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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
touching the queen
WOW, Nicholas W has given a good reply. The name is indeed high treason, and simply raising one's hand in a menacing fashion was sufficient to constitute this offence, as was the intolerable assault of putting horns on the monarch, as two of Henry VIII's wives were accused of and executed for. [There's an elegant construction for you!] The punishment for one of noble status was beheading; for a commoner, hanging, drawing and quartering (a really horrid affair, depicted with a good deal of editing in the conclusion of Braveheart) and this was still on the books at the end of the 18th century --Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities has Jerry Cruncher, the resurrection man, bemoaning the prospect of Charles Darnay's being "spiled".
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
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as was the intolerable assault of putting horns on the monarch
Would this be to make a cuckold of the king as in Merry Wives (is it, or another?). Horns were the sign of a cuckold.
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