Bonzo's British History Recollection

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Over the past weeks it has occured to me that I've been forgetting nagging little things that I used to know about history. This is probably because in the past 2 years the only piece of british history I was taught was about 'Jack the Ripper'.

Well I'm hoping some of you intelligent chappys, and chappets, will be able to help me out:

'Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?' I know a king said this about a priest, and I remember his knights overheard him and went and killed the priest. I think the priest was called thomas or something like that. Can someone tell me the rest of the details?

Ok next one: There was some incident called 'Bloody <Insert day here, I think it was Sunday or Monday or Thursday>. I have vague recollections that it was when the army basically rode down a lot of civilians who were protesting. Again can someone fill in the rest of the details.

Note: I remembered this one because it is parodied (sp?) in Night Watch, and it is half mentioned in a song that I've been listening to this week.

Ok that's all for now!

Oh and I'm sure I could find this out somewhere else but well, read the name (the first word)

 

Being an American, I could be wrong, but...

The quote is from Shakespeare's Richard III, I think he had the Archbishop of Canterbury killed.

The second, "Bloody Sunday" was about an Irish independence riot put down by the British...But I don't know much more than that...

 

The "Thomas" is St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered in 1170 AD by four French knights at the "request" of King Henry II. The quote is from Shakespeare, although I am not sure which of his works.

Bloody Sunday...The Irish one, occurred November 21, 1920 when British troops fired on players and spectators at a soccer match in Dublin. A great account of the event can be found here . Actually, make a search from this page, because the board won't accept the full address .

I love history.

 

1. Quote by Henry II Plantagenet, R. 1154-1189

He didn't say 'get rid of', he said more like 'who will relieve me of that priest' - and he didn't mean killing. He was only complaining when he had had enough of it with archbishop Beckett's firm defence of the Church's rights, including the Church's very temporal rights

2. Already guessed correctly. Sunday, of course.

 

I think there is a bloody sunday regarding the great war as well. (WWI) It was during one of the big offensives, can't remember which one though. They had shelled the german position for like 3 weeks, and then told their soldiers that they could just walk over the german lines, as there would be noone left. Well, they were wrong. The german machinegunners didn't even have to aim. I think the cassualties for one single day was some 37000, making it the bloodiest single day in british history.

On a sidenote, the british lost the same amount of soldiers during the first month of WWI as they did in the entire period of the Napoleon wars...

 

I'm with Belisarius here. I think bloody sunday is usally used with British soldiers firing into a crowd of civilians in Northern Ireland in the 70's, which intensifed the tensions there, even more so as the whole thing developed into a justice scandal, as authorities didn't want to investigate the incident.

 

Yes, the one you are referring to happened in Derry, Northern Ireland on Jan 20, 1972. when British troops fired into a civilian crowd, killing 13. It created a scandal because the matter was never properly investigated. It actually is currently the subject of an inquiry by a multi-national tribunal. This is the Bloody Sunday made famous by U2. The other Bloody Sunday, the one in 1920 was made famous by the movie "Michael Collins" starring Liam Neesom. Each are equally notorious from a historical standpoint.

I am not aware of any WWI battle called bloody sunday, but I'll keep checking.

 

I can't believe the news today, I just can't close my eyes, and make it go away...

U2 are the shiznits.

 

Ah many thanks! Perhaps I should be worried that people from another country no more about my own countries history, maybe this is why I'm not patriotic.

Oh and it was from a song by Third Eye Blind, not U2, that made me think about Bloody Sunday (it was the irish one i was thinking of, I'd vaguely heard of the other one but I didn't know what day it was or the exact number of deaths).