Emma Stands in the Palace of Westminster
Read through the passage below, then use the table to rearrange the events into chronological order. Firstly, cut and paste (or drag and drop) each event into the appropriate century. Then arrange the events into chronological order within each century.
Emma stood between the abbey and the House of Commons and reflected on the great events that had been celebrated or mourned over the years. Victories, yes – El Alamein, the Falklands, Agincourt, Blenheim and the defeat of the Armada; Waterloo, Trafalgar and Wolfe’s capture of Quebec; heroic disasters like Dunkirk or the Somme. But moments of defeat, shame and disaster also – Yorktown and the loss of America, the fall of Singapore, the genocide of Wexford and Drogheda, the massacre at Amritsar, the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich. Civil War also, with Briton killing Briton – Culloden, Naseby, Bannockburn and the carnage of the Wars of the Roses, (not to mention Peterloo, the General Strike and the Peasant’s Revolt). She thought also of the disasters that had afflicted London – the Great Fire, the Plague and the Blitz.
She thought also of the growth of British power and the moves from absolute monarchy to democracy. From William the Conqueror’s coronation in the abbey to the gaining of votes for women, from Magna Carta to the Great Reform Act of ’32, from De Montfort’s first parliament to the Glorious Revolution and the move to constitutional monarchy. Union with Scotland, the acts of union with Wales and the incorporation of Ireland to form ‘Great Britain’, the partition of Ireland which was to sow the seeds of ‘The Troubles’. The bells had rung to announce many of the great moments in history, the communist revolution in Russia, the great French Revolution of ’89, as well as great moments in British history – the zenith of the Great Exhibition, Disraeli’s purchase of the Suez canal, Victoria proclaimed Empress of India, the ‘granting’ of Indian Independence and the ‘wind of change’ that followed it. This ground had witnessed Henry’s break with Rome, the first woman Prime Minister, the vote to execute Charles I and the brief interregnum of Cromwell’s commonwealth. Prayers had doubtless been said to celebrate Hilary’s ascent of Everest, England winning the World Cup and the phyrric victories of the Boer and the Crimean wars, and of course, the escape from being blown up by the gunpowder plot of Guy Fawkes.
