United States or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It seemed early to think about shutting up then, however, with the sun still in the heavens, and we settled to push straight on for Runnymead, three and a half miles further, a quiet wooded part of the river, and where there is good shelter. We all wished, however, afterward that we had stopped at Penton Hook.
Long before Columbus set sail from Palos, American history was a-making in the shire-moots of Saxon England, at Hastings, and Runnymead, and Bannockburn. In all the mediæval achievements of England, in peace and war in her cathedrals, her castles, her universities, in Cressy, Poictiers, and Agincourt Americans may without paradox claim their ancestral part.
He "adjured the mob by those who met at Runnymead to resist such an act of lawless power; applauded the heaven-born suggestion of the drunkard; called upon them all to follow his example; by Magna Charta every Englishman was entitled to stretch himself at length in the mud when and where he would; and at the Alderman's peril be it, if he should presume to drive over them."
But there was no such surcease for the Saxon cultivator. The share of his cattle and crops which he was compelled to give up to the Norman baron became more rigidly defined, more strictly exacted, with every succeeding century, and the whole civil state of England was built up on this principle. The baronial order assembled at Runnymead to force the hand of the king.
It was the magna charter extorted from King John at Runnymead the trumpet call echoing and re-echoing by hill and through valley in our Declaration of Independence. Before Radama, although rude and primitive in form, it was the basic principle cherished by the people of Madagascar.
I saw one called 'Woodstock, and another 'Highcombe House. If we took one, we should have to call it 'The Grange." "Helen, you have told me all about those little huts twice already, during the last half-hour. Only, last time you had seen one called 'Runnymead, and another called 'The Limes. Presently, if you like, we will walk along and read all the names.
Lonesome unknown Patch of Meadow, lying far amid peaty wildernesses in those Salzwedel regions: unknown to all writing mortals as yet; but which threatens, in this summer of 1729, to become famous as Runnymead among the Meadows of History! And the FIFTH cause In short, there was no real "cause" of the least magnitude; the effect was produced by the combination of many small and imaginary ones.
It is now nearly a hundred years since it was first proposed to erect a triumphal column upon Runnymead; but we have sometimes a strange antipathy to do what would seem avoidable; the monument to the memory of Hampden is a sore proof of the niggardliness of liberals to the liberal; but all monuments to such a man or to such a cause must appear poor; the names "Hampden" and "Runnymead" suffice; the green and verdant mead, encircled by the coronet of Cooper's Hill, reposing beneath the sun, and shadowed by the passing cloud, is an object of reverence and beauty, immortalized by the glorious liberty which the bold barons of England forced from a spiritless tyrant.
It rises abruptly from the Runnymead meadows, and extends its long ridge in a northwesterly direction; the summit is approached by a winding road, which from different points of the ascent progressively unfolds a gorgeous number of fertile views, such as no other country in the world can give. "Of hills and dales, and woods, and lawns, and spires, And glittering towns, and silver streams."
How that single fact fills the soul, and nerves the spirit; how proudly the British birthright throbs within our bosoms. We long to lead the new Napoleon, the absolute Nicholas, the frank, hospitable, and brave, but sometimes overconfident American, to this green sward of Runnymead and tell them that here was secured to the Englishman a liberty which other nations have never enjoyed!
Word Of The Day