|
Elizabeth Bridget Cane
Elizabeth Bridget Armistead or Armitstead (11 July 1750 – 8 July 1842) was a courtesan and, later, the spouse of statesman and politician Charles James Fox. Her relationship with and marriage to Fox was one of the most famous and controversial of their age. Early life Elizabeth Armistead was born Elizabeth Bridget Cane on 11 July 1750. Later items in ''The Public Advertiser'' and '' Town and Country Magazine'' reported her place of birth as Greenwich, London, and her parentage as variously a market porter and an herb-vendor or a shoemaker turned Methodist lay preacher, but biographer I. M. Davis gives such accounts little credence. Samuel Rogers believed she had once been a waiting woman to actress Fanny Abington. The reasons for her changing her maiden name to Armistead or Armitstead are unknown. She began her career in an exclusive, high-class brothel in London, though which one is uncertain. An entry in Sir Joshua Reynolds's appointment books for 1771 includes a m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Courtesan
Courtesan, in modern usage, is a euphemism for a "kept" mistress (lover), mistress or prostitute, particularly one with wealthy, powerful, or influential clients. The term historically referred to a courtier, a person who attended the Royal court, court of a monarch or other powerful person. History In European feudalism, feudal society, the court was the centre of government as well as the residence of the monarch, and social and political life were often completely mixed together. Prior to the Renaissance, courtesans served to convey information to visiting dignitaries, when servants could not be trusted. In Renaissance Europe, courtiers played an extremely important role in upper-class society. As it was customary during this time for royal couples to lead separate lives—commonly marrying simply to preserve bloodlines and to secure political alliances—men and women would often seek gratification and companionship from people living at court. In fact, the verb 'to court' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke
Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke, 3rd Viscount St John (21 December 1732 – 5 May 1787), was a British Viscount and landowner. His father was John St John, 2nd Viscount St John, half-brother of Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751). G. E. Cokayne; with Vicary Gibbs, H.A. Doubleday, Geoffrey H. White, Duncan Warrand and Lord Howard de Walden, editors. The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed., 13 volumes in 14 (1910-1959; reprint in 6 volumes, Gloucester, U.K.: Alan Sutton Publishing, 2000), volume II, pp. 207, 208. His mother was Anne Furnese and his younger brother General the Hon. Henry St John (1738–1818). Biography Bolingbroke was educated at Eton College, Berkshire. He succeeded to the title of 3rd Baron St John of Battersea on 19 June 1748. He succeeded to the title of 3rd Viscount St John on 26 November 1748. "Bully," as he was called by his contemporar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bond Street
Bond Street in the West End of London links Piccadilly in the south to Oxford Street in the north. Since the 18th century the street has housed many prestigious and upmarket fashion retailers. The southern section is Old Bond Street and the longer northern section New Bond Street—a distinction not generally made in everyday usage. The street was built on fields surrounding Clarendon House on Piccadilly, which were developed by Sir Thomas Bond. It was built up in the 1720s, and by the end of the 18th century was a popular place for the upper-class residents of Mayfair to socialise. Prestigious or expensive shops were established along the street, but it declined as a centre of social activity in the 19th century, although it held its reputation as a fashionable place for retail, and is home to the auction houses Sotheby's and Bonhams (formerly Phillips) and the department store Fenwick and jeweller Tiffany's. It is one of the most expensive and sought after strips of real e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leasehold Estate
A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to hold land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord. Although a tenant does hold rights to real property, a leasehold estate is typically considered personal property. Leasehold is a form of land tenure or property tenure where one party buys the right to occupy land or a building for a given length of time. As a lease is a legal estate, leasehold estate can be bought and sold on the open market. A leasehold thus differs from a freehold or fee simple where the ownership of a property is purchased outright and thereafter held for an indeterminate length of time, and also differs from a tenancy where a property is let (rented) on a periodic basis such as weekly or monthly. Terminology and types of leasehold vary from country to country. Sometimes, but not always, a residential tenancy under a lease agreement is colloquially known as renting. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bengal
Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predominantly covering present-day Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Geographically, it consists of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta system, the largest river delta in the world and a section of the Himalayas up to Nepal and Bhutan. Dense woodlands, including hilly rainforests, cover Bengal's northern and eastern areas, while an elevated forested plateau covers its central area; the highest point is at Sandakphu. In the littoral southwest are the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest. The region has a monsoon climate, which the Bengali calendar divides into six seasons. Bengal, then known as Gangaridai, was a leading power in ancient South Asia, with extensive trade networks forming connections to as far away as Roman Egypt. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The company seized control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world. The EIC had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three Presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time. The operations of the company had a profound effect on the global balance of trade, almost single-handedly reversing the trend of eastward drain of Western bullion, seen since Roman times. Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade duri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Smith (East India Company Officer)
Brigadier-General Richard Smith (baptised 1734 – 3 July 1803) was Commander-in-Chief, India of the East India Company (Bengal). Early life He was the eldest son of John Smith, cheesemonger, of Jermyn Street, St. James’s, in what is now central London. Military career He served in India as an ensign in the Madras Army in 1752, rising to the rank of captain. In 1761 returned to London and became a prominent shareholder in the East India Company. When he went out to India again in 1764 it was as Colonel of one of the East India Company's three brigades. In 1767 he was promoted to Commander-in-Chief, India. He was made Brigadier-General in 1768 before retiring in 1770. Political career In 1774 he went into politics and was briefly elected to Parliament as the member for Hindon, Wiltshire, by spending 15 guineas per vote. On petition the election was declared void due to bribery by the winning candidates. He and his fellow candidate, Thomas Brand Hollis, were prosecuted, fined ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Hare (MP)
James Hare (1747–1804) was an English politician, diplomat and wit. Life He was the son of Joseph Hare, an apothecary of Wells, Somerset. He was educated at Eton College, and entered King's College, Cambridge in December 1765. He graduated B.A. in 1770, having become a fellow in 1768, a position he held to 1774. Hare entered London life, where his status as a wit was generally recognised. Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire described Hare as having "a manner of placing every object in so new a light that his kind of wit always surprises as much as it pleases." He associated with the fashionable set of Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle, William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, Earl Fitzwilliam, General Richard FitzPatrick, Charles James Fox, and Anthony Morris Storer. He sat for the borough of , in Hampshire, from May 1772 to 1774, and then for , a constituency controlled by the William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, Duke of Devonshire, from 3 July 1781 until ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard FitzPatrick
General Richard FitzPatrick (24 January 174825 April 1813), styled The Honourable from birth, was an Anglo-Irish soldier, wit, poet, and Whig politician. He sat in the British House of Commons for 39 years from 1774 to 1813, and was a "sworn brother" of the statesman Charles James Fox. He served in the Philadelphia campaign during the American Revolutionary War. Family and childhood FitzPatrick was a younger son of John FitzPatrick, 1st Earl of Upper Ossory, and Lady Evelyn, daughter of John Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Gower. He had an elder brother, John FitzPatrick, 2nd Earl of Upper Ossory, and two sisters: Mary, who later married Charles James Fox's brother Stephen Fox, 2nd Baron Holland, and Louisa, who became the second wife of Fox's Whig adversary William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne. After the death of her husband in 1758, Fitzpatrick's mother brought her children to England and soon remarried Richard Vernon, an original member of the Jockey Club. Lady Evelyn bore her s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Winter's Tale
''The Winter's Tale'' is a play by William Shakespeare originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, many modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics consider it to be one of Shakespeare's "problem plays" because the first three acts are filled with intense psychological drama, while the last two acts are comic and supply a happy ending. The play has been intermittently popular, revived in productions in various forms and adaptations by some of the leading theatre practitioners in Shakespearean performance history, beginning after a long interval with David Garrick in his adaptation ''Florizel and Perdita'' (first performed in 1753 and published in 1756). ''The Winter's Tale'' was revived again in the 19th century, when the fourth "pastoral" act was widely popular. In the second half of the 20th century, ''The Winter's Tale'' in its entirety, and drawn largely from the First Folio t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Steele
Sir Richard Steele (bap. 12 March 1672 – 1 September 1729) was an Anglo-Irish writer, playwright, and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine ''The Spectator''. Early life Steele was born in Dublin, Ireland, in March 1672 to Richard Steele, a wealthy attorney, and Elinor Symes (''née'' Sheyles); his sister Katherine was born the previous year. He was the grandson of Sir William Steele, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and his first wife Elizabeth Godfrey. His father lived at Mountown House, Monkstown, County Dublin. His mother, of whose family background little is known, was described as a woman of "great beauty and noble spirit". His father died when he was four, and his mother a year later. Steele was largely raised by his uncle and aunt, Henry Gascoigne (secretary to James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde), and Lady Katherine Mildmay. A member of the Protestant gentry, he was educated at Charterhouse School, where he first met Add ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The main auditorium seats 2,256 people, mak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_-_Sir_Richard_Steele_-_NPG_3227_-_National_Portrait_Gallery.jpg "Click for more on -> Richard Steele")
