What two important events in unhistory transpired one year ago
this week?
Last week I spotted someone refer to his thousandth post, took
a peek at my own count, and voila: 1066. My kilopost snuck right
past me. I was probably too busy reviling JDH or worshipping
Kuzi or reviewing an uppercrust uppowoc cylinder someone had
bombed me, or just generally spewing sarcastic stream of
consciousness prose. Anyhoo, I missed it.
Of course, 1066 put me in mind of the year Harold Godwinson took
an arrow in his eye on Senlac hill, back in those beknighted days
when potentates actually had skin in the game. That there's history.
Consequences of history linger. This day, for instance,
made four letter Saxon words nasty. It's why *** and *** and ***
are filtered by forum software, while excrement and coitus
and vagina are not.
So at first I reckoned to wait until post 1210, the next famous
day in British history, when the barons forced John to promise not
to punish any free man without trial. This Magna Carta is taught in
school as the first constitutional limits on regal power. That's history.
Problem is, I'd need 143 posts to reach that number, by which time
I'd be distracted streaming sarcasm again and that dang number would
sneak right past me.
Luckily, unhistory came to my rescue. A mere 34 years after that unlucky
arrow, in 1100, Henry Beauclerk had to sign a Charter of Liberties, promising
not to sell bishoprics or steal dowries and let people marry who they want,
or else his nobles and prelates wouldn't have let him climb up on the throne.
This was well and truly the first in a long series of contracts between English
speaking peoples and their rulers. Craploads of Wat Tylers laid their heads on
the block in the process. This is how our forebears replaced the rule of power
which applies everywhere else with the rule of law which is our peculiar
birthright. A long series of emancipations regrettably in rapid retreat today.
But nobody remembers the C of L, which makes it unhistory; even though the
consequences of unhistory equally linger, so that the C of L led directly to
the MC.
Well, one year ago this week, third week of March, also marks important unhistory.
Do you know what happened? These events dove-tail so neatly with 1100 and 1210 and
Wat Tyler and Habeus Corpus and all those centuries of struggle now being
systematically undone, that I adjusted my aim, bided my 34 posts, and here we are,
third week of March, at post number 1100, year of the unfamous Charter of
Liberties.
So here's what I want you to do. One simple rule: No cheating with google or
wikipedia or such not. Be on your BOTL honor to scratch your own head on this. Just
tell me what two remarkable unhistorical events consonant with this theme started
and ended this third week of March just one year ago among English speaking peoples.
First one to name them both gets a fiver of aptly named Alec Bradley Black Market
Filthy Hooligan Cigars.
Yep. It's all going to dovetail together, from conquest to beauclerk to black market
hooligan, once we see the answer.
Who's in?
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