PLU J-Term 2013: Tudor England: British Museum and Unusual Discoveries

Today our adventuresome group visited the British Museum and made other individual excursions around London. About a third of the class wanted Indian food for dinner, and also discovered that nearby Drummond Street has 10 Indian restaurants within three blocks. So, we picked Masalla and had a nice meal there.

At the British Museum, truly one of the world's most impressive collections of archeological discoveries, we examined closely Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, including remains of the Parthenon from Greece, Assyrian Stele, and the Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799. (English and French scholars eventually did decoded Egyptian hieroglyphics, but it took over 20 years to sort out.)

The class also examined European and English historical materials, including medieval English coins, clocks, weapons, and Viking-age materials. Although we saw some materials from the War of the Roses and personal effects of Richard III, the Tudor Room was disappointingly closed, so we missed out on that interesting collection.

I made a personal venture into "legal London", which is a bit off the tourist track but well worthwhile. If you take the Holborn tube stop, you can find in a few blocks an interesting and very ancient oasis in the middle of Business London: the Inns of Court, Lincoln's Inn, King's College, Fleet Street, and the small but fascinating church, St. Dunstan's-in-the-West.

St. Dunstan's was an interesting find for me: Directly across Fleet Street from a (formerly) seedy pub where Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare drank and wrote, you'll find an octagonal church founded in the 12th century and rebuilt in the 18th. John Donne and William Tyndale were active here, and it is also the place where Thomas West, Baron de la Warre, was married--and this man later became the first governor of Virginia and is the namesake for the state (and river) of Delaware. (Get it? de la Warre = Delaware).

In addition, Lawrence Washington, Jr. had two of his children baptized here (Anne in 1621 and Lawrence in 1622). These are members of the family tree of Pres. George Washington, who also had a half-brother named Lawrence Washington. I didn't know any of this when entering, but the stories gradually unfolded as I carefully inspected the plaques and melancholy memorials as the afternoon light gradually faded. (Yes, it gets dark here by about 4pm as we are pretty far north in Europe.)

Here are some other photos from the day:

This center "wild boar" image was Richard III's coronation pin, given out when he usurped power in 1483 and was abruptly coronated. He lived up to his name as a marauding force of nature...