English History Quotes

“The Scottish scout called Hamish Plenderlief spoke to his superior saying, “Sir, I have just returned from a patrol around Tynemouth Priory. My second scout and myself observed that the English King Edward II has been joined in his illegal invasion of Scotland by his queen, Isabella!”
― Michael G. Kramer, Isabella Warrior Queen

“Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“Francis stared down at the Duchess of York's letter. He swallowed, then read aloud in a husky voice, "It was showed by John Sponer that King Richard, late mercifully reigning upon us, was through great treason piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this City."
As Margaret listened, the embittered grey eyes had softened, misted with sudden tears.
"My brother may lie in an untended grave," she said, "but he does not lack for an epitaph.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, The Sunne in Splendour

“Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘The Merchant’s Tale’ masterfully explores the theme of self-deception and the intricate dynamics of marital relationships. As the narrative unfolds, it illuminates the ironic nature of marriage, where love and treachery often coexist. By restoring January’s sight, Chaucer metaphorically portrays his willful ignorance, allowing him to live in blissful ignorance of his wife’s infidelity. This allegory provokes readers to question the nature of self-deception and the precarious illusions individuals construct in their pursuit of happiness within the confines of marriage.

‘The Merchant’s Tale’ serves as a cautionary tale, addressing the complexities and pitfalls of love, trust, and the frailties of human nature. Chaucer’s exploration of self-deception requires readers to critically examine the choices and illusions woven throughout the tale, shedding light on the paradoxical nature of love and marriage. Through this literary masterpiece, Chaucer prompts us to question the realities of our own lives, reminding us of the delicate balance between truth and the seductive allure of self-imposed blindness. (from an article titled "Chaucer’s ‘The Merchant’s Tale’: Unveiling the Harsh Realities of Matrimony")”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“We've been brought up to think of the Victorians as prudes, horrified by a glimpse of table leg, but that myth was constructed in the 1920s out of whole cloth, to give their rebellious children an excuse to point and say, "We invented sex!" The reality is stranger: the Victorians were licentious in the extreme behind closed doors, only denying everything in public in the pursuit of probity.”
― Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum

“She no longer followed fashion; she had created a fashion all her own.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“English is about remembering, not about acknowledging.”
― Tony Duong

“[Florence Nightingale's] sister's condition was all too common among many a well-off spinster, 'condemned to spend her days in a meaningless round of trivial occupations, which ate away at her vital strength.' Parthenope's illness, Florence thought, was simply caused by boredom, 'by the conventional life of the present phase of civilisation, which fritters away all that is spiritual in women.' Watching Parthenope lose her sanity, her strength, even the ability to walk, had left Florence aghast. She observed that all around her women were 'going mad for the want of something to do'. She was determined to avoid this fate for herself.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“Victoria had been encouraged to believe that she was weak, inadequate and unable to cope without [Albert].”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“There is no denying that these women had hard lives, but care needs to be taken with these articles about them because they were written in a Victorian genre known as 'slumming', a semi-salacious relishment of the misfortunes of lower-class people.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“While Alice had played her part in watching, waiting and attending on her father, Victoria herself hadn't been much use. ... Alice wasn't a trained nurse, but ... tradition and convention insisted in any case that a daughter was better than the most professional nurse available. (Tradition and convention were wrong about this, as Victoria herself later admitted.)”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“Victoria, who lacked a father, had long sought mentors or alternative fathers in Uncle Leopold, Melbourne and then in Albert himself. Yet she couldn't get him to listen to her. It was in any case, a vain hope. A Victorian man was failing in his masculinity if he failed to control his wife, and Albert could never quite control a wife who was also a queen. So they were doomed to clash.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“What can appear to us twenty-first century people to be an unhealthy fascination with death and mourning in Victorian culture may in fact have been a source of powerful mental resilience. They were 'in touch' with birth and death. Today grieving and mourning are perceived as weakness, almost sickness, to be conquered and overcome. It might be better to accept bereavement, as the Victorians did, as an integral part of life.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“Victoria's former governess Laddle perceptively noticed that the queen's grief would be worse because 'she has no friend to turn to'. 'The worst, far the worst,' Laddle continued, 'is yet to come - the numberless, incessant wishes to "ask the Prince," to "Send for the Prince", the never-failing joy, fresh every time, when he answered her call ... he greatest delight was in OBEYING him.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“She had clasped his cold body because she could not bear to let him go. And something else Victoria could not easily bear to relinquish was the hold Albert had had over his wife's life.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“A species of madness' had come upon her, [Dr Clark] claimed ... but these fears were greatly amplified by the fact that Victoria was approaching that time of life when Victorian women in general were believed to lose control of themselves: the menopause. ... Menopausal women, contemporary doctors hinted, would become sex maniacs.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“[Alix, Princess of Wales] had been taught to think that her beauty was her greatest achievement, and at heart was a simple, straightforward person.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“To Victoria's evident distaste, [Prime Minister William] Gladstone made no concessions to her femininity. He treated her just like a man, or else 'as a competent and intelligent head of state'.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“Before the twentieth century, to be a widow was perhaps to be in the most potent of a woman's life stages. For the first time, a widow was answerable to no one. For the first time, she could own property. For all women other than the queen, a woman's worldly goods, and even her children, had up to that point been not hers but her father's or husband's.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“Even at rock bottom, when her doctors had thought she would go mad with grief, Victoria had spoken of endurance. She was 'determined', she wrote, that as a widow 'no one person, may he be ever so good ... is to lead, or guide, or dictate to me'.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“With Bertie's illness, Victoria's return to her best self, the self she had lost in Albert, had begun.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“The daily contents even of her bin 'would be more interesting than a year's file of The Times'.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“Historian Dorothy Thompson has pointed out the double standard at work here. A king's having a mistress was regrettable, but ultimately acceptable. The possibility, though, of a female ruler having a sexual relationship outside of marriage, causes dismay and prurient ridicule.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“The next draft of a bill outlining the punishments for homosexuality must omit all mention of females; it was unnecessary for 'women don't do such things'.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“Victoria's courtiers generally shared the views of her administrators and colonial staff in India, which were that Indians were decidedly inferior to Europeans. Victoria, however, perhaps having less cause to worry about her status being challenged, was less prone to this, 'There is no hatred to a brown skin - none,' she wrote, even in the wake of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“This bonnet, worn with resolution, had caused some upset. Her government had asked its queen to appear more ... queenly. 'The symbol that unties this vast Empire is a Crown not a bonnet,' complained Lord Roseberry. But Victoria stoutly refused, and 'the bonnet triumphed'.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“Many people envied her position as the winner of the Baby Race and the wearer of the crown. But when she discovered she was to be queen, Victoria already knew that it was the breaking, not the making, of her life. 'I cried much,' she said. Her mother had prepared her for the lonely royal trap in which bother of their lives would be lived, a trap that tightly clasped so many Victorian women but which squeezed and nipped at a queen perhaps most damagingly of all. 'You cannot escape your own feelings,' Victoire told Victoria, all those years ago, 'you cannot escape ... from the situation you are born in'. You cannot escape. It was true. You cannot escape.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“The men would be loud and dangerous and have that stink about them, the stink of war.”
― Nicola Griffith, Menewood

“It is not for such remains as any of the above that a plea is needed; they have powerful friends, and perhaps no enemies. But there is another class of architecture that is fast fading away, and that a class which has brightened many a landscape and figured cheerfully in many a tale.”
― Alfred Rimmer, Ancient Streets and Homesteads of England

“The Hamartia of Esteem by Stewart Stafford

A clash of Roses has seared these temples grey,
The brash cur pack supplanting divinity's place,
Nightshade words aimed at codpiece not the face,
Inquisition's gauntlet strikes this judgement day.

A death warrant marked by slander's inked stain?
Scarred by a caricatured actor's grasping fear?
In a groundless play for a groundling's sneer?
Mannequin tyrant in a jailer playwright's disdain?

Time shall be your confessor and guide,
A guest casting stones at yourself in haste,
Purifying my beloved's fair hand, debased,
Redeem her undoing at a vengeful rabble's side.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford