Sublime

In 1681 the directorship was taken over by the recklessly aggressive Sir Josiah Child, who had started his career supplying beer to the navy in Portsmouth, and who was described by the diarist John Evelyn as ‘an overgrown and suddenly monied man … most sordidly avaricious’.81

Two months later the Defence broke – or was cut – from her moorings and also came into Dutch possession. Using these ships and their crews as bargaining counters the Dutch commander opened negotiations; if Courthope would relinquish Run he would return both prizes and prisoners. Many of the prisoners also wrote urging compliance. They were being

Innocent had long wanted the French crown to intervene in the south, but it was not until 1215 that Philip Augustus’s son, Louis, finally launched an expedition of his own. Nothing much came of it. In 1219, he tried again, this time getting as far as committing wholesale slaughter at the small market town of Marmande, where all 7,000 inhabitants

Sardis, a busy commercial and industrial city at the junction of five roads about thirty miles south of Thyatira, had been the capital of the ancient region called Lydia. In the sixth century BC, it was one of the greatest cities of the world, where the fabulous King Croesus reigned amid his treasures. Even though the citadel of Sardis was situated