Prince Rupert of the Rhine
Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland, was a noted German soldier, scientist, colonial governor and amateur artist during the 17th century. He first came to prominence as a Cavalier cavalry commander during the English Civil War. Rupert was a younger son of the German prince Frederick V, Elector Palatine and his wife Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of James VI of Scotland and I of England, thus Rupert was the nephew of King Charles I of England, who made him Duke of Cumberland and Earl of Holderness, the first cousin of King Charles II of England. His sister Electress Sophia was the mother of George I of Great Britain. Prince Rupert had a varied career, he was a soldier from a young age, fighting against Spain in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War, against the Holy Roman Emperor in Germany during the Thirty Years' War. Aged 23, he was appointed commander of the Royalist cavalry during the English Civil War, becoming the archetypal Cavalier of the war and the senior Royalist general.
He was banished from England. He served under Louis XIV of France against Spain, as a Royalist privateer in the Caribbean. Following the Restoration, Rupert returned to England, becoming a senior English naval commander during the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch wars, engaging in scientific invention and serving as the first governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Rupert died in England in 1682, aged 62. Rupert is considered to have been a quick-thinking and energetic cavalry general, but undermined by his youthful impatience in dealing with his peers during the Civil War. In the Interregnum, Rupert continued the conflict against Parliament by sea from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, showing considerable persistence in the face of adversity; as the head of the Royal Navy in his years, he showed greater maturity and made impressive and long-lasting contributions to the Royal Navy's doctrine and development. As a colonial governor, Rupert shaped the political geography of modern Canada—Rupert's Land was named in his honour, he was a founder of the Hudson's Bay Company.
He played a role in the early Atlantic slave trade. Rupert's varied and numerous scientific and administrative interests combined with his considerable artistic skills made him one of the more colourful individuals of the Restoration period. Rupert was born in Prague in 1619, at the start of the Thirty Years' War, to Frederick V, Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia, Elizabeth Stuart, was declared a prince by the principality of Lusatia, he was given his name in honour of King Rupert of a famous Wittelsbach ancestor. Rupert's father was a leading member of the Holy Roman Empire and the head of the Protestant Union, with a martial family tradition stretching back several centuries. Rupert's family was at the heart of a network of Protestant rulers across the north of Europe, as Frederick had close ties through his mother to the ruling House of Orange-Nassau in the United Provinces, Elizabeth was the daughter of James I of England and Anne of Denmark; the family lived an wealthy lifestyle in Heidelberg, enjoying the palace gardens—the Hortus Palatinus, designed by Inigo Jones and Salomon de Caus—and a lavish castle with one of the best libraries in Europe.
Frederick had allied himself with rebellious Protestant Bohemian nobility in 1619, expecting support from the Protestant Union in his revolt against the Catholic Ferdinand II, the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor. This support was not forthcoming, resulting in a crushing defeat at the hands of his Catholic enemies at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. Rupert's parents were mockingly termed the "Winter King and Queen" as a consequence of their reigns in Bohemia having lasted only a single season. Rupert was left behind in the court's rush to escape Ferdinand's advance on Prague, until Kryštof z Donína, a court member, tossed the prince into a carriage at the last moment. Rupert accompanied his parents to The Hague, where he spent his early years at the Hof te Wassenaer, the Wassenaer Court. Rupert's mother paid her children little attention by the standards of the day preferring her pet monkeys and dogs. Instead, Frederick employed Monsieur and Madame de Plessen to act as governors to his children, with instructions to inculcate a positive attitude towards the Czechs/Bohemians and the English, to bring them up as strict Calvinists.
The result was a strict school routine including logic, writing, drawing and playing instruments. As a child, Rupert was at times badly behaved, "fiery and passionate" and earned himself the nickname Robert le Diable, or "Rupert The Devil". Nonetheless, Rupert proved to be an able student. By the age of three he could speak some English and French, mastered German while still young, but had little interest in Latin and Greek, he excelled in art, being taught by Gerard van Honthorst, found maths and the sciences easy. By the time he was 18. Rupert's family continued their attempts to regain the Palatinate during their time in The Hague. Money was short, with the family relying upon a small pension from The Hague, the proceeds from family investments in Dutch raids on Spanish shipping, revenue from pawned family jewellery. Frederick set about convincing an alliance of nations—including England and Sweden—to support his attempts to regain the Palatinate and Bohemia. By the early 1630s Frederick had built a close relationship with the Swedish King Gustavus, the dominant Protestant leader in Germany.
In 1632, the two men disagreed over Gustavus' insistence that Frederick provide
William Dugdale
Sir William Dugdale was an English antiquary and herald. As a scholar he was influential in the development of medieval history as an academic subject. Dugdale was born at Shustoke, near Coleshill in Warwickshire, where his father, John Dugdale, was steward to the local landowner; as he was born, a swarm of bees flew into the garden, which some considered "a happy presage on the life of the babe." He was educated at Coventry. In 1623 he married Margaret Huntbach. In 1625, the year after his father's death, he purchased the manor of Blyth, near Shustoke. During an enclosure dispute with a neighbour a few years he met the Leicestershire antiquary William Burton, who acted as arbitrator, he became involved in transcribing documents and collecting church notes and met other Midlands antiquaries such as Sir Symon Archer and Sir Thomas Habington. He began working with Archer on the history of Warwickshire and their research led them to the archives of public records in London. There he met Sir Henry Spelman, Sir Simonds d'Ewes and Sir Edward Dering.
Hatton became his principal patron. In 1638 through the influence of his friends Dugdale was created a pursuivant of arms extraordinary by the name of Blanch Lyon, in 1639 he was promoted to the office of Rouge Croix Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary; the accommodation in the College of Arms and the income from his post enabled him to pursue his research in London. According to his account, in 1641 Sir Christopher Hatton, foreseeing the war and dreading the ruin and spoliation of the Church, commissioned him to make exact drafts of all the monuments in Westminster Abbey and the principal churches in England. In June 1642 he was summoned with the other heralds to attend the king at York; when war broke out Charles deputed him to summon the castles of Warwick to surrender. He witnessed the battle of Edgehill, returned with a surveyor to make a survey of the battlefield, he arrived in Oxford with the king in November 1642 and he was admitted MA of the University. He worked as a bureaucrat in the royalist capital after December 1643 when Hatton was appointed Comptroller of the Household.
In 1644 the king appointed him Chester Herald of Arms in Ordinary. During his leisure at Oxford he collected material at the Bodleian Library and college libraries for his books, it was during these years that he met Elias Ashmole, who became his son-in-law. Following the surrender of Oxford in 1646 Dugdale returned to Blyth Hall and compounded for his estates under the terms of the Oxford articles. Hatton, who had opposed the surrender, went into exile in France, where Dugdale visited him in 1648, he recommenced his antiquarian researches, collaborating with Roger Dodsworth on the Monasticon Anglicanum, the first volume of, published in 1655. In the following year he published his own Antiquities of Warwickshire, soon recognised as a model county history. In this work he was one of the first to consider the significance of stone tools, stating these were "weapons used by the Britons before the art of making arms of brass or iron was known". At the Restoration Dugdale obtained the office of Norroy King of Arms through the influence of the Earl of Clarendon.
In the office of Norroy he undertook heraldic visitations of the counties north of the Trent. In 1677 he was knighted and promoted to the office of Garter Principal King of Arms, which he held until his death. In his last years he wrote an account of his life at the request of Anthony Wood, he died "in his chair" at Blythe Hall in 1686. Monasticon Anglicanum, he edited Sir Henry Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum and Concilia, adding his own extensions to the latter. His Life, written by himself up to 1678, with his diary and correspondence, an index to his manuscript collections, was edited by William Hamper, published in 1827. College of Arms Dugdale baronets This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Dugdale, Sir William". Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press. Jan Broadway, William Dugdale: A Life of the Warwickshire Historian and Herald Christopher Dyer and Catherine Richardson, William Dugdale, Historian, 1605–1686 William Hamper, The Life and Correspondence of William Dugdale "Archival material relating to William Dugdale".
UK National Archives. Catalogue of Dugdale's correspondence www.dugdale-society.org.uk
House of Commons of England
The House of Commons of England was the lower house of the Parliament of England from its development in the 14th century to the union of England and Scotland in 1707, when it was replaced by the House of Commons of Great Britain. In 1801, with the union of Great Britain and Ireland, that house was in turn replaced by the House of Commons of the United Kingdom; the Parliament of England developed from the Magnum Concilium that advised the English monarch in medieval times. This royal council, meeting for short periods, included ecclesiastics and representatives of the counties; the chief duty of the council was to approve taxes proposed by the Crown. In many cases, the council demanded the redress of the people's grievances before proceeding to vote on taxation. Thus, it developed legislative powers; the first parliament to invite representatives of the major towns was Montfort's Parliament in 1265. At the "Model Parliament" of 1295, representatives of the boroughs were admitted. Thus, it became settled practice that each county send two knights of the shire, that each borough send two burgesses.
At first, the burgesses were entirely powerless. Any show of independence by burgesses would thus be to lead to the exclusion of their towns from Parliament; the knights of the shire were in a better position, although less powerful than their noble and clerical counterparts in what was still a unicameral Parliament. The division of the Parliament of England into two houses occurred during the reign of Edward III: in 1341 the Commons met separately from the nobility and clergy for the first time, creating in effect an Upper Chamber and a Lower Chamber, with the knights and burgesses sitting in the latter, they formed what became known as the House of Commons, while the clergy and nobility became the House of Lords. Although they remained subordinate to both the Crown and the Lords, the Commons did act with increasing boldness. During the Good Parliament of 1376, the Commons appointed Sir Peter de la Mare to convey to the Lords their complaints of heavy taxes, demands for an accounting of the royal expenditures, criticism of the King's management of the military.
The Commons proceeded to impeach some of the King's ministers. Although Mare was imprisoned for his actions, the benefits of having a single voice to represent the Commons were recognized, the office which became known as Speaker of the House of Commons was thus created. Mare was soon released after the death of King Edward III and in 1377 became the second Speaker of the Commons. During the reign of the next monarch, Richard II, the Commons once again began to impeach errant ministers of the Crown, they began to insist that they could control public expenditures. Despite such gains in authority, the Commons still remained much less powerful than the Lords and the Crown; the influence of the Crown was increased by the civil wars of the late fifteenth century, which destroyed the power of the great noblemen. Both houses of Parliament held little power during the ensuing years, the absolute supremacy of the Sovereign was restored; the domination of the monarch grew further under the House of Tudor in the sixteenth century.
This trend, was somewhat reversed when the House of Stuart came to the English throne in 1603. The first two Stuart monarchs, James I and Charles I, provoked conflicts with the Commons over issues such as taxation and royal powers; the differences between Charles I and Parliament were great, resulted in the English Civil War, in which the armed forces of Parliament were victorious. In December 1648 the House of Commons was purged by the New Model Army, supposed to be subservient to Parliament. Pride's Purge was the only military coup in English history. Subsequently, King Charles I was beheaded and the Upper House was abolished; the unicameral Parliament that remained was referred to by critics as the Rump Parliament, as it consisted only of a small selection of Members of Parliament approved by the army - some of whom were soldiers themselves. In 1653, when leading figures in this Parliament began to disagree with the army, it was dissolved by Oliver Cromwell. However, the monarchy and the House of Lords were both restored with the Commons in 1660.
The influence of the Crown had been decreased, was further diminished after James II was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights 1689 was enacted. Duration of English Parliaments before 1660 History of borough status in England and Wales Lex Parliamentaria List of Acts of the Parliament of England List of Parliaments of England List of Speakers of the House of Commons of England Modus Tenendi Parliamentum John Cannon, Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832 J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons
Baddesley Ensor
Baddesley Ensor is a village and civil parish in the district of North Warwickshire in Warwickshire, about three miles west of Atherstone. It runs into the village of Grendon. There were mining activities in the area for centuries before the two main shafts, which formed Baddesley Colliery, were sunk in 1850. Although called Baddesley Colliery it was just over the border in Baxterley. From on until 1989 when the pit closed most Baddesley men worked in some capacity at the mine; the worst disaster at the mine occurred on 2 May 1882. There was a fire followed by an explosion and 23 men lost their lives in attempting to rescue nine nightshift workers trapped by the fire. A memorial to all the men who worked in the mines, in the form of a pit head winding wheel was erected on the common on the site of the old Maypole pit. Since the closure of the mine the village is now residential. Baddesley Ensor is known for its common. There are beautiful views to be seen looking over towards Birmingham and Leicestershire and Staffordshire.
Other landmarks are the old wheel used for the old pit and a bomb hole. The A5 runs near to the village and the M42 is nearby; the village is served by bus routes 48, 764, the nearest railway station is Atherstone. The nearest airports are East Midlands. Local newspapers are the Tamworth Herald, which has a separate edition for North Warwickshire, the Atherstone Recorder; the BBC radio station covering the area is BBC Warwickshire. Local commercial stations in the area include Mercia and Touch FM; the village is covered by the Central ITV and BBC West Midlands TV regions broadcast from the nearby Sutton Coldfield transmitting station. Baddesley in the Domesday Book
Puritan Sabbatarianism
Puritan Sabbatarianism or Reformed Sabbatarianism just Sabbatarianism, is observance of Sabbath in Christianity, characterised by devotion of the entire day to worship, the avoidance of recreational activities. Unlike seventh-day Sabbatarians, Puritan Sabbatarians practice first-day Sabbatarianism, keeping Sunday as Sabbath and referring to it as the Lord's Day. Puritan Sabbath, expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith, is contrasted with Continental Sabbath: the latter follows the Continental Reformed confessions such as the Heidelberg Catechism, which emphasise rest and worship on the Lord's Day, but do not forbid recreational activities. However, John Calvin believed Christians were commanded to avoid recreation as well as work on Sunday in order to devote the day to worship, during the seventeenth century there was consensus among continental as well as British Reformed theologians that the entire Sabbath was to be set aside for worship. While John Calvin's theology of the fourth commandment differed from that of the Puritans, he believed that Christians were commanded to cease from labor and recreation in order to devote the entire day to worship.
The Genevan Consistory during the time of Calvin interviewed people for working or engaging in recreation considered inappropriate for spiritual refreshment such as hunting, banqueting, playing tennis or billiards, or bowling skittles on Sundays. During the Vestiarian controversy, Reformers were spurred to develop the regulative principle of worship, a fundamental article that no corporate worship is permissible that does not have the sanction of Scripture, whether stated explicitly, or derived by a necessary deduction from Scripture. By the 17th century, Puritans had applied the regulative principle to devote first-day Sabbath to God, indulging in neither the labors nor the recreations common to the other six days. Sunday Sabbatarianism as jure divino or divinely ordained command, in contrast to non-Sabbatarian and antinomian reliance on Christian liberty, thus was a linked development to the regulative principle amongst English Protestants over the 17th century. Stricter observance of Lord's Day arose in England and Scotland, in reaction to the Prelatic laxity with which Sunday observance was customarily kept, which included recreations classified as lawful.
Opposed by seventh-day Sabbatarians John Traske, Theophilus Brabourne, the Seventh-day Baptists, some Puritans stated that Sabbath was a proportion rather than a particular day, while others further identified the first day as Christian Sabbath. Though there are slight differences between confessional formulations of British and continental European Reformed churches, in the seventeenth century there came to be a consensus among the Reformed that the Sabbath should be devoted to the worship of God. Puritan Sabbatarianism is enshrined in its most mature expression, the Westminster Confession of Faith, in the Calvinist theological tradition: 7; as it is the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God. This Sabbath is kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe a holy rest, all the day, from their own works and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but are taken up, the whole time, in the public and private exercises of his worship, in the duties of necessity and mercy.
Jonathan Edwards delivered three sermons on The Perpetuity and Change of the Sabbath that are central to Puritan tradition. The first sermon emphasises Sabbath as an immutable, divine natural and positive law, while the second emphasises an alteration of "another law, which determined the beginning and ending of their working days"; the third sermon regards the proper keeping of Sabbath: "We are to abstain from being outwardly engaged in any worldly thing, either worldly business or recreations," because "the sabbath-day is an accepted time, a day of salvation, a time wherein God loves to be sought, loves to be found."Reformed Sabbatarian theologian G. I. Williamson accordingly suggests that "television, reading of newspapers and magazines, engaging in sports and excursions... are not proper to the Sabbath because'Sabbath' means to cease from these things in order to give one day to worship and the reading of God's Word, etc." The cessation described entails all engrossing activities of the six days of the week, whether employment or recreations, thus excludes ceasing only from work while continuing favorite recreations.
Williamson affirms striving toward holiness, calling it a lofty goal to avoid "even thoughts and words about our worldly employments or recreations."Though modern expression of Puritan Sabbath has been caricatured as being boring, organisations that promote Sabbaths as joyous, delightful appointments include Day One Christian Ministries. Historical theologi
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. Part of Warwickshire, Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 12th largest in the United Kingdom, it is the second largest city in the West Midlands region, after Birmingham. Coventry is 19 miles east-southeast of Birmingham, 24 miles southwest of Leicester, 11 miles north of Warwick and 94 miles northwest of London. Coventry is the most central city in England, being only 11 miles south-southwest of the country's geographical centre in Leicestershire; the current Coventry Cathedral was built after the majority of the 14th century cathedral church of Saint Michael was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in the Coventry Blitz of 14 November 1940. Coventry motor companies have contributed to the British motor industry; the city has two universities, Coventry University in the city centre and the University of Warwick on the southern outskirts. On 7 December 2017, the city won the title of UK City of Culture 2021, after beating Paisley, Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland to the title.
They will be the third title holder, of the quadrennial award which began in 2013. The Romans founded a settlement in Baginton, next to the River Sowe, another formed around a Saxon nunnery, founded c. AD 700 by St Osburga, left in ruins by King Canute's invading Danish army in 1016. Earl Leofric of Mercia and his wife Lady Godiva built on the remains of the nunnery and founded a Benedictine monastery in 1043 dedicated to St Mary. In time, a market was established at the settlement expanded. Coventry Castle was a bailey castle in the city, it was built in the early 12th century by 4th Earl of Chester. Its first known use was during The Anarchy when Robert Marmion, a supporter of King Stephen, expelled the monks from the adjacent priory of Saint Mary in 1144, converted it into a fortress from which he waged a battle against the Earl. Marmion perished in the battle, it was demolished in the late 12th century and St Mary's Guildhall was built on part of the site. It is assumed. By the 14th century, Coventry was an important centre of the cloth trade, throughout the Middle Ages was one of the largest and most important cities in England.
The bishops of Lichfield were referred to as bishops of Coventry and Lichfield, or Lichfield and Coventry. Coventry claimed the status of a city by ancient prescriptive usage, was granted a charter of incorporation in 1345, in 1451 became a county in its own right; the plays that William Shakespeare witnessed in Coventry during his boyhood or'teens' may have influenced how his plays, such as Hamlet, came about. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Coventry became one of the three main British centres of watch and clock manufacture and ranked alongside Prescot, in Lancashire and Clerkenwell in London; as the industry declined, due to competition from Swiss Made clock and watch manufacturers, the skilled pool of workers proved crucial to the setting up of bicycle manufacture and the motorbike, machine tool and aircraft industries. In the late 19th century, Coventry became a major centre of bicycle manufacture; the industry energised by the invention by James Starley and his nephew John Kemp Starley of the Rover safety bicycle, safer and more popular than the pioneering penny-farthing.
The company became Rover. By the early 20th century, bicycle manufacture had evolved into motor manufacture, Coventry became a major centre of the British motor industry; the research and design headquarters of Jaguar Cars is in the city at their Whitley plant and although vehicle assembly ceased at the Browns Lane plant in 2004, Jaguar's head office returned to the city in 2011, is sited in Whitley. Jaguar is owned by Tata Motors. With many of the city's older properties becoming unfit for habitation, the first council houses were let to their tenants in 1917. With Coventry's industrial base continuing to soar after the end of the Great War a year numerous private and council housing developments took place across the city in the 1920s and 1930s; the development of a southern by-pass around the city, starting in the 1930s and being completed in 1940, helped deliver more urban areas to the city on rural land. Coventry suffered severe bomb damage during the Second World War. There was a massive Luftwaffe air raid that the Germans called Operation Moonlight Sonata, part of the "Coventry Blitz", on 14 November 1940.
Firebombing on this date led to severe damage to large areas of the city centre and to Coventry's historic cathedral, leaving only a shell and the spire. More than 4,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, along with around three quarters of the city's industrial plants. More than 800 people were killed, with thousands injured and homeless. Aside from London and Plymouth, Coventry suffered more damage than any other British city during the Luftwaffe attacks, with huge firestorms devastating most of the city centre; the city was targeted due to its high concentration of armaments, munitions and aero-engine plants which contributed to the British war effort, although there have been claims that Hitler launched the attack as revenge for the bombing of Munich by the RAF six days before the Coventry Blitz and chose the Midlands city because its medieval heart was regarded as one of the finest in Britain. Following the raids, the majority of Coventry's historic buildings could not be saved as they were in ruinous states or were deemed unsafe for any future use.
Several structures were demolished to make way for
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 23. Endnotes:
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). 