Bernard de Montfaucon

The Benedictine monk and antiquary Bernard de Montfaucon passed on December 21, 1741.  Montfaucon lived nearly 86 years, joining the Benedictines at about 20 years of age, after having served briefly in the French army.  His fame derives from various scholarly works he published, including an authoritative history of Greek writing, and by 1724, his 15 volume “L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures”.  This work was translated into English as “Antiquity Explained and Represented in Diagrams”. 

In 1824, Walter Scott received a copy of Montfaucon's Antiquities for his library.  As John Gibson Lockhart says, in his “Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott”,  ‘Such arrivals as that of “the Wallace Chair” were frequent throughout 1824. It was a happy, and therefore it need hardly be added an ineventful year—his last year of undisturbed prosperity. The little incidents that diversified his domestic interior, and the zeal which he always kept up for all the concerns of his friends, together with a few indications of his opinions on subjects of literary and political interest, will be found in his correspondence, which will hardly require any editorial explanations. Within, I think, the same week in January, arrived a copy of Montfauçon’s Antiquities, in fifteen volumes folio, richly bound in scarlet, the gift of King George IV…’

Coventry Act

"May go to the devil for a self-conceited ass. One pleasure of this twist of intrigue is, to revenge me of that villain, who thought himself so essential, that, by Heaven! he forced himself on my privacy, and lectured me like a schoolboy. Hang the cold-blooded hypocritical vermin! If he mutters, I will have his nose slit as wide as Coventry's.[*]--Hark ye, is the Colonel come?"

"I expect him every moment, your Grace."

[*] The ill-usage of Sir John Coventry by some of the Life Guardsmen, in revenge of something said in Parliament concerning the King's theatrical amours, gave rise to what was called Coventry's Act, against cutting and maiming the person.

According to "The Book of Days", the slitting to the bone of Sir John Coventry's nose that Sir Walter Scott employs in the text of "Peveril of the Peak", occurred on December 21, 1669.  "Peveril of the Peak" is set in the Popish Plot of 1678.  The plot was entirely fictitious, and served anti-Catholic ends.

Thomas Becket

"Come hither, Waldemar," said Prince John. "An unhappy prince am I. My father, King Henry, had faithful servants - he had but to say that he was plagued by a factious priest, and the blood of Thomas-a-Becket, saint though he was, stained the steps of his own alter. - Tracy, Morville, Brito..."

- From Scott's "Ivanhoe".

Thomas Becket is best known for his death, at the hands of his childhood friend Henry II of England's men. Today is his birthday; December 21, 1117. Thomas was the son of a London merchant. While, as a young man, employed by the sheriff of London, Thomas met Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. Theobald sent him to study civil law in Italy and France. Becket was very successful in his studies, and among those who noticed was Henry II. Henry raised Thomas to the position of chancellor of the realm (1158), a post which he filled admirably. Trusting that Becket was of the same mind as he, and wanting to check the power of the church, Henry further promoted the future saint to become Archbishop of Canterbury. The seeds of dissension that led to Thomas-a-Becket's death will be covered in a future post.