the Dardanelles, territory from which Turkey was able to dominate the strategic waterway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

On March 12, 1947, Truman appeared before a joint session of Congress to make his case. The world, he declared, faced a choice in the years to come. Nations could adopt a way of life "based upon the will of the majority" and governments that provided "guarantees of individual liberty" or they could face a way of life "based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority." This latter regime, he indicated, relied upon "terror and oppression." "The foreign policy and the national security of this country," he claimed, were involved in the situations confronting Greece and Turkey. Greece, he argued, was "threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by communists." It was incumbent upon the United States to support Greece so that it could "become a self-supporting and self-respecting democracy." The "freedom-loving" people of Turkey also needed U.S. aid, which was "necessary for the maintenance of its national integrity." The president declared that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Truman requested $400 million in assistance for the two nations. Congress approved his request two months later.

The Truman Doctrine was a de facto declaration of the Cold War. Truman's address outlined the broad parameters of U.S. Cold War foreign policy: the Soviet Union was the center of all communist activity and movements throughout the world; communism could attack through outside invasion or internal subversion; and the United States needed to provide military and economic assistance to protect nations from communist aggression.

Not everyone embraced Truman's logic. Some realized that the insurgency in Greece was supported not by the Soviet Union, but by Yugoslavia's Tito, who broke with the Soviet communists within a year. Additionally, the Soviets were not demanding control of the Dardanelles, but only assurances that this strategic waterway would not be used by Russia's enemies-as the Nazis had used it during World War II. And whether U.S. assistance would result in democracy in Greece or Turkey was unclear. Indeed, both nations established repressive right-wing regimes in the years following the Truman Doctrine. Yet, the Truman Doctrine successfully convinced many that the United States was locked in a life-or-death struggle with the Soviet Union, and it set the guidelines for over 40 years of U.S.-Soviet relations.

One of the greatest inventions of all time: the earmuffs,created by Maine teenager Chester Greenwood in 1877.

ALBERT EINSTEIN BORN:
March 14, 1879

On March 14, 1879, Albert Einstein is born, the son of a Jewish electrical engineer in Ulm, Germany. Einstein's theories of special and general relativity drastically altered man's view of the universe, and his work in particle and energy theory helped make possible quantum mechanics and, ultimately, the atomic bomb.

After a childhood in Germany and Italy, Einstein studied physics and mathematics at the Federal Polytechnic Academy in Zýrich, Switzerland. He became a Swiss citizen and in 1905 was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Zýrich while working at the Swiss patent office in Bern. That year, which historians of Einstein's career call the annus mirabilis--the "miracle year"--he published five theoretical papers that were to have a profound effect on the development of modern physics.

In the first of these, titled "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light," Einstein theorized that light is made up of individual quanta (photons) that demonstrate particle-like properties while collectively behaving like a wave. The hypothesis, an important step in the development of quantum theory, was arrived at through Einstein's examination of the photoelectric effect, a phenomenon in which some solids emit electrically charged particles when struck by light. This work would later earn him the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In the second paper, he devised a new method of counting and determining the size of the atoms and molecules in a given space, and in the third he offered a mathematical explanation for the constant erratic movement of particles suspended in a fluid, known as Brownian motion. These two papers provided indisputable evidence of the existence of atoms, which at the time was still disputed by a few scientists.

Einstein's fourth groundbreaking scientific work of 1905 addressed what he termed his special theory of relativity. In special relativity, time and space are not absolute, but relative to the motion of the observer. Thus, two observers traveling at great speeds in regard to each other would not necessarily observe simultaneous events in time at the same moment, nor necessarily agree in their measurements of space. In Einstein's theory, the speed of light, which is the limiting speed of any body having mass, is constant in all frames of reference. In the fifth paper that year, an exploration of the mathematics of special relativity, Einstein announced that mass and energy were equivalent and could be calculated with an equation, E=mc2.

Although the public was not quick to embrace his revolutionary science, Einstein was welcomed into the circle of Europe's most eminent physicists and given professorships in Zýrich, Prague, and Berlin. In 1916, he published "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity," which proposed that gravity, as well as motion, can affect the intervals of time and of space. According to Einstein, gravitation is not a force, as Isaac Newton had argued, but a curved field in the space-time continuum, created by the presence of mass. An object of very large gravitational mass, such as the sun, would therefore appear to warp space and time around it, which could be demonstrated by observing starlight as it skirted the sun on its way to earth. In 1919, astronomers studying a solar eclipse verified predictions Einstein made in the general theory of relativity, and he became an overnight celebrity. Later, other predictions of general relativity, such as a shift in the orbit of the planet Mercury and the probable existence of black holes, were confirmed by scientists.

During the next decade, Einstein made continued contributions to quantum theory and began work on a unified field theory, which he hoped would encompass quantum mechanics and his own relativity theory as a grand explanation of the workings of the universe. As a world-renowned public figure, he became increasingly political, taking up the cause of Zionism and speaking out against militarism and rearmament. In his native Germany, this made him an unpopular figure, and after Nazi leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 Einstein renounced his German citizenship and left the country.

He later settled in the United States, where he accepted a post at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He would remain there for the rest of his life, working on his unified field theory and relaxing by sailing on a local lake or playing his violin. He became an American citizen in 1940.

In 1939, despite his lifelong pacifist beliefs, he agreed to write to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on behalf of a group of scientists who were concerned with American inaction in the field of atomic-weapons research. Like the other scientists, he feared sole German possession of such a weapon. He played no role, however, in the subsequent Manhattan Project and later deplored the use of atomic bombs against Japan. After the war, he called for the establishment of a world government that would control nuclear technology and prevent future armed conflict.

In 1950, he published his unified field theory, which was quietly criticized as a failure. A unified explanation of gravitation, subatomic phenomena, and electromagnetism remains elusive today. Albert Einstein, one of the most creative minds in human history, died in Princeton in 1955.

14th March 1757 - Admiral John Byng of the Royal Navy was executed by firing squad for breaching the Articles of War at the start of the Seven Years' War against the French.
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Portrait of John Byng by Thomas Hudson, 1749

John Byng (October 29, 1704 – March 14, 1757) was a British Admiral who was court-martialled and executed for failing to "do his utmost" during the Battle of Minorca, at the beginning of the Seven Years' War.

In spring of 1756, Byng, who had previously served as the Commodore-Governor of Newfoundland, was dispatched with a small and undermanned fleet to relieve the British Fort St. Philip (Port Mahon) on the Mediterranean island of Minorca (in the Balearic Islands). During the battle that ensued, several British ships were badly damaged by the French squadron while others, including Byng's flagship, were still out of effective firing range. Instead of engaging the enemy directly, Byng decided to keep the formation, allowing the French to get away undamaged. After four days of waiting, the fleet turned back to Gibraltar without relieving the fort, which was consequently forced to capitulate.

The failure caused a savage outburst of wrath in Britain. Byng was brought home and court-martialled for breach of the Articles of War, which had recently been deliberately revised to mandate capital punishment for officers of all ranks who did not do their utmost against the enemy, either in battle or pursuit. He was condemned to death and shot on 14 March 1757 at Portsmouth, aboard HMS Monarch.

The severity of the penalty and the suspicion that he was used as a scapegoat led in time to a reaction in favour of Byng. It became a commonplace to say that he was put to death for an error of judgment. The execution was also satirized by Voltaire in Candide.

wikipedia.org

Also on this day -

1794 - Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin.

1984 - Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Féin, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast, Northern Ireland.

1991 - The "Birmingham Six", wrongly convicted of murder and bombing pubs in Birmingham, England, were released after 16 years in prison.

15th March 1672 - King Charles II issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence.
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Charles II was England's first monarch since the Restoration.

The Royal Declaration of Indulgence was Charles II of England's attempt to extend religious liberty to Protestant nonconformists in his realms, by suspending the execution of the penal laws that punished recusants from the Church of England. Charles issued the Declaration on March 15, 1672.

The English Parliament, however, suspected that their king favoured Roman Catholicism, and compelled him to withdraw this declaration in favour of religious freedom - putting in its place the first of the Test Acts (1673), which required anyone entering public service in England to take the Anglican sacrament.

When Charles II's openly Catholic successor James II attempted to issue a similar Declaration of Indulgence, an order for general religious tolerance, this was one of the grievances that led to the Glorious Revolution that outset him from the throne.


Also on this day -

44 BC - Julius Caesar of the Roman Republic was stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

1877 - History of cricket: Cricketers representing England and Australia played the first Test match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (the first actual game was between Canada and the US in the 1840s, but was just a friendly).

1906 - Charles Rolls and Henry Royce founded the automobile manufacturing company Rolls-Royce.

wikipedia.org

THE IDES OF MARCH:
March 15, 44 B.C.

Gaius Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, is stabbed to death in the Roman Senate house by 60 conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus.

Caesar, born into the Julii, an ancient but not particularly distinguished Roman aristocratic family, began his political career in 78 B.C. as a prosecutor for the anti-patrician Popular Party. He won influence in the party for his reformist ideas and oratorical skills, and aided Roman imperial efforts by raising a private army to combat the king of Pontus in 74 B.C. He was an ally of Pompey, the recognized head of the Popular Party, and essentially took over this position after Pompey left Rome in 67 B.C. to become commander of Roman forces in the east.

In 63 B.C., Caesar was elected pontifex maximus, or "high priest," allegedly by heavy bribes. Two years later, he was made governor of Farther Spain and in 64 B.C. returned to Rome, ambitious for the office of consul. The consulship, essentially the highest office in the Roman Republic, was shared by two politicians on an annual basis. Consuls commanded the army, presided over the Senate and executed its decrees, and represented the state in foreign affairs. Caesar formed a political alliance--the so-called First Triumvirate--with Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus, the wealthiest man in Rome, and in 59 B.C. was elected consul. Although generally opposed by the majority of the Roman Senate, Caesar's land reforms won him popularity with many Romans.

In 58 B.C., Caesar was given four Roman legions in Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, and during the next decade demonstrated brilliant military talents as he expanded the Roman Empire and his reputation. Among other achievements, Caesar conquered all of Gaul, made the first Roman inroads into Britain, and won devoted supporters in his legions. However, his successes also aroused Pompey's jealousy, leading to the collapse of their political alliance in 53 B.C.

The Roman Senate supported Pompey and asked Caesar to give up his army, which he refused to do. In January 49 B.C., Caesar led his legions across the Rubicon River from Cisalpine Gaul to Italy, thus declaring war against Pompey and his forces. Caesar made early gains in the subsequent civil war, defeating Pompey's army in Italy and Spain, but was later forced into retreat in Greece. In August 48 B.C., with Pompey in pursuit, Caesar paused near Pharsalus, setting up camp at a strategic location. When Pompey's senatorial forces fell upon Caesar's smaller army, they were entirely routed, and Pompey fled to Egypt, where he was assassinated by an officer of the Egyptian king.

Caesar was subsequently appointed Roman consul and dictator, but before settling in Rome he traveled around the empire for several years and consolidated his rule. In 45 B.C., he returned to Rome and was made dictator for life. As sole Roman ruler, Caesar launched ambitious programs of reform within the empire. The most lasting of these was his establishment of the Julian calendar, which, with the exception of a slight modification and adjustment in the 16th century, remains in use today. He also planned new imperial expansions in central Europe and to the east. In the midst of these vast designs, he was assassinated on March 15, 44 B.C., by a group of conspirators who believed that his death would lead to the restoration of the Roman Republic. However, the result of the "Ides of March" was to plunge Rome into a fresh round of civil wars, out of which Octavian, Caesar's grand-nephew, would emerge as Augustus, the first Roman emperor, destroying the republic forever.

16th March 1190 - a mob of English crusaders attacked the Jews of York. The Jews took refuge in the castle, then commited mass suicide. About the same time, Jews were officially designated slaves of the English king, Richard The Lionheart.
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York Castle, where many Jews died on 16th March 1190.


Richard The Lionheart

Massacres at London and York (1189–1190)
Richard I had taken the cross before his coronation (September 3, 1189). A number of the principal Jews of England presented themselves to do homage at Westminster; but there appears to have been a superstition against Jews being admitted to such a holy ceremony, and they were repulsed during the banquet which followed the coronation. The rumour spread from Westminster to the City of London that the king had ordered a massacre of the Jews; and a mob in Old Jewry, after vainly attacking throughout the day the strong stone houses of the Jews, set them on fire at night, killing those within who attempted to escape. The king was enraged at this insult to his royal dignity, but took no steps to punish the offenders, owing to their large numbers. After his departure on the crusade, riots with loss of life occurred at Lynn, where the Jews attempted to attack a baptised coreligionist who had taken refuge in a church. The seafaring population rose against them, fired their houses, and put them to the sword. So, too, at Stamford fair, on March 7, 1190, many were slain, and on March 18 fifty-seven were slaughtered at Bury St. Edmunds. The Jews of Lincoln saved themselves only by taking refuge in a castle.

Isolated attacks on Jews occurred also at Colchester, Thetford, and Ospringe, but the most striking incident occurred at York on the night of March 16 (the day of the Jewish feast of Shabbat ha-Gadol, the shabbat before Passover) and March 17, 1190. The Jews of York were alarmed by the preceding massacres and by the setting on fire of several of their houses by the anti-Jewish rioting in the wake of religious fervor during crusaders' preparations for the Third Crusade against the Saracens, led by Richard.

Their leader Josce asked the warden of York Castle to receive them with their wives and children, and they were accepted into Clifford's Tower. However, the tower was besieged by the mob of crusaders, demanding that the Jews convert to Christianity and be baptized. Trapped in the castle, the Jews were advised by their religious leader, Rabbi Yomtob of Joigney, to kill themselves rather than convert; Josce began the self-immolation by slaying his wife Anna and his two children, and then was killed by Yomtob. The father of each family killed his wife and children, and then Yomtob stabbed the men before killing himself. The handful of Jews who did not kill themselves surrendered to the crusaders at daybreak on March 17, leaving the castle on a promise that they would not be harmed; they were also killed. In the aftermath the wooden tower was burnt down.

Also on this day -

1534
England severs all relations with Roman Catholic papacy.

1690
France's King Louis XIV sends troops to Ireland to fight for King James II.

1872
The first English FA Cup takes place at The Oval cricket ground in London.

wikipedia.org

17th March 1337: Edward the Black Prince becomes Duke of Cornwall, the first ever British 'Duke'.




Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales, KG, known as the Black Prince (June 15, 1330 – June 8, 1376) was the eldest son of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault.



Birth and titles
Born at Woodstock Palace in Oxfordshire, he was created earl of Chester in 1333, Duke of Cornwall in 1337, becoming the first English Duke created, and Prince of Wales in 1343.


Military talent
He proved to have a prodigious military talent, as shown by his bravery at the Battle of Crécy when he was only sixteen. He followed this up ten years later with another Hundred Years' War victory at the Battle of Poitiers, and in 1367 with the victory at the Battle of Najera in northern Castile.

He continued the practice of using Welsh and English archers in the English army, and the English owed much of their subsequent military success to the supremacy of the English longbow over the continental crossbow. He proved repeatedly that his longbowmen were not only able to fire far faster than crossbowmen, but more accurately at far greater distances. He was also one of the first military leaders to introduce a uniform, clothing his Cheshire and Flintshire troops in green and white cloth.


Final campaign and illness, death and burial


Effigy on the Black Prince's tomb in Canterbury Cathedral

His military campaigning on behalf of Pedro of Castile, known to his enemies as 'Pedro the Cruel', ruined Edward's health as well as his finances, and he was forced to give up the administration of Aquitaine in 1371 and return to England. Whilst making an attempt to involve himself in the government of England, he soon had to give up any hope of resuming military activity, and he died at Westminster on Trinity Sunday, June 8, 1376, leaving his young son as heir to the throne. He is buried in the Corona, Canterbury Cathedral, opposite his nephew Henry IV of England, where his original heraldic attributes may be seen.


Emblem
The emblem of the Prince of Wales's feathers and its accompanying motto, Ich dien (German: "I serve"), are said to have been inherited by the prince from King John of Bohemia, against whom he fought in the Battle of Crécy. According to legend, after the battle, the prince walked over to the king of Bohemia's dead body. The King had ridden into battle despite his blindness, and Edward admired his bravery. He picked up the King's helmet, lined with ostrich feathers, and took the King's motto, Ich dien. This emblem and motto were not exclusively used by the Black Prince, but also by his brothers. This story, however is only partly true; while it is true that he adopted the ostrich feathers from the king of Bohemia, the emblem he used was used before him by other English monarchs


Marriage and issue
Edward had been brought up with his cousin Joan "The Fair Maid of Kent". After marrying her in October, 1361 (a controversial match), Edward was sent to rule the province of Aquitaine as prince on behalf of his father. In this period, he had two sons, Edward (who died in infancy) and Richard, who would later rule as Richard II of England. He was given the lordship of Biscay by Pedro I of Castile in 1367.



The name "Black Prince"
Edward is almost always now called the "Black Prince", but he was never known as such during his lifetime (instead being known as Edward of Woodstock after his place of birth). The "Black Prince" title does not appear in writing until at least 200 years after his death. Its origin is uncertain; while some later historians have speculated that he may have worn black armour (possibly presented to him by his father at the battle of Crécy), or a black surcoat over his armour, it is also likely that the name was first coined by French chroniclers in reference to the ruinous military defeats he had inflicted on France or his cruelty in these. One (possibly apochryphal) etymology of the phrase has it deriving from the blackness of his tomb effigy from dirt and/or black polish, when it is in fact shiny metal.

wikipedia.org

17 March 1649: Cromwell abolishes the monarchy and declares England a Commonwealth

March 17, 1970 - My Lai massacre: The United States Army charges 14 officers with suppressing information related to the incident.

March 17th, 1959 - Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, flees Tibet and travels to India.


March 17, 1891 - The British steamship SS Utopia sinks off the coast of Gibraltar, killing 574.


March 17th 1756 - St. Patrick's Day is celebrated in New York City for the first time (at the Crown and Thistle Tavern).

18th March 1834 - The Tolpuddle Martyrs are transported to Australia.
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The Tolpuddle Martyrs were a group of 19th century British labourers who were arrested for and convicted of swearing a secret oath as members of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. The rules of the society show it was clearly structured as a friendly society and operated as a trade-specific benefit society. But at the time, friendly societies had strong elements of what we now consider is the predominant role of trade unions. They were subsequently sentenced to transportation to Australia.

The Reform Act of 1832 made unions legal, and that year six men from Tolpuddle in Dorset founded the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers to protest against the gradual lowering of wages in the 1830s. They refused to work for less than 10 shillings a week, although by this time wages were as low as 6 shillings a week. The society, led by George Loveless, a Methodist local preacher, met in the house of Thomas Standfield.

In 1834 James Frampton, a local landowner, wrote to the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, to complain about the union, invoking an obscure law from 1797 prohibiting people from swearing oaths to each other, which the Friendly Society had done. James Brine, James Hammett, George Loveless, George's brother James Loveless, George's brother in-law Thomas Standfield, and Thomas' son John Standfield were arrested, found guilty, and transported to Australia.

They became popular heroes and were released in 1836, with the support of Lord John Russell who had recently become Home Secretary. George Loveless was later involved in the Chartist Movement, while the others moved to London, Ontario, Canada, where there is now a monument in their honour and an affordable housing/ trade union complex named after them. They are buried in a small London, Ontario, cemetery on Fanshawe Park Road East.

There was also a monument erected in their honour in Tolpuddle in 1934, and a sculpture of the martyrs made in 2001 stands in the village in front of the Martyrs Museum there.

An annual festival is held in Tolpuddle, organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) featuring a parade of banners from many trade unions, a memorial service, speeches and music. Recent festivals have featured speakers such as Tony Benn and musicians such as Billy Bragg, as well as others from all around the world. The festival is usually held in the third week of July.

The story of Tolpuddle has enriched the history of trade unionism, but the significance of the Tolpuddle Martyrs continues to be debated since Sidney and Beatrice Webb wrote the History of Trade Unionism (1890) and continues with such works as Dr Bob James Craft Trade or Mystery (2001).

wikipedia.org
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Also on this day -

March 18

1766 Parliament repeals the Stamp Act


After four months of widespread protest in America, the British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act, a taxation measure enacted to raise revenues for a standing British army in America.

The Stamp Act was passed on March 22, 1765, leading to an uproar in the colonies over an issue that was to be a major cause of the Revolution: taxation without representation. Enacted in November 1765, the controversial act forced colonists to buy a British stamp for every official document they obtained. The stamp itself displayed an image of a Tudor rose framed by the word "America" and the Latin phrase Honi soit qui mal y pense--"Shame to him who thinks evil of it."

The colonists, who had convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the impending enactment, greeted the arrival of the stamps with outrage and violence. Most Americans called for a boycott of British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors. After months of protest, and an appeal by Benjamin Franklin before the British House of Commons, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766. However, the same day, Parliament passed the Declaratory Acts, asserting that the British government had free and total legislative power over the colonies.

historychannel.com

FRENCH-ALGERIAN TRUCE:
March 18, 1962

On March 18, 1962, France and the leaders of the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) sign a peace agreement to end the seven-year Algerian War, signaling the end of 130 years of colonial French rule in Algeria.

In late October 1954, a faction of young Algerian Muslims established the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) as a guerrilla organization dedicated to winning independence from France. They staged several bloody uprisings during the next year, and by 1956 the FLN was threatening to overrun the colonial cites, home to Algeria's sizable European settler population. In France, a new administration, led by Guy Mollet, promised to quell the Muslim rebellion and sent 500,000 French troops to Algeria to crush the FLN.

To isolate the rebels and their area of operations, France granted Tunisia and Morocco independence, and their borders with Algeria were militarized with barbed wire and electric fencing. When FLN leaders attempted to travel to Tunisia in October 1956 to discuss the Algerian War, French forces diverted their plane and jailed the men. In response, the FLN launched a new campaign of terrorism in the colonial capital of Algiers. General Jacques Massu, head of France's crack parachute unit, was given extraordinary powers to act in the city, and through torture and assassination the FLN presence in Algiers was destroyed. By the end of 1957, the rebels had been pushed back into rural areas, and it seemed the tide had turned in the Algerian War.

However, in May 1958, a new crisis began when European Algerians launched massive demonstrations calling for the integration of Algeria with France and for the return of Charles de Gaulle to power. In France, the Algerian War had seriously polarized public opinion, and many feared the country was on the brink of army revolt or civil war. On June 1, de Gaulle, who had served as leader of France after World War II, was appointed prime minister by the National Assembly and authorized to write a new national constitution.

Days after returning to power, de Gaulle visited Algiers, and though he was warmly welcomed by the European Algerians he did not share their enthusiasm for Algerian integration. Instead, he granted Muslims the full rights of French citizenship and in 1959 declared publicly that Algerians had the right to determine their own future. During the next two years, the worst violence in Algeria was perpetrated by European Algerians rather than the FLN, but scattered revolts and terrorism did not prevent the opening of peace negotiations between France and the FLN-led provisional government of the Algerian Republic in 1961.

On March 16, 1962, a peace agreement was signed at ývian-les-Bains, France, promising independence for Algeria pending a national referendum on the issue. French aid would continue, and Europeans could return to their native countries, remain as foreigners in Algeria, or take Algerian citizenship. On July 1, 1962, Algerians overwhelmingly approved the agreement, and most of the one million Europeans in Algeria poured out of the country. More than 100,000 Muslim and 10,000 French soldiers were killed in the seven-year Algerian War, along with thousands of Muslim civilians and hundreds of European colonists.

That was interesting.

19th March 1982 - Argentine forces led by Alfredo Astiz occupied South Georgia, precipitating the Falklands War against Britain.
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The Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas), was a war between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands (also known in Spanish as the Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, occurring between March and June of 1982. The Falklands consist of two large and many small islands in the South Atlantic Ocean east of Argentina, whose ownership had long been disputed.

Argentina was in the midst of a devastating economic crisis and large-scale civil unrest against the military junta that was governing Argentina in the period leading up to the war. The Argentine government, headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri, decided to play off long-standing feelings of nationalism by launching what it thought would be a quick and easy war to reclaim the Falkland Islands. The ongoing tension between the two countries over the islands increased on 19 March when 50 Argentines landed on the British dependency of South Georgia and raised their flag, an act that is seen as the first offensive action in the war. On 2 April, Galtieri ordered the 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands, triggering the Falklands War.

Though initially surprised by the Argentine attack on the South Atlantic islands, Britain launched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and air force, and retake the islands by amphibious assault. After heavy combat, the British eventually prevailed and the islands remained under British control, although as of 2006, Argentina shows no sign of relinquishing its claim to the Falkland Islands.

The political effects of the war were strong in both countries. The Argentine loss prompted even larger protests against the military government, which prompted its downfall, while a wave of patriotic sentiment swept through the United Kingdom, bolstering the government of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The war has played an important role in the culture of both countries, and has been the subject of several books, movies, and songs, although due to the low number of casualties on both sides it is not seen as a truly major event in the individual history of either country. Militarily, however, it remains important as the sole example of a major naval and amphibious operation between modern forces since the Second World War.


Dates of the conflict - April 1 - June 14, 1982


Strengths.
Argentina - Geographical advantage
Britain - Tactical and experience advantage


Casualties.
Argentina - 655 killed, 1,100 wounded, 11,313 prisoners.
Britain - 255 killed, 246 wounded.


Result - Britain regains possession of the islands.


Argie ship General Belgrano sinks.



wikipedia.org

NERVE GAS ATTACK ON TOKYO SUBWAY:
March 20, 1995

At the height of the morning rush hour in Tokyo, Japan, five two-man terrorist teams from the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult, riding on separate subway trains, converge at the Kasumigaseki station and secretly release lethal sarin gas into the air. The terrorists then took a sarin antidote and escaped while the commuters, blinded and gasping for air, rushed to the exits. Twelve people died, and 5,500 were treated in hospitals, some in a comatose state. Most of the survivors recovered, but some victims suffered permanent damage to their eyes, lungs, and digestive systems. A United States Senate subcommittee later estimated that if the sarin gas had been disseminated more effectively at Kasumigaseki station, a hub of the Tokyo subway system, tens of thousands might have been killed.

In the attack's aftermath, Japanese police raided Aum Shinrikyo headquarters and arrested hundreds of members, including the cult's blind leader, Shoko Asahara. The cult, which combined Buddhism and yoga with apocalyptic Christian philosophy, was already under investigation for a 1994 sarin attack that killed seven, and for the murder of several political opponents.

During the 1980s, Asahara, a self-styled Buddhist monk, began winning numerous converts to his Aum Shinrikyo cult, whose name translates roughly to the "Supreme Teachings of Om." Asahara exploited the spiritual vacuum left by Japan's economic boom years and promised religious rebirth and supernatural powers to young Japanese who felt uncomfortable within their country's rigidly homogenous society. In 1989, Aum was recognized as a religious corporation in Japan, and by 1995 it had a worldwide following of more than 40,000 people and assets in excess of $1 billion.

In the early 1990s, Asahara added Christian apocalyptic beliefs to his Buddhist teachings and proclaimed that he was the reincarnation of both Jesus Christ and Gautama Buddha. Aum became militant, stockpiling weapons and recruiting brilliant young scientists to help him accumulate an arsenal of biochemical weapons, including advanced nerve agents such as VX and killer diseases such as Q-fever and anthrax. These weapons, Asahara promised, would lead Aum Shinrikyo to victory in the coming Armageddon.

More than a dozen political opponents to the cult were murdered, their bodies incinerated in specially built microwave ovens, and in June 1994 Aum staged its first sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, west of Tokyo. A car, modified to strategically release the lethal gas, was driven near a dormitory where judges and court officials conducting a case against Aum were staying. Seven people died, and 150 people were injured. Japan's authorities, hindered by constitutional protection of religious organizations, failed to arrest Asahara or suppress his cult, though they were the prime suspects in the attack. In early 1995, Asahara told his followers that World War III had begun, and a second sarin attack was planned for the Tokyo subway system, which carries some four million riders a day.

In the years since the 1995 attack, five Aum members have been sentenced to die for the murderous acts committed by the cult at Kasumigaseki station and elsewhere, and others have been sentenced to varying prison terms. Shoko Asahara, was sentenced to death by hanging in February 2004, but continues to appeal the decision.

Aum Shinrikyo was stripped of its legal status and tax privileges as a religious organization, but the Japanese government concluded it was no longer a threat and stopped short of using an anti-subversion law to ban it. Aum has changed its name to Aleph, which is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and meant to signify renewal, and maintains an impressive following.

20th March 1616 - Sir Walter Raleigh is released from imprisonment in the Tower of London to search for gold in Guyana in South America.
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Raleigh and his son Wat, 1602.


Walter Raleigh was born at Hayes Barton, in Devon, England in 1554. He was the half brother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (1537–1583) and Adrian Gilbert, uncle of Sir Francis Drake (1540–1596) through his first wife Alice Drake, and brother-in-law of Sir Richard Grenville (1542–1591) through Alice's brother John. He was also related to the Sackvilles or Sackfields of Dorset and apparently to most of the individuals whom he chose for his entourage to the New World and to other places. Raleigh's family had a fundamentally Protestant religious orientation and experienced a number of near escapes during the reign of the Catholic queen Mary I of England (1553–155. During childhood, Raleigh developed a hatred of Catholicism, and proved quick to express it after the Protestant Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558. In 1572, he became an undergraduate at Oriel College, Oxford and in the registry of the Middle Temple in 1575.

In 1591, Raleigh was secretly married to Elizabeth ("Bess") Throckmorton, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, and eleven years his junior, who was pregnant for the third time. When the unauthorised marriage was discovered the next year, the Queen ordered Raleigh imprisoned and Bess dismissed from court. It was several years before Raleigh returned to favour. The couple remained devoted to each other, and, during Raleigh's absences, she proved a capable manager of the family's fortunes and reputation. The couple had two sons, Wat and Carew.

Raleigh was Governor of Jersey (an island off the northern coast of France but is a British dependency) 1600–1603, responsible for modernising the defences of the island. He named the new fortress protecting the approaches to Saint Helier Fort Isabella Bellissima, known thereafter in English as Elizabeth Castle.

Royal favour did not last, however. On November 17, 1603, after Elizabeth's death, Raleigh went on trial for treason in the converted Great Hall of Winchester Castle for supposed involvement in the Main Plot. His involvement in the Main Plot seems to have been confined to meeting with Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham and no more, but Raleigh was in disfavour at that point. He languished in the Tower of London until 1616. While imprisoned, he wrote a book about ancient history (of Greece and Rome): A Historie of the World, also known as A History of the World.

Raleigh was released from the Tower on 20th March 1616 to conduct a second expedition to the Orinoco in search of El Dorado, in the course of which his men, under the command of Lawrence Keymis, sacked the Spanish outpost of San Thome. Raleigh's son Wat was struck by a bullet and killed instantly in the initial attack on the town. On Raleigh's return to England, the outraged Spanish Ambassador demanded that King James reinstate Raleigh's death sentence.

Raleigh was beheaded at Whitehall on October 29, 1618. His last words after he was allowed to view the axe that was to take his life were "This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all Diseases!" According to "Shepherd of the Ocean," a biography of Raleigh by J.H. Adamson and H.F. Holland, his wife had the head "embalmed and kept it by her side, frequently inquiring of visitors if they would like to see Sir Walter." In 1618, Raleigh's head was interred with his body at St. Margaret's near Westminster Abbey.

Although his popularity had waned considerably since his Elizabethan heyday, his execution was seen by many to be unnecessary and unjust, and is judged by some historians to have hastened the demise of the Stuart dynasty.

wikipedia.org

21st March 1556 - The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, is burnt at the stake. The reason? Because he was a Protestant, and the evil Queen Mary (Bloody Mary), a Protestant-hating Catholic who murdered thousands of Protestants during her reign, had just ascended to the throne.
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Thomas Cranmer (July 2, 1489 – March 21, 1556) was the protestant Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of the English kings Henry VIII and Edward VI. He wrote two prayerbooks and is considered to be the founder of the Church of England. In 1556 he was burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I and is among the first Anglican martyrs.

Cranmer was born in 1489 in Aslacton, now Aslockton, near Nottingham. His parents Thomas and Agnes Cranmer were from the common gentry and had only enough land to support their eldest son upon their death. Due to this lack of land Thomas and his younger brother were forced to join the church.

In 1510 Cranmer was given a fellowship at Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1515 while still at Cambridge he married Joan, the niece of the landlady of the nearby Dolphin Tavern; this led to his expulsion from the college due to the rule that fellows were to remain celibate. In 1519 Joan Cranmer died during childbirth; this allowed him to be re-accepted into the college. He was known as a dedicated student and was noted for his interest in unorthodox philosophy. He became a doctor of divinity in 1523.

A plague forced Cranmer to leave Cambridge for Essex. Here he came to the attention of Henry VIII, who was staying nearby. The King and his councillors found Cranmer a willing advocate for Henry's desired annulment from Catherine of Aragon and he became involved with the case as a researcher. Cranmer was sent as part of the embassy to Rome in 1530, and in 1532 he became ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

Cranmer met his second wife Margarete, relative by marriage of the Lutheran scholar Andreas Osiander, while spending the summer of 1532 in Nuremberg.

Edward VI died in 1553, to be succeeded by his half-sister, Mary I. Mary was the daughter of Henry’s first wife (Catherine of Aragon, a Spaniard), and was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. In line with her Catholic beliefs, she began the process of counter-reformation. On February 14, 1556 Cranmer, as a Protestant, was removed from office, imprisoned and charged with treason; he had, after all, been responsible for the removal of Mary’s mother Catherine of Aragon. He was tried and sentenced, but the Queen spared his life. However, he was subsequently tried for heresy and, being found guilty, made several recantations, as he said later, in order to avoid execution. Despite this, which should have absolved him under Mary’s own Heresy Act, Cranmer was sentenced to death by burning. Her change of heart is difficult to explain. She had previously spared him and he had been reluctant to accede to the determination of Northumberland, Edward’s advisor to have Lady Jane Grey made Queen in her stead.


Cranmer’s martyrdom, from John Foxe’s book (1563)

According to John Foxe on 21st March 1556 Cranmer was brought in procession to St. Mary’s Church in Oxford where he was to make a public statement affirming his recantation. Cranmer withdrew his recantation and denounced Catholic doctrine and the Pope from the pulpit, reportedly stating, “And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ's enemy and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine.” After this Cranmer was taken to be burned at the stake:

“Then was an iron chain tied about Cranmer and fire set unto him. When the wood was kindled and the fire began to burn near him, he stretched forth his right hand, which had signed his recantation, into the flames, and there held it so the people might see it burnt to a coal before his body was touched. In short, he was so patient and constant in the midst of his tortures, that he seemed to move no more than the stake to which he was bound; his eyes were lifted up to heaven, and often he said, so long as his voice would suffer him, “this unworthy right hand!” and often using the words of Stephen, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” till the fury of the flames putting him to silence, he gave up the ghost.” (The Book of Act and Monuments, Book of Martyrs, By John Foxe – 1563)

Bishops Ridley and Latimer had also been burned at this place in October 1555 and these three martyrdoms are commemorated with the nearby Victorian Martyrs' Memorial in Oxford.

Also on this day -

1413 - Henry V becomes King of England.

1801 - The Battle of Alexandria was fought between British and French forces near the ruins of Nicopolis in Egypt.

1993 - An IRA bomb explodes in Warrington, Cheshire, killing two young boys - Tim Parry, aged 12, and Jonathan Ball, aged just 3. Jonathan was in town to buy his mother a Mother's Day card. 56 other people were injured.

wikipedia.org

22nd March 1819 - Hannah Bocking, 16, became the youngest girl to be executed in Britain.
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The Poisoned Cake



Hannah Bocking of Litton, Derbyshire was a 16-year-old servant girl. In the summer of 1818 she was turned down for a job. The reason was ‘her unamiable temper and disposition’. Another local girl, Jane Grant, was taken on instead.

Hannah hid her jealousy and apparently remained friends with Jane. One day they were out walking past the skeleton of Anthony Lingard in his gibbet (up until about the mid-19th Century, criminals pubicly hanged in Britain were often left hanging there in the gibbet, usually for months, so that passers-by would see them. It was hoped it would deter would-be criminals). Hannah chose this place to give Jane a poisoned cake. Very soon Jane was dead.

Hannah was arrested and taken to Derby gaol. Six months later she was tried for murder. At first she first tried to involve members of her own family in the crime. Finally she admitted that she had bought some poison ten weeks before giving it to Jane in a cake.

The murder was clearly deliberately planned, which meant that Hannah Bocking had no chance of escaping the death penalty. On 22 March 1819, only four days after her trial, she was publicly executed by the old cart and gallows method.

This is how her death was reported around the country:

‘At the moment, when she was launched into eternity, an involuntary shuddering pervaded the assembled crowd, and although she excited little sympathy, a general feeling of horror was expressed that one so young should have been so guilty, and so insensible.’

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Until 1808 the law in Britain offered the death penalty for some 200 offenses, including some petty crimes such as stealing goods worth up to 5 shillings (25 pence in today's money) and stealing letters. Some others were:

*Attempting suicide
*Being in the company of gypsies for one month
*Vagrancy for soldiers and sailors
*"Strong evidence of malice" in children aged 7–14 years old

Between 1832 and 1834 Parliament abolished the death penalty for:

*Shoplifting goods worth five shillings (£0.25) or less
*Returning from Transportation
*Letter-stealing
*Sacrilege

In 1861, Parliament reduced the number of capital crimes to four:

*Murder
*Treason
*Arson in Royal Dockyards
*Piracy with violence

Britain ended public hangings in 1868 and formally abolished the hanging, beheading and quartering of traitors in 1870.

In 1965 Parliament passed the 'Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act' abolishing capital punishment for murder. And with the introduction of the Human Rights Act in 1998, the death penalty was officially abolished for all crimes in both civilian and military cases.

wikipedia.org

ARTIFICIAL-HEART PATIENT DIES:
March 23, 1983

On March 23, 1983, Barney Clark dies 112 days after becoming the world's first recipient of a permanent artificial heart. The 61-year-old dentist spent the last four months of his life in a hospital bed at the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City, attached to a 350-pound console that pumped air in and out of the aluminum-and-plastic implant through a system of hoses.

In the late 19th century, scientists began developing a pump to temporarily supplant heart action. In 1953, an artificial heart-lung machine was employed successfully for the first time during an operation on a human patient. In this procedure, which is still used today, the machine temporarily takes over heart and lung function, allowing doctors to operate extensively on these organs. After a few hours, however, blood becomes damaged by the pumping and oxygenation.

In the late 1960s, hope was given to patients with irreparably damaged hearts when heart-transplant operations began. However, the demand for donor hearts always exceeded availability, and thousands died every year while waiting for healthy hearts to become available.

On April 4, 1969, a historic operation was performed by surgeon Denton Cooley of the Texas Heart Institute on Haskell Karp, a patient whose heart was on the brink of total collapse and to whom no donor heart had become available. Karp was the first person in history to have his diseased heart replaced by an artificial heart. The temporary plastic-and-Dacron heart extended Karp's life for the three days it took doctors to find him a donor heart. However, soon after the human heart was transplanted into his chest, he died from infection. Seven more failed attempts were made, and many doctors lost faith in the possibility of replacing the human heart with a prosthetic substitute.

In the early 1980s, however, a pioneering new scientist resumed efforts to develop a viable artificial heart. Robert K. Jarvik had decided to study medicine and engineering after his father died of heart disease. By 1982, he was conducting animal trials at the University of Utah with his Jarvik-7 artificial heart.

On December 2, 1982, a team led by Dr. William C. DeVries implanted the Jarvik-7 into Barney Clark. Because Jarvik's artificial heart was intended to be permanent, the Clark case drew worldwide attention. Clark spent his last 112 days in the hospital and suffered considerably from complications and the discomfort of having compressed air pumped in and out of his body. He died on March 23, 1983, from various complications. Clark's experience left many feeling that the time of the permanent artificial heart had not yet come.

During the next decade, Jarvik and others concentrated their efforts on developing mechanical pumps to assist a diseased heart rather than replace it. These devices allow many patients to live the months or even years it takes for them to find a donor heart. Battery powered, these implants give heart-disease patients mobility and allow them to live relatively normal lives. Meanwhile, in the 1990s, the Jarvik-7 was used on more than 150 patients whose hearts were too damaged to be aided by the mechanical pump implant. More than half of these patients survived until they got a transplant.

In 2001, a company called AbioMed unveiled the AbioCor, the first completely self-contained replacement heart. Although patients implanted with the AbioCor have still eventually died, AbioMed has shown it is possible to live as long as 500 days with the implant.

23rd March 1708 - Prince James Francis Edwart Stuart (The Old Pretender) made an unsuccessful attempt to land at the Firth of Forth with his French fleet. He was a claimant to the Throne. But the Royal Navy, led by Admiral Byng, scared the French ships away. The Jacobites, his supporters, referred to him as King James III of England and VIII of Scotland.
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The Old Pretender


Prince James Francis Edward Stuart or Stewart (June 10, 1688 – January 1, 1766) was a claimant of the thrones of Scotland and England (September 16, 1701 – January 1, 1766) who is more commonly referred to as The Old Pretender. His Jacobite supporters referred to him as James III of England and VIII of Scotland, and he was a key figure in the history of the British monarchy, although his personality was not such as to have made a great impact.

From the moment of his birth, on June 10, 1688 (which was also the year of the Glorious Revolution), at St. James's Palace, the prince was the subject of controversy. He was the son of King James II of England and his Roman Catholic second wife, Mary of Modena. From his first marriage, the king had two adult daughters who had been brought up in the Protestant faith, and as long as there was a possibility of one of them succeeding him directly, the British people were prepared to tolerate his own Roman Catholic sympathies. When people began to fear that Mary would produce a son and heir, a movement grew to replace James by force with his son-in-law, William of Orange.

When the young prince was born, a rumour was immediately spread that the call for a "warming-pan" had been the pretext for a substitution, the real baby having allegedly been born dead. There is no historical evidence for this. However, within weeks of his birth, the child was sent to France for safety, and his father was fighting unsuccessfully to retain his crown.

The prince was brought up in France, where, recognised by King Louis XIV of France as the rightful heir to the English and Scottish thrones, he became the focus for the Jacobite movement. On his father's death in 1701, he was declared King, with the title of James III of England and VIII of Scotland.

Having been delayed in France by an attack of measles, James made an unsuccessful attempt to land at the Firth of Forth on March 23, 1708, but his French ships were driven back by the fleet of Admiral George Byng. Had he renounced his Roman Catholic faith, he might have succeeded to the throne after the death of his half-sister Anne, but he refused to do so. As a result, in 1714, a German Protestant became King George I of Great Britain.

In 1714 the French forces were defeated, and King Louis XIV of France was forced to accept peace with England and her allies. He signed the Treaty of Utrecht in 1714 that, amongst other humiliating conditions, required him to expel James from France.

In the following year, the Jacobites instigated a rebellion in Scotland aimed at restoring "King James III and VIII" to the throne. In 1715, James finally set foot on Scottish soil, following the indecisive Battle of Sheriffmuir, but he was disappointed by the strength of support he found. Instead of carrying through the plans for a coronation at Scone, he returned to France. He was not welcomed back, because his patron, Louis XIV, was dead and the government found him an embarrassment. The Pope offered him refuge in Rome, where he lived for the rest of his life.

On September 3, 1719, James Francis Edward Stuart married Maria Clementina Sobieska (1702-1735), granddaughter of the Polish king, John III Sobieski. They had two sons:

Charles Edward Stuart, (December 31, 1720 – January 31, 178, aka "Bonnie Prince Charlie"

Henry Benedict Stuart, (March 11, 1725 – July 13, 1807)

Following James's failure, attention turned to his handsome and charismatic son, "Bonnie Prince Charlie", whose rebellion of 1745 came closer to success than his father's. With the failure of this second rebellion, however, the Stuart hopes of regaining the British throne were effectively destroyed. James died in Rome on January 1, 1766, and is buried in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.

wikipedia.org

24th March 1603 - King James I of England and Ireland comes to the Throne as the Crowns of England and Scotland are joined - the "Union of the Crowns." He was already King James VI of Scotland from 24th July 1567. Even though the Crowns of England and Scotland had united, England/Wales didn't unify with Scotland as part of one country until 1707.
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James VI of Scotland and James I of England and Ireland (Charles James) (June 19, 1566–March 27, 1625) was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland. He ruled in Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 until his death, and, from the 'Union of the Crowns', in England and Ireland as James I from 24 March 1603 until his death. He was the first monarch of England from the House of Stuart, succeeding the last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I, who died without children.

James was a successful monarch in Scotland, but the same was not true in England. He was unable to deal with a hostile Parliament of England; the refusal on the part of the House of Commons to impose sufficiently high taxes crippled the royal finances. His taste for political absolutism, his mismanagement of the kingdom's funds and his cultivation of unpopular favourites established the foundation for the English Civil War, during which James' son and successor, Charles I, was tried and executed. During James' own life, however, the governments of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were relatively stable.

Along with Alfred the Great, James is considered to have been one of the most intellectual and learned individuals ever to sit on the English or Scottish thrones. Under him, much of the cultural flourishing of Elizabethan England continued; science, literature and art, contributed by individuals such as Sir Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare grew by leaps and bounds during his reign. James himself was a talented scholar, writing works such as Daemonologie (1597), The True Law of Free Monarchies (159, Basilikon Doron (1599) and A Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604).

wikipedia.org