In this issue:

  • UELAC Conference 2021: be part of the story Hosted by Bridge Annex , May 27-31
  • UELAC AGM Friday 28 May at 11:00AM ET
  • William and Priscilla McKinstry: Forgotten Loyalist Ancestors – Part 4 by Stephen Davidson UE
  • JAR: “The Predicament We Are In”: How Paperwork Saved the Continental Army
  • JAR: The Revolutionary War Service of James Noble
  • Washington’s Quill: A Family Man: George Washington as seen by Elizabeth E. Seelye and Lucy E. Guernsey
  • Canada’s History: Hay Bay Church “Unadorned Sanctuary”
  • How Bed Bugs were Dealt with in the Georgian Era
  • Making it Count – Canada’s First Census
  • Canada’s Census 2021 and UEL
  • Eighteenth-Century Spies in the European Silk Industry
  • Participating in the Heritage Community: Vancouver Branch
  • Events:
    • Samuel Waldo and the American Heroes of Louisbourg: Examining Their Role in Colonization and Enslavement in Early New England. Monday 10 May @5:30PM ET
    • Victoria Branch, Loyalists Cemeteries in Eastern Ontario by Stuart Lyall Manson UE Sat. 15 May 1:00PM ET
    • Toronto Branch “The Loyalists of Digby” by Brian McConnell UE Tues 18 May @7:30PM ET
  • In The News: Bacon: Sports and life lessons come from Mom
  • From the Twittersphere and Beyond

Connect with us:

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UELAC Conference 2021: be part of the story Hosted by Bridge Annex , May 27-31
Bridge Annex has created an interactive and memorable experience that will immerse you in Loyalist and related history. Visit our interactive map and explore what you can expect May 27-31, 2021. Use the interactive map on the web-site to navigate the conference offerings.
All live events are now virtual.
The All-Access Pass is an amazing value at only $50.00 – attend all presentations and events virtually and get a free music download, courtesy of our musical entertainment, the renowned Celtic group, The Brigadoons!
Come be part of the story this May!
See the details and register www.uelbridgeannex.com/2021

UELAC AGM Friday 28 May at 11:00AM ET
Package Now Available in the Member’s Section
The AGM 2021 page has now been posted in the Member’s Section at uelac.ca
The first item in the list of contents is the Annual conference, the second one is the AGM material.
At the AGM page you will find this information:

  • Overview
  • Notice of Meeting
  • Attending the Virtual AGM
  • Not Attending? Send Your Proxy
  • AGM General Items
  • Reports
  • Motions

As a member, you have access to the information. You may also attend the Annual General Meeting for Members, which of course is virtual.

  1. Registration: Any member who wishes to attend the UELAC AGM 2021 on Friday 28 May at 11:00AM ET must register for it separately from the annual conference. This registration is free; the form is on the website. Registration must be by Friday 21 May.
  2. Proxy: A member can assign his/her attendance and vote to another person. The proxy form is available there too. NOTE. There are deadlines depending on the the membership status of the member assigning a proxy and of the proxy-holder. The three deadlines are 8 May, 13 May and 18 May.

If you are having difficulty using the AGM Registration form, try this:

  1. Save the registration to your desk top
  2. When you open the document you will see the edit button. Click on it
  3. Double tap to enter the information areas that require your input
  4. When you see the cursor, input the required information
  5. When you are finished send it off to Jo Ann Tuskin at the Dominion URL.
    1. Be sure to spell her email correctly

William and Priscilla McKinstry: Forgotten Loyalist Ancestors – Part Four of Four
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
The four sons of William and Priscilla McKinstry died as single men, failing to pass on their father’s surname. Three of their four sisters married men who had strong connections to the victorious side of the American Revolution. If the stories of their Loyalist parents were going to be preserved in family lore, it fell to their oldest sister, Priscilla, to marry into a loyal family. She did. So if the experiences of William and Priscilla McKinstry are remembered by anyone, it would a descendant of their daughter Priscilla.
Priscilla McKinstry was ten years old when her father died of tuberculosis just days before the family’s evacuation ship left Boston for Halifax in March of 1776. After two years in the Nova Scotia capital, Priscilla’s mother and siblings moved to Rhode Island, remaining there a year before finally settling in Haverhill, Massachusetts. There, Priscilla’s sisters met and married local suitors, and made lives for themselves in various New England towns.
Priscilla caught the eye of John Hazen, a native of Haverhill who was ten years her senior. For seven years before the outbreak of the American Revolution, John’s uncle, William Hazen, had been trading in fish and fur at the mouth of the St. John River in what was then the western edge of the colony of Nova Scotia. When he was 20 years old, John joined his uncle as an employee at his trading post at Portland Point (today’s Saint John, New Brunswick).
The Maritime Provinces had first welcomed settlers from the New England colonies in the 1760s, following the expulsion of the Acadians from land that would henceforth be known as Nova Scotia. Historians now refer to them as the New England Planters, meaning that they were pioneer settlers from the older British colonies.
The St. John River had a number of Planter settlements located between today’s Gagetown and Saint John. However, not all of these settlers remained loyal to the crown during the American Revolution. Some actively took up arms and attacked the British fortifications at Fort Cumberland on what is today the border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Other Planters did retain their loyalty to the crown, including those who were employees of William Hazen. Although he was not a Loyalist refugee, nevertheless, John Hazen was an American colonist who retained his loyalty to the crown. James Simonds, a fellow “resident Loyalist”, once complained about how the crown forgot the trials of the Loyal Planters when it compensated the revolution’s refugees: “They had a numerous British army to protect them; we had to combat the sons of darkness alone. In a word, we had much less than they to hope for by unshaken loyalty and incomparably more to fear.”
Two years after the end of the American Revolution, John Hazen moved from his uncle’s headquarters (in the newly created city of Saint John) to Oromocto, just 20 km below Fredericton. Records of the era do not explain why the Massachusetts native decided to remain in New Brunswick. As a Loyalist, was he afraid to return to his home? Was it the fact that he had a steady income in the newly created colony?
One thing is certain, though. At 32 years of age, John Hazen still did not have a wife. He returned to Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1787 where he married 22 year-old Priscilla McKinstry on Sunday, September second. The historical records fail to tell us whether Hazen had known Priscilla for a long time or whether his courtship of the Loyalist doctor’s daughter was only a matter of months.
Priscilla returned to New Brunswick with John. Over the next 20 years she gave birth to 8 sons and 4 daughters. The family eventually moved down the river to the community of Burton. John became a magistrate for the area, and died at age 73 in 1828.
The inventory taken at Hazen’s death valued his worldly goods at £3,179. He gave Priscilla the “use of dwelling and furnishings in addition to her right of dower”, while his sons William, John, James and Robert received his land. Sons Thomas, Nathaniel, and Charles each received £150. (His son George had died unmarried eight years earlier.)
Priscilla remained in the family home until her death at 77 in August of 1842. Her husband’s death notice had included the fact that John Hazen had moved to New Brunswick from Massachusetts. However, when his wife died, the newspapers failed to say anything about Priscilla’s Loyalist parents and brother.
Priscilla’s greatest legacy would be the children she bore and raised. Her third son, John Hazen Junior, was a member of H. M. 49th Regiment and became the sheriff of Sunbury County. His son, John King Hazen, was the father of a daughter and son. That son would become known as Sir John Douglas Hazen. Hazen, the great-great-grandson of two Massachusetts Loyalists, would serve the province of New Brunswick as its premier from 1908 to 1911. But this is just one line of descent from Priscilla McKinstry Hazen.
Seven of her 12 children married and had families, extending the descendants of William and Priscilla McKinstry over many generations. Eliza Hazen married a Mr. Kimball, William McKinstry Hazen (note his middle name) married Mary Woodbridge Allen, John Hazen Junior married Elizabeth King of Dublin, Ireland, Charles Hazen had two wives in his lifetime — Sarah Nevers Perley and Mary Jones, his sister, Mary Ann Glennie Hazen, married George F.S. Garden, Robert Hazen married Sarah McMonagle, and Charlotte Hazen married the widower Nathaniel Hubbard.
The unmarried children of Priscilla and John Hazen were George Leonard Hazen, James Hazen, Thomas Hazen, Sarah Hazen and Nathaniel Merrill Hazen. Charlotte Hazen Hubbard was the last of this generation; she died in 1873. She would have carried the stories of her family’s experiences during the revolution well into the 19th century.
If any descendants of Dr. William and Priscilla McKinstry held onto the memory of the Loyalist heritage it would be through the line of their oldest daughter, Priscilla. Both time and distance would gradually lead to the loss of the family’s history. Priscilla Hazen’s children and grandchildren ventured off to such faraway places as California and Mexico, so for a time the family stories of persecution in Massachusetts would have crossed the continent. But with each passing generation, the stories would grow shorter, and the details would be lost.
Oddly enough, it is the house built by Dr. William McKinstry that has endured while the memories of its occupants have all but disappeared. On July 5, 1984, the Loyalist couple’s house on High Street in Taunton, Massachusetts was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Known as the McKinstrey House (note the variation in spelling), it now serves as the rectory for St. Thomas Episcopal Church located next door. While its age and architecture make it significant, the stories of its original occupants make it a memorial to two Loyalists whose descendants may have forgotten them entirely.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

JAR: “The Predicament We Are In”: How Paperwork Saved the Continental Army
by Mike Matheny 3 May 2021
“Few people know the predicament we are in,” wrote George Washington, while he expressed the Continental army’s dire circumstances. By January 1776, just six months into the Revolutionary War, the Continental army faced a crisis outside Boston. This particular crisis, not caused by a British attack, was a personnel issue. “Search the volumes of history through,” Washington wrote, “and I much question whether a case similar to ours is to be found . . . to have one army disbanded, and another to raise, within the same distance of a reinforced enemy; it is too much to attempt—what may be the final issue of the last manouvre, time can only tell.” The Continental army, having grown to just over 22,000 soldiers, was about to disperse. Most soldiers’ enlistment contracts expired on January 1, 1776, and less than half agreed to reenlist. Entire regiments were leaving the battlefield, headed for home. Congress had not paid the army for two months in a row. Their short enlistments now at an end, dissatisfied soldiers believed their commitments were done. The American Revolution almost ended before it began, not due to a battlefield defeat, but in large part to the overwhelming personnel challenges inherent in creating and maintaining the first national army.
Historians frequently highlight the tremendous challenges the Continental army endured. The army’s early rabble nature faced many leadership, training, discipline, and logistical weaknesses. One of the most frustrating issues was its specific personnel problems. The army’s manpower shortage, recruitment and reenlistment crises, and financial woes, comprised a unified theme. They all related to the often unglamorous and tedious topic of personnel management, or in modern terms, “human resources.” The army only survived by successfully coping with these challenges through strength reporting that gave it an ability to see itself, improvisation in recruiting and reenlistment to retain its force, and short-term fixes in finances to keep the army together long enough to win the war. Personnel management was a vital factor in the success or failure in the fight for independence, one which, had the Continental army not sufficiently coped with, the American Revolution might have quickly collapsed under British occupation.
Building (and Re-Building) the Army
The Continental Congress created a national army with initially modest proportions that reorganized multiple times to cope with personnel challenges. After the first armed conflict occurred at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Congress created the Continental army on June 14, 1775. Starting from scratch, the very first Continental army establishment included only ten regiments… Read more…

JAR: The Revolutionary War Service of James Noble
by Michael J. F. Sheehan 28 April 2021
When old Revolutionary War soldiers applied for their military pensions in the first and second quarter of the nineteenth century, they generally reported the basic information of their service. Occasionally, a soldier provided detail of his service that highlighted their adventures and sufferings. One such soldier was Private James Noble, originally of Maryland. James Noble applied for his pension on September, 24, 1833 in Howard County, Missouri, at the age of over “seventy-two” years and a few months. When he appeared before the County Clerk, John B. Clark, he had not only his story, but his witness, James H. Birch, and the standard clergyman, Hampton L. Boone. When we compare Noble’s pension application to his muster rolls, other pension applications, and a variety of primary sources, we can more fully appreciate his tale.
As he understood it, James Noble was born in 1760 in Kent County, Maryland. For the first seventeen years of his life, he lived there, up until the outbreak of the American Revolution. In 1777, he joined the army. Curiously, he didn’t join a Maryland unit, but the 10th Virginia Regiment, “commanded by Stephens [Edward Stevens] as Colonel and the regiment formed a part of a Brigade Commanded by General [George] Weedon.” He was in the company of “David Lards [Laird] . . . when he first entered the army.” According to his muster roll, Noble did indeed enlist in David Laird’s company of the 10th Virginia on May 15, 1777. As a Maryland native, it isn’t clear as to why he joined a Virginia unit. Nor is it clear if he enlisted in the south or in New Jersey, where the unit was during the month he enlisted. The 10th Virginia muster rolls indicate they were encamped in the vicinity of Middlebrook, New Jersey (present Martinsville), but within two weeks of his signing up, Noble was sick in the army hospital, possibly as early as June 12, when the roll was recorded. The following month, he was still sick in the hospital at “Mendon,” which may have meant Mendham, New Jersey, near Morristown, where the army had encamped after the Battle of Princeton. This muster is also the first to indicate that Noble had enlisted “during [the] war,” as opposed to the three year option. Whatever ailed Noble must have been serious, for he spent July and August still in the hospital, but he made no mention of this episode in any part of his pension application. Read more…

Washington’s Quill: A Family Man: George Washington as seen by Elizabeth E. Seelye and Lucy E. Guernsey
The best way to describe the Washington biographies by Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye (December 12, 1858 — November 11, 1923) and Lucy Ellen Guernsey (August 12, 1826 — November 3, 1899) would be as family affairs. The Story of Washington was written by Elizabeth, illustrated by her sister Allegra, and edited by her father, Edward. Meanwhile, Washington and Seventy-Six was written by Lucy and her sister Clara. A distinctly feminine voice permeates the pages of the two books. Both authors focused on Washington’s public life and placed a strong emphasis on the female connections that shaped the man. Seelye, in a chapter dedicated to Washington’s marriage, described that the general carried a miniature of his wife for forty years.1 Guernsey similarly provided a full chapter on marriage, and also brought to light that despite the frosty relationship between Washington and his mother, he still took the time to send her letters.2 The deliberate inclusion of women in the biographies is a direct reflection of the female identity of the authors. Read more…

Canada’s History: Hay Bay Church “Unadorned Sanctuary”
By Nancy Payne on 19 March 2021
The Loyalists landed in eastern Ontario more than two hundred years ago, and their influence endures in sites such as Old Hay Bay Church.
I have gazed in wonder at the gold-and-blue magnificence of Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica. I have sat in awe in the cool stone grandeur of Ottawa’s Christ Church Cathedral. Yet modest, severe Old Hay Bay Church predates both of these major historic houses of worship, and it has its own storied history.
So what if it was used as a barn for a while and was almost abandoned to disintegrate into the shoreline on Hay Bay, off the Bay of Quinte? Like the Loyalists who built it, the church is essential to the story of this distinctive region on the north side of Lake Ontario between Kingston and Belleville, Ontario. It’s an area whose settlers’ roots extend to the arrival in 1784 of about 250 people, under the leadership of Major Peter Van Alstine, who were fleeing post-revolutionary America. Read more…

How Bed Bugs were Dealt with in the Georgian Era
Admit it — many of you are scratching already, aren’t you? I was whilst writing this if I’m honest. One of our readers asked about turpentine being used to kill head lice and this set us off to find out more about the subject and somehow ending up looking at how they dealt with bed bugs (buggs as they were known, somewhere we lost that second ‘g’) in the eighteenth century.
They were clearly a major problem, with many cures being offered to eliminate these little critters such as this from ‘The family jewel, and compleat housewife’s companion or, the whole art of cookery made plain and easy’ by Penelope Bradshaw in 1754. Read more…

Making it Count – Canada’s First Census
By Christopher Moore 12 March 2021, Canada’s History
Canada’s first census was launched in 1666, but it took three hundred years to be truly completed — by a rebel historian who championed Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.
Compared to the sophisticated technology and statistical expertise behind the upcoming May 2021 census of Canada, the 1666 census of New France was a low-tech affair.
The first census undertaken in what is now Canada involved a handful of clerks working with quill pens, bottled ink, and sheaves of paper while making their way through the scattered riverside farm communities and small, raw towns of New France, mostly in the depths of winter. Their effort to make an accurate tally of a few thousand colonists took months.
Anyone with deep roots in French Quebec can enjoy finding ancestors named and identified on the “Rolle des familles” of 1666 — my own children can, but through their mother, not me. For the rest of us, the census provides an encounter with the people of a new colonial settlement: husbands and wives with broods of children and the occasional hired man on small farms cleared from the woods. Read more…

Canada’s Census 2021 and UEL
It is census time in Canada, this Tuesday 11 May or earlier.
Many of us will complete the short form, but some will have to spend a bit longer and provide more information. One of the additional questions asks the responder to include their ethnic or cultural origins, and as I understand it as many as are applicable, Indigenous origins, origins referring to countries and other ethnic or cultural origins. Check down near the bottom of the third list and you will see “Ulster Scott” and lo and behold “United Empire Loyalist”. Makes me feel proud, and happy that we are recognized.
Thanks to Ruth Davidson Fulks and Stephen Davidson for passing this along

Eighteenth-Century Spies in the European Silk Industry
Curious about the advancing wonders of the age, savants traveled abroad to gather trade secrets for their homeland.
By Matthew Wills 27 April 2021 at JSTOR
After being introduced from China, silk cloth became a hallmark of European luxury. By the middle of the eighteenth century, French silk—used for wallpaper, upholstery, and, of course, clothing—dominated the European market. But, as scholar Paola Bertucci shows, the French were dependent on importing double-twisted Italian threads. This organzine, as the Italian thread was known, was superior to the thread made in France itself.
So what was the secret of Italian silk thread, and how could France learn to produce it at home? According to Bertucci, they resorted to industrial espionage, what she calls “intelligent travel.” Read more…

Participating in the Heritage Community: Vancouver Branch
The British Columbia Heritage Fairs Program developed out of an initiative of the Historica Foundation to promote the study of history and heritage within Canada. Students from grades four to nine (although in BC students from grade ten have been invited to participate) have been encouraged for years to examine one’s own family connections and stories, as well as to look at historical figures and events that have contributed much to the development of Canada. Students are given an opportunity to showcase their research projects in a public setting where they can present their findings to a larger audience.
The Vancouver Branch UELAC Award
The Vancouver Branch of the UELAC is a proud participant and supporter of the BC Heritage Fairs Program. As such, we have created an award to be presented to a project at each Regional Heritage Fair beginning 2010.
For more information about Vancouver Branch’s participation, read here…
On May 22, 2021, it will be great for UELAC Vancouver Branch members to be able to offer our virtual services, once again as Adjudicators for the 2021 UELAC Branch,B.C. Heritage Fair Award. Submitted by Carl Stymiest UE.

Events:

Samuel Waldo and the American Heroes of Louisbourg: Examining Their Role in Colonization and Enslavement in Early New England. Monday 10 May @5:30PM ET

This program looks anew at at Robert Feke’s historic 1748 Portrait of Brigadier-General Samuel Waldo, in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art collection. Discussion of Waldo and related portraits that commemorate the 1745 Siege of Louisbourg, the French fort on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Details and Registration

Victoria Branch, Loyalists Cemeteries in Eastern Ontario by Stuart Lyall Manson UE Sat. 15 May 1:00PM ET

At 10:00AM (Pacific Time)
From his research, Stuart has published a first book titled “Sacred Ground: Loyalist Cemeteries of Eastern Ontario.“ The presentation will be about his research and findings.
The book features detailed site histories of these six cemeteries, coupled with detailed biographical profiles of selected loyalists confirmed to be buried at those locations. Stuart interweaves their personal stories with the broader historical context of the times. For example, he explores the persistence of African slavery here in our corner of Upper Canada, and its connection to local loyalists. The book is based on extensive and thorough primary and secondary source research. Stuart is an historian by profession; he co-owns an historical research company located in Ottawa. He was born and bred in the loyalist City of Cornwall, where he currently resides with his wife and daughters.
More information about the book at Global Genealogy, where it can be purchased.
Contact Frans Compeer to register, his email membership.vic.uelac@gmail.com

Toronto Branch “The Loyalists of Digby” by Brian McConnell UE Tues 18 May @7:30PM ET

Please join us on May 18, 2021 at 7:30 pm via Zoom to hear about Brian McConnell’s latest book, The Loyalists of Digby, which explores the experience of the United Empire Loyalists and the Black Loyalists who arrived in Digby and Digby County, Nova Scotia, in the 1780s.
Digby County in Nova Scotia is one of the most Loyalist in Nova Scotia.
Contact Sally Gustin gustin.deboer@gmail.com for the link.

In The News:
Bacon: Sports and life lessons come from Mom
By John U. Bacon on 6 May 2021
250 years ago my mom’s side of the family lived in Yonkers, New York. But being United Empire Loyalists, when the Revolutionary War started they escaped to New Brunswick, Canada. And that’s what makes me Half-Canadian Bacon.
Mom grew up in Milltown, New Brunswick, a town so small it no longer exists. It had one school building, with no lab, no gym, no school teams.
“Figure skates?” I asked.
“No,” she said, looking at me as if I had two heads. “Hockey skates.”
“You played hockey?”
“Of course! Everybody did!”
In fact, that’s about all they did. There wasn’t much else. Read more…

From the Twittersphere and Beyond

  • Visit over 30 cemeteries in Nova Scotia with United Empire Loyalist gravestones: Brian McConnell UE
  • 2 May 1776 A fleet of 15 British ships heads up the St Lawrence River, carrying Gen John Burgoyne & reinforcements for his planned expedition from Canada, including Hessians under Gen Baron von Riedesel.
  • 4 May 1783 – The first fleet of 400 settlers from New York arrived at Port Roseway, N.S. (later renamed Shelburne)- disbanded soldiers and Black regiments from the American Revolutionary War. The area’s population would soon swell to between 9,000 and 10,000 refugees in the area.
  • 5 May 1783 – Thomas Freemen of Halifax, advertises the Atlantic Neptune charts of Nova Scotia for sale. Created by cartographer, army officer and colonial administrator, Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres (1721-1824), they were first published in England – 1777, 1780, 1781 & 1784. …the most important collection of maps, charts and views of North America published in the eighteenth century.” Dying at the age of 102 in 1824, he was buried in the crypt at St. George’s Round Church in Halifax.
  • This Week in History
    • 2 May 1771: The “Cabarrus Black Boys” in North Carolina blow up a train of government ammunition wagons. Gov. Tryon had been transporting ammunition to his militia army, suppressing an active rebellion in the west.
    • 1 May 1775 NY’s Committee of 100 suggests that every man acquire weapons & school himself in military discipline.
    • 3 May 1775 Governor of North-Carolina Colony instructed by British gov’t to organize Loyalist militias.
    • 2 May 1776 France loans 1 mil livres to a company created to support the American cause.
    • 4 May 1776 Rhode-Island renounces allegiance to the English King, but continues to call itself an “English Colony.”
    • 5 May 1776 British Gen. Clinton offers broad amnesty to North-Carolina patriots for their “wicked rebellion.”
    • 6 May 1776 Governor of Rhode-Island sends Washington proclamation discharging inhabitants’ allegiance to the Crown.
    • 7 May 1776 Congress takes measures to protect Philadelphia from threat of two British warships on Delaware River.
  • Clothing and Related:
  • Townsends
  • Miscellaneous
    • 30 Apr 1707 the Acts of Union created the Kingdom of Great Britain from the Kingdoms of England & Scotland. This marks the date that @RoyalNavy came to exist as the British Navy although both countries Navies are much older.
    • What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week? (Pennsylvania Gazette 4/2/1771). For the “conveniency of their customers” tobacconists Hamilton & Leiper had three locations, one in Philadelphia, one in Baltimore, & one in Frederick-Town, Maryland. An advert in the Pennsylvania Gazette, a regional newspaper, reached customers in all three local markets.
    • Prince William & Duchess Kate Celebrate 10th Wedding Anniversary! Two centuries ago, Victoria and Albert promoted the monarchy as a family affair, with cosy domesticity humanising and democratising the lofty institution. For Victoria and Albert, their happy marriage forged a bond with the bulk of Victoria’s subjects. The Queen as wife and mother was accessible in a way that Victoria as sovereign could never be. The Illustrated London News acclaimed her as simultaneously “the great Queen and stateswoman in the gorgeous palace” and “the young, lovely and virtuous mother amidst the pure joys of… domestic relaxation.” On Thursday, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge released a short video to mark their 10th wedding anniversary. It was filmed in Norfolk, partly at the couple’s home Anmer Hall, and included a family walk to a neighbouring beach. The 40-second clip celebrated a notably successful and apparently equitable partnership and, with the inclusion of all three of the couple’s children, a very happy family life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xhm0BxhBtU Monarchy in Britain is an institution based in a family. As such it will inevitably alter its appearance and brand identity with every generation. The Cambridges’ self-presentation as a tightly bound fivesome finds its echo in William’s family in the Queen’s own childhood, when her father described the quartet of King, Queen and two princesses as “us four”.
    • Graf Zeppelin over the Pyramids of Giza, Egypt, 1931.
    • Mudlark in the Thames: A little 17th C bearded face from the neck of a Bellarmine stoneware jug emerges from the Thames mud yesterday to survey a vastly different world than the one around him when he last saw the light of day a few hundred years ago! No wonder he looks bemused

 

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