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History Of England Quotes

Browse 32 quotes about History Of England.

History Of England Quotes

“For decades, indeed centuries, the English legal system had been decried for its unfairness. The lists of its short-comings varied, but most included the sheer time it took to resolve any case and the eye-watering cost in lawyers' fees of legal action. This indefinite imprisonment of debtors and the power of the central courts in London were also causes for repeated complaint, as was the fact that the law was a closed shop, conducted in Latin and French, to the absolute exclusion of non-professionals.”

History Of EnglandUnfair Legal System
Book:The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
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“It was not to be a blunt instrument of instruction, but something subtler. Humour and satire were to be its methos. 'It must be written in a jocular way,' he explained; to sway the opinions of the 'multitude' required not disputation, but amusement and 'phantasie' that would delight and charm.”

PropagandaHistory Of EnglandMarchamont NedhamHistory Of The Press
Book:The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
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“There appeared before her eyes the figure of Oliver Cromwell, in the guise of the Old Testament military leader Gideon, going into the Commons Chamber and demanding the resignation of the Speaker and the end of the assembly: 'I saw suddenly a departure of them, though they were very loath thereunto.' When, four days later, news reached the Hillingdon vicarage that exactly these events had just occurred in London, Anna's friends were thunderstruck. She was not mad. God himself was speaking through her.”

ProphecyHistory Of EnglandOliver CromwellAnna Trapnel
Book:The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
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“... she had foreseen the New Model Army's occupation of London in the tense weeks before Charles I was tried. Two years after that she had experienced a further trance and this time saw an army on the battlefield, led by a figure of valour and courage, God indicating that 'Oliver Cromwell, then Lord General, was that Gideon'. Cromwell's defeat of the Scots at the battle of Dunbar soon afterwards offered Anna confirmation of the truth of her visions.”

VisionsHistory Of EnglandOliver CromwellAnna Trapnel
Book:The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
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“As soon as the edifice of the knowledge of the ancients had been shaken in the minds of the most inquisitive, questions upon questions arose which now demanded technology, including -- crucially -- the invention of the telescope and the microscope, enabling a generation of scholars to see clearly things which had been absolutely invisible to their forefathers. It was a thrilling, and dangerous, time to be alive.”

History Of ScienceHistory Of EnglandHistory Of Technology
Book:The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
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“I mean, who even are the English? The descendants of the Germanic tribes? We're a great hotchpotch really, aren't we? A mishmash of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans, et cetera, et cetera, to a complicatedly hybrid ancestry, barely united for centuries, and our borders always shifting. We're not a pure, homogenous race sprung from English soil, are we? When people talk about Englishness, I often get a whiff of frowsty Victorian velvet," she mused, articulating more expansively with her hands as she warmed to her theme. "It makes me think of paintings of King Alfred, Ivanhoe and Tennyson, people putting on dressing-up clothes to do archery, and William Morris tapestries. Perhaps Englishness is less about geography and historical dates and more about symbols and emotions? There are lots of tripwires and misty hollows between the lions and unicorns, aren't there? When you begin to think about what Englishness means--- and, by extension, English food--- it all starts to become rather precarious and complicated, doesn't it?”

PopulationSymbolicStereotypingHistory Of EnglandMother CountryEnglishnessEuropean Culture
Book:Good Taste
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“Their love of the Church was not, indeed, the effect of study or meditation. Few among them could have given any reason, drawn from Scripture or ecclesiastical history, for adhering to her doctrines, her ritual, and her polity; nor were they, as a class, by any means strict observers of that code of morality which is common to all Christian sects. But the experience of many ages proves that men may be ready to fight to the death, and to persecute without pity, for a religion whose creed they do not understand, and whose precepts they habitually disobey.”

ReligionChurch Of EnglandHistory Of EnglandGentry
Book:The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 1
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“It is impossible to determine precisely how many Victorians were dependent on the drug, but since millions used it on a daily basis, the number must have been considerable. The pallor of many women in the middle and upper classes, their frequent lack of appetite, their tendency to faint and to spend considerable time alone in dark rooms, the ornate patterns of overupholstered and overfurnished rooms, the persistently closed, thick draperies - these are evidence of a national dependency that the restraints of Victorian society discouraged anyone from discussing.”

History Of England
Author:David Morrell
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