Quotes from Jenny Uglow

Before the battle they had been discussing whether there might be life after death, and Windham and Rochester had made a pact that if there was, the first to die would come back and tell the other. But, said Rochester, he [Windham] never did.

On the third morning of the riots Burdett saw a constable, balanced on a ladder, peering through his library windows, and heard soldiers break in downstairs: he was arrested reading the Magna Carta to his son, an aptly dramatic scene. He was then taken to the Tower in a coach guarded by six hundred cavalrymen wielding sabres.

On Easter Sunday, 18 April, the Te Deums were sung and the Lord was praised for removing the tyrant. 'Nap the Mighty is gone to pot,' wrote the nineteen-year-old Thomas Carlyle in amazement, with double underlining.

Sinclair was even more impassioned. He owned large estates in Caithness and in the 1790s he compiled his detailed Statistical Account of Scotland, a compendium of information on geography, economy and society and history that would eventually grow to twenty-one volumes. Putting the new theories

Our Shepherds', he wrote angrily, 'Thirsted to make the guardian Crook of Law/A tool of Murder': Giants in their impiety alone, But in their weapons and their warfare base As vermin working out of reach, they leagued Their strength perfidiously to undermine Justice, and make an end of Liberty.