Tag Archives: jury

Henry Tudor was a patient young man, who waited and watched while civil war raged in England and quarreling lords fought to see who would be king. He waited safely in France, biding his time until his spies told him the hour had come to strike. Then from northern France he crossed the English Channel with 2000 soldiers. Ahead of Henry and his soldiers had gone his agents, who sought to weaken the position of England’s King, Richard III. Henry’s agents had plotted secretly with some of Richard’s supporters, lords who led small armies of their own. That was why when the battle was fought at Bosworth Field, England, in 1485, first one group and then another broke from King Richard’s ranks and joined Henry Tudor’s forces. Screaming “Treason, treason!” King Richard III hurled himself into the thick of the fray. He wanted to kill young Henry Tudor, but King Richard himself was struck down. As the King’s armour clad body crashed heavily to the ground, the light golden crown that fitted over his helmet rolled under a nearby hawthorn bush. When the battle was over, a soldier picked up the crown and placed it on Henry Tudor’s helmet. For over a hundred years, Henry Tudor (who became King Henry VII) and his descendants ruled England. There had been kings in England for centuries, but powerful feudal nobles had often refused to accept their authority. Moreover, for 30 years before Henry Tudor’s victory at Bosworth, England had been engaged in a disastrous war between two branches of the royal family. But though Henry Tudor and his descendants met with op position, they steadily increased their powers. As a result, England became a unified and prosperous country. We learn how strong monarchies, or kingdoms, developed in Europe during the later Middle …

If you had been a citizen of the ancient Greek city of Athens on a fine spring morning in 409 B.C., you would have gathered with thousands of your fellow citizens on a hillside inside the city. You would then have listened carefully to the discussion of various matters of business, conducted by the chairman and secretary of the meeting from a platform below and facing you. You would have seen an Athenian citizen thread his way from the hillside to this platform. This was a sure sign that he had a proposal to make to the voters. The citizen turned toward the assembled throng and spoke in a strong, clear voice. A man named Thrasybulus, he said, should be rewarded with a golden crown for his services to Athens. When the speaker paused, another citizen came to the platform. Yes, by all means thank Thrasybulus and give him a golden crown, urged the second speaker. He went on, these acts were not enough, because Thrasybulus was a foreigner, the best reward for serving Athens so faithfully and so well would be to make him an Athenian citizen. Would the voters of Athens do this? he asked. The chairman called for a vote by a show of hands and tellers counted the votes. A majority was in favour of the proposal and it was declared officially to have been approved by the voters of Athens. The secretary had a copy of the proposal carved on a marble slab to make the record permanent and there the record is to this day, over 2800 years later, but still readable! This old record tells us that Athenian citizens held meetings, discussed their own problems, and decided for themselves What they would do. The voters, instead of a pharaoh or a king, made …