54 Quotes About English-history

[Alfred the Great] possessed the supreme military virtue of willingness to be taught by the enemy.

Murders can be committed successfully sometimes, but the disposal of the body is always a difficult matter.

Historians have never made the mistake of underestimating Henry VII, not even those who like him little.

After several years of struggle to bring the country to subjection, during which Henry had to keep armies in the field at ruinous cost, his rosy dreams of affluence changed to despair. He was close to the brink of bankruptcy when he gave in finally and allowed the terms which the moderates had advised in the beginning.

The counts of Anjou and their lovely, but wicked wives gained such an unsavory reputation over the centuries that the people of England were appalled when they found that one of them was to be King of England. This was young Henry, the grandson of Henry I and of the Count of Anjou, and there was much angry muttering and shaking of heads.

Everybody needed news. Everybody wanted news. News was known as ‘hot’. It was a society of conversation so that rumour and gossip passed quickly through the streets. At times of more than usual excitement papers and pamphlets were dropped in the street and were eagerly snatched up and passed from hand to hand. Anonymous publications, without a printer’s imprint, were widely circulated. One owner of a coffee-house trained his parrot to squawk ‘What’s the news?’ at his customers.

It was not simply the effect of an epigram but, rather, the product of a fertile mind and keen observation. Wit was the currency of the court of Charles II.

When Victoria was born, food was cooked in open fireplaces, horses carried messages, half of the population was illiterate, and a narrow band of property owners were the only ones with political power. By the end of her life in 1901, people traveled by subway, telegraphs shot messages across oceans, education was compulsory, and women had some basic rights.

Germany was then a collection of states that had been bundled together in a union called the German Confederation in 1815 after Napoleon was defeated. (The country would not exist as one nation until 1871.) Some of the states had sided with France in the Napoleonic Wars, but the largest and most powerful—Prussia—was allied with England. One small state, Hanover, was, oddly, ruled from London by the English kings, who were Hanoverian by heritage.