Back In The Saddle



I'm back from a week-long vacation with my family. Thanks to the wonderful guest posters for their great reporting.

We'll make guest posting a regular part of Washington's Blog, and we'll also get back to writing ourselves.





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Why the English took to Tea - Deborah Swift

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I would certainly not have been able to finish any of my books without my regular top-up of that quintessentrially English drink, tea. I have inherited a number of teapots from my mother much like these from Vintage Dorset , and tea drinking has always been a big part of my family life. Of course tea is not really English at all, it came first from China and later was introduced to India by the British as a way of suppliying the British Empire with a cheaper product . At the end of the 17th century almost nobody in England drank tea,  but by the end of the next century nearly everyone from King to commoner did. In 1699 six tons were imported, but by the turn of the eighteenth century eleven thousand tons were inported! The sudden enthusiasm for tea can be attributed to a number of factors - the first of which was the King's marriage to Catherine of Braganza. Her enormous dowry, suited to her position as daughter of King John IV of Portugal, included the trading posts of Tangier and...
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The Glorious (ish) 1st of June

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by Jonathan Hopkins   When France ’s revolutionary government declared war on Britain in 1793, the country breathed a collective sigh of despair. Since being drummed out of America in 1776 things had not gone well for the British, militarily. They were forced from their toehold on the French mainland at Toulon thanks largely to the clever tactics of a young artillery captain called Napoleon Buonaparte. And the Duke of York’s campaign in Flanders was becoming bogged down after minor early successes. Britain needed a victory. Something to shout about: to help restore collective morale and take people’s minds off growing social unrest at home. So when in the spring of 1794 the Admiralty got wind of a large enemy grain convoy returning to France from America , the English Channel fleet, under Admiral Lord Howe, was ordered to intercept it. Sixty-nine years old at that time, Richard Howe joined the navy at thirteen and having been successfully involved in many previous naval acti...
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Rightful Head of England: Pope vs. King

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By Rosanne E. Lortz We thought that the clergy of our realm had been our subjects wholly, but now we have well perceived that they be but half our subjects, yea, and scarce our subjects: for all the prelates at their consecration make an oath to the Pope, clean contrary to the oath that they make to us, so that they seem to be his subjects, and not ours. On May 11, 1532, King Henry VIII uttered this complaint to Parliament, that the clergy of the realm cared more for the Pope’s commands than they did for his own. Any Tudor-phile can tell you what happened next. Two years later Henry issued the Act of Supremacy, severing the connection with Rome and making himself “the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England.” But how did the Church of England become so reliant on the Church of Rome in the first place? How did the Pope, the bishop of the far-away city of Rome, gain authority over what happened in the British Isles? Augustine of Canterbury The story of the Pope’s involvement ...
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