1.
Lord Chancellor
–
The Lord Chancellor, formally the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, is a senior functionary in the government of the United Kingdom. They are appointed by the Sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor is the second highest ranking of the Great Officers of State, ranking after only the Lord High Steward. Prior to the Union there were separate Lords Chancellor for England and Wales, the Lord Chancellor is a member of the Cabinet and, by law, is responsible for the efficient functioning and independence of the courts. In 2007 there were a number of changes to the legal system, the current Lord Chancellor is Elizabeth Truss, who is also Secretary of State for Justice. One of the Lord Chancellors responsibilities is to act as the custodian of the Great Seal of the Realm, a Lord Keeper of the Great Seal may be appointed instead of a Lord Chancellor. The two offices entail exactly the same duties, the distinction is in the mode of appointment. The seal is then said to be in commission, since the 19th century, however, only Lord Chancellors have been appointed, the other offices having fallen into disuse. The office of Lord Chancellor of England may trace its origins to the Carolingian monarchy, in England, the office dates at least as far back as the Norman Conquest, and possibly earlier. Some give the first Chancellor of England as Angmendus, in 605, other sources suggest that the first to appoint a Chancellor was Edward the Confessor, who is said to have adopted the practice of sealing documents instead of personally signing them. A clerk of Edwards, Regenbald, was named chancellor in some documents from Edwards reign, in any event, the office has been continuously occupied since the Norman Conquest. The chancellor headed the office or chancery. Formerly, the Lord Chancellor was almost always a churchman, as during the Middle Ages the clergy were amongst the few men of the realm. The Lord Chancellor performed multiple functions—he was the Keeper of the Great Seal, the royal chaplain. Thus, the position emerged as one of the most important ones in government and he was only outranked in government by the Justiciar. As one of the Kings ministers, the Lord Chancellor attended the curia regis or Royal Court, if a bishop, the Lord Chancellor received a writ of summons, if an ecclesiastic of a lower degree or, if a layman, he attended without any summons. The curia regis would later evolve into Parliament, the Lord Chancellor becoming the prolocutor of its upper house, as was confirmed by a statute passed during the reign of Henry VIII, a Lord Chancellor could preside over the House of Lords even if not a Lord himself. The Lord Chancellors judicial duties also evolved through his role in the curia regis, petitions for justice were normally addressed to the King and the curia, but in 1280, Edward I instructed his justices to examine and deal with petitions themselves as the Court of Kings Bench. Important petitions were to be sent to the Lord Chancellor for his decision, by the reign of Edward III, this chancellery function developed into a separate tribunal for the Lord Chancellor
2.
William IV of the United Kingdom
–
William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death. The third son of George III and younger brother and successor to George IV, he was the last king, William served in the Royal Navy in his youth and was, both during his reign and afterwards, nicknamed the Sailor King. He served in North America and the Caribbean, in 1789, he was created Duke of Clarence and St Andrews. Since his two brothers died without leaving legitimate issue, he inherited the throne when he was 64 years old. Although William did not engage in politics as much as his brother or his father, through his brother, the Viceroy of Hanover, he granted his German kingdom a short-lived liberal constitution. William was succeeded in the United Kingdom by his niece, Victoria, William was born in the early hours of the morning on 21 August 1765 at Buckingham House, the third child and son of King George III and Queen Charlotte. He had two brothers, George and Frederick, and was not expected to inherit the Crown. He was baptised in the Great Council Chamber of St Jamess Palace on 20 September 1765 and his godparents were his paternal uncles, the Duke of Gloucester and Prince Henry, and his paternal aunt, Princess Augusta, then hereditary duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. He spent most of his life in Richmond and at Kew Palace. At the age of thirteen, he joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman and his experiences in the navy seem to have been little different from those of other midshipmen, though in contrast to other sailors he was accompanied on board ships by a tutor. He did his share of the cooking and got arrested with his shipmates after a brawl in Gibraltar. He served in New York during the American War of Independence, I am fully persuaded, that it is unnecessary to caution you against offering insult or indignity to the persons of the Prince or Admiral. The plot did not come to fruition, the British heard of it and assigned guards to William and he became a lieutenant in 1785 and captain of HMS Pegasus the following year. The two were friends, and dined together almost nightly. At Nelsons wedding, William insisted on giving the bride away and he was given command of the frigate HMS Andromeda in 1788, and was promoted to rear-admiral in command of HMS Valiant the following year. William sought to be made a duke like his brothers, and to receive a similar parliamentary grant. To put pressure on him, William threatened to stand for the House of Commons for the constituency of Totnes in Devon, Williams political record was inconsistent and, like many politicians of the time, cannot be certainly ascribed to a single party. William ceased his active service in the Royal Navy in 1790, the following year he spoke in favour of the war, expecting a command after his change of heart, none came
3.
Queen Victoria
–
Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she adopted the title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, both the Duke of Kent and King George III died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne aged 18, after her fathers three brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was already a constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments, publicly, Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together, after Alberts death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength and her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration. Her reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian era and it was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover and her son and successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father. Victorias father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, until 1817, Edwards niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 precipitated a crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent. In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl and Feodora —by her first marriage to the Prince of Leiningen and her brother Leopold was Princess Charlottes widower. The Duke and Duchess of Kents only child, Victoria, was born at 4.15 a. m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Victoria was christened privately by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace and she was baptised Alexandrina, after one of her godparents, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, and Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina, Charlotte, and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of the Dukes eldest brother, George, the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Kent married on the same day in 1818, but both of Clarences daughters died as infants. Victorias father died in January 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old, a week later her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son, George IV. The Duke of York died in 1827, when George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his next surviving brother, William IV, and Victoria became heir presumptive
4.
House of Lords
–
The House of Lords of the United Kingdom, referred to ceremonially as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster, officially, the full name of the house is, The Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. Unlike the elected House of Commons, all members of the House of Lords are appointed, the membership of the House of Lords is drawn from the peerage and is made up of Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal. The Lords Spiritual are 26 bishops in the established Church of England, of the Lords Temporal, the majority are life peers who are appointed by the monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister, or on the advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. However, they include some hereditary peers including four dukes. Very few of these are female since most hereditary peerages can only be inherited by men, while the House of Commons has a defined 650-seat membership, the number of members in the House of Lords is not fixed. There are currently 805 sitting Lords, the House of Lords is the only upper house of any bicameral parliament to be larger than its respective lower house. The House of Lords scrutinises bills that have approved by the House of Commons. It regularly reviews and amends Bills from the Commons, while it is unable to prevent Bills passing into law, except in certain limited circumstances, it can delay Bills and force the Commons to reconsider their decisions. In this capacity, the House of Lords acts as a check on the House of Commons that is independent from the electoral process, Bills can be introduced into either the House of Lords or the House of Commons. Members of the Lords may also take on roles as government ministers, the House of Lords has its own support services, separate from the Commons, including the House of Lords Library. The Queens Speech is delivered in the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament, the House also has a Church of England role, in that Church Measures must be tabled within the House by the Lords Spiritual. This new parliament was, in effect, the continuation of the Parliament of England with the addition of 45 MPs and 16 Peers to represent Scotland, the Parliament of England developed from the Magnum Concilium, the Great Council that advised the King during medieval times. This royal council came to be composed of ecclesiastics, noblemen, the first English Parliament is often considered to be the Model Parliament, which included archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, and representatives of the shires and boroughs of it. The power of Parliament grew slowly, fluctuating as the strength of the monarchy grew or declined, for example, during much of the reign of Edward II, the nobility was supreme, the Crown weak, and the shire and borough representatives entirely powerless. In 1569, the authority of Parliament was for the first time recognised not simply by custom or royal charter, further developments occurred during the reign of Edward IIs successor, Edward III. It was during this Kings reign that Parliament clearly separated into two chambers, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The authority of Parliament continued to grow, and, during the fifteenth century
5.
Hereditary peer
–
Hereditary peers form part of the peerage in the United Kingdom. There are over eight hundred peers who hold titles that may be inherited. Formerly, most of them were entitled to sit in the House of Lords, Peers are called to the House of Lords with a writ of summons. A hereditary title is not necessarily a title of the peerage, for instance, baronets and baronetesses may pass on their titles, but they are not peers. Conversely, the holder of a title may belong to the peerage. Peerages may be created by means of letters patent, but the granting of new hereditary peerages has dwindled, with six having been created since 1965. The hereditary peerage, as it now exists, combines several different English institutions with analogous ones from Scotland and Ireland, English Earls are an Anglo-Saxon institution. Around 1014, England was divided into shires or counties, largely to defend against the Danes, each shire was led by a great man, called an earl. When the Normans conquered England, they continued to appoint earls, but not for all counties, Earldoms began as offices, with a perquisite of a share of the legal fees in the county, they gradually became honours, with a stipend of £20 a year. Like most feudal offices, earldoms were inherited, but the kings frequently asked earls to resign or exchange earldoms, William the Conqueror and Henry II did not make Dukes, they were themselves only Dukes of Normandy or Aquitaine. But when Edward III of England declared himself King of France, he made his sons Dukes, to them from other noblemen. Later Kings created Marquesses and Viscounts to make finer gradations of honour, which men were ordered to Council varied from Council to Council, a man might be so ordered once and never again, or all his life, but his son and heir might never go. Under Henry VI of England, in the 15th century, just before the Wars of the Roses, the first claim of hereditary right to a writ comes from this reign, so does the first patent, or charter declaring a man to be a Baron. The five orders began to be called Peers, holders of older peerages also began receive greater honour than Peers of the same rank just created. If a man held a peerage, his son would succeed to it, if he had no children, if he had a single daughter, his son-in-law would inherit the family lands, and usually the same Peerage, more complex cases were decided depending on circumstances. Customs changed with time, Earldoms were the first to be hereditary, after Henry II became the Lord of Ireland, he and his successors began to imitate the English system as it was in their time. A writ does not create a peerage in Ireland, all Irish peerages are by patent or charter, in the 18th century, Irish peerages became rewards for English politicians, limited only by the concern that they might go to Dublin and interfere with the Irish Government. Scotland evolved a system, differing in points of detail
6.
Lucca
–
Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio, in a fertile plain near the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital of the Province of Lucca and it is famous for its intact Renaissance-era city walls. Lucca was founded by the Etruscans and became a Roman colony in 180 BC, the rectangular grid of its historical centre preserves the Roman street plan, and the Piazza San Michele occupies the site of the ancient forum. Traces of the amphitheatre still may be seen in the Piazza dellAnfiteatro, at the Lucca Conference, in 56 BC, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus reaffirmed their political alliance known as the First Triumvirate. Frediano, an Irish monk, was bishop of Lucca in the sixth century. At one point, Lucca was plundered by Odoacer, the first Germanic King of Italy, Lucca was an important city and fortress even in the sixth century, when Narses besieged it for several months in 553. Under the Lombards, it was the seat of a duke who minted his own coins, the Holy Face of Lucca, a major relic supposedly carved by Nicodemus, arrived in 742. During the eighth-tenth centuries Lucca was a center of Jewish life, Lucca became prosperous through the silk trade that began in the eleventh century, and came to rival the silks of Byzantium. During the tenth–eleventh centuries Lucca was the capital of the margraviate of Tuscany, more or less independent. After the death of Matilda of Tuscany, the city began to constitute itself an independent commune, for almost 500 years, Lucca remained an independent republic. There were many minor provinces in the region between southern Liguria and northern Tuscany dominated by the Malaspina, Tuscany in this time was a part of feudal Europe, dante’s Divine Comedy includes many references to the great feudal families who had huge jurisdictions with administrative and judicial rights. Dante spent some of his exile in Lucca, in 1273 and again in 1277, Lucca was ruled by a Guelph capitano del popolo named Luchetto Gattilusio. In 1314, internal discord allowed Uguccione della Faggiuola of Pisa to make himself lord of Lucca, the Lucchesi expelled him two years later, and handed over the city to another condottiero, Castruccio Castracani, under whose rule it became a leading state in central Italy. Lucca rivalled Florence until Castracanis death in 1328, on 22 and 23 September 1325, in the battle of Altopascio, Castracani defeated Florences Guelphs. For this he was nominated by Louis IV the Bavarian to become duke of Lucca, Castracanis tomb is in the church of San Francesco. His biography is Machiavellis third famous book on political rule, in 1408, Lucca hosted the convocation intended to end the schism in the papacy. Occupied by the troops of Louis of Bavaria, the city was sold to a rich Genoese, Gherardino Spinola, then seized by John, Lucca had been the second largest Italian city state with a republican constitution to remain independent over the centuries. In 1805, Lucca was conquered by Napoleon, who installed his sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi as Princess of Lucca, from 1815 to 1847 it was a Bourbon-Parma duchy
7.
Grand Duchy of Tuscany
–
The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was a central Italian monarchy that existed, with interruptions, from 1569 to 1859, replacing the Duchy of Florence. The grand duchys capital was Florence, Tuscany was nominally a state of the Holy Roman Empire until the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797. Initially, Tuscany was ruled by the House of Medici until the extinction of its branch in 1737. The Medicis only advancement in the days of their existence was their elevation to royalty, by the Holy Roman Emperor. Francis Stephen of Lorraine, a descendant of the Medici, succeeded the family. Tuscany was governed by a viceroy, Marc de Beauvau-Craon, for his entire rule and his descendants ruled, and resided in, the grand duchy until 1859, barring one interruption, when Napoleon Bonaparte gave Tuscany to the House of Bourbon-Parma. Following the collapse of the Napoleonic system in 1814, the duchy was restored. The United Provinces of Central Italy, a client state of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, Tuscany was formally annexed to Sardinia in 1860, following a landslide referendum, in which 95% of voters approved. In 1569, Cosimo de Medici had ruled the Duchy of Florence for 32 years, during his reign, Florence purchased the island of Elba from the Republic of Genoa, conquered Siena and developed a well-equipped and powerful naval base on Elba. Cosimo also banned the clergy from holding positions and promulgated laws of freedom of religion. Cosimo also was a supporter of Pope Pius V, who in the light of Florences expansion in August 1569 declared Cosimo Grand Duke of Tuscany. The international reaction to Cosimos elevation was bleak, Queen Catherine of France, though herself a Medici, viewed Cosimo with the utmost disdain. Rumours circulated at the Viennese court that had Cosimo as a candidate for King of England, Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor and King Philip II of Spain reacting quite angrily, as Florence was an Imperial fief and declared Pius Vs actions invalid. However, Maximilian eventually confirmed the elevation with an Imperial diploma in 1576, during the Holy League of 1571, Cosimo fought against the Ottoman Empire, siding with the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy League inflicted a defeat against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto. Cosimos reign was one of the most militaristic Tuscany had ever seen, Cosimo experienced several personal tragedies during the later years of his reign. His wife, Eleanor of Toledo, died in 1562, along with four of his due to a plague epidemic in Florence. These deaths were to him greatly, which, along with illness
8.
Whigs (British political party)
–
The Whigs were a political faction and then a political party in the parliaments of England, Scotland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and 1850s, they contested power with their rivals, the Whigs origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute monarchy. The Whigs played a role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and were the standing enemies of the Stuart kings and pretenders. The Whigs took full control of the government in 1715, and remained dominant until King George III, coming to the throne in 1760. The Whig Supremacy was enabled by the Hanoverian succession of George I in 1714, the Whigs thoroughly purged the Tories from all major positions in government, the army, the Church of England, the legal profession, and local offices. The Partys hold on power was so strong and durable, historians call the period from roughly 1714 to 1783 the age of the Whig Oligarchy. The first great leader of the Whigs was Robert Walpole, who maintained control of the government through the period 1721–1742, his protégé was Henry Pelham, who led from 1743 to 1754. Both parties were founded on rich politicians, more than on votes, there were elections to the House of Commons. The Whig Party slowly evolved during the 18th century, later on, the Whigs drew support from the emerging industrial interests and wealthy merchants, while the Tories drew support from the landed interests and the royal family. The term Whig was originally short for whiggamor, a term meaning cattle driver used to describe western Scots who came to Leith for corn. In the reign of Charles I the term was used during Wars of the Three Kingdoms to refer derisively to a faction of the Scottish Covenanters who called themselves the Kirk Party. It was then applied to Scottish Presbyterian rebels who were against the Kings Episcopalian order in Scotland, Whig was a term of abuse applied to those who wanted to exclude James on the grounds that he was a Roman Catholic. The fervent Tory Samuel Johnson often joked that the first Whig was the Devil, the Whigs, under Lord Shaftesburys leadership, wished to exclude the Duke of York from the throne due to his Catholicism, his favouring of monarchical absolutism and his connections to France. They believed the Duke, if allowed to inherit the throne, would endanger the Protestant religion, liberty, the first Exclusion Bill was supported by a substantial majority on its second reading in May 1679. In response, King Charles prorogued Parliament and then dissolved it and this new parliament did not meet for thirteen months, because Charles wanted to give passions a chance to die down. When it met in October 1680, an Exclusion Bill was introduced and passed in the Commons without major resistance, Charles dissolved Parliament in January 1681, but the Whigs did not suffer serious losses in the ensuing election. The next Parliament first met in March, at Oxford, but Charles dissolved it only after a few days, when he made an appeal to the country against the Whigs, and determined to rule without Parliament. In February, Charles had made a deal with the French King Louis XIV, without Parliament, the Whigs gradually crumbled, mainly due to the Rye House Plot
9.
Trinity College, Cambridge
–
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England. With around 600 undergraduates,300 graduates, and over 180 fellows, by combined student numbers, it is second to Homerton College, Cambridge. Members of Trinity have won 32 Nobel Prizes out of the 91 won by members of Cambridge University, five Fields Medals in mathematics were won by members of the college and one Abel Prize was won. Other royal family members have studied there without obtaining degrees, including King Edward VII, King George VI, along with Christs, Jesus, Kings and St Johns colleges, it has also provided several of the well known members of the Apostles, an intellectual secret society. In 1848, Trinity hosted the meeting at which Cambridge undergraduates representing private schools such as Westminster drew up the first formal rules of football, Trinitys sister college in Oxford is Christ Church. Like that college, Trinity has been linked with Westminster School since the schools re-foundation in 1560, the college was founded by Henry VIII in 1546, from the merger of two existing colleges, Michaelhouse, and Kings Hall. At the time, Henry had been seizing church lands from abbeys, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, being both religious institutions and quite rich, expected to be next in line. The King duly passed an Act of Parliament that allowed him to any college he wished. The universities used their contacts to plead with his sixth wife, the Queen persuaded her husband not to close them down, but to create a new college. The king did not want to use royal funds, so he combined two colleges and seven hostels to form Trinity. Contrary to popular belief, the lands granted by Henry VIII were not on their own sufficient to ensure Trinitys eventual rise. In its infancy Trinity had owed a great deal to its college of St Johns. Its first four Masters were educated at St Johns, and it took until around 1575 for the two colleges application numbers to draw even, a position in which they have remained since the Civil War. Bentley himself was notorious for the construction of a hugely expensive staircase in the Masters Lodge, most of the Trinitys major buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries. Thomas Nevile, who became Master of Trinity in 1593, rebuilt and this work included the enlargement and completion of Great Court, and the construction of Neviles Court between Great Court and the river Cam. Neviles Court was completed in the late 17th century when the Wren Library, in the 20th century, Trinity College, St Johns College and Kings College were for decades the main recruiting grounds for the Cambridge Apostles, an elite, intellectual secret society. In 2011, the John Templeton Foundation awarded Trinity Colleges Master, Trinity is the richest Oxbridge college, with a landholding alone worth £800 million. Trinity is sometimes suggested to be the second, third or fourth wealthiest landowner in the UK – after the Crown Estate, the National Trust, in 2005, Trinitys annual rental income from its properties was reported to be in excess of £20 million
10.
Court of Chancery
–
The Court of Chancery was a court of equity in England and Wales that followed a set of loose rules to avoid the slow pace of change and possible harshness of the common law. The Chancery had jurisdiction over all matters of equity, including trusts, land law, the administration of the estates of lunatics and the guardianship of infants. Thus the Court of Chancery had a far greater remit than the law courts, whose decisions it had the jurisdiction to overrule for much of its existence. From the time of Elizabeth I onwards the Court was severely criticised for its pace, large backlogs. Those problems persisted until its dissolution, despite being mitigated somewhat by reforms, for much of its existence the Court was formally led by the Lord Chancellor, assisted by the judges of the common law courts. The staff of the court included a number of clerks, led by the Master of the Rolls. In 1813 a Vice-Chancellor was appointed to deal with the Chancerys increasing backlogs, offices of the Chancery were sold by the Lord Chancellor for much of its history, raising large amounts of money. The Court of Chancery originated, as did the other High Courts before 1875, in the Norman curia regis or Kings Council, maintained by most early rulers of England after 1066. Under the feudal system, the Council was made up of the Monarch and its jurisdiction was virtually unlimited, with executive, judicial and legislative functions. This large body contained lawyers, peers, and members of the Church and it soon became apparent that it was too unwieldy to deal with the nations day-to-day business. The Chancery started as the staff of the Lord Chancellor, described as a great secretarial bureau, a home office, a foreign office. The Chancery came to prominence after the decline of the Exchequer, dealing with the law of equity, something more fluid, complaints were normally brought via a bill or petition, which had to show that the common law did not provide a remedy for the problem. The Chancery writs were in French, and later English, rather than the Latin used for common law bills, in the reign of Edward III, the Court found a fixed home at Westminster Hall, where it sat almost continually until its dissolution. Prior to this, the disposing of justice had been made difficult by the fact that the Lord Chancellor was required to travel with the King wherever he went. By 1345 the Lord Chancellor began to be seen as the leader of the Court of Chancery, rather than as a representative of the King, and writs and bills were addressed directly to him. Under Richard II it became practice to consider the Chancery separate from the curia, the King gave evasive answers to the requests, and made no decision. Kerly suggests that many complaints from the Commons came from lawyers of the common law, the growth in the number of is a primary indicator of the changing position of Chancery. Chancery English, used in documents, can be seen as the beginnings of Standard English – a national standard of spelling
11.
Samuel Pepys
–
Samuel Pepys FRS was an administrator of the navy of England and Member of Parliament who is most famous for the diary that he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Pepys had no experience, but he rose to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and King James II through patronage, hard work, and his talent for administration. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy, the detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War. Pepys was born in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London on 23 February 1633, the son of John Pepys, a tailor and his great uncle Talbot Pepys was Recorder and briefly Member of Parliament for Cambridge in 1625. His fathers first cousin Sir Richard Pepys was elected MP for Sudbury in 1640, appointed Baron of the Exchequer on 30 May 1654, Pepys was the fifth of eleven children, but child mortality was high and he was soon the oldest survivor. He was baptised at St Brides Church on 3 March, Pepys did not spend all of his infancy in London, for a while, he was sent to live with nurse Goody Lawrence at Kingsland, just north of the city. In about 1644, Pepys attended Huntingdon Grammar School before being educated at St Pauls School, London and he attended the execution of Charles I in 1649. In 1650, he went to Cambridge University, having received two exhibitions from St Pauls School and a grant from the Mercers Company. In October, he was admitted as a sizar to Magdalene College, he moved there in March 1651, later in 1654 or early in 1655, he entered the household of another of his fathers cousins, Sir Edward Montagu, who was later created 1st Earl of Sandwich. From a young age, Pepys suffered from stones in his urinary tract – a condition from which his mother and brother John also later suffered. He was almost never without pain, as well as other symptoms, by the time of his marriage, the condition was very severe. In 1657 Pepys decided to undergo surgery, not an option, as the operation was known to be especially painful. Nevertheless, Pepys consulted surgeon Thomas Hollier and, on 26 March 1658, Pepys stone was successfully removed and he resolved to hold a celebration on every anniversary of the operation, which he did for several years. However, there were long-term effects from the operation, the incision on his bladder broke open again late in his life. The procedure may have left him sterile, though there is no evidence for this. In mid-1658 Pepys moved to Axe Yard, near the modern Downing Street and he worked as a teller in the Exchequer under George Downing. On 1 January 1660, Pepys began to keep a diary and he recorded his daily life for almost ten years
12.
Harrow School
–
Harrow School /ˈhæroʊ/ is an independent boarding school for boys in Harrow, London, England. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243, Harrow is one of the original nine public schools that were regulated by the Public Schools Act 1868. For the academic year 2016/17, Harrow charges boarders up to £12,450 per term, being the fourth most expensive boarding school in the Headmasters, the school has an enrolment of 805 boys spread across twelve boarding houses, all of whom board full-time. It remains one of four all-boys, full-boarding schools in Britain, harrows uniform includes straw hats, morning suits, top hats and canes. The school in its current form was founded in February 1572 under a Royal Charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I to John Lyon, a wealthy local farmer. In the original charter, six governors were named, including two members of the Gerard family of Flambards, and two members of the Page family of Wembley and Sudbury Court. It was only after the death of Lyons wife in 1608 that the construction of the first school building began and it was completed in 1615 and remains to this day, however it is now much larger. Lyon died in 1592, leaving his assets to two causes, the lesser was the School, and by far the greater beneficiary was the maintenance of a road to London,10 miles away. The school owned and maintained road for many years following Lyons death. At first the subject taught was Latin, and the only sport was archery. Both subjects were compulsory, archery was dropped in 1771, although most boys were taught for free, their tuition paid for by Lyons endowment, there were a number of fee-paying foreigners. It was their presence that amplified the need for boarding facilities, by 1701 for every local there were two foreign pupils, these generated funds for the School as fees increased. It is now known as The John Lyon School and is a prominent independent school and it maintains close links with Harrow. The majority of the boarding houses were constructed in Victorian times. The 20th century saw the innovation of a dining hall. Presently there are about 800 boys boarding at Harrow, according to a 2009 article, the school has expanded overseas, opening additional schools in Beijing, China, Shanghai, China, Bangkok, Thailand, and New Territories, Hong Kong. Boys at Harrow have two uniforms, the photograph was placed on the front cover of the News Chronicle the next morning under the tagline Every picture tells a story. The picture was reproduced in other national publications and became
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cottenham, Charles Christopher Pepys". Encyclopædia Britannica. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 252–253. This cites:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the .svg)
