<\/a>This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of course, England has scarcely been free of wars. \u00a0You only need to read Shakespeare\u2019s own historical plays to remember that. \u00a0To choose just one example: \u00a0In 1399, after John of Gaunt died, King Richard II \u2014 who may have been mad, but was certainly ill-suited to rule \u2014 disinherited Gaunt\u2019s son,\u00a0Henry of Bolingbroke, who had already been exiled. \u00a0In response, Henry invaded England in June of that year with a small but rapidly growing force that encountered little effective resistance. \u00a0Bolingbroke deposed Richard and had himself crowned as King Henry IV. \u00a0And Richard, it is thought, was starved to death in captivity, dying at the age of 33. \u00a0(We saw his tomb, yesterday, in Westminster Abbey, where Henry V, partly hoping to atone for his father\u2019s seizure of the throne and possible murder of Richard, had his body transferred long after his death.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And then, of course, there was the English Civil War that deposed and eventually executed Charles I in 1649. \u00a0The Commonwealth of England, a republic led by Oliver Cromwell, was then proclaimed. \u00a0But Charles II, son of Charles I, returned to the throne in 1660.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moreover,\u00a0the waters surrounding them haven\u2019t completely shielded the British Isles from external invasion and conquest, either. \u00a0The Romans were famously here under Julius Caesar and thereafter. \u00a0(Think of Hadrian\u2019s Wall.) \u00a0Constantine was crowned emperor in York. \u00a0Various Viking invasions had a considerable impact, leaving behind them, among other things, scores of Scandinavian place names. \u00a0Most famously of all, of course, William the Conqueror (a Norman, just barely past being a Viking \u2014 or a \u201cNorthman\u201d \u2014 himself) crossed the Channel and defeated poor King Harold Godwinson (another ethnic Scandinavian) at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Napoleon never made it here. \u00a0And neither, much more significantly, did Hitler\u2019s Third Reich.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
England\u2019s geographical situation differs dramatically from that of Israel. \u00a0On which I\u2019ll post a few lines later.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from London, England<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I\u2019ve found myself thinking today about how geography has influenced the history of, respectively, England and Israel. \u00a0 To make my point about the first, I can do no better than to quote the famous words spoken by the dying John of Gaunt in William Shakespeare\u2019s Richard II (Act II, Scene 1), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>