Sevenoaks

 The town's name is derived from the Old English word "Seouenaca", the name given to a small chapel near seven oak trees on The Vine around AD 800.   The Vine Cricket Ground, also known as Sevenoaks Vine, is one of the oldest cricket venues in England. It was given to the town of Sevenoaks in Kent in 1773 by John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset (1745–1799) and owner of nearby Knole House. The land is thought to have possibly been used as a vineyard for the Archbishops of Canterbury. Seven oak trees were planted on the northern edge of the ground in 1902 to mark the coronation of King Edward VII. Six were blown down in the Great Storm of 1987. In December 1987, seven new oaks were planted to replace those lost in the storm.

  There are few records earlier than the 13th century for the town, when it was given market status. The weekly cattle market was held in Hitchen Hatch Lane until 1999. It was closed to make way for the "160 BT building" in London Road. A food market is held in the centre of town every Saturday. In the Middle Ages two hospitals were provided by religious orders for the care of old or sick people, especially those going on pilgrimage. Sevenoaks School, at the south end of the High Street, is one of the oldest lay foundations in England. It was founded by William Sevenoke in 1432. Sevenoke, a foundling, had been brought up in the town. In later life he became a merchant and served as alderman, sheriff and Mayor of London. Founding the school and adjacent almshouses was his thanks to the town.

 In 1560 the school was granted letters patent by Queen Elizabeth I and became known as 'Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School'. It was "for the education of boys and youths in grammar and learning". In 1456 Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, purchased the Knole estate and built Knole House. The mansion dominates the town. The eponymous oak trees in Knole Park have been replaced several times over the centuries. In 1902 seven oaks were planted on the north side of The Vine cricket ground to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VII. During the Great Storm of 1987, six of those trees were blown down. Their replacements, planted in a ceremony involving well-known people from television shows such as Blue Peter and locals such as Gloria Hunniford and Caron Keating, were vandalised, leaving the one mature tree standing. The trees have been replaced and eight Oak trees of varying ages line The Vine.

 A serious railway accident occurred nearby on 24 August 1927. Southern Railway K class passenger tank engine No. A800 River Cray was derailed hauling a Cannon Street to Deal express, knocking a road bridge and killing 13 passengers. The locomotive crew survived. The entire K class was subsequently rebuilt to prevent such an event from occurring again. The accident called into question the quality of track laying in the area. Knole Park is a 1,000-acre (4 km²) Site of Special Scientific Interest and medieval deer park containing several thousand trees, a cricket pitch and a golf course running across. In its centre is Knole, the home of the Sackville family (the Earls of Dorset) since it was given to them by Queen Elizabeth I in 1577. The estate is owned and maintained by the National Trust, although the Sackvilles still live there. Riverhill House and gardens are located directly to the south of Knole Park, on the southern edge of Sevenoaks. The house and gardens, which were first built in the 16th century, are privately owned by Jane Margaret Rogers but are periodically open to the public.

 Monday, 31^st May 2021

 

Woodstock

 There is a market town and civil parish eight miles (thirteen km) north-west of Oxford in Oxfordshire, England. Blenheim Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is next to Woodstock, in the parish of Blenheim. It is the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough and the only non-royal, non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title of palace. The palace, one of England's largest houses, was built between 1705 and 1722, and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.  The palace is named after the 1704 Battle of Blenheim, and thus ultimately after Blindheim (also known as Blenheim) in Bavaria. It was originally intended to be a reward to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough for his military triumphs against the French and Bavarians in the War of the Spanish Succession, culminating in the Battle of Blenheim. The land was given as a gift, and construction began in 1705, with some financial support from Queen Anne. The project soon became the subject of political infighting, with the Crown cancelling further financial support in 1712,

 Marlborough's three-year voluntary exile to the Continent, the fall from influence of his duchy and lasting damage to the reputation of the architect Sir John Vanbrugh.  Designed in the rare, and short-lived, English Baroque style, architectural appreciation of the palace is as divided today as it was in the 1720s.  It is unique in its combined use as a family home, mausoleum and national monument. The palace is notable as the birthplace and ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill. Following the palace's completion, it became the home of the Churchill (later Spencer-Churchill) family for the next 300 years, and various members of the family have wrought changes to the interiors, park and gardens. At the end of the 19th century, the palace was saved from ruin by funds gained from the 9th Duke of Marlborough's marriage to American railroad heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt. The estate given by the nation to Marlborough, for the new palace, was the manor of Woodstock, sometimes called the Palace of Woodstock, which had been a royal demesne, in reality little more than a deer park.

 Legend has obscured the manor's origins. King Henry I enclosed the park to contain the deer. Henry II housed his mistress Rosamund Clifford (sometimes known as "Fair Rosamund") there in a "bower and labyrinth"; a spring in which she is said to have bathed remains, named after her.  It seems the unostentatious hunting lodge was rebuilt many times, and had an uneventful history until Elizabeth I, before her succession, was imprisoned there by her half-sister Mary I between 1554 and 1555. Elizabeth had been implicated in the Wyatt plot, but her imprisonment at Woodstock was short, and the manor remained in obscurity until bombarded and ruined by Oliver Cromwell's troops during the Civil War. When the park was being re-landscaped as a setting for the palace the 1st Duchess wanted the historic ruins demolished, while Vanbrugh, an early conservationist, wanted them restored and made into a landscape feature. The Duchess, as so often in her disputes with her architect, won the day and the remains of the manor were swept away.

 Winston Churchill was born in the palace in 1874 and buried in the nearby village of Blandon. Edward, elder son of King Edward III and heir apparent, was born in Woodstock Manor on 15 June 1330. In his lifetime he was commonly called Edward of Woodstock but is known today as the Black Prince. In the reign of Queen Mary I, her half-sister Elizabeth was imprisoned in the gatehouse of Woodstock Manor. The palace remains the home of the Dukes of Marlborough, the present incumbent of the title being Charles James (Jamie) Spencer-Churchill, 12th Duke of Marlborough. Charles James succeeded to the Dukedom upon his father's death on 16 October 2014. As of October 2016^[update], the Marlboroughs still have to tender a copy of the French royal flag to the Monarch on the anniversary of the Battle of Blenheim as rent for the land that Blenheim Palace stands on.  The palace, park, and gardens are open to the public on payment of an entry fee (maximum £24.90 as of October 2016^[update]). Separation of tourist entertainment attractions (the "Pleasure Gardens") from the palace ensures that the atmosphere of a large country house is retained. The palace is linked to the gardens by a miniature railway, the Blenheim Park Railway.

Sunday, 30^th May 2021

Holy and the Ivy

 Since the Stone Age the Winter Solstice has been celebrated.  From the 21^{st of} December the nights become shorter.  The days become longer.  After living through the winter months, people were glad of the good news of summer getting closer and so they celebrated.  Sophisticated stone henges were built near Amesbury on Salisbury Plain and Avebury in Wiltshire, which acted like calendars.  At the time of the Winter Solstice, the sun predictably shines through the appropriate stones.  There were celebrations to welcome the longer day.  There were songs sung and one of these was the now famous Holly and the Ivy, which was associated with winter thanksgiving.  The song developed into a carol when the Christian missionaries arrived in England.  They took over the solstice celebrations and turned then gradually into the Christmas festival that we all know today.

 The Holly and the Ivy was taken to be a representation of the red holly berries being the blood of Christ and the pointed leaves of the Ivy being a reference to the crown of thorns that was put on his head.  It seems inappropriate to sing of Jesus’s crucifixion when celebrating the joyous birth of a pure and innocent baby boy.  Mary, his mother, bore him in love as a gift from God to the created world.  The celebrations at Bethlehem are well known with the visit of the Three Wise Men, who were guided by that star in the East to worship this child and bring him gifts.  It is a story of joy and celebration.  Even today we give presents to our loved ones and friends in memory of this action by the Persian astronomers, who followed that star to worship the child Jesus, as we should all be led to do.

 A carol is a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship.  It is often with a dance or a popular character.  The word comes from the French carole, a circle dance accompanied by singers.  A carol was a happy dancing song of celebration for festivals.  Later there were special carols written for Christmas and special Carol Festivals.  A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is a gift to all people, everywhere, who wish to share in it, most famously from King’s College, Cambridge.  It should be mentioned that we often use the red berries of the Holly as well as the green Ivy leaves for decorations.  This makes our homes more colorful and happy as we celebrate the traditional twelve days of Christmas.  Christians who celebrate the Twelve Days may give gifts on each of them, with each of the Twelve Days representing a wish for a corresponding month of the new year. They may feast on traditional foods and otherwise celebrate the entire time through to the morning of the Solemnity of Epiphany.

 However, in recent years this buying of presents has become a commercial necessity in the High Streets of the world, now taken over to a large extent by online buying.  It is a sad reflection on the way the world views it’s actions by the amount of money that they spend rather than the love and harmony of everyday life.  The birth of Jesus Christ should be celebrated each and every day.  His teachings to us all can’t be put back in the box after the Christmas celebrations.  We need to live our lives through his example of loving our fellow man, sharing what we have together for the greater good.  What is important about Christmas is the remembrance of the earthly birth of a small child, born to humble parents in love.  The life of Jesus was all about love.  His examples to us all must be recognized if we are to have any successful futures on this earth plane.  We need to act with positivity and negate all negativity that is infecting our lives and give thanks for the trust that Jesus gives us each and every day.

 Saturday, 29^th May 2021

Holy Night

In Roquemaure, France at the end of 1843, the church organ had recently been renovated. To celebrate the event, the parish priest persuaded poet Placide Cappeau, a native of the town, to write a Christmas poem.  Soon afterwards that same year, Adolphe Adam composed the music. The song was premiered in Roquemaure in 1847 by the opera singer Emily Laurey. Unitarian minister John Sullivan Dwight, editor of Dwight's Journal of Music, wrote the English version in 1855. This version became popular in the United States, especially in the North, where the third verse resonated with abolitionists, including Dwight himself. The words of the third verse are Truly He taught us to love one another. His law is Love and His gospel is Peace; Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother and in his name all oppression shall cease, Sweet hymns of joy in grateful Chorus raise we; Let all within us praise his Holy name!  The wide vocal range of the song makes it one of the more difficult Christmas songs to execute properly, especially for untrained amateurs.

 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." As the Union armies advanced through the Confederacy, thousands of slaves were freed each day until nearly all (approximately 3.9 million, according to the 1860 Census) were freed by July 1865.  Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C The assassination occurred only days after the surrender at Appomattox Court House of Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia to Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, which had signalled the effective end of the American Civil War. Lincoln’s death plunged much of the country into despair, and the search for Booth and his accomplices was the largest manhunt in American history to that date.

Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an African American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the American civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. King advanced civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. He was the son of early civil rights activist Martin Luther King Sr.  There are still cases that prove that there is a black problem in this country with many black woman afraid to go out onto the streets at night. There is a culture in America with so many people carrying weapons of shooting first.  This was exemplified by a black woman whose car broke down and she knocked on the door of a house to ask for help.  The door opened and the householder shot her at point blank range.

 White policemen tend to shoot first and treat black people as targets.  In July 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement began after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African American teen Trayvon Martin.  17 months earlier in February 2012. The movement became nationally recognized for street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two African Americans, that of Michael Brown—resulting in protests and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, a city near St. Louis—and Eric Garner in New York City.George Perry Floyd Jr. was an African American man murdered by police during an arrest after a store clerk suspected he may have used a counterfeit $20 bill in Minneapolis. Derek Chauvin, one of four police officers who arrived on the scene, knelt on Floyd's neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. After his death, protests against police brutality, especially towards black people, quickly spread across the United States and globally. As he was dying, he said "I can't breathe" which was used as a rallying cry during subsequent protests.  Changes are slow in coming as the right wing in American politics resists any differences to their supremacy.

 Friday, 28^th May 2021

 

Investigation

 The action of investigating something or someone is known as an investigation.  Politically it is usually by inviting somebody to appear before a panel of Members of Parliament to answer their questions.  It gives both sides a chance to state their case and it often involves complaints against a Minister of the Government, who may have broken the rules or even the law.  These investigations are nowadays broadcast live on the various news channels and so it is a very public affair.  Nobody is on trial, but prosecutions could be made afterwards depending on the seriousness of the matter under discussion.  It has been known for the person being questioned to make accusations against other members of the Government and they too may well be asked to appear before the investigators.

 A lot depends on the skills of the people involved as to how they are able to deal with the questions asked.  On occasions the man or woman being questioned may find that they have made their position more transparent for better or for worse.  The penalties involved are usually none other than clearing the air, so that all interested parties are able the make up the truth of the matter.  As questions are asked, so the instigators can pursue their individual lines of enquiry or special interests that they may have in this matter.  There is a Chairperson who calls the questioners to the fore and take a certain amount of time to address the person under investigation.  Certainly, all questions need to be answered and everybody acts in a civilized way without tempers ever being frayed.

 The most famous investigation was that of Jesus of Nazareth.  He was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, who called him Rabbi and kissed him in the Garden of Gethsemane.  This was to identify Jesus to the members of Sanhedrin, who had come with soldiers to arrest Jesus.  He went quietly, as the Disciples were told not to interfere as Jesus was taken away to the Temple, where the members of the Sanhedrin questioned him and tried to trick disclosures from him making him guilty according to their laws or the laws of Rome.  They failed to succeed however as Jesus was certainly guided and forewarned of their trickery.  Jesus was well read in the religious laws and, as a young man, was often found in deep discussion with priests of the Temple.  They wanted to execute Jesus, because they couldn’t win any other way, so they took him to the Governor of Judea.

 Pontius Pilate was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judea, serving under Emperor Tiberius.  He was duty bound to listen to the Sanhedrin, as they kept the Jews under control and made ruling in Jerusalem easier to manage.  The Jews were not allowed to execute prisoners and so they had to get Jesus executed as an enemy of Rome.  Pilate question Jesus but could find no fault in him.  Afterwards he famously washed his hands showing that he had finished with this matter.  However, the Jews insisted that Jesus was a danger to Rome and that he had set himself up as The King of the Jews and could compete against Tiberius.  Reluctantly Pilate condemned Jesus to be crucified and so it was that after Jesus’s death he rose again in three days.  The birth of Christianity was created from this action, as the Romans sort to kill anyone who had associated with Jesus at that time.

Thursday, 27^th May 2021