William Rufus

‘While the princes and barons of the first Crusade were establishing in Palestine the little Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, various alterations took place in Europe, by which the rights of the absentees were materially affected. No one suffered more by these than Robert Duke of Normandy. To furnish himself forth for the Crusade, this eldest son of William the Conqueror had imprudently pledged the Duchy of Normandy, being the only part of his father's dominions which had descended to him, to his brother William, called Rufus, or the Red, King of England, for a large sum of money. But while Robert was employed in cleaving Mahometan champions asunder, and exhibiting feats of the most romantic valour, William was privately engaged in securing and rendering permanent the temporary interest which the mortgage gave him in the fief of the duchy, and it soon became evident, that even if Robert should be able and desirous to redeem the territory, it was not likely that his more powerful brother would renounce the right he had acquired over it. But the death of William Rufus brought into play a third son of the Conqueror. This was Henry, the youngest, whom his brothers, both Robert and William, had treated with considerable severity after their father's death, and refused to grant any appanage becoming his rank. Civil war ensued among the brothers, and on one memorable occasion, Henry was besieged by his two brethren, in the fortress of Mount Saint Michael, and reduced to the greatest extremity for want of water. His distress being communicated to Robert, who was always generous, he instantly sent him a supply. William, who was of a harder and more inflexible disposition, upbraided Robert with his imprudent generosity. "What else could I do?" answered the generous Norman. "He is our brother. Had he died for lack of water, how were we to supply his loss?"

Upon the surrender of the fortress, however, Henry was reduced to the condition of a private individual, although his bravery was equal to that of either of his brothers; his sagacity was also much superior, and his learning, which was uncommon in those days, so considerable, that he obtained the name of Beauclerc, or Fine Scholar.

William Rufus was killed accidentally with an arrow, while hunting in the New Forest, 'which had been so unscrupulously formed or enlarged, by his father the Conqueror. Henry was engaged in the same sport in a different part of the forest, and learning this accident as soon as it happened, rode post-haste to London, and availed himself of Robert's absence to procure his own election to the crown of England, which was confirmed by Parliament…’

The fateful arrow that slew William II of England was fired by Walter Tirel, on August 2^nd, 1100.  Sir Walter Scott’s history is found in “Tales of a Grandfather”.

Thomas Gainsborough

English portraitist and landscape painter Thomas Gainsborough died this day, August 2^nd, in the year 1788.  Despite his renown for painting, it is a house Gainsborough lived in, and a “doctor” that lead to a connection with Sir Walter Scott.  The house is Schomberg House, in London.  The text describing this connection comes from William Whitley’s “Thomas Gainsborough”.

‘Schomberg House, where Gainsborough lived until his death in 1788, was originally the residence of the Dukes of Schomberg. Afterwards it became the property of Lord Holdernesse, from whom it was acquired by John Astley, a painter and a fellow-student of Reynolds. According to a lengthy biography of Astley, published soon after his death in 1787, Lord Holdernesse offered him Schomberg House for £5000, and held to his offer, although he knew before the contract was signed that he could have had £7000 for it from Lord Melbourne. We are told that Astley, who had married a rich widow, spent another £5000 in altering the house. "The centre he himself inhabited, and raised that fine room where Dr. Graham, with such infamy to the police which suffered him, preceded Cosway. There, too, he built an attic story which, for the surprises of scenery in a town like London, should be seen by all who come to it."

Dr. Graham, whose lectures, with their demonstrations of the human figure unadorned, scandalised the town, was the notorious personage whose earth baths and electrical machine were tried upon Sir Walter Scott when a child in a vain effort to cure his lameness. Sir Walter, who thought that Graham had a touch of madness in his composition, remembered him at Edinburgh when he used to attend the Greyfriars Church in a gay suit of white and silver, with a chapeau bras, " and his hair marvellously dressed into a sort of double toupee, like the two towers of Parnassus. Lady Hamilton is said to have first enacted his Goddess of Health." The tradition that Nelson's enchantress posed at Graham's lectures appears to have no foundation in fact, but out of it has grown the legend that Gainsborough painted from Lady Hamilton the picture in the National Gallery, Musidora bathing her Feet. The attractions of Graham's Temple of Health included the reading of lectures by Ann Curtis —to the horror of that embodiment of propriety, Mrs. Siddons, whose sister the lecturer was—but the noisy crowds who flocked to Pall Mall were drawn there by the Goddess of Health, the Celestial Bed, and similar unedifying spectacles. These ultimately brought down upon the head of Gainsborough's next-door neighbour the wrath and the interference of the Bishop of London.’

Dr. James Graham is a subject nearly as noteworthy as Gainsborough; certainly more notorious.  Graham was an early practitioner of sex therapy, and his electo-magnetic technique was used more to promote fertility than to cure lameness.

Battle of the Nile

The Battle of the Nile took place on August 2, 1798.  In this battle, Napoleon's navy under Vice Admiral Francois-Paul Brueys D'Aigalliers was defeated by the British Royal Navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson.  The British navy gained the upper hand in the Napoleonic Wars with this victory.

Walter Scott references this battle in the line 'On Egypt...' in his poem Marmion.

'Nor mourn ye less his perished worth,
Who bade the conqueror go forth,
And launch'd that thunderbolt of war
On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar;
Who, born to guide such high emprize,
For Britain's weal was early wise;
Alas! to whom the Almighty gave,
For Britain's sins, an early grave!
His worth, who, in his mightiest hour,
A bauble held the pride of power,
Spum'd at the sordid lust of pelf,
And served his Albion for herself;
Who, when the frantic crowd amain
Strain'd at subjection's bursting rein,
O'er their wild mood full conquest gain'd,
The pride, he would not crush, restrain'd,
Show'd their fierce zeal a worthier cause,
And brought the freeman's arm, to aid the freeman's laws...'