prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What series of wins did the sports team that the all time highest goal scorer in spain national team was a member or achieve in 2009?

The following are given passages.
Context 1: Passage 1:
List of La Liga top scorers
La Liga all-time top scorer is Lionel Messi with 474 goals, all for Barcelona  He also holds the record for most goals scored in a single season with 50 in the 2011–12 campaign, and is the only player ever to win the league's top scorer award in eight different seasons  Athletic Bilbao's Telmo Zarra, who was the competition's all-time top scorer until 2014, won the top scorer award six times  Three other players — Real Madrid's Alfredo Di Stéfano, Quini of Sporting Gijón and Barcelona, and Hugo Sánchez of Atlético Madrid and Real Madrid — each finished as top scorer in five individual seasons 

All-time top scorers
Key

Bold shows players still playing in La Liga 
Italics show players still playing professional football in other leagues As of matches played on 4 June 2023

Top scorers by season
See also
Pichichi Trophy
European Golden Shoe
Premier League Golden Boot
List of Bundesliga top scorers by season
List of Ligue 1 top scorers
Capocannoniere
Passage 2:
FC Barcelona
Futbol Club Barcelona (Catalan pronunciation: [fubˈbɔl ˈklub bəɾsəˈlonə] (listen)), commonly referred to as Barcelona and colloquially known as Barça ([ˈbaɾsə]), is a professional football club based in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, that competes in La Liga, the top flight of Spanish football 
Founded in 1899 by a group of Swiss, Catalan, German, and English footballers led by Joan Gamper, the club has become a symbol of Catalan culture and Catalanism, hence the motto "Més que un club" ("More than a club")  Unlike many other football clubs, the supporters own and operate Barcelona  It is the third-most valuable sports team in the world, worth $5 51 billion, and the world's fourth richest football club in terms of revenue, with an annual turnover of €582 1 million  The official Barcelona anthem is the "Cant del Barça", written by Jaume Picas and Josep Maria Espinàs  Barcelona traditionally play in dark shades of blue and garnet stripes, hence nicknamed Blaugrana 
Domestically, Barcelona has won a record 77 trophies: 27 La Liga, 31 Copa del Rey, 14 Supercopa de España, three Copa Eva Duarte, and two Copa de la Liga titles, as well as being the record holder for the latter four competitions  In international club football, the club has won 22 European and worldwide titles: five UEFA Champions League titles, a record four UEFA Cup Winners' Cups, a joint record five UEFA Super Cups, a record three Inter-Cities Fairs Cups, a joint record two Latin Cups, and three FIFA Club World Cups  Barcelona was ranked first in the International Federation of Football History & Statistics Club World Ranking for 1997, 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2015, and occupies the ninth position on the UEFA club rankings as of May 2023  The club has a long-standing rivalry with Real Madrid, and matches between the two teams are referred to as El Clásico 
Barcelona is one of the most widely supported teams in the world, and the club has one of the largest social media following in the world among sports teams  Barcelona players have won a record twelve Ballon d'Or awards, with recipients including Johan Cruyff, as well as a record seven FIFA World Player of the Year awards, with winners including Romário, Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho  In 2010, three players who came through the club's youth academy (Lionel Messi, Andrés Iniesta and Xavi) were chosen as the three best players in the world in the FIFA Ballon d'Or awards, an unprecedented feat for players from the same football academy  Additionally, players representing the club have won a record eight European Golden Shoe awards 
Barcelona is one of three founding members of the Primera División that have never been relegated from the top division since its inception in 1929, along with Athletic Bilbao and Real Madrid  In 2009, Barcelona became the first Spanish club to win the continental treble consisting of La Liga, Copa del Rey, and the UEFA Champions League, and also became the first Spanish football club to win six out of six competitions in a single year, by also winning the Spanish Super Cup, UEFA Super Cup, and FIFA Club World Cup  In 2011, the club became European champions again, winning five trophies  This Barcelona team, which won fourteen trophies in just four years under Pep Guardiola, is considered by some in the sport to be the greatest team of all time  By winning their fifth Champions League trophy in 2015 under Luis Enrique, Barcelona became the first European football club in history to achieve the continental treble twice 

History
1899–1922: Beginnings
On 22 October 1899, Swiss Hans Gamper placed an advertisement in Los Deportes declaring his wish to form a football club; a positive response resulted in a meeting at the Gimnasio Solé on 29 November  Eleven players attended – Walter Wild (the first president of the club), Luis de Ossó, Bartomeu Terradas, Otto Kunzle, Otto Maier, Enric Ducal, Pere Cabot, Carles Pujol, Josep Llobet, John Parsons, and William Parsons – and Foot-Ball Club Barcelona was born 

FC Barcelona had a successful start in regional and national cups, competing in the Campionat de Catalunya and the Copa del Rey  In 1901, the club participated in the very first football competition played on the Iberian Peninsula, the Copa Macaya, narrowly losing to Hispania AC, but in the following year, Barça won the tournament, the club's first-ever piece of silverware, and then participated in the first Copa del Rey, losing 1–2 to Bizcaya (a combination of players from Athletic Club and Bilbao FC) in the final  In 1908, Hans Gamper – now known as Joan Gamper – became club president in a desperate attempt to save Barcelona from extinction, finding the club struggling not just on the pitch, but also financially and socially, after not winning a competition since the Campionat de Catalunya in 1905  He said in a meeting, "Barcelona cannot die and must not die  If there is nobody who is going to try, then I will assume the responsibility of running the club from now on " Club president on five separate occasions between 1908 and 1925, he spent 25 years in total at the helm  One of his main achievements was ensuring Barça acquire its own stadium and thus generate a stable income On 14 March 1909, the team moved into the Camp de la Indústria, a stadium with a capacity of 8,000  To celebrate their new surroundings, the club conducted a logo contest the following year  Carles Comamala won the contest, and his suggestion became the crest that the club still wears – with some minor changes – as of the present day The stadium is regarded as the main element that helped the club grow in the 1910s and become a dominant team, winning three successive Campionats de Catalunya between 1909 and 1911, three Copa del del Rey in four years between 1910 and 1913, and four successive Pyrenees Cup between the inaugural year in 1910 and 1913, which was one of the earliest international club cups in Europe since it consisted of the best teams of Languedoc, Midi and Aquitaine (Southern France), the Basque Country and Catalonia; all were former members of the Marca Hispanica region  The contest was the most prestigious in that era  Notable figures of Barça's first great team include Carles Comamala, Alfredo Massana, Amechazurra, Paco Bru and Jack Greenwell  The latter became the club's first full-time coach in 1917 During the same period, the club changed its official language from Castilian to Catalan and gradually evolved into an important symbol of Catalan identity  For many fans, participating in the club had less to do with the game itself and more with being a part of the club's collective identity  On 4 February 1917, the club held its first tribute match to honour Ramón Torralba, who played from 1913 to 1928  The match was against local side Terrassa where Barcelona won the match 6–2 Gamper simultaneously launched a campaign to recruit more club members, and by 1922, the club had more than 20,000, who helped finance a new stadium  The club then moved to the new Les Cortes, which they inaugurated the same year  Les Cortes had an initial capacity of 30,000, and in the 1940s it was expanded to 60,000 In 1912, Gamper recruited Paulino Alcántara, the club's seventh all-time top-scorer, and in 1917, Gamper also recruited Jack Greenwell as the first full-time manager in Barcelona's history  After this hiring, the club's fortunes began to improve on the field and soon enjoyed its first "golden age"  Along with Alcántara, the Barça team under Greenwell also included Sagibarba, Ricardo Zamora, Josep Samitier, Félix Sesúmaga and Franz Platko  This team won 9 out of 10 Campionats de Catalunya between 1919 and 1928 and two Copa del Rey titles in 1920 and 1922  In total, during the Gamper-led era, Barcelona won eleven Campionats de Catalunya, six Copa del Rey and four Pyrenees Cups 

1923–1957: Rivera, Republic and Civil War
On 14 June 1925, in a spontaneous reaction against Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, the crowd in the stadium jeered the Royal March  As a reprisal, the ground was closed for six months and Gamper was forced to relinquish the presidency of the club  This coincided with the transition to professional football, and, in 1926, the directors of Barcelona publicly claimed, for the first time, to operate a professional football club 

On 3 July 1927, the club held a second testimonial match for Paulino Alcántara, against the Spanish national team  To kick off the match, local journalist and pilot Josep Canudas dropped the ball onto the pitch from his aeroplane  In 1928, victory in the Spanish Cup was celebrated with a poem titled "Oda a Platko", which was written by a member of the Generation of '27, Rafael Alberti, inspired by the heroic performance of the Barcelona goalkeeper, Franz Platko  On 23 June 1929, Barcelona won the inaugural Spanish League  A year after winning the championship, on 30 July 1930, Gamper committed suicide after a period of depression brought on by personal and financial problems Although they continued to have players of the standing of Josep Escolà, the club now entered a period of decline, in which political conflict overshadowed sports throughout society  Attendance at matches dropped as the citizens of Barcelona were occupied with discussing political matters  Although the team won the Campionat de Catalunya in 1930, 1931, 1932, 1934, 1936, and 1938, success at a national level (with the exception of the 1937 disputed title) evaded them 
A month after the entire Spanish Civil War began in 1936, several players from Barcelona enlisted in the ranks of those who fought against the military uprising, along with players from Athletic Bilbao  On 6 August, Falangist soldiers near Guadarrama murdered club president Josep Sunyol, a representative of the pro-independence political party  He was dubbed the martyr of barcelonisme, and his murder was a defining moment in the history of FC Barcelona and Catalan identity  In the summer of 1937, the squad was on tour in Mexico and the United States, where it was received as an ambassador of the Second Spanish Republic  The tour led to the financial security of the club but also resulted in half of the team seeking asylum in Mexico and France, making it harder for the remaining team to contest for trophies On 16 March 1938, Barcelona came under aerial bombardment from the Italian Air Force, causing more than 3,000 deaths, with one of the bombs hitting the club's offices  A few months later, Catalonia came under occupation and as a symbol of the "undisciplined" Catalanism, the club, now down to just 3,486 members, faced a number of restrictions  All signs of regional nationalism, including language, flag and other signs of separatism were banned throughout Spain  The Catalan flag was banned and the club were prohibited from using non-Spanish names  These measures forced the club to change its name to Club de Fútbol Barcelona and to remove the Catalan flag from its crest 

In 1943, Barcelona faced rivals Real Madrid in the semi-finals of Copa del Generalísimo (now the Copa del Rey)  The first match at Les Corts was won by Barcelona 3–0  Real Madrid comfortably won the second leg, beating Barcelona 11–1  According to football writer Sid Lowe, "There have been relatively few mentions of the game [since] and it is not a result that has been particularly celebrated in Madrid  Indeed, the 11–1 occupies a far more prominent place in Barcelona's history  This was the game that first formed the identification of Madrid as the team of the dictatorship and Barcelona as its victims " It has been alleged by local journalist Paco Aguilar that Barcelona's players were threatened by police in the changing room, though nothing was ever proven Despite the difficult political situation, CF Barcelona enjoyed considerable success during the 1940s and 1950s  In 1945, with Josep Samitier as coach and players like César, Ramallets and Velasco, they won La Liga for the first time since 1929  They added two more titles in 1948 and 1949  In 1949, they also won the first Copa Latina  In June 1950, Barcelona signed László Kubala, who was to be an important figure at the club On a rainy Sunday of 1951, the crowd left Les Corts stadium after a 2–1 win against Santander by foot, refusing to catch any trams, and surprising the Francoist authorities  The reason was simple: at the same time, a tram strike was taking place in Barcelona, receiving the support of blaugrana fans  Events like this made CF Barcelona represent much more than just Catalonia and many progressive Spaniards saw the club as a staunch defender of rights and freedoms Coach Ferdinand Daučík and László Kubala led the team to five different trophies including La Liga, the Copa del Generalísimo, the Copa Latina, the Copa Eva Duarte, and the Copa Martini Rossi in 1952  In 1953, the club won La Liga and the Copa del Generalísimo again 

1957–1978: Club de Fútbol Barcelona
With Helenio Herrera as coach, a young Luis Suárez, the European Footballer of the Year in 1960, and two influential Hungarians recommended by Kubala, Sándor Kocsis and Zoltán Czibor, the team won another national double in 1959 and a La Liga and Fairs Cup double in 1960  In 1961, they became the first club to beat Real Madrid in a European Cup play-off  However, they lost 2–3 to Benfica in the final 

The 1960s were less successful for the club, with Real Madrid monopolising La Liga  The completion of the Camp Nou, finished in 1957, meant the club had little money to spend on new players  The 1960s saw the emergence of Josep Maria Fusté and Carles Rexach, and the club won the Copa del Generalísimo in 1963 and the Fairs Cup in 1966  Barcelona restored some pride by beating Real Madrid 1–0 in the 1968 Copa del Generalísimo final at the Santiago Bernabéu in front of dictator Francisco Franco, with coach Salvador Artigas, a former republican pilot in the Civil War  With the end of Franco's dictatorship in 1974, the club changed its official name back to Futbol Club Barcelona and reverted the crest to its original design, including the original letters once again The 1973–74 season saw the arrival of Johan Cruyff, who was bought for a world record £920,000 from Ajax  Already an established player with Ajax, Cruyff quickly won over the Barcelona fans when he told the European press that he chose Barcelona over Real Madrid because he could not play for a club associated with Francisco Franco  He further endeared himself when he named his son "Jordi", after the local Catalan Saint George  Next to champions like Juan Manuel Asensi, Carles Rexach and Hugo Sotil, he helped the club win the 1973–74 season for the first time since 1960, defeating Real Madrid 5–0 at the Santiago Bernabéu en route  He was crowned European Footballer of the Year in 1973 during his first season with Barcelona (his second Ballon d'Or win; he won his first while playing for Ajax in 1971)  Cruyff received this prestigious award a third time (the first player to do so) in 1974, while he was still with Barcelona 

1978–2000: Núñez and stabilization
In 1978, Josep Lluís Núñez became the first elected president of FC Barcelona, and, since then, the members of Barcelona have elected the club president  The process of electing a president of FC Barcelona was closely tied to Spain's transition to democracy in 1974 and the end of Franco's dictatorship  The new president's main objective was to develop Barcelona into a world-class club by giving it stability both on and off the pitch  His presidency was to last for 22 years, and it deeply affected the image of Barcelona, as Núñez held to a strict policy regarding wages and discipline, letting go of such players as Diego Maradona, Romário and Ronaldo rather than meeting their demands On 16 May 1979, the club won its first European Cup Winners' Cup by beating Fortuna Düsseldorf 4–3 in Basel in a final watched by more than 30,000 travelling blaugrana fans  The same year, Núñez began to invest in the club's youth programme by converting La Masia into a dormitory for young academy players from abroad  The name of the dormitory would later become synonymous with the youth programme of Barcelona 

In June 1982, Diego Maradona was signed for a world record fee of £5 million from Boca Juniors  In the following season, under coach César Luis Menotti, Barcelona won the Copa del Rey, beating Real Madrid  Maradona's time with Barcelona, however, was short-lived and he soon left for Napoli  At the start of the 1984–85 season, Terry Venables was hired as manager and he won La Liga with noteworthy displays by German midfielder Bernd Schuster  The next season, he took the team to their second European Cup final, only to lose on penalties to Steaua București during a dramatic evening in Seville Around this time, tensions began to arise between what was perceived as president Núñez's dictatorial rule and the nationalistic support group, Boixos Nois  The group, identified with a left-wing separatism, repeatedly demanded the resignation of Núñez and openly defied him through chants and banners at matches  At the same time, Barcelona experienced an eruption in skinheads, who often identified with a right-wing separatism  The skinheads slowly transferred the Boixos Nois' ideology from liberalism to fascism, which caused division within the group and a sudden support for Núñez's presidency  Inspired by British hooligans, the remaining Boixos Nois became violent, causing havoc leading to large-scale arrests After the 1986 FIFA World Cup, Barcelona signed the English top scorer Gary Lineker, along with goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta, but the team could not achieve success, as Schuster was excluded from the team  Terry Venables was subsequently fired at the beginning of the 1987–88 season and replaced with Luis Aragonés  The season finished with the players rebelling against president Núñez, in an event known as the Hesperia mutiny, and a 1–0 victory in the Copa del Rey final against Real Sociedad 

The Dream Team era
In 1988, Johan Cruyff returned to the club, this time as manager and he assembled what would later be dubbed the "Dream Team"  He used a mix of Spanish players like Pep Guardiola, José Mari Bakero, Jon Andoni Goikoetxea, Miguel Angel Nadal and Txiki Begiristain while signing international players such as Ronald Koeman, Michael Laudrup, Romário and Hristo Stoichkov 

It was ten years after the inception of the youth programme, La Masia, when the young players began to graduate and play for their first team  One of the first graduates, who would later earn international acclaim, was future Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola 
Under Cruyff's guidance, Barcelona won four consecutive La Liga titles from 1991 to 1994  They beat Sampdoria in both the 1989 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup final and the 1992 European Cup final at Wembley, with a free kick goal from Dutch international Ronald Koeman  They also won a Copa del Rey in 1990, the European Super Cup in 1992 and three Supercopa de España trophies  With 11 trophies, Cruyff became the club's most successful manager at that point  He also became the club's longest consecutive serving manager, serving eight years  Cruyff's fortune was to change, and, in his final two seasons, he failed to win any trophies and fell out with president Josep Lluís Núñez, resulting in his departure  On the legacy of Cruyff's football philosophy and the passing style of play he introduced to the club, future coach of Barcelona Pep Guardiola would state, "Cruyff built the cathedral, our job is to maintain and renovate it "Reacting to Cruyff's departure, an independent protest group was organised by Armand Caraben, Joan Laporta and Alfons Godall  The objective of the group, called L'Elefant Blau, was to oppose the presidency of Núñez, which they regarded as a corruption of the club's traditional values  Laporta would later take over the presidency of Barcelona in 2003 Cruyff was briefly replaced by Bobby Robson, who took charge of the club for a single season in 1996–97  He recruited Ronaldo for a world record transfer fee from his previous club, PSV and delivered a cup treble, winning the Copa del Rey, UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and the Supercopa de España, with Ronaldo registering 47 goals in 49 games  Despite his success, Robson was only ever seen as a short-term solution while the club waited for Louis van Gaal to become available Like Maradona, Ronaldo only stayed a short time before he left for Inter Milan in another world record transfer  However, new heroes emerged, such as Luís Figo, Patrick Kluivert, Luis Enrique and Rivaldo, and the team won a Copa del Rey and La Liga double in 1998  In 1999, the club celebrated its centenari, winning the Primera División title, and Rivaldo became the fourth Barcelona player to be awarded European Footballer of the Year  Despite this domestic success, the failure to emulate Real Madrid in the Champions League led to van Gaal and Núñez resigning in 2000 

2000–2008: Exit Núñez, enter Laporta
The departures of Núñez and Van Gaal were hardly noticed by the fans when compared to that of Luís Figo, then club vice-captain  Figo had become a cult hero and was considered by Catalans to be one of their own  Barcelona fans, however, were distraught by Figo's decision to join arch-rivals Real Madrid, and, during subsequent visits to the Camp Nou, Figo was given an extremely hostile reception  Upon his first return, a piglet's head and a full bottle of whiskey were thrown at him from the crowd  The next three years saw the club in decline, and managers came and went  Van Gaal was replaced by Lorenzo Serra Ferrer who, despite an extensive investment in players in the summer of 2000, presided over a mediocre league campaign and a first-round Champions League exit, and was dismissed late in the season  Long-serving Barcelona deputy coach Carles Rexach was appointed as his replacement, initially on a temporary basis, and managed to at least steer the club to the last Champions League spot on the final day of the season against Valencia via an exceptional performance from Rivaldo, who completed arguably the greatest hat-trick in history with an overhead bicycle kick winner in the final minute to secure qualification Despite better form in La Liga and a good run to the semi-finals of the Champions League, Rexach was never viewed as a long-term solution and that summer Van Gaal returned to the club for a second spell as manager  What followed, despite another decent Champions League performance, was one of the worst La Liga campaigns in the club's history, with the team as low as 15th in February 2003  This led to Van Gaal's resignation and replacement for the rest of the campaign by Radomir Antić, though a sixth-place finish was the best that he could manage  At the end of the season, Antić's short-term contract was not renewed, and club president Joan Gaspart resigned, his position having been made completely untenable by such a disastrous season on top of the club's overall decline in fortunes since he became president three years prior 

After the disappointment of the Gaspart era, the combination of a new young president, Joan Laporta, and a young new manager, former Dutch and AC Milan star Frank Rijkaard, saw the club bounce back  On the field, an influx of international players, including Ronaldinho, Deco, Henrik Larsson, Ludovic Giuly, Samuel Eto'o, Rafael Márquez and Edgar Davids, combined with home grown Spanish players, such as Carles Puyol, Andrés Iniesta, Xavi and Víctor Valdés, led to the club's return to success  Barcelona won La Liga and the Supercopa de España in 2004–05, and Ronaldinho and Eto'o were voted first and third, respectively, in the FIFA World Player of the Year awards 

In the 2005–06 season, Barcelona repeated their league and Supercopa successes  The pinnacle of the league season arrived at the Santiago Bernabéu in a 3–0 win over Real Madrid  It was Rijkaard's second victory at the Bernabéu, making him the first Barcelona manager to win there twice  Ronaldinho's performance was so impressive that after his second goal, which was Barcelona's third, some Real Madrid fans gave him a standing ovation  In the Champions League, Barcelona beat the English club Arsenal in the final  Trailing 1–0 to a ten-man Arsenal and with less than 15 minutes remaining, they came back to win 2–1, with substitute Henrik Larsson, in his final appearance for the club, setting up goals for Samuel Eto'o and fellow substitute Juliano Belletti, for the club's first European Cup victory in 14 years Despite being the favourites and starting strongly, Barcelona finished the 2006–07 season without trophies  A pre-season US tour was later blamed for a string of injuries to key players, including leading scorer Eto'o and rising star Lionel Messi  There was open feuding as Eto'o publicly criticised coach Rijkaard and Ronaldinho  Ronaldinho also admitted that a lack of fitness affected his form  In La Liga, Barcelona were in first place for much of the season, but inconsistency in the New Year saw Real Madrid overtake them to become champions  Barcelona advanced to the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey, winning the first leg against Getafe 5–2, with a goal from Messi bringing comparison to Diego Maradona's goal of the century, but then lost the second leg 4–0  They took part in the 2006 FIFA Club World Cup, but were beaten by a late goal in the final against Brazilian side Internacional  In the Champions League, Barcelona were knocked out of the competition in the last 16 by eventual runners-up Liverpool on away goals Barcelona finished the 2007–08 season third in La Liga and reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League and Copa del Rey, both times losing to the eventual champions, Manchester United and Valencia, respectively  The day after a 4–1 defeat to Real Madrid, Joan Laporta announced that Barcelona B coach Pep Guardiola would take over Frank Rijkaard's duties on 30 June 2008 

2008–2012: Guardiola era
Barcelona B youth manager Pep Guardiola took over Frank Rijkaard's duties at the conclusion of the season  Guardiola brought with him the now famous tiki-taka style of play he had been taught during his time in the Barcelona youth teams  In the process, Guardiola sold Ronaldinho and Deco and started building the Barcelona team around Xavi, Andrés Iniesta and Lionel Messi 

Barça beat Athletic Bilbao 4–1 in the 2009 Copa del Rey Final, winning the competition for a record-breaking 25th time  A historic 2–6 victory against Real Madrid followed three days later and ensured that Barcelona became 2008–09 La Liga champions  Barça finished the season by beating Manchester United 2–0 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, with goals from Eto'o and Messi, to win their third Champions League title, and complete the first ever treble won by a Spanish team  The team went on to win the 2009 Supercopa de España against Athletic Bilbao and the 2009 UEFA Super Cup against Shakhtar Donetsk, becoming the first European club to win both domestic and European Super Cups following a treble  In December 2009, Barcelona won the 2009 Club World Cup  Barcelona accomplished two new records in Spanish football in 2010 as they retained the La Liga trophy with 99 points and won the Supercopa de España for a ninth time After Laporta's departure from the club in June 2010, Sandro Rosell was soon elected as the new president  The elections were held on 13 June, where he got 61 35% (57,088 votes, a record) of total votes  Rosell signed David Villa from Valencia for €40 million and Javier Mascherano from Liverpool for €19 million  At the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Barcelona players that had graduated from the club's La Masia youth system would play a major role in Spain becoming world champions  On 11 July, seven players who came through the academy participated in the final, six of whom were Barcelona players who started the match, with Iniesta scoring the winning goal against the Netherlands In November 2010, Barcelona defeated their main rival Real Madrid 5–0 in El Clásico 
At the ceremony for the 2010 FIFA Ballon d'Or in December, Barcelona's La Masia became the first youth academy ever to have all three finalists for the Ballon d'Or, with Messi, Iniesta and Xavi being named the three best players in the world for 2010  In the 2010–11 season, Barcelona retained the La Liga trophy, their third title in succession, finishing with 96 points  In April 2011, the club reached the Copa del Rey final, losing 1–0 to Real Madrid at the Mestalla Stadium in Valencia  In May, Barcelona defeated Manchester United in the 2011 Champions League Final 3–1 held at Wembley Stadium, a repeat of the 2009 final, winning their fourth European Cup  In August 2011, La Masia graduate Cesc Fàbregas was bought from Arsenal and he would help Barcelona defend the Spanish Supercup against Real Madrid  The Supercup victory brought the total number of official trophies to 73, matching the number of titles won by Real Madrid Later the same month, Barcelona won the UEFA Super Cup defeating Porto 2–0 with goals from Messi and Fàbregas  This extended the club's overall number of official trophies to 74, surpassing Real Madrid's total amount of official trophies  The Super Cup victory also saw Guardiola win his 12th trophy out of a possible 15 in his three years at the helm of the club, becoming the all-time record holder of most titles won as a coach at Barcelona 

In December, Barcelona won the Club World Cup for a record second time since its establishment, after defeating 2011 Copa Libertadores holders Santos 4–0 in the final thanks to two goals from Messi and goals from Xavi and Fàbregas  As a result, the overall trophy haul during the reign of Guardiola was further extended and saw Barcelona win their 13th trophy out of a possible 16  Considered by some in the sport to be the greatest team of all time, with Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson stating, ”They mesmerise you with their passing”, their five trophies in 2011 saw them receive the Laureus World Sports Award for Team of the Year In the 2011–12 season, Barcelona lost the semi-finals of the Champions League against Chelsea  Guardiola, who had been on a rolling contract and had faced criticism over his recent tactics and squad selections, announced that he would step down as manager on 30 June and be succeeded by assistant Tito Vilanova  Guardiola finished his tenure with Barça winning the Copa del Rey final 3–0, bringing the tally to 14 trophies that Barça had won under his coaching It was announced in summer of 2012 that Tito Vilanova, assistant manager at Barcelona, would take over from Pep Guardiola as manager  Following his appointment, Barcelona went on an incredible run that saw them hold the top spot on the league table for the entire season, recording only two losses and amassing 100 points  Their top scorer once again was Lionel Messi, who scored 46 goals in La Liga, including two hat-tricks  On 11 May 2013, Barcelona were crowned as the Spanish football champions for the 22nd time, still with four games left to play  Ultimately, Barcelona ended the season 15 points clear of rivals Real Madrid, despite losing 2–1 to them at the beginning of March  They reached the semi-final stage of both the Copa del Rey and the Champions League, going out to Real Madrid and Bayern Munich respectively  On 19 July, it was announced that Vilanova was resigning as Barcelona manager because his throat cancer had returned, and he would be receiving treatment for the second time after a three-month medical leave in December 2012 

2014–2020: Bartomeu era
On 22 July 2013, Gerardo "Tata" Martino was confirmed as manager of Barcelona for the 2013–14 season  Barcelona won the 2013 Supercopa de España 1–1 on away goals  On 23 January 2014, Sandro Rosell resigned as president by the admissibility of a complaint for alleged misappropriation following the transfer of Neymar  Josep Maria Bartomeu replaced him to finish the term 

Barcelona won the treble in the 2014–15 season, winning La Liga, Copa del Rey and Champions League titles, and became the first European team to have won the treble twice  On 17 May, the club clinched their 23rd La Liga title after defeating Atlético Madrid  This was Barcelona's seventh La Liga title in the last ten years  On 30 May, the club defeated Athletic Bilbao in the Copa del Rey final at Camp Nou  On 6 June, Barcelona won the 2015 Champions League Final with a 3–1 win against Juventus, which completed the treble, the club's second in six years  Barcelona's attacking trio of Messi, Suárez and Neymar, dubbed "MSN", scored 122 goals in all competitions, the most in a season for an attacking trio in Spanish football history On 11 August, Barcelona started the 2015–16 season winning a joint record fifth European Super Cup by beating Sevilla 5–4 in the 2015 UEFA Super Cup  They ended the year with a 3–0 win over Argentine club River Plate in the 2015 Club World Cup final on 20 December to win the trophy for a record third time, with Suárez, Messi and Iniesta the top three players of the tournament  The Club World Cup was Barcelona's 20th international title, a record only matched by Egyptian club Al Ahly  By scoring 180 goals in 2015 in all competitions, Barcelona set the record for most goals scored in a calendar year, breaking Real Madrid's record of 178 goals scored in 2014  On 10 February 2016, qualifying for the sixth Copa del Rey final in the last eight seasons, Luis Enrique's Barcelona broke the club's record of 28 consecutive games unbeaten in all competitions set by Guardiola's team in the 2010–11 season, with a 1–1 draw with Valencia in the second leg of the 2015–16 Copa del Rey  With a 5–1 win at Rayo Vallecano on 3 March, Barcelona's 35th match unbeaten, the club broke Real Madrid's Spanish record of 34 games unbeaten in all competitions from the 1988–1989 season  After Barça reached 39 matches unbeaten, their run ended on 2 April 2016 with a 2–1 defeat to Real Madrid at Camp Nou  On 14 May 2016, Barcelona won their sixth La Liga title in eight seasons  The front three of Messi, Suárez and Neymar finished the season with 131 goals, breaking the record they had set the previous year for most goals by an attacking trio in a single season 

On 8 March 2017, Barcelona made the largest comeback in Champions League history in the 2016–17 UEFA Champions League Round of 16 second Leg, defeating Paris Saint-Germain 6–1 (aggregate score 6–5), despite losing the first leg in France by a score of 4–0  On 29 May 2017, former player Ernesto Valverde was named as Luis Enrique's successor  On 20 September 2017, Barcelona issued a statement exercising their stance on the 2017 Catalan referendum saying, "FC Barcelona, in holding the utmost respect for its diverse body of members, will continue to support the will of the majority of Catalan people, and will do so in a civil, peaceful, and exemplary way"  The match against UD Las Palmas on the referendum day was requested to be postponed by the Barcelona board due to heavy violence in Catalonia, but it (the request) was declined by La Liga, therefore being held behind closed doors  Two directors, Jordi Monés and Carles Vilarrubí, handed in their resignations in protest at the game's being played  Winning La Liga for the 2017–18 season, on 9 May 2018, Barcelona defeated Villarreal 5–1 to set the longest unbeaten streak (43 games) in La Liga history  On 27 April 2019, Barcelona won their 26th La Liga title  However, the La Liga title was overshadowed by an improbable Champions League exit to Liverpool in the semi-finals, with Barça losing the second leg 0–4 after being up 3–0 after a home victory On 13 January 2020, following the loss to Atlético Madrid in the Spanish Supercup, former Real Betis coach Quique Setién replaced Ernesto Valverde as the new head coach of Barcelona  Ultimately Barcelona finished the season trophyless for first time in 12 years  On 17 August, the club confirmed that Setién had been removed from his position as manager with director of football Eric Abidal also dismissed from his position  Two days later, Ronald Koeman was appointed as the new head coach of Barcelona  Rising dissatisfaction among supporters due to worsening finances and decline on the pitch in the previous season led to Josep Maria Bartomeu announcing his resignation as president on 27 October 2020, to avoid facing a vote of no confidence from the club members 

2021–present: Return of Laporta and post-Messi era
On 7 March 2021, Joan Laporta was elected president of Barcelona with 54 28% of the vote  Barcelona won their 31st Copa del Rey, their only trophy under Ronald Koeman, after defeating Athletic Bilbao 4–0 in the final  In August 2021 Barcelona found themselves unable to comply with La Liga's Financial Fair Play requirements, and revealed a club debt of €1 35bn and a wage bill accounting for 103% of total income  Negotiations with Lionel Messi, now in the final year of his contract, had been ongoing for some time  However, on 5 August 2021, Barcelona announced that they would be unable to re-sign Messi to an extension due to La Liga regulations  This was despite the fact that the club and Messi had reached an agreement over the details of a new contract  Messi departed the club after 21 years as a Barça player, and the club's all-time leading goalscorer, and signed on a free transfer with French club Paris Saint-Germain  The financial implications also restricted Barcelona in the transfer market and as a result most of the incoming players were either free transfers or loans and they had to reduce players' wages to register the incoming players Poor performances in La Liga and the Champions League led to the sacking of Ronald Koeman on 28 October, with a club legend Xavi replacing him  Xavi could not reverse the fortunes in the Champions League, and Barcelona dropped down to the Europa League for the first time since 2003–04, subsequently exiting in the quarter-finals  In the domestic league, Xavi improved Barça's form and guided them from ninth to second, guaranteeing a Champions League spot next season  However, this also meant Barcelona finished trophyless after earlier Supercopa and Copa del Rey exits On 15 January 2023, Xavi guided Barcelona to their first trophy since the 2021 Copa del Rey, as the Catalans defeated Real Madrid 3–1 in the Supercopa de España final On March 10, 2023, Spanish prosecutors said they had filed a complaint against Barcelona and two of the La Liga club's ex-presidents over alleged payments to a company owned by a senior refereeing official to influence match results On 23 March 2023, UEFA said it had opened an investigation into the club for a potential violation of the European soccer governing body's legal framework regarding payments made by the club to a company owned by a senior refereeing official 

Support
The nickname culer for a Barcelona supporter is derived from the Catalan cul (English: arse), as the spectators at the first stadium, Camp de la Indústria, sat with their culs over the stand  In Spain, about 25% of the population is said to be Barça sympathisers, second behind Real Madrid, supported by 32% of the population  Throughout Europe, Barcelona is the favourite second-choice club  The club's membership figures have seen a significant increase from 100,000 in the 2003–04 season to 170,000 in September 2009, the sharp rise being attributed to the influence of Ronaldinho and then-president Joan Laporta's media strategy that focused on Spanish and English online media  As of 31 May 2023, the club has 150,317 memberships, called socis In addition to membership, as of March 2022 there are 1,264 officially registered fan clubs, called penyes, around the world  The fan clubs promote Barcelona in their locality and receive beneficial offers when visiting Barcelona  Among the best supported teams globally, Barcelona has the second highest social media following in the world among sports teams, with over 103 million Facebook fans as of December 2021, only behind Real Madrid with 111 million  The club has had many prominent people among its supporters, including Pope John Paul II, who was an honorary member, and former prime minister of Spain José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero 

Club rivalries
El Clásico
There is often a fierce rivalry between the two strongest teams in a national league, and this is particularly the case in La Liga, where the game between Barcelona and Real Madrid is known as "The Classic" (El Clásico)  From the start of national competitions the clubs were seen as representatives of two rival regions in Spain: Catalonia and Castile, as well as of the two cities  The rivalry reflects what many regard as the political and cultural tensions felt between Catalans and the Castilians, seen by one author as a re-enactment of the Spanish Civil War  Over the years, the head-to-head record between the two clubs is 102 victories for Madrid, 100 victories for Barcelona, and 52 draws 

As early as the 1930s, Barcelona "had developed a reputation as a symbol of Catalan identity, opposed to the centralising tendencies of Madrid"  In 1936, when Francisco Franco started the Coup d'état against the democratic Second Spanish Republic, the president of Barcelona, Josep Sunyol, member of the Republican Left of Catalonia and Deputy to The Cortes, was arrested and executed without trial by Franco's troops (Sunyol was exercising his political activities, visiting Republican troops north of Madrid)  During the dictatorships of Miguel Primo de Rivera and especially Francisco Franco, all regional languages and identities in Spain were frowned upon and restrained  As such, most citizens of Barcelona were in strong opposition to the fascist-like regime  In this period, Barcelona gained their motto Més que un club (English: More than a club) because of its alleged connection to Catalan nationalist as well as to progressive beliefs There's an ongoing controversy as to what extent Franco's rule (1939–75) influenced the activities and on-pitch results of both Barcelona and Real Madrid  Fans of both clubs tend to exaggerate the myths favouring their narratives  Most historians agree than Franco did not have a preferred football team, but his Spanish nationalist beliefs led him to associate himself with the establishment teams, such as Atlético Aviación and Madrid FC (that recovered its royal name after the fall of the Republic)  On the other hand, he also wanted the renamed CF Barcelona succeed as "Spanish team" rather than a Catalan one  During the early years of Franco's rule, Real Madrid weren't particularly successful, winning two Copa del Generalísimo titles and a Copa Eva Duarte; Barcelona claimed three league titles, one Copa del Generalísimo and one Copa Eva Duarte  During that period, Atlético Aviación were believed to be the preferred team over Real Madrid  The most contested stories of the period include Real Madrid's 11–1 home win against Barcelona in the Copa del Generalísimo, where the Catalan team alleged intimidation, and the controversial transfer of Alfredo Di Stéfano to Real Madrid despite his agreement with Barcelona  The latter transfer was part of Real Madrid chairman Santiago Bernabéu's "revolution" that ushered in the era of unprecedented dominance  Bernabéu, himself a veteran of the Civil War who fought for Franco's forces, saw Real Madrid on top not only of Spanish but also European football, helping create the European Cup, the first true competition for Europe's best club sides  His vision was fulfilled when Real Madrid not only started winning consecutive league titles but also swept the first five editions of the European Cup in the 1950s  These events had a profound impact on Spanish football and influenced Franco's attitude  According to historians, during this time he realized the importance of Real Madrid for his regime's international image, and the club became his preferred team until his death  Fernando Maria Castiella, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under Franco from 1957 until 1969, noted that "[Real Madrid] is the best embassy we have ever had " Franco died in 1975, and the Spanish transition to democracy soon followed  Under his rule, Real Madrid had won 14 league titles, 6 Copa del Generalísimo titles, 1 Copa Eva Duarte, 6 European Cups, 2 Latin Cups and 1 Intercontinental Cup  In the same period, Barcelona had won 8 league titles, 9 Copa del Generalísimo titles, 3 Copa Eva Duarte titles, 3 Inter-Cities Fairs Cups and 2 Latin Cups The rivalry was intensified during the 1950s when the clubs disputed the signing of Alfredo Di Stéfano  Di Stéfano had impressed both Barcelona and Real Madrid while playing for Los Millionarios in Bogotá, Colombia, during a players' strike in his native Argentina  Soon after Millonarios' return to Colombia, Barcelona directors visited Buenos Aires and agreed with River Plate, the last FIFA-affiliated team to have held Di Stéfano's rights, for his transfer in 1954 for the equivalent of 150 million Italian lira (according to other sources 200,000 dollars)  This started a battle between the two Spanish rivals for his rights  FIFA appointed Armando Muñoz Calero, former president of the Spanish Football Federation as mediator  Calero decided to let Di Stéfano play the 1953–54 and 1955–56 seasons in Madrid, and the 1954–55 and 1956–57 seasons in Barcelona  The agreement was approved by the Football Association and their respective clubs  Although the Catalans agreed, the decision created various discontent among the Blaugrana members and the president was forced to resign in September 1953  Barcelona sold Madrid their half-share, and Di Stéfano moved to Los Blancos, signing a four-year contract  Real paid 5 5 million Spanish pesetas for the transfer, plus a 1 3 million bonus for the purchase, an annual fee to be paid to the Millonarios, and a 16,000 salary for Di Stéfano with a bonus double that of his teammates, for a total of 40% of the annual revenue of the Madrid club Di Stéfano became integral in the subsequent success achieved by Real Madrid, scoring twice in his first game against Barcelona  With him, Madrid won the first five editions of the European Cup  The 1960s saw the rivalry reach the European stage when Real Madrid and Barcelona met twice in the European Cup, with Madrid triumphing en route to their fifth consecutive title in 1959–60 and Barcelona prevailing en route to losing the final in 1960–61  In 2002, the European encounter between the clubs was dubbed the "Match of The Century" by Spanish media, and Madrid's win was watched by more than 500 million people  An intense fixture which is marked by its indiscipline in addition to memorable goal celebrations from both teams – often involving mocking the opposition – such notable celebrations occurred in 2009 when Barcelona captain Carles Puyol kissed his Catalan armband in front of incensed Madrid fans at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium and in 2017 when Lionel Messi celebrated his 93rd-minute winner for Barcelona against Real Madrid at the Bernabéu by taking off his Barcelona shirt and holding it up to incensed Real Madrid fans – with his name and number facing them 

El derbi Barceloní
Barça's local rival has always been Espanyol  Blanc-i-blaus, being one of the clubs granted royal patronage, was founded exclusively by Spanish football fans, unlike the multinational nature of Barça's primary board  The founding message of the club was clearly anti-Barcelona, and they disapprovingly saw FC Barcelona as a team of foreigners  The rivalry was strengthened by what Catalonians saw as a provocative representative of Madrid  Their original ground was in the affluent district of Sarrià Traditionally, Espanyol was seen by the vast majority of Barcelona's citizens as a club which cultivated a kind of compliance to the central authority, in stark contrast to Barça's revolutionary spirit  Also in the 1960s and 1970s, while FC Barcelona acted as an integrating force for Catalonia's new arrivals from poorer regions of Spain expecting to find a better life, Espanyol drew their support mainly from sectors close to the regime such as policemen, military officers, civil servants and career fascists In 1918, Espanyol started a counter-petition against autonomy, which at that time had become a pertinent issue  Later on, an Espanyol supporter group would join the Falangists in the Spanish Civil War, siding with the fascists  Despite these differences in ideology, the derbi has always been more relevant to Espanyol supporters than Barcelona ones due to the difference in objectives  In recent years the rivalry has become less political, as Espanyol translated its official name and anthem from Spanish to Catalan Though it is the most played local derby in the history of La Liga, it is also the most unbalanced, with Barcelona overwhelmingly dominant  In the primera división league table, Espanyol has only managed to end above Barça on three occasions from 87 seasons (1928–2022) and the only all-Catalan Copa del Rey final was won by Barça in 1957  Espanyol has the consolation of achieving the largest margin win with a 6–0 in 1951, while Barcelona's biggest win was 5–0 on seven occasions (in 1933, 1947, 1964, 1975, 1992, 2016 and 2017)  Espanyol achieved a 2–1 win against Barça during the 2008–09 season, becoming the first team to defeat Barcelona at Camp Nou in their treble-winning season 

Rivalry with AC Milan
One of Barcelona's rivals in European football is Italian club AC Milan  The team against which Barcelona has played the most matches (19), it is also the third most played match in European club competitions, behind Real Madrid–Juventus (21) and Real Madrid–Bayern Munich (26)  Two of the most successful clubs in Europe, Milan has won seven European Cups to Barça's five, while both clubs have won a record five European Super Cups  Barcelona and Milan have won other continental titles, which make them the second and third most decorated teams in world football, with 19 and 14 titles respectively, both behind Real Madrid's 23 Barcelona leads the head-to-head record with eight wins and five defeats  The first encounter between the two clubs was in the 1959–60 European Cup  They faced off in the round of 16 and Barça won the tie on a 7–1 aggregate score (0–2 in Milan and 5–1 in Barcelona)  While Milan had never knocked Barcelona out of the European Cup, they beat Johan Cruyff's Dream Team 4–0 in the 1994 Champions League final, despite being the underdogs  In 2013, however, Barcelona made a "historic" comeback from a 0–2 first leg defeat in the round of 16 of the 2012–13 Champions League, winning 4–0 at the Camp Nou 

Ownership and finances
Along with Real Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, and Osasuna, Barcelona is organised as a registered association  Unlike a limited company, it is not possible to purchase shares in the club, but only membership  The members of Barcelona, called socis, form an assembly of delegates which is the highest governing body of the club  As of 31 May 2023, the club has 150,317 socis In 2010, Forbes evaluated Barcelona's worth to be around €752 million (US$1 billion), ranking them fourth after Manchester United, Real Madrid and Arsenal, based on figures from the 2008–09 season  According to Deloitte, Barcelona had a recorded revenue of €366 million in the same period, ranking second to Real Madrid, who generated €401 million in revenue  In 2013, Forbes magazine ranked Barcelona the third most valuable sports team in the world, behind Real Madrid and Manchester United, with a value of $2 6 billion  In 2014, Forbes ranked them the second most valuable sports team in the world, worth $3 2 billion, and Deloitte ranked them the world's fourth richest football club in terms of revenue, with an annual turnover of €484 6 million  In 2017, Forbes ranked them the fourth most valuable sports team in the world with a team value of $3 64 billion  In 2018, Barcelona became the first sports team to surpass $1bn in annual revenues  In November 2018 Barcelona became the first sports team with average first-team pay in excess of £10m ($13 8m) per year  However, years of profligate spending under the leadership of Josep Maria Bartomeu (president between 2014 and 2020) and other factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, saw the club's gross debt rise to about $1 4 billion in 2021, much of it short-term 

Records
In March 2021, Lionel Messi overtook Xavi's record of 767 games played for the club, and presently has made 778 official appearances in all competitions, while also holding the record for the most appearances in La Liga matches for Barcelona, with 520 

Barcelona's all-time highest goalscorer in official competitions is Lionel Messi with 672 goals, surpassing Paulino Alcántara's 369 goals in March 2014, a record which stood for 87 years  In December 2020, Messi also overtook Pelé’s 643 goals for Santos to become the highest official scorer for a single club  Messi is the record goalscorer for Barcelona in European and international club competitions, and the record league scorer with 474 goals in La Liga  Four other players have managed to score over 100 league goals for Barcelona: César Rodríguez (190), Luis Suárez (147), László Kubala (131) and Samuel Eto'o (108)  Josep Samitier is the club's highest goalscorer in the Copa del Rey, with 64 goals László Kubala holds the La Liga record for most goals scored in one match, with seven goals against Sporting Gijón in 1952  Lionel Messi co-holds the Champions League record with five goals against Bayer Leverkusen in 2012  Eulogio Martínez became Barça's top goalscorer in a cup game, when he scored seven goals against Atlético Madrid in 1957 Barcelona goalkeepers have won a record number of Zamora trophies (20), with Antoni Ramallets and Víctor Valdés winning a record five each  Valdés had a ratio of 0 832 goals-conceded-per-game, a La Liga record, and he also holds the record for longest period without conceding a goal (896 minutes) in all competitions for Barcelona  Claudio Bravo has the record of best unbeaten start in a season in La Liga history, at 754 minutes 

Barcelona's longest serving manager is Jack Greenwell, with nine years in two spells (1917–1924) and (1931–1933), and Pep Guardiola is the club's most successful manager (14 trophies in 4 years)  The most successful Barcelona player is Lionel Messi with 35 trophies, surpassing Andrés Iniesta, with 32 trophies Barcelona's Camp Nou is the largest stadium in Europe  The club's highest home attendance was 120,000 in a European Cup quarter-final against Juventus on 3 March 1986  The modernisation of Camp Nou during the 1990s and the introduction of all-seater stands means the record will not be broken for the foreseeable future as the current capacity of the stadium is 99,354 El Barça de les Cinc Copes is the first team in Spanish football to have won five trophies in a single season (1951–1952)  Barcelona is the only club to have played in every season of European competitions since they started in 1955 counting non-UEFA competition Inter-Cities Fairs Cup  On 18 December 2009, alongside being the only Spanish club to achieve a continental treble, Barcelona became the first ever European football team to win six trophies in a calendar year (Sextuple)  In January 2018, Barcelona signed Philippe Coutinho from Liverpool for €120 million, the highest transfer fee in club's history  In August 2017, Barcelona player Neymar transferred to Paris Saint-Germain for a world record transfer fee of €222 million In 2016, Barcelona's La Masia was ranked second by the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) as the most top-level players producing academy in the world 

Kits and crest
The club's original crest was a quartered diamond-shaped crest topped by the Crown of Aragon and the bat of King James, and surrounded by two branches, one of a laurel tree and the other a palm  The club shared Barcelona's coat of arms, as a demonstration of its identification with the city and a desire to be recognised as one  In 1910, the club held a competition among its members to design a new crest  The winner was Carles Comamala, who at the time played for the club  Comamala's suggestion became the crest that the club wears today, with some minor variations  The crest consists of the St George Cross in the upper-left corner with the Catalan flag beside it, and the team colours at the bottom The blue and garnet colours of the shirt were first worn in a match against Hispania in 1900  Several competing theories have been put forth for the blue and garnet design of the Barcelona shirt  The son of the first president, Arthur Witty, claimed it was the idea of his father as the colours were the same as the Merchant Taylor's School team  Another explanation, according to author Toni Strubell, is that the colours are from Robespierre's First Republic  In Catalonia the common perception is that the colours were chosen by Joan Gamper and are those of his home team, FC Basel Since 1998, the club has had a kit deal with Nike  In 2016, the deal was renewed until 2028 for a record €155 million per year  The contract includes a clause sanctioning penalty or agreement termination anytime if Barcelona fail to qualify for the European competitions or is relegated from La Liga 
Notes

Kit suppliers and shirt sponsors
Anthems
Throughout its history, the club has had various official songs  The anthem in use today is El Cant del Barça (The Song of Barça), composed in 1974 on the occasion of the club's 75th anniversary  Authors Josep Maria Espinàs and Jaume Picas composed the lyrics in Catalan, while the music was composed by Manuel Valls The song was first performed on 27 November 1974 at the Camp Nou stadium before the match between FC Barcelona and the East Germany national team by a 3,500-man choir led by Oriol Martorell  On November 28, 1988, in celebration of the club's centenary, the song was performed by Catalan singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat at the end of the festival at the Camp Nou stadium  Since the 2008–09 season, "Cant del Barça" has been featured on the official Barcelona jerseys 
El Cant del Barça is turned on before Barcelona games take place at the Camp Nou, especially during matches against Real Madrid and just before the start of the meeting  The song is also often played for supporters and fans to cheer, chant and celebrate the victory 

Stadium
Barcelona initially played in the Camp de la Indústria  The capacity was about 6,000, and club officials deemed the facilities inadequate for a club with growing membership In 1922, the number of supporters had surpassed 20,000 and by lending money to the club, Barça was able to build the larger Camp de Les Corts, which had an initial capacity of 20,000 spectators  After the Spanish Civil War the club started attracting more members and a larger number of spectators at matches  This led to several expansion projects: the grandstand in 1944, the southern stand in 1946, and finally the northern stand in 1950  After the last expansion, Les Corts could hold 60,000 spectators After the construction was complete there was no further room for expansion at Les Corts  Back-to-back La Liga titles in 1948 and 1949 and the signing of László Kubala in June 1950, who would later go on to score 196 goals in 256 matches, drew larger crowds to the games  The club began to make plans for a new stadium  The building of Camp Nou commenced on 28 March 1954, before a crowd of 60,000 Barça fans  The first stone of the future stadium was laid in place under the auspices of Governor Felipe Acedo Colunga and with the blessing of Archbishop of Barcelona Gregorio Modrego  Construction took three years and ended on 24 September 1957 with a final cost of 288 million pesetas, 336% over budget 

In 1980, when the stadium was in need of redesign to meet UEFA criteria, the club raised money by offering supporters the opportunity to inscribe their name on the bricks for a small fee  The idea was popular with supporters, and thousands of people paid the fee  Later this became the centre of controversy when media in Madrid picked up reports that one of the stones was inscribed with the name of long-time Real Madrid chairman and Franco supporter Santiago Bernabéu  In preparation for the 1992 Summer Olympics two tiers of seating were installed above the previous roofline  It has a current capacity of 99,354 making it the largest stadium in Europe In December 2021, a record 88% of the club members voted in favor of the Espai Barça project to revamp the club's sporting facilities, being the first online referendum in FC Barcelona history  Originally projected to have been completed in 2021, renovation work on Camp Nou began on 1 June 2023 and it is now aimed to finish by the end of 2026, with an estimated €1 5 billion net funding  During the renovation period, Barcelona will move for the entire 2023–24 season to Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys in Montjuïc, expecting to return in November 2024, with the stadium still under construction There are also other facilities, which include:
Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper (FC Barcelona's training ground)
Masia-Centre de Formació Oriol Tort (Residence of young players)
Estadi Johan Cruyff (Home of the reserve team, women's team, and Juvenil A)
Palau Blaugrana (FC Barcelona indoor sports arena)
Palau Blaugrana 2 (Secondary indoor arena of FC Barcelona)

Honours
S Shared recordIn 2015, Barcelona received the Nine Values Cup, an award of the international children's social programme Football for Friendship 

Players
Spanish teams are limited to three players without EU citizenship  The squad list includes only the principal nationality of each player; several non-European players on the squad have dual citizenship with an EU country  Also, players from the ACP countries that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement are not counted against non-EU quotas due to the Kolpak ruling 

Current squad
As of 7 July 2023Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules  Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality 

Personnel
Current technical staff
Football Sport Management
Management
Board of directors
Filmography
See also
List of fan-owned sports teams
La Masia
Barcelona Femení
Barcelona Atlètic
Barcelona C
Barcelona Futsal
Barcelona Bàsquet
Barcelona Handbol
Barcelona Voleibol
Passage 3:
Spain national football team records and statistics
The following details the Spain national football team records 

Individual records
Player records
Nationwide
Most hat-tricks scored: 3 – Fernando Torres & David Villa
Most consecutive games with at least one goal: 6 – David Villa
Top scorer in World Cup finals: 9 – David Villa
Most goals scored in one World Cup: 5 – Emilio Butragueño (1986) & David Villa (2010)
Most consecutive matches scored in at World Cup: 4 – David Villa (2010)
Top scorer in European Championship finals: 6 – Álvaro Morata
Most goals scored in one European Championship: 4 – David Villa (2008)
Top scorer in Confederations Cup finals: 8 – Fernando Torres
Most goals scored in one Confederations Cup: 5 – Fernando Torres (2013)
Top scorer in UEFA Nations League finals: 6 – Ferran Torres
Most goals scored in one UEFA Nations League: 6 – Ferran Torres (2020–21)

Most caps
As of 18 June 2023, the players with the most caps for Spain are:

Bold denotes players still active at international level for the national team 

Most goals
As of 18 June 2023, the ten highest scorers for Spain are:

Bold denotes players still active at international level for the national team 

Most assists
As of 14 June 2021, the highest assist-providers for Spain are:

Bold denotes players still active at international level for the national team 
These are Opta defined assists 

Most penalty goals
As of 29 March 2022 

Bold denotes players still active at international level for the national team 

Hat-tricks
As of 17 November 2020 

4 Player scored 4 goals
5 Player scored 5 goals
6 Player scored 6 goals

Manager records
Most manager appearances
Vicente del Bosque: 114

Team records
Worldwide
World Cup winners: 2010
Most consecutive wins including friendlies: 15 (2008–09)
Most consecutive wins achieved by an international coach from debut: 13 – Vicente del Bosque
Longest unbeaten run: 36 matches (2007–09)
Longest streak without conceding a goal: 9 matches (1992–93)
Most penalty shoot-outs in one World Cup by one team: 2 at the 2002 FIFA World Cup (shared with  Argentina at the 1990 FIFA World Cup,  Netherlands and  Costa Rica at the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and  Russia and  Croatia at the 2018 FIFA World Cup)
Highest maximum number of points in World Cup qualification: 30 out of 30 (2010) (shared with  Germany for 2018)

Biggest wins
Heaviest defeats
Scores from 4–0 and up

FIFA Rankings
Last update was on 14 November 2021   
Source:
Passage 4:
List of international goals scored by Lionel Messi
Lionel Messi is an Argentine footballer who has represented the Argentina national team since his debut in 2005  Since then, Messi has scored 103 goals in 175 international appearances, making him the country's all-time top scorer; he surpassed Gabriel Batistuta's record of 54 goals with a free kick against the United States in the semi-final of the Copa América Centenario on 21 June 2016  He also holds the record for most goals by a South American male, surpassing Pelé‘s 77 goals with a hat-trick against Bolivia in September 2021  Messi made his debut for Argentina in a 2–1 away win over Hungary on 17 August 2005, and scored his first international goal a year later in his sixth appearance, against Croatia Messi's goal against Serbia and Montenegro, on 16 June 2006, at the age of 18 years and 357 days, made him the youngest-ever scorer for Argentina at a FIFA World Cup  He has scored nine international hat-tricks, and has netted twice in a match on ten occasions  In a June 2022 friendly against Estonia, Messi scored five goals in a match for Argentina for the first time  Out of all his opponents, Messi has scored the most against Bolivia, netting eight goals in total 29 of Messi's goals have come in FIFA World Cup qualifiers  Additionally, he has netted 13 in the Copa América, leading his team to victory in the 2021 edition of the tournament  Furthermore, he also reached the final with Argentina in 2007, 2015 and 2016  At the 2015 Copa América, he allegedly rejected the tournament's Best Player award, and the trophy was omitted from the ceremony  Nonetheless, he received the Best Player award and accepted it for his performances in the 2021 tournament  Messi has scored thirteen times in FIFA World Cup tournaments, a record for Argentina; Messi netted once in 2006, four in 2014, when he guided his team to the final, being awarded the Golden Ball for best player, once in 2018 and another seven in 2022, when he captained Argentina to their third World Cup Trophy, scoring twice in the final and winning the Golden Ball for a record second time  The remainder of Messi's goals, 49, have come in friendlies 

Goals
As of match played 15 June 2023 
Scores and results list Argentina's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Messi goal 

Hat-tricks
Statistics
As of match played 15 June 2023

See also
List of career achievements by Lionel Messi
List of men's footballers with 50 or more international goals
List of men's footballers with 100 or more international caps
List of men's footballers with 500 or more goals
List of footballers with the most goals in a single game
List of top international men's football goal scorers by country
Lists of hat-tricks
List of international goals scored by Gabriel Batistuta
List of international goals scored by Diego Maradona
List of international goals scored by Alfredo Di Stéfano
Passage 5:
Trevor Porritt
Trevor Porritt (born May 24, 1961, in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a former Canadian field hockey player who played for the Canada men's national field hockey team from 1980 to 1988, including the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics  He was the top-scorer for the gold medalist team at the 1987 Pan American Games  Porritt was inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame in 2000 

International senior competitions
1983 – Pan American Games, Caracas (1st)
1984 – Olympic Games, Los Angeles (10th)
1987 – Pan American Games, Indianapolis (1st)
1988 – Olympic Games, Seoul (11th)
Passage 6:
2013 Supercopa de España
The 2013 Supercopa de España was a two-legged Spanish football match-up that was played in August 2013 between the champions of 2012–13 La Liga, Barcelona, and the winner of the 2012–13 Copa del Rey, Atlético Madrid In the first leg which was played on 21 August in Madrid, former Barcelona striker David Villa put Atlético Madrid ahead when he hit a right-footed volley into the back of the net after a cross from the left after 12 minutes  Barcelona equalized in the 66th minute when substitute Neymar headed in at the far post after a high cross by Dani Alves from the right In the second leg, played on 28 August at the Camp Nou, Lionel Messi missed a penalty for Barcelona in the 89th minute, hitting his shot against the crossbar after Miranda had bundled substitute Pedro over in the area  Atlético Madrid had two players sent off: Filipe Luís in the 81st minute for tangling with Dani Alves, and Arda Turan, who had already been substituted, in the first minute of added time for protesting a decision 
Barcelona won the cup for a record 11th time on the away goals rule 

Match details
First leg
Second leg
See also
2013–14 Atlético Madrid season
2013–14 FC Barcelona season
Context 2: Passage 1:
Siege of Germanicia
The siege of Germanicia or Marash was led by Muslim forces of the Rashidun Caliphate during their campaigns in Anatolia in 638  The city surrendered without much bloodshed  This expedition is important because it marks the end of the military career of the legendary Arab Muslim general Khalid ibn Walid, who was dismissed from the army a few months after his return from the expedition 

Background
The Muslims won a decisive victory at the Battle of Yarmouk fought in August 636, thus the attempt made by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius to roll back Roman Syria failed  Further, unable to send more imperial troops to Syria, Heraclius made yet another attempt to re-conquer Syria by the aid of his Christian Arab allies of Jazira  The army of the Christian Arabs laid siege to Emesa in mid-summer of 638  The Muslims avoided a battle in the open and instead opted for a defensive strategy which led to the Battle at Emesa  All the regiments from outposts in northern Syria were called to Emesa  The Christian Arab Army was forced to withdraw their siege when, by the orders of Caliph Umar, the Muslim army from Iraq attacked Jazira  At this point, the rear elements of the besieging army were attacked by a Mobile guard led by Khalid ibn Walid, which in effect left the Byzantine forces devastated  Caliph Umar then launched a full-scale invasion of Jazira which was completed without much resistance in just a few months  As soon as the western part of Jazira was occupied, Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah wrote to Umar and asked for Ayadh bin Ghanam, who was operating in western Jazira, to be put under his command so that he could use him in raids across the northern border  Umar agreed to this request, and Ayadh moved to Emesa with a part of the Muslim forces sent from Iraq to Jazira 

The siege
In the Autumn of 638, Abu Ubaidah launched several columns, including two commanded by Khalid ibn Walid and Ayadh, to raid Byzantine territory in Anatolia as far west as Tarsus  Khalid's objective was Germanicia (Arabic: Marash), the city which lies on a plain at the foot of the Taurus Mountains  The region is best known for its production of salep, a flour made from dried orchid tubers  In late 638, the Muslim army laid the siege to the city which contained a Byzantine garrison  Expecting no help from their Emperor, the Byzantine garrison surrendered the city on the usual terms of Jizya offered by the Rashidun army, which included terms stating that the garrison and the populace be spared  As for material wealth, the Muslims could take all they wished 

Aftermath
It is narrated that Khalid returned to Qinnasrin laden with spoils of war that had seldom been seen before  Many Muslim historians commented that Just the spoils of Marash were sufficient to make the soldiers of this expedition rich for life  Khalid ibn Walid, who was at the peak of his military career was unfortunately dismissed by Caliph Umar because of his immense popularity which was a result of his very successful military career  It was a general view that Umar had dismissed Khalid because he was angry with Khalid, though it was clarified later by Caliph Umar that:

I have not dismissed Khalid because of my anger or because of any dishonesty on his part, but because people glorified him and were misled  I feared that people would rely on him, rather than God, for victory  I want them to know that it is God who does all things; and there should be no mischief in the land 
Khalid was urged by many of his companions to retaliate against Umar for this  Khalid did not, although he was powerful enough to launch a coup d'état against Umar and in effect seize the power of the Rashidun Empire  He instead chose to stay away from politics and died four years later in 642 in Emesa  Caliph Umar was said to have felt embarrassed for his conduct against Khalid and was reported to have said at his death that 'he would have appointed Khalid as his successor if he was still alive '
Passage 2:
United Nations Security Council Resolution 862
United Nations Security Council resolution 862, adopted unanimously on 31 August 1993, after recalling resolutions 841 (1993), 861 (1993) and an agreement between the President of Haiti and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Haiti, the Council reaffirmed the international community's commitment to a solution in Haiti and discussed the establishment of a new police force in Haiti under a proposed United Nations Mission in Haiti (UNMIH) The immediate dispatch of an advance team of no more than 30 personnel to assess requirements and prepare for the possible dispatch of both the civilian police and military assistance components of UNMIH  The mandate of the advance team would last for one month with the prospect of incorporating it into the UNMIH peacekeeping mission when established 
The Council awaited a further report by the Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali concerning the proposed establishment of UNMIH and its financial costs, time-frame, projected conclusion and co-ordination with the work of the Organization of American States, further requesting him to enter into a Status of Forces Agreement with the Government of Haiti to facilitate an early dispatch of UNMIH when the Council decided  The mission was formally established in Resolution 867 

See also
History of Haiti
List of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 801 to 900 (1993–1994)
Passage 3:
United Nations General Assembly resolution ES-10/L 22
United Nations General Assembly resolution ES‑10/19 is an emergency session resolution declaring the status of Jerusalem as Israel's capital as "null and void"  It was adopted by the 37th Plenary meeting of the tenth emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly during the tenure of the seventy-second session of the United Nations General Assembly on 21 December 2017  The resolution was drafted by Yemen and Turkey  Though strongly contested by the United States, it passed by 128 votes to 9 against with 21 absentees and 35 abstentions 

Background
On 6 December 2017, US President Donald Trump said that he would recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and begin the process of moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem  This was a departure from previous Security Council resolutions and prevailing international norms (where no state either recognises Jerusalem as a national capital nor has an embassy there) 
After a United Nations Security Council resolution was vetoed by the U S  three days earlier, Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour said that the General Assembly would vote on a draft resolution calling for Trump's declaration to be withdrawn  He sought to invoke Resolution 377, known as the "Uniting for Peace" resolution, to circumvent a veto  The resolution states that the General Assembly can call an Emergency Special Session to consider a matter "with a view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures" if the Security Council fails to act 

Campaign
On 20 December, US President Donald Trump threatened to cut US aid to countries voting against the US's side  The day before the vote, he said: "Let them vote against us   We don't care   this isn't like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars  We're not going to be taken advantage of any longer " Ambassador Nikki Haley warned her country would remember and "take names" of every country that voted in favour of the resolution  The governments of Turkey and Iran denounced the threats made by the US as "anti-democratic" and "blackmail"  Haley had sent a letter to dozens of member states that warned Trump had asked her to "report back on those countries who voted against us " Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said "I call on the whole world: Don't you dare sell your democratic struggle and your will for petty dollars" and warned Trump that "he cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with his dollars " He added: "I hope and expect the US won't get the result it expects from there (UN) and the world will give a very good lesson to the United States" Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel rejects this vote before it passes and called the UN a "house of lies" Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, condemned Trump's warning to countries receiving aid from the US: "Trump should know that there are things that are not for sale or subject to blackmail, particularly issues of principle, legality and morality "Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland's spokesman, a country which was seeking re-negotiations of the NAFTA,  confirmed its intention to abstain from the vote and that the resolution should not have come to the General Assembly 

Content
The text of the resolution includes the following key statements:
The General Assembly,

Bearing in mind the specific status of the Holy City of Jerusalem and, in particular, the need for the protection and preservation of the unique spiritual, religious and cultural dimensions of the City, as foreseen in the relevant United Nations resolutions,
Stressing that Jerusalem is a final status issue to be resolved through negotiations in line with relevant United Nations resolutions,
Expressing in this regard its deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem,
Affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council, and in this regard, calls upon all States to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem, pursuant to resolution 478 (1980) of the Security Council;
Demands that all States comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the Holy City of Jerusalem, and not to recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions;
Reiterates its call for the reversal of the negative trends on the ground that are imperiling the two-State solution and for the intensification and acceleration of international and regional efforts and support aimed at achieving, without delay, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East on the basis of the relevant United Nations resolutions, the Madrid terms of reference, including the principle of land for peace, the Arab Peace Initiative and the Quartet Roadmap and an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 

Motion
The motion was proposed by Yemen and Turkey 

Debate
In introducing the resolution as chair of the Arab Group, Yemen's Ambassador said the US decision was a "blatant violation of the rights of the Palestinian people, as well as those of all Christians and Muslims " He emphasized that it constituted a "dangerous breach of the Charter of the United Nations and a serious threat to international peace and security, while also undermining the chances for a two‑State solution and fuelling the fires of violence and extremism "Turkey, who was the co-sponsor of the draft resolution, also spoke as current chair of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)  Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said that Trump's decision was an outrageous assault to all universal values  "The Palestinians have the right to their own state based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital  This is the main parameter and only hope for a just and lasting peace in the region  However, the recent decision of a UN Member State to recognise Jerusalem, or Al-Quds, as the capital of Israel, violates international law, including all relevant UN resolutions "The General Assembly heard from Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, who said that the meeting was "not because of any animosity to the United States of America" but instead the sessions was "called to make the voice of the vast majority of the international community — and that of people around the world — heard on the question of Jerusalem/Al‑Quds Al‑Sharif " He called the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to move its embassy there "an aggressive and dangerous move" which could inflame tensions and lead to a religious war that "has no boundaries " He added that though the decision would have no impact on the city's status, it would nevertheless compromise the role of the United States in the Middle East peace process  He urged member states to reject "blackmail and intimidation "US Ambassador Nikki Haley then said that her country was "singled out for attack" because of its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel  She added that: "The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation,” Haley said  "We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations, and so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit " She added that: "America will put our embassy in Jerusalem  That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do  No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that   this vote will make a difference in how Americans view the UN "Israel's Ambassador Danny Danon then told the assembly that the vowed that "no General Assembly resolution will ever drive us from Jerusalem "Venezuela's ambassador, speaking for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), expressed "grave concern about Israel’s ongoing violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including attempts to alter the character, status and demographic composition of the City of Jerusalem  [It was] also concerned about the decision to relocate the United States embassy [and] warned that such provocative actions would further heighten tensions, with potentially far‑reaching repercussions given the extremely volatile backdrop Other speakers included Pakistan, Indonesia, Maldives, Syria, Bangladesh, Cuba, Iran, and China Malaysia's Ambassador Datuk Seri Mohammed Shahrul Ikram Yaakob said that, as a member of the OIC and NAM,  "Malaysia joins the international community in expressing our deep concern and rejects the decision by the United States to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel  It is also an infringement of the Palestinian people’s rights and their right to self determination " He called for a peaceful two-state solution and that Malaysia is concerned the situation will only feed into the agenda of extremists "Other speakers included, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and South Africa  The Permanent Observer for the Holy See, Tomasz Grysa, emphasised that Jerusalem was most sacred to the Abrahamic faiths and a symbol for millions of believers around the world who considered it their "spiritual capital " Its significance went "beyond the question of borders, a reality that should be considered a priority in every negotiation for a political solution "  The Holy See, he said, called for a "peaceful resolution that would ensure respect for the sacred nature of Jerusalem and its universal value   reiterating that only international guarantee could preserve its unique character and status and provide assurance of dialogue and reconciliation for peace in the region "After the motion was passed, more speeches continued with Estonia, who also spoke on behalf of other states  Australia's Ambassador then explained her country's government did "not support unilateral action that undermined the peace process [and] it did not believe today’s text would help to bring the parties back to the negotiating table "Other speakers included, Paraguay, whose Ambassador said that the country would abstain because "the question of Jerusalem was a matter for the Security Council, as the primary body responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security " This was followed by El Salvador, Argentina and Romania Canada's Ambassador Marc-Andre Blanchard called the proposal "one-sided" and said: "We are disappointed that this resolution is one sided and does not advance prospects for peace to which we aspire, which is why we have abstained on today’s vote " He, however, added that Canada wanted to emphasise Jerusalem's special significance to the Abrahamic religions of  Jews, Muslims and Christians  "Denying the connection between Jerusalem and the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths undermines the integrity of the site for all  We also reiterate the need to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem’s Holy sites Nicaragua explained its support of the resolution, as it "rebuffed recent unilateral attempts to modify the character and status of Jerusalem  Such unilateral actions were in blatant violation of resolution 2234 (2016) and others   unilateral actions jeopardised peace and stability in the Middle East and drew the international community further away from a solution "Mexico's ambassador then explained the abstention and emphasised that convening an emergency session was a disproportionate response  "The United States must become part of the solution, not a stumbling block that would hamper progress   the international community was further than ever from agreement "The Czech Republic then said that while it supported the European Union position, it had abstained because it "did not believe the draft resolution would contribute to the peace process "Armenia said that is position "remained unchanged  The situation should be resolved through negotiations paving the way for lasting peace and security "Hungary echoed Armenia's stance and said it would not comment on the foreign relations of the United States Latvia then spoke, before Estonia re-took the floor to say it had also spoken on behalf of Albania, Lithuania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 

Result
Reactions
States – UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced that the U S  will move its embassy to Jerusalem and "no vote in the UN will make any difference on that" and that the US was "by far the single largest contributor to the UN " She also warned that the US might also cut funding to the UN itself  During the 2018 State of the Union Address, Trump said that the countries which voted against the resolution opposed the United States' "sovereign right to make this recognition" and said he would ask Congress to pass legislation which would ensure foreign aid would "only go to America's friends, not enemies of America "
 – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the result shortly after it was announced in call it "preposterous," while he also thanked the states that supported "the truth" by not participating in "the theater of the absurd " He added that: "Jerusalem is our capital  Always was, always will be   But I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refused to participate in this theatre of the absurd  So I appreciate that, and especially I want to again express our thanks to [US] President (Donald) Trump and Ambassador [Nikki] Haley, for their stalwart defense of Israel and their stalwart defense of the truth "  Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, reminded Israelis of the longstanding Israeli disdain for such votes  "Let us just remember that this is the same UN about which our first ambassador to the organization, Abba Eban, once said: 'If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions'  There is nothing new in what just happened at the UN " He also praised the US as "the moral beacon shining out of the darkness " Minister of Strategic Affairs and Public Security Gilad Erdan said: "The historic connection between Israel and Jerusalem is stronger than any vote by the 'United Nations' — nations who are united only by their fear and their refusal to recognize the simple truth that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and the Jewish people "
However, opposition Joint List Chairman and MK Ayman Odeh called the vote a wake-up call for Israel: "In the international arena, there still exists a large and definitive majority that believes that the Palestinian people, like all other nations, deserve a place in this world and the right to self-determination  This evening's vote by the majority of the world's nations against Trump's announcement, in spite of the pressure and threats, flies in the face of Trump's and Netanyahu's diplomatic policy and is a clear statement by the international community in support of peace and the right of the Palestinians to an independent state, whose capital is East Jerusalem "
 – A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the vote "a victory for Palestine;" Abbas himself thanked the member states who voted in support of the resolution "in spite of the pressures they faced " UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour called the vote "a massive setback" for the US 
 – Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif called the result a "resounding global no" to the Trump administration's "thuggish intimidation "
 – Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said that it was "unhelpful to pick up a fight with Trump over a side issue and urged countries to concentrate on the threat posed by "theo-fascist" Iran instead "
Israel's Foreign Affairs Ministry reacted in writing on Twitter that Khalifa had denounced an Arab boycott of Israel and confirmed Bahraini citizens were free to visit Israel 
Iran responded to this by saying that "Palestine's freedom from the clutches of Israeli occupation remains the Islamic world's highest priority" and that "despite all complex plots, manufactured crises and fictitious threats propagated by the US-Zionism axis, Palestine still is and will remain the Islamic world's number one priority until it is liberated, and no one    can distract Muslims from this serious issue "
 – Jimmy Morales, the president of Guatemala, one of the nine countries which voted against the resolution, announced on 24 December 2017 that he would follow Trump in move his country's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem MediaHaaretz's Noa Landau, wrote, in citing unnamed diplomatic sourced, that Israel was particularly disappointed with countries like India that have enhanced bilateral relations with it recently  "The main disappointment in Israel was with the countries that have enhanced bilateral relations in recent years, especially those that share a particularly conservative worldview with the Netanyahu government  For example, India – whose Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, visited Israel in July, a tour that was memorable mainly for the pastoral photographs of him and Netanyahu embracing and wading in the waves – voted for the resolution against Israel and the United States "
OthersAt a "Solidarity to Save Jerusalem" rally organised by the Barisan Nasional government in Malaysia, one of the attendees Association of NextGen Christians of Malaysia President Joshua Hong said at the Putra Mosque: "We are here because we feel that the decision made by President Trump on announcing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is merely a political decision  He added that the decision also hurts Christian and Arabic churches in Palestine and not just the Muslims  "To us as Christians, Jerusalem is a city of peace and after that announcement, we feel there is no more peace  I think it is not right and unjust  We believe we should continue pursuing the sustainable peace solution for Palestine and Israel, rather than just a single nation declaring it just like that " He claimed that about 50 members of the group turned up in a show of support for the Palestinian people 

See also
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 43/177
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 67/19
List of United Nations resolutions concerning Israel
List of United Nations resolutions concerning Palestine
United Nations General Assembly resolution
Passage 4:
Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1499–1501)
The First Rebellion of the Alpujarras (Arabic: ثورة البشرات الأولى; 1499–1501) were a series of uprisings by the Muslim population of the Kingdom of Granada, Crown of Castile (formerly, the Emirate of Granada) against their Catholic rulers  They began in 1499 in the city of Granada in response to mass forced conversions of the Muslim population to the Catholic faith, which were perceived as violations of the 1491 Treaty of Granada  The uprising in the city quickly died down, but it was followed by more serious revolts in the nearby mountainous area of the Alpujarras  The Catholic forces, on some occasions led personally by King Ferdinand, succeeded in suppressing the revolts and inflicted severe punishment on the Muslim population 
The Catholic rulers used these revolts as a justification to repudiate the Treaty of Granada and abrogate the rights of the Muslims guaranteed by the treaty  All Muslims of Granada were subsequently required to convert to Catholicism or be expelled, and in 1502 these forced conversions applied to all of Castile  However, they did not apply in the kingdoms of Valencia or Aragon 

Background
Muslims had been present in the Iberian peninsula since the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th century  By the end of the 15th century, the Emirate of Granada was the last Muslim-ruled area in the peninsula  In January 1492, after a decade-long campaign, Muhammad XII of Granada (also known as "Boabdil") surrendered the Emirate to the Catholic forces led by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile  The Treaty of Granada, signed on November 1491, guaranteed a set of rights to the Muslims of Granada, including religious tolerance and fair treatment, in return for the capitulation At this point, the Muslim population in the former Emirate of Granada was estimated to be between 250,000 and 300,000, making up the majority in the former emirate, and constituting roughly half of the entire Muslim population in Spain Initially, the Catholic rulers upheld the treaty  Despite pressure from the Spanish clergy, Ferdinand and the Archbishop of Granada Hernando de Talavera chose a laissez-faire policy towards the Muslims in the hope that interaction with Catholics would make them "understand the error" of their faith and abandon it  When Ferdinand and Isabella visited the city in the summer of 1499, they were greeted by enthusiastic crowds, including Muslims In the summer of 1499, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, the archbishop of Toledo, arrived in Granada and began working alongside Talavera  Cisneros disliked Talavera's approach and began sending uncooperative Muslims, especially the noblemen, to prison, where they were treated harshly until they agreed to convert  Emboldened by the increase in conversions, Cisneros intensified the efforts and in December 1499 he told Pope Alexander VI that three thousand Muslims converted in a single day  Cisneros' own church council warned that these methods might be a breach of the Treaty, and sixteenth-century hagiographer Álvar Gómez de Castro described the approach as "methods that were not correct" 

Uprising in the Albayzín
The increasing forced conversions of Muslims triggered resistance, initially among the urban population of the Albayzín (also spelled Albaicín), the Muslim quarter of Granada   The situation was exacerbated by the treatment of elches, former Christians who converted to Islam  Specific clauses in the Treaty of Granada forbade the conversion of the elches back to Christianity against their will, but the treaty allowed for questionings of such converts by Christian clerics, in the presence of Muslim religious authorities  Cisneros used this 'loophole' to summon elches and imprison those who refused to return to Christianity  These efforts were often focused on wives of Muslim men – an emphasis that angered the Muslim population who considered this a violation of their families 

On 18 December 1499, as part of this effort, constable Velasco de Barrionuevo and an assistant were taking a female elche from the Albayzín for such questioning  When they passed through a square, she shouted that she was being forced to become Christian  The officials were then surrounded by a hostile crowd, the constable was killed and the assistant managed to escape after being sheltered by a local Muslim woman This incident escalated into an open revolt  The residents of the Albayzín barricaded the streets and armed themselves  An angry crowd marched to Cisneros' house, apparently for an assault  This crowd later dispersed, but over the following days the revolt become more organized  The population of the Albayzín elected their own officials and leaders  In the standoff that ensued, the archbishop Hernando de Talavera and the Captain-General Marquis de Tendilla attempted to defuse the situation through negotiations and gestures of good-will  After ten days, the uprising ended as the Muslims handed in their weapons and handed over the constable's killers, who were promptly executed Subsequently, Cisneros was summoned to the court in Seville to account for his actions, facing a furious Ferdinand  Cisneros however argued that it was the Muslims, not him, who breached the Treaty by engaging in armed rebellion  He convinced Ferdinand and Isabella to declare a collective pardon to the rebels, on condition that they convert to Christianity  Cisneros returned to Granada, which now nominally became a fully Christian city 

Uprising in the Alpujarra
Although the uprising in the Albayzín appeared to be put down and Granada was nominally transformed to a Christian city, the rebellion spread to the countryside  The leaders of the Albayzín uprising fled to the Alpujarra mountains  The inhabitants of the mountains, almost exclusively Muslims, had only accepted Christian rule reluctantly  They quickly rose up in revolts against what they regarded as the violation of the terms of the Treaty of Granada, and because they feared they would suffer the same forced conversions as the residents of the Albayzín  By February 1500, 80,000 Christian troops were mobilized to put down the rebellion  By March, King Ferdinand arrived to personally direct the operations The rebels were often tactically well led and made use of the mountainous terrain to conduct guerrilla warfare  However, they lacked a central leadership and coherent strategy  This was partly caused by the previous Castilian policy of encouraging and facilitating the Granadan upper class to leave the country or convert and be absorbed into the Christian upper class  The rebels' lack of strategic command allowed the Christian forces to proceed by defeating the rebels in one area separately, then moving on to the next The rebelling towns and villages in the Alpujarra were gradually defeated  Ferdinand personally led the assault on Lanjarón  Rebels who surrendered were generally required to be baptized in order to keep their lives  Towns and villages which had to be taken by assault were treated harshly  One of the most violent episodes occurred in Laujar de Andarax, where the Catholic forces under Louis de Beaumont took 3,000 Muslims prisoner and then slaughtered them  Between two and six hundred women and children who took refuge in a local mosque were blown up with gunpowder  During the capture of Velefique, all the men were killed and the women enslaved  At Nijar and Güéjar Sierra, the whole population was enslaved except children who were kidnapped in order to be brought up as Christians On 14 January 1501, Ferdinand ordered his army to stand down because the uprising seemed to be suppressed  However, further unrest occurred in Sierra Bermeja  An army under Alonso de Aguilar, one of the most distinguished captains of Spain, marched to put down this rebellion  On 16 March, the army's undisciplined troops, eager for pillage, charged the rebels  However, this was met by a fierce counterattack  The result was a catastrophe for the Catholic army; Aguilar himself was killed in battle and the army was nearly annihilated However, the Muslims soon sued for peace, and Ferdinand, aware of the weakness of the army and the difficulty of mountain warfare, declared that the rebels must choose between exile or baptism  Only those who could pay ten gold doblas were given passage, and the majority who could not pay had to stay and be baptized  The insurgents surrendered in waves, beginning from the middle of April, since some waited to see whether the first insurgents who surrendered were safe  The emigrants were escorted under guards to the port of Estepona and given passage to North Africa  The remaining were allowed to return home after converting, surrendering their arms, and forfeiting their property 

Aftermath
By the end of 1501, the rebellion was put down  The Muslims were no longer given their rights provided by the Treaty of Granada, and were given the choice of: (1) remain and accept baptism, (2) reject baptism and be enslaved or killed, or  (3) be exiled  Given the expensive fee exacted for passage out of Spain, conversion was the only realistic option for them  Therefore, only a decade after the fall of the Emirate of Granada, the entire Muslim population of Granada had nominally become Christian A proclamation in 1502 extended these forced conversions to the rest of the lands of Castile, even though those outside Granada had nothing to do with the rebellion  The newly converted Muslims were known as nuevos cristianos ("new Christians") or moriscos  (lit  "Moorish")  Although they converted to Christianity, they maintained their existing customs, including their language, distinct names, food, dress and even some ceremonies  Many secretly practiced Islam, even as they publicly professed and practiced Christianity  In return, the Catholic rulers adopted increasingly intolerant and harsh policies in order to eradicate these characteristics  This culminated in Philip II's Pragmatica of 1 January 1567 which ordered the Moriscos to abandon their customs, clothing and language  The pragmatica triggered the Morisco revolts in 1568–1571 

See also
Expulsion of the Moriscos
Morisco rebellions in Granada
Mudéjar
Reconquista
Passage 5:
Dutch Republic
The United Provinces of the Netherlands, officially the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (Dutch: Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden), and commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795  It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands  The republic was established after seven Dutch provinces in the Spanish Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule, forming a mutual alliance against Spain in 1579 (the Union of Utrecht) and declaring their independence in 1581 (the Act of Abjuration)  It comprised Groningen, Frisia, Overijssel, Guelders, Utrecht, Holland and Zeeland 
Although the state was small and contained only around 1 5 million inhabitants, it controlled a worldwide network of seafaring trade routes  Through its trading companies, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (GWC), it established a Dutch colonial empire  The income from this trade allowed the Dutch Republic to compete militarily against much larger countries  It amassed a huge fleet of 2,000 ships, initially larger than the fleets of England and France combined  Major conflicts were fought in the Eighty Years' War against Spain (from the foundation of the Dutch Republic until 1648), the Dutch–Portuguese War (1602–1663), four Anglo-Dutch Wars (the first against the Commonwealth of England, two against the Kingdom of England, and a fourth against the Kingdom of Great Britain: 1652–1654, 1665–1667, 1672–1674 and 1780–1784), the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713), the War of Austrian Succession (1744–1748) and the War of the First Coalition (1792–1795) against the Kingdom of France 
The republic was more tolerant of different religions and ideas than its contemporary states were, allowing freedom of thought to its residents  Artists flourished under this regime, including painters such as Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer and many others  So did scientists, such as Hugo Grotius, Christiaan Huygens and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek  The Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world during much of the 17th century, a period which became known in Dutch history as the Dutch Golden Age



ground_truth: continental treble

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: Who led the muslim forces to retake the proposed embassy destination?

The following are given passages.
Context 2: 
The republic was a confederation of provinces each with a high degree of independence from the federal assembly, known as the States General  In the Peace of Westphalia (1648) the republic gained approximately 20% more territory, located outside the member provinces, which was ruled directly by the States General as Generality Lands  Each province was led by an official known as the stadtholder (Dutch for 'steward'); this office was nominally open to anyone, but most provinces appointed a member of the House of Orange  The position gradually became hereditary, with the Prince of Orange simultaneously holding most or all of the stadtholderships, making him effectively the head of state  This created tension between political factions: the Orangists favoured a powerful stadtholder, while the Republicans favoured a strong States General  The Republicans forced two Stadtholderless Periods, 1650–1672 and 1702–1747, with the latter causing national instability and the end of Great Power status 
Economic decline led to a period of political instability known as the Patriottentijd (1780–1787)  This unrest was temporarily suppressed by a Prussian invasion in support of the stadtholder  The French Revolution and subsequent War of the First Coalition caused these tensions to reignite  Following military defeat by France, the stadtholder was expelled in the Batavian Revolution of 1795  This ended the Dutch Republic; it was succeeded by the Batavian Republic 

History
Until the 16th century, the Low Countries—corresponding roughly to the present-day Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg—consisted of a number of duchies, counties, and prince-bishoprics, almost all of which were under the supremacy of the Holy Roman Empire, with the exception of the County of Flanders, most of which was under the Kingdom of France 
Most of the Low Countries had come under the rule of the House of Burgundy and subsequently the House of Habsburg  In 1549, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which further unified the Seventeen Provinces under his rule  Charles was succeeded by his son, King Philip II of Spain  In 1568, the Netherlands, led by William I of Orange, together with Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, and Lamoral, Count of Egmont revolted against Philip II because of high taxes, persecution of Protestants by the government, and Philip's efforts to modernize and centralize the devolved-medieval government structures of the provinces  This was the start of the Eighty Years' War  During the initial phase of the war, the revolt was largely unsuccessful  Spain regained control over most of the rebelling provinces  This period is known as the "Spanish Fury" due to the high number of massacres, instances of mass looting, and total destruction of multiple cities and in particular Antwerp between 1572 and 1579 
In 1579, a number of the northern provinces of the Low Countries signed the Union of Utrecht, in which they promised to support each other in their defence against the Army of Flanders  This was followed in 1581 by the Act of Abjuration, the declaration of independence of the provinces from Philip II  Dutch colonialism began at this point, as the Netherlands was able to swipe a number of Portuguese and Spanish colonies, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region  After the assassination of William of Orange on 10 July 1584, both Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England declined offers of sovereignty  However, the latter agreed to turn the United Provinces into a protectorate of England (Treaty of Nonsuch, 1585), and sent the Earl of Leicester as governor-general  This was unsuccessful and in 1588 the provinces became a confederacy  The Union of Utrecht is regarded as the foundation of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, which was not recognized by Spain until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 
During the Anglo-French War (1778–1783), the internal territory was divided into two groups: the Patriots, who were pro-French and pro-American, and the Orangists, who were pro-British  The Republic of the United Provinces faced a series of republican revolutions in 1783–1787  During this period, republican forces occupied several major Dutch cities  Initially on the defence, the Orangist forces received aid from Prussian troops and retook the Netherlands in 1787  The republican forces fled to France, but then successfully re-invaded alongside the army of the French Republic (1793–1795), ousting stadtholder William V, abolishing the Dutch Republic, and replacing it with the Batavian Republic (1795–1806)  After the French Republic became the French Empire under Napoleon, the Batavian Republic was replaced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Holland (1806–1810) 
The Netherlands regained independence from France in 1813  In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 the names "United Provinces of the Netherlands" and "United Netherlands" were used  In 1815, it was rejoined with the Austrian Netherlands and Liège (the "Southern provinces") to become the Kingdom of the Netherlands, informally known as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, to create a strong buffer state north of France  On 16 March 1815, the son of stadtholder William V crowned himself King William I of the Netherlands  Between 1815 and 1890, the King of the Netherlands was also in a personal union the Grand Duke of the sovereign Grand Duchy of Luxembourg  After Belgium gained its independence in 1830, the state became unequivocally known as the "Kingdom of the Netherlands", as it remains today 

Economy
During the Dutch Golden Age in the late-16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch Republic dominated world trade, conquering a vast colonial empire and operating the largest fleet of merchantmen of any nation  The County of Holland was the wealthiest and most urbanized region in the world  In 1650 the urban population of the Dutch Republic as a percentage of total population was 31 7 percent, while that of the Spanish Netherlands was 20 8 percent, of Portugal 16 6 percent, and of Italy 14 percent  In 1675 the urban population density of Holland alone was 61 percent, compared to the rest of the Dutch Republic, where 27 percent lived in urban areas The free trade spirit of the time was augmented by the development of a modern, effective stock market in the Low Countries  The Netherlands has the oldest stock exchange in the world, founded in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company, while Rotterdam has the oldest bourse in the Netherlands  The Dutch East-India Company exchange went public in six different cities  Later, a court ruled that the company had to reside legally in a single city, so Amsterdam is recognized as the oldest such institution based on modern trading principles  While the banking system evolved in the Low Countries, it was quickly incorporated by the well-connected English, stimulating English economic output The Dutch Republic was a master of banking, often compared to 14th century Florence  When Southern Europe was experiencing poor harvests, surplus grain from Poland was sold by the Dutch for large profits 

Politics
The republic was a confederation of seven provinces, which had their own governments and were very independent, and a number of so-called Generality Lands  The latter were governed directly by the States General, the federal government  The States General were seated in The Hague and consisted of representatives of each of the seven provinces  The provinces of the republic were, in official feudal order:

Duchy of Guelders
County of Holland
County of Zeeland
Lordship of Utrecht
Lordship of Overijssel
Lordship of Frisia
Lordship of GroningenThere was an eighth province, the County of Drenthe, but this area was so poor that it was exempt from paying federal taxes, and as a consequence, it was denied representation in the States General 
Each province was governed by the Provincial States, their main executive official (though not the official head of state) being a raadpensionaris or landsadvocaat  In times of war, the stadtholder, who commanded the army, would have more power than the raadpensionaris  In theory, the stadtholders were freely appointed by and subordinate to the states of each province  However, in practice the princes of Orange of the House of Orange-Nassau, beginning with William the Silent, were always chosen as stadtholders of most of the provinces 
Zeeland and usually Utrecht had the same stadtholder as Holland  There was a constant power struggle between the Orangists, who supported the stadtholders and specifically the princes of Orange, and the Republicans, who supported the States General and hoped to replace the semi-hereditary nature of the stadtholdership with a true republican structure 
After the Peace of Westphalia, several border territories were assigned to the United Provinces  They were federally governed Generality Lands  These were Staats-Brabant, Staats-Vlaanderen, Staats-Overmaas, and (after the Treaty of Utrecht) Staats-Opper-Gelre  The States General of the United Provinces were in control of the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company, but some shipping expeditions were initiated by some of the provinces, mostly Holland and Zeeland 
The framers of the United States Constitution were influenced by the Constitution of the Republic of the United Provinces, as Federalist No  20, by James Madison, shows  Such influence appears, however, to have been of a negative nature, as Madison describes the Dutch confederacy as exhibiting "Imbecility in the government; discord among the provinces; foreign influence and indignities; a precarious existence in peace, and peculiar calamities from war " Apart from this, the American Declaration of Independence is similar to the Act of Abjuration, essentially the declaration of independence of the United Provinces, but concrete evidence that the latter directly influenced the former is absent 

Religion
In the Union of Utrecht of 20 January 1579, Holland and Zeeland were granted the right to accept only one religion (in practice, Calvinism)  Every other province had the freedom to regulate the religious question as it wished, although the Union stated every person should be free in the choice of personal religion and that no person should be prosecuted based on religious choice  William of Orange had been a strong supporter of public and personal freedom of religion and hoped to unite Protestants and Catholics in the new union, and, for him, the Union was a defeat  In practice, Catholic services in all provinces were quickly forbidden, and the Dutch Reformed Church became the "public" or "privileged" church in the republic During the republic, any person who wished to hold public office had to conform to the Reformed Church and take an oath to this effect  The extent to which different religions or denominations were persecuted depended much on the time period and regional or city leaders  In the beginning, this was especially focused on Roman Catholics, being the religion of the enemy  In 17th-century Leiden, for instance, people opening their homes to services could be fined 200 guilders (a year's wage for a skilled tradesman) and banned from the city  Throughout this, however, personal freedom of religion existed and was one factor—along with economic reasons—in causing large immigration of religious refugees from other parts of Europe In the first years of the republic, controversy arose within the Reformed Church, mainly around the subject of predestination  This has become known as the struggle between Arminianism and Gomarism, or between Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants  In 1618, the Synod of Dort tackled this issue, which led to the banning of the Remonstrant faith 
Beginning in the 18th century, the situation changed from more or less active persecution of religious services to a state of restricted toleration of other religions, as long as their services took place secretly in private churches 

Decline
Long-term rivalry between the two main factions in Dutch society, the Staatsgezinden (Republicans, Dutch States Party) and the Prinsgezinden (Royalists or Orangists), sapped the strength and unity of the country  Johan de Witt and the Republicans did reign supreme for a time at the middle of the 17th century (the First Stadtholderless Period) until his overthrow and murder in 1672  Subsequently, William III of Orange became stadtholder  After a 22-year stadtholderless era, the Orangists regained power, and his first problem was to survive the Franco-Dutch War (with the derivative Third Anglo-Dutch war), when France, England, Münster, and Cologne united against this country 
Wars to contain the expansionist policies of France in various coalitions after the Glorious Revolution, mostly including England and Scotland—after 1707, Great Britain—burdened the republic with huge debts, although little of the fighting after 1673 took place on its own territory  The necessity to maintain a vast army against France meant that less money could be spent on the navy, weakening the republic's economy  After William III's death in 1702 the Second Stadtholderless Period was inaugurated  Despite having contributed much in the War of the Spanish Succession, the Dutch Republic gained little from the peace talks in Utrecht (1713)  However, the Dutch had over a period of forty years successfully defended their positions in the Southern Netherlands and their troops were central in the alliances which had halted French territorial expansion in Europe until 1792  The end of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748, and Austria becoming allies with France against Prussia, marked the end of the republic as a major military power Fierce competition for trade and colonies, especially from France and England, furthered the economic downturn of the country  The three Anglo-Dutch Wars and the rise of mercantilism had a negative effect on Dutch shipping and commerce 

See also
List of countries that gained independence from Spain
Dutch Empire
Dutch East India Company
Passage 6:
Project Daedalus
Project Daedalus (named after Daedalus, the Greek mythological designer who crafted wings for human flight) was a study conducted between 1973 and 1978 by the British Interplanetary Society to design a plausible uncrewed interstellar probe  Intended mainly as a scientific probe, the design criteria specified that the spacecraft had to use existing or near-future technology and had to be able to reach its destination within a human lifetime  Alan Bond led a team of scientists and engineers who proposed using a fusion rocket to reach Barnard's Star 5 9 light years away   The trip was estimated to take 50 years, but the design was required to be flexible enough that it could be sent to any other target star 
All the papers produced by the study are available in a BIS book, Project Daedalus: Demonstrating the Engineering Feasibility of Interstellar Travel,

Concept
Daedalus would be constructed in Earth orbit and have an initial mass of 54,000 tonnes including 50,000 tonnes of fuel and 500 tonnes of scientific payload  Daedalus was to be a two-stage spacecraft  The first stage would operate for two years, taking the spacecraft to 7 1% of light speed (0 071 c), and then after it was jettisoned, the second stage would fire for 1 8 years, taking the spacecraft up to about 12% of light speed (0 12 c), before being shut down for a 46-year cruise period  Due to the extreme temperature range of operation required, from near absolute zero to 1600 K, the engine bells and support structure would be made of molybdenum alloyed with titanium, zirconium, and carbon, which retains strength even at cryogenic temperatures  A major stimulus for the project was Friedwardt Winterberg's inertial confinement fusion drive concept, for which he received the Hermann Oberth gold medal award This velocity is well beyond the capabilities of chemical rockets or even the type of nuclear pulse propulsion studied during Project Orion  According to Dr  Tony Martin, controlled-fusion engine and the nuclear–electric systems have very low thrust, equipment to convert nuclear energy into electrical has a large mass, which results in small acceleration, which would take a century to achieve the desired speed; thermodynamic nuclear engines of the NERVA type require a great quantity of fuel, photon rockets have to generate power at a rate of 3×109 W per kg of vehicle mass and require mirrors with absorptivity of less than 1 part in 106, interstellar ramjet's problems are tenuous interstellar medium with a density of about 1 atom/cm3, a large diameter funnel, and high power required for its electric field  Thus the only suitable propulsion method for the project was thermonuclear pulse propulsion Daedalus would be propelled by a fusion rocket using pellets of a deuterium/helium-3 mix that would be ignited in the reaction chamber by inertial confinement using electron beams  The electron beam system would be powered by a set of induction coils trapping energy from the plasma exhaust stream  250 pellets would be detonated per second, and the resulting plasma would be directed by a magnetic nozzle  The computed burn-up fraction for the fusion fuels was 0 175 and 0 133 producing exhaust velocities of 10,600 km/s and 9,210 km/s respectively  Due to scarcity of helium-3 on Earth, it was to be mined from the atmosphere of Jupiter by large hot-air balloon supported robotic factories over a 20-year period, or from a less distant source, such as the Moon The second stage would have two 5-metre optical telescopes and two 20-metre radio telescopes  About 25 years after launch these telescopes would begin examining the area around Barnard's Star to learn more about any accompanying planets  This information would be sent back to Earth, using the 40-metre diameter second stage engine bell as a communications dish, and targets of interest would be selected  Since the spacecraft would not decelerate, upon reaching Barnard's Star, Daedalus would carry 18 autonomous sub-probes that would be launched between 7 2 and 1 8 years before the main craft entered the target system  These sub-probes would be propelled by nuclear-powered ion drives and would carry cameras, spectrometers, and other sensory equipment  The sub-probes would fly past their targets, still travelling at 12% of the speed of light, and transmit their findings back to the Daedalus' second stage, mothership, for relay back to Earth 
The ship's payload bay containing its sub-probes, telescopes, and other equipment would be protected from the interstellar medium during transit by a beryllium disc, up to 7 mm thick, weighing up to 50 tonnes   This erosion shield would be made from beryllium due to its lightness and high latent heat of vaporisation  Larger obstacles that might be encountered while passing through the target system would be dispersed by an artificially generated cloud of particles, ejected by support vehicles called dust bugs about 200 km ahead of the vehicle  The spacecraft would carry a number of robot wardens capable of autonomously repairing damage or malfunctions 

Specifications
Overall length: 190 metres
Payload mass: 450 tonnes

Variants
A quantitative engineering analysis of a self-replicating variation on Project Daedalus was published in 1980 by Robert Freitas  The non-replicating design was modified to include all subsystems necessary for self-replication  Use the probe to deliver a seed factory, with a mass of about 443 metric tons, to a distant site  Have the seed factory replicate many copies of itself on-site, to increase its total manufacturing capacity, then use the resulting automated industrial complex to construct probes, with a seed factory on board, over a 1,000-year period  Each REPRO would weigh over 10 million tons due to the extra fuel needed to decelerate from 12% of lightspeed 
Another possibility is to equip the Daedalus with a magnetic sail similar to the magnetic scoop on a Bussard ramjet to use the destination star heliosphere as a brake, making carrying deceleration fuel unnecessary, allowing a much more in-depth study of the star system chosen 

See also
Breakthrough Starshot
Project Icarus
Project Longshot
Enzmann starship

Further reading
K  F  Long (2012)  "Project Daedalus"  Deep Space Propulsion: A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight  Springer  pp  190–197  ISBN 9781461406075 
Passage 7:
Kushla
Kushla (Кушла) is a village in southern Bulgaria, Zlatograd municipality, Smolyan Province, located near the border with Greece  In the Ottoman times the town was called Ugurli in Turkish and Kotyli in Greek  In 1918 the village was part of the Satres (bulg  Sinikovo) community  Following Greek and Bulgarian independence, the former town and its 350 families was divided between the countries in the Neuilly treaty in 1922 until 1941 when the Axis powers opened the borders briefly up to 1944 when Greece retook Kotyli and the local Bulgarian Muslims were since schooled in Greek language  The other part of the village lies in the Xanthi regional unit of Greece as Kotyli (Kozludzha)  The villages have a Pomak (Bulgarian Muslim) majority 
Passage 8:
Siege of Jerusalem (636–637)
The siege of Jerusalem (636–637) was part of the Muslim conquest of the Levant and the result of the military efforts of the Rashidun Caliphate against the Byzantine Empire in the year 636–637/38  It began when the Rashidun army, under the command of Abu Ubayda, besieged Jerusalem beginning in November 636  After six months, the Patriarch Sophronius agreed to surrender, on condition that he submit only to the Caliph  According to Islamic tradition, in 637 or 638, Caliph Umar (r  634–644) traveled to Jerusalem in person to receive the submission of the city  The Patriarch thus surrendered to him 
The Muslim conquest of the city solidified Arab control over Palestine, which would not again be threatened until the First Crusade in 1099 

Background
Jerusalem was an important city of the Byzantine province of Palaestina Prima  Just 23 years prior to the Muslim conquest, in 614, it fell to an invading Sassanid army under Shahrbaraz during the last of the Byzantine–Sasanian Wars  The Persians looted the city, and are said to have massacred its 90,000 Christian inhabitants  As part of the looting, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed and the True Cross captured and taken to Ctesiphon as a battle-captured holy relic  The Cross was later returned to Jerusalem by Emperor Heraclius after his final victory against the Persians in 628  The Jews, who were persecuted in their Christian-controlled homeland, initially aided the Persian conquerors After the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632, Muslim leadership passed to Caliph Abu Bakr (r  632–634) following a series of campaigns known as the Ridda Wars  Once Abu Bakr's sovereignty over Arabia had been secured, he initiated a war of conquest in the east by invading Iraq, then a province of the Sassanid Persian Empire; while on the western front, his armies invaded the Byzantine Empire In 634, Abu Bakr died and was succeeded by Umar (r  634–644), who continued his own war of conquest  In May 636, Emperor Heraclius (r  610–641) launched a major expedition to regain the lost territory, but his army was defeated decisively at the Battle of Yarmouk in August 636  Thereafter, Abu Ubayda, the Rashidun commander-in-chief of the Rashidun army in Syria, held a council of war in early October 636 to discuss future plans  Opinions of objectives varied between the coastal city of Caesarea and Jerusalem  Abu Ubayda could see the importance of both these cities, which had resisted all Muslim attempts at capture  Unable to decide on the matter, he wrote to Caliph Umar for instructions  In his reply, the caliph ordered them to capture the latter  Accordingly, Abu Ubayda marched towards Jerusalem from Jabiyah, with Khalid ibn al-Walid and his mobile guard leading the advance  The Muslims arrived at Jerusalem around early November, and the Byzantine garrison withdrew into the fortified city 

Siege
Jerusalem had been well-fortified after Heraclius recaptured it from the Persians  After the Byzantine defeat at Yarmouk, Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, repaired its defenses  The Muslims had so far not attempted any siege of the city  However, since 634, Saracen forces had the potential to threaten all routes to the city  Although it was not encircled, it had been in a state of siege since the Muslims captured the towns of Pella and Bosra east of the Jordan River  After the Battle of Yarmouk, the city was severed from the rest of Syria, and was presumably being prepared for a siege that seemed inevitable  When the Muslim army reached Jericho, Sophronius collected all the holy relics including the True Cross, and secretly sent them to the coast, to be taken to Constantinople  The Muslim troops besieged the city some time in November 636  Instead of relentless assaults on the city, they decided to press on with the siege until the Byzantines ran short of supplies and a bloodless surrender could be negotiated Although details of the siege were not recorded, it appeared to be bloodless  The Byzantine garrison could not expect any help from the humbled Heraclius  After a siege of four months, Sophronius offered to surrender the city and pay a jizya (tribute), on condition that the caliph came to Jerusalem to sign the pact and accept the surrender  It is said that when Sophronius's terms became known to the Muslims, Shurahbil ibn Hasana, one of the Muslim commanders, suggested that instead of waiting for the caliph to come all the way from Madinah, Khalid ibn Walid should be sent forward as the caliph, as he was very similar in appearance to Umar  The subterfuge did not work  Possibly, Khalid was too famous in Syria, or there may have been Christian Arabs in the city who had visited Madinah and had seen both Umar and Khalid, remembering the differences  Consequently, the Patriarch of Jerusalem refused to negotiate  When Khalid reported the failure of this mission, Abu Ubaidah wrote to caliph Umar about the situation, and invited him to come to Jerusalem to accept the surrender of the city 

Surrender
The date of the surrender of Jerusalem is debatable  Primary sources, such as chronicles from centuries closer or further removed from the time of the events, offer the year 638, for instance Theophilus of Edessa (695–785); or 636, 636/37, and 637  Academic secondary sources tend to prefer 638  Encyclopaedia Britannica mentions both options in different articles In early April 637, Umar arrived in Palestine and went first to Jabiya, where he was received by Abu Ubaidah, Khalid, and Yazid, who had travelled with an escort to receive him  Amr was left as commander of the besieging Muslim army Upon Umar's arrival in Jerusalem, a pact known as the Umariyya Covenant was composed  It surrendered the city and gave guarantees of civil and religious liberty to Christians in exchange for jizya  It was signed by caliph Umar on behalf of the Muslims, and witnessed by Khalid, Amr, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, and Mu'awiya  Depending on the sources, in either 637 or in 638, Jerusalem was officially surrendered to the caliph  For the Jewish community this marked the end of nearly 500 years of Roman rule and oppression  Umar permitted the Jews to once again reside within the city of Jerusalem itself It has been recorded in the annals of Muslim chronicles, that at the time of the Zuhr prayers, Sophronius invited Umar to pray in the rebuilt Church of the Holy Sepulchre  Umar declined, fearing that accepting the invitation might endanger the church's status as a place of Christian worship, and that Muslims might break the treaty and turn the church into a mosque  After staying for ten days in Jerusalem, the caliph returned to Medina 

Aftermath
Following the Caliph's instructions, Yazid proceeded to Caesarea, and once again laid siege to the port city  Amr and Shurahbil marched to complete the occupation of Palestine, a task that was completed by the end of the year  Caesarea, however, could not be taken until 640, when at last, the garrison surrendered to Mu'awiya I, then a governor of Syria  With an army of 17,000 men, Abu Ubaidah and Khalid set off from Jerusalem to conquer all of northern Syria  This ended with the conquest of Antioch in late 637  In 639, the Muslims invaded and conquered Egypt 
During his stay in Jerusalem, Umar was led by Sophronius to various holy sites, including the Temple Mount  Seeing the poor state of where the Temple once stood, Umar ordered the area cleared of refuse and debris before having a wooden mosque built on the site  The earliest account of such a structure is given by the Gallic bishop Arculf, who visited Jerusalem between 679 and 682, and describes a very primitive house of prayer able to accommodate up to 3,000 worshippers, constructed of wooden beams and boards over preexisting ruins More than half a century after the capture of Jerusalem, in 691, the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik commissioned the construction of the Dome of the Rock over a large outcropping of bedrock on the Temple Mount  The 10th-century historian al-Maqdisi wrote that Abd al-Malik built the shrine in order to compete in grandeur with the city's Christian churches  Whatever the intention, the impressive splendor and scale of the shrine is seen as having helped significantly in solidifying the attachment of Jerusalem to the early Muslim faith Over the next 400 years, the city's prominence diminished as Saracen powers in the region jockeyed for control  Jerusalem remained under Muslim rule until it was captured by Crusaders in 1099 during the First Crusade 

Hadith
It is believed in Sunni Islam that Muhammad foretold the conquest of Jerusalem in numerous authentic hadiths in various Islamic sources, including a narration mentioned in Sahih al-Bukhari in Kitab Al Jizyah Wa'l Mawaada'ah (The Book of Jizya and Storage):
Narrated `Auf bin Mali:
I went to the Prophet during the Expedition to Tabuk while he was sitting in a leather tent  He said, "Count six signs that indicate the approach of the End Times: my death, the conquest of Jerusalem, a plague that will afflict you (and kill you in great numbers) as the plague that afflicts sheep   "The siege of Jerusalem was carried by Abu Ubaidah under Umar in the earliest period of Islam along with Plague of Emmaus  The epidemic is famous in Muslim sources because of the death of many prominent companions of Muhammad 

Notes
Passage 9:
Mawdud
Mawdud ibn Altuntash (Arabic: شرف الدولة المودود) (also spelled Maudud or Sharaf al-Dawla Mawdûd) (died October 2, 1113) was a Turkic military leader who was atabeg of Mosul from 1109 to 1113  He organized several expeditions to reconquer lands from the Crusaders and defeated them at  Battle of Al-Sannabra

Biography
Mawdud was an officer of Muhammad I Tapar who sent him to reconquer Mosul from the rebel atabeg Jawali Saqawa  After his conquest of the city, Mehmed entrusted him with several military attempts to push back the Crusaders from the nearby Principality of Antioch and County of Edessa  The first attempt was launched in 1110; having joined forces with Ilghazi, the emir of Mardin, and of Sökmen el-Kutbî, emir of Ahlat, they began by besieging Edessa from April of that year, but Baldwin I of Jerusalem intervened, and forced Mawdud to retreat 
The following year Mawdud marched against Edessa, but as the city walls had been quickly strengthened, he preferred to lay siege to the town of Turbessel, held by Joscelin I of Courtenay  When Ridwan of Aleppo sent news that the Christians under Tancred were on the verge of capturing Aleppo, he moved on to that city  On his arrival, however, he discovered that the capture of the city was not imminent at all, and that Ridwan even refused to open the city's gates for him  He also received the news that a relief army which had been sent by Baldwin I was now marching northwards, so he raised the siege of Turbessel and the subsequent Battle of Shaizar in 1111 proved to be indecisive and a tactical draw 
The 1112 campaign began again with the siege of Turbessel, but was halted when a party of the Mosul army was decimated by Joscelin on June 15  An attempt to capture Edessa with the assistance of its Armenian population was discovered by then count Baldwin II of Jerusalem, resulting in the slaughter of the Armenian participants 
In 1113 Toghtekin of Damascus, tired of the ravages by the Christian forces against his territories, appealed to Mawdud to join him to invade the Kingdom of Jerusalem  The two pillaged Galilee and besieged Tiberias, though without being able to capture it  On June 28, however, the Muslims defeated King Baldwin I of Jerusalem's army at the Battle of Al-Sannabra  Reinforcements saved the Christian forces from total annihilation and prevented the Muslim commanders from exploiting the victory, and ultimately forced them to retreat to Damascus due to a lack of supplies 
It was while in Damascus as a guest of Toghtekin that Mawdud was murdered by the Assassins, possibly with the knowledge of his host (who himself accused Ridwan of the deed)  As Mawdud and Toghtekin returned from prayer an assailant stabbed Mawdud four times, fatally wounding him  The killer was beheaded by nearby guards and his body burned  Mawdud was taken into a nearby house and offered food but, according to Ibn al-Athir, refused to eat as he was in the middle of a fast and died later that day  He was succeeded as atabeg by Aqsunqur al-Bursuqi, his representative at Baghdad 



ground_truth: Abu Ubaidah

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: When was the kingdom that Heptarchy was part of abolished?

The following are given passages.
Context 3: Passage 1:
Serres Province
Serres Province was one of the four provinces of Serres Prefecture of Greece  Its territory corresponded with that of the current municipalities Emmanouel Pappas and Serres, and part of the municipality Irakleia  It was abolished in 2006 
Passage 2:
Kavangoland
Kavangoland was a bantustan in South West Africa (present-day Namibia), intended by the apartheid government to be a self-governing homeland for the Kavango people  After the legal framework was established in 1968 as the Development of Self-Government for Native Nations in South-West Africa Act, 1968 (Act No  54 of 1968), Kavangoland was set up in 1970 and self-government was granted in 1973  The Kavango Legislative Council had its administrative headquarters in Rundu; its first session opened in October 1970 in the presence of the South African Minister for Bantu Administration and Development 
Kavangoland, like other homelands in South West Africa, was abolished in May 1989 at the start of the transition to independence 
Sebastian Kamwanga, Hompa (king) of the Gciriku and member of the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) was the political representative of Kavangoland from 1981 to 1989 
Passage 3:
Smolensk Governorate
Smolensk Governorate (Russian: Смоленская губерния, romanized: Smolenskaja gubernija), or the Government of Smolensk, was an administrative division (a guberniya) of the Tsardom of Russia, the Russian Empire, and the Russian SFSR  It existed, with interruptions, between 1708 and 1929 
Smolensk Governorate, together with seven other governorates, was established on December 29 [O S  December 18], 1708, by an edict from Tsar Peter the Great  As with the rest of the governorates, neither the borders nor internal subdivisions of Smolensk Governorate were defined; instead, the territory was defined as a set of cities, and section of lands adjacent to those cities 

History
On July 28 [O S  July 17], 1713, Smolensk Governorate was abolished and its territory was divided between Moscow and Riga Governorates  Smolensk Province was created as a result  The governorate was re-established in 1726, and Smolensk Province was re-incorporated into the Governorate  In 1775, it was included, along with parts of Moscow and Belgorod Governorates, into Smolensk Viceroyalty  The governorate was again restored in 1796 
After the October Revolution, Smolensk Governorate was base of independent Western Oblast/Western Commune, Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus, Lithuanian–Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (Litbel), and finally incorporated into the Russian SFSR 
Eventually, on January 14, 1929, Smolensk Governorate was abolished and its territory was incorporated into Western Oblast 

Subdivisions
Smolensk Governorate, together with seven other governorates, was established on December 29 [O S  December 18], 1708, by Tsar Peter the Great's edict  As with the rest of the governorates, neither the borders nor internal subdivisions of Smolensk Governorate were defined; instead, the territory was defined as a set of cities and the lands adjacent to those cities At the time of establishment, the following thirty cities were included into Smolensk Governorate,
In 1713, when Smolensk Governorate was abolished and merged into Riga Governorate, the following five uyezds were established in the area formally occupied by the governorate (the administrative centers are given in parentheses),
Belsky Uyezd (Bely);
Dorogobuzhsky Uyezd (Dorogobuzh);
Roslavlsky Uyezd (Roslavl);
Smolensky Uyezd (Smolensk);
Vyazemsky Uyezd (Vyazma) After Smolensk Governorate was re-established in 1726, it was subdivided into these five uyezds 
In 1775, Smolensk Viceroyalty was subdivided into 12 uyezds, which remained when it was transformed back to a governorate in 1802
(the administrative centers, which all had the town status, are in parentheses),
Belsky Uyezd (Bely);
Dorogobuzhsky Uyezd (Dorogobuzh);
Dukhovshchinsky Uyezd (Dukhovshchina);
Gzhatsky Uyezd (Gzhatsk);
Krasninsky Uyezd (Krasny);
Porechsky Uyezd (Porechye);
Roslavlsky Uyezd (Roslavl);
Smolensky Uyezd (Smolensk);
Sychyovsky Uyezd (Sychyovka);
Vyazemsky Uyezd (Vyazma);
Yelninsky Uyezd (Yelnya);
Yukhnovsky Uyezd (Yukhnov) 

Demography
Language
Population by mother tongue according to the Imperial census of 1897 

Religion
According to the Imperial census of 1897 
Passage 4:
Damaraland
Damaraland was a name given to the north-central part of what later became Namibia, inhabited by the Damaras  It was bounded roughly by Ovamboland in the north, the Namib Desert in the west, the Kalahari Desert in the east, and Windhoek in the south 
In the 1970s the name Damaraland was revived for a bantustan in South West Africa (present-day Namibia), intended by the apartheid government to be a self-governing homeland for the Damara people  A centrally administered local government was created in 1980  The bantustan Damaraland was situated on the western edge of the territory that had been known as Damaraland in the 19th century 
Damaraland, like other homelands in South West Africa, was abolished in May 1989 at the start of the transition to independence 
The name Damaraland predates South African control of Namibia, and was described as "the central portion of German South West Africa" in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition 

See also
Apartheid
Bantustans in South West Africa
Leaders of Damaraland
Diocese of Namibia (formerly Diocese of Damaraland)
Passage 5:
Pyrgiotissa
Pyrgiotissa was a province of Heraklion Prefecture, Crete, Greece  Its territory corresponded with that of the current municipal unit Tympaki  It was abolished in 2006 
Passage 6:
Mercian Supremacy
The Mercian Supremacy was the period of Anglo-Saxon history between c  716 and c  825, when the kingdom of Mercia dominated the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy in England  Sir Frank Stenton apparently coined the phrase, arguing that Offa of Mercia, who ruled 757–796, effectively achieved the unification of England south of the Humber estuary  Scholastic opinion on the relationship between the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia at this time remains divided 
While the precise period during which the Mercian Supremacy existed remains uncertain – depending upon whether one includes the reigns of Penda (c  626–655) and Wulfhere (658–675) – the end of the era is generally agreed to be around 825, following the defeat of King Beornwulf at the Battle of Ellandun (near present-day Swindon) 
Nicholas Brooks noted that "the Mercians stand out as by far the most successful of the various early Anglo-Saxon peoples until the later ninth century" and with the exception of three years under Northumbrian domination, this is true between the years 633 and 825 Recorded by Bede as the nemesis of early Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, Penda of Mercia achieved an early expansion of his kingdom's territory, but his reign ended with his death in battle, which was followed by a brief three-year period when Northumbria ruled over the Mercians  The rebellion against Northumbria by Penda's son Wulfhere in 658 immediately preceded the restoration of Penda's kingdom and a period of expansion in which Mercia's influence reached as far south as the Isle of Wight  During this period of expansion, Mercia lost its province of the Kingdom of Lindsey to Northumbria in 661, but its recapture by Æthelred of Mercia following the Battle of the Trent in 679 secured Mercia's position as the dominant Anglo-Saxon power for over a century 
Mercia's hold over the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Essex, Sussex and Kent seems to have been tenuous until 716, when Æthelbald of Mercia restored Mercia's hegemony for over forty years  Offa's accession in 757 heralded the beginning of a golden age for Mercia  Some historians have suggested that Offa's defeat of the Welsh and the West Saxons of Wessex established the Mercian Supremacy, which remained unchallenged until 825 when Egbert of Wessex supported an East Anglian rebellion against Beornwulf of Mercia, whose defeat at Ellendun effectively brought the Supremacy to an end 
Passage 7:
Capital punishment in New Zealand
Capital punishment in New Zealand – the process of sentencing convicted offenders to death for the most serious crimes (capital crimes) and carrying out that sentence, as ordered by a legal system – first appeared in a codified form when New Zealand became a British colony in 1840  It was first carried out with a public hanging in Victoria Street, Auckland in 1842, while the last execution occurred in 1957 at Mount Eden Prison, also in Auckland   In total, 85 people have been executed in New Zealand Capital punishment was first abolished for murder in 1941 by the First Labour Government, with all death sentences commuted to life imprisonment  However, the succeeding First National Government reinstated it in 1949, following which eight more executions took place in the period up to 1957  Subsequently, public opinion turned against the use of capital punishment, and it was once again abolished for murder in 1961, and abolished for all crimes, including treason, in 1989 

Method
The method of execution was always by hanging  At first, there were many possible execution sites all around the country, but later, the only two cities where hangings were carried out were Wellington (the capital) and Auckland (now the largest city) 
Initially, there was no professional hangman employed—the executioner was simply chosen from among any who were deemed qualified  On occasion, convicted criminals were employed as hangmen, often in exchange for reduced sentences or monetary reward  In 1877, the sheriff of Blenheim recommended that a professional executioner be hired  Tom Long, an Irishman who claimed to have been an executioner in Australia, was hired as the official hangman  He was the only official hangman to be publicly known; others remained anonymous 

History
At the time of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 when New Zealand became a British colony, the most current legislation governing capital punishment in England, and henceforth New Zealand, was the Punishment of Offences Act (1837), which had abolished the death penalty for a number of statutory offences, including cattle stealing, and replaced it with penal transportation for life  However, some capital crimes remained on the British law books, including murder, treason, espionage, arson in the royal dockyards, and piracy with violence All those executed were convicted of murder, with the exception of Hamiora Pere, who was convicted of treason in 1869  All bar one were men; the exception being Minnie Dean, who was found guilty of infanticide in 1895  However, before Dean's trial, imprisonment and execution, several other women had been found guilty of Infanticide in nineteenth-century New Zealand, but had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment  These were Caroline Whitting (1872), Phoebe Veitch (1883) and Sarah-Jane and Anna Flannagan (1891) 

Public executions
The first eight executions were carried out in public, from 1842 to 1858; five outside the gate of the Auckland Gaol on the corner of Queen Street and Victoria Street West in central Auckland; one on King Edward Parade on the waterfront at Devonport; and two outside Mount Cook Gaol in Wellington, which is today the site of the Dominion Museum building and National War Memorial on Puke Ahu At the first execution, on 7 March 1842, approximately a thousand people gathered at the corner of Queen Street and Victoria Street West, now the centre of the Auckland CBD, to witness the hanging of Wiremu Kīngi Maketū  He had been found guilty of murdering five people on Motuarohia Island, in the Bay of Islands  The people killed were Thomas Bull, employed by Elisabeth Roberton, who was also murdered along with her son aged eight, her daughter of two, and a girl of nearly three named Isabella Brind, the natural daughter of one Captain Brind by a Māori woman, the daughter of Rewa, chief of Ngapuhi in that area  Mrs Roberton's husband, Captain John Roberton, had drowned prior in Paroa Bay, just opposite the island  Thomas Bull had a reputation for strength and brutality  He seemed at all times to have made a set at Maketū and had on several occasions struck, thrown, or otherwise maltreated him  Maketū was unable to defend himself against such an opponent; nor indeed did it conform with his notions of dignity to do so, he being (by virtue of his chiefly rank) above combat with one who was a servant and whom he therefore regarded on the same plane as a slave  Maketū, therefore, bided his time for revenge  Maketū then killed Thomas Bull in the night with an axe; he then brutally murdered Mrs Roberton, who was shouting abuse at him and then went to murder the two girls (ransacking the house and then burning Mrs Roberton and the two children within it)  The boy ran up Pa Hill, where Maketū chased him and threw him off the 200-foot (60 m) cliff  He was sentenced to death by an all-white jury (his defence had wanted a half-white, half-Māori jury) in an Auckland court, and executed on 7 March 1842 

The second execution in New Zealand was the public hanging of Joseph Burns on 17 June 1848  On the day of his execution, he was paraded down Auckland's Queen St, seated in a coffin, and taken by boat across the Waitemata Harbour to the Devonport waterfront, where he was hanged on King Edward Parade, not far from the scene of his crimes  Burns was the first European settler to be executed in New Zealand The third execution in New Zealand, and first in Wellington, occurred on 19 April 1849  Maroro of Ngāti Kahungunu descent was hanged outside Mount Cook Gaol in front of approximately 500 people, following his conviction of the murder of John Branks and his three children The fourth execution occurred in the same location in Wellington on 17 June 1850, in front of a similar sized crowd, when William Good was hanged for the murder of John Ellis  The scaffold was "erected on Cook's Mount, immediately in front of the brick wall of the gaol "The fifth execution was that of escaped Australian convict, William Bowden, on 27 April 1852  He was hanged on the scaffold erected outside the entrance gate of the Auckland Gaol, on the corner of Queen Street and Victoria Street West, in front of approximately 300 people The sixth execution in New Zealand, and the third public hanging to take place outside the Auckland Gaol on the corner of Queen and Victoria Streets was that of Charles Marsden on 12 February 1856  It took approximately 14 minutes for Marsden to die, with accusations that his execution was "clumsily performed" The seventh execution took place in Auckland at sunrise on 11 July 1856 with the public hanging of John White  In a sign of changing attitudes to the spectacle of public executions, the Superintendent had ordered that the scaffold be erected after dark the previous evening, and the front of the scaffold, under the drop, be partially boarded up  Due to the early hour of the execution, no more than twenty to thirty people witnessed the event on the corner of Queen Street and Victoria Street West The last public execution was that of John Killey, who had been found guilty of murdering John Butler in Whangarei on 17 December 1857  At his later sentencing in Auckland, the judge, Sir George Alfred Arney, was "said to have been moved to tears" in passing sentence, while Killey "fell down in the dock in a fainting fit"  He was hanged on 18 March 1858, also outside the gate of the Auckland Gaol 

Move to abolish public executions in the British colonies of Australasia
Throughout the British colonies of Australasia public hangings came to be seen as "barbarous spectacles"  The last public hanging in Sydney took place outside Darlinghurst Gaol on 21 September 1852, in which local press noted disapprovingly the "extraordinary attendance of children, upon whose tender minds the shocking spectacle of a fellow creature dangling at the end of a rope, had no other more serious effect than that of eliciting from them three cheers for the hangman"  New South Wales, where public executions were also "associated with the hated convict era", became the first of the British colonies in Australia to abolish public executions, when the Act to Regulate the Execution of Criminals 1855 (NSW) came into force on 10 January 1855 Victoria and Tasmania followed shortly after with the Private Execution Act 1855 (Vic) and the Criminals’ Execution Act 1855 (Tas) respectively  When the Moreton Bay settlement separated from NSW to become the self-governing colony of Queensland in 1859, the New South Wales legislation automatically applied While South Australia and Western Australia abolished public executions in 1858 and 1870 respectively, both colonies subsequently passed amendments which allowed for the hanging of capitally convicted Aboriginal Australians at the scene of their alleged crimes: the Act to Amend an Act to Regulate the Execution of Criminals 1861 (SA) and the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1871 Amendment Act 1875 (WA) In New Zealand, public executions were abolished under Section 1 of the Executions of Criminals Act 1858, which specified that executions had to be carried out "within the walls or the enclosed yard of some gaol, or within some other enclosed space"  The Act came into force on 3 June 1858, three months after the country's last public hanging in central Auckland By way of comparison with other English-speaking countries which share an historical legacy of English common law, the last public execution in the United Kingdom was the hanging of Michael Barrett outside Newgate Prison in London on 26 May 1868, in front of a crowd of approximately 2000 people  Canada's last public execution occurred on 7 December 1869 when Nicholas Melady was hanged in front of "a few hundred spectators", outside the Huron County Gaol, now called the Huron Historic Gaol, in Goderich, Ontario  The last judicial execution carried out in public in the United States was the hanging of Rainey Bethea in a parking lot in Owensboro, Kentucky on 14 August 1936, in front of an estimated crowd of 20,000 

Executed out of public view
In 1862, in Wellington, James Collins became the first person in New Zealand to be executed out of public view In 1866, the site of the old Auckland Gaol was made ready for a temporary market  The Sheriff approved the removal of the graves of the five executed criminals, to respect "public decency"  The bodies were reinterred in "a remote and unused spot" of the Symonds St Cemetery The last person to be executed was Walter James Bolton, for poisoning his wife, on 18 February 1957 

Abolition: 1949–1961
When the Labour Party formed its first government following the 1935 general election, it commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment  The Crimes Amendment Act 1941  changed the penalty for murder from death to life imprisonment with hard labour  The only crimes for which the death penalty still applied were treason and piracy 
The Labour Party lost power to the more conservative National Party, which had pledged to reintroduce capital punishment, in 1949  During that earlier period, support and opposition for capital punishment were clearly delineated on partisan grounds  The National Party supported the restoration and maintenance of the death penalty, while the Labour Party opposed it  During debate over the Capital Punishment Act 1950 (which exempted expectant mothers and young persons under the age of 18 years), Labour expressed concern about the constitutional implications of the concentration of executive power in this context (although Labour had used this power from 1935 to 1941), while National Party Attorney-General Clifton Webb referred to the alleged "deterrent" value of the death penalty as potential threat and punitive severity  However, Webb was relatively sparing in his use of the death penalty, while his successor, Attorney-General Jack Marshall (1955–1957), was a hardliner on that issue and the number and pace of executions accelerated, arousing debate 
During the time that the National Party was in office (1949–1957), 36 people were convicted of murder, and 22 of those were sentenced to death (George Horry was convicted of murder in 1951 but not hanged because the death penalty was not in force in 1942)  The final decision on executions rested with Cabinet, and only eight of the condemned were executed  The rest were commuted to life imprisonment  Even then, professional opinion was divided  Film censor Gordon Mirams did not regard spectacles of hanging as appropriate content within crime dramas and western films and excised such content and dialogue on the basis of family propriety According to Department of Justice historian Pauline Engel, the British Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1953) may have heavily influenced the rise of abolitionism, as did the controversies that surrounded the executions of Harry Whiteland and Edward Te Whiu, which raised questions about post-war trauma, intellectual and developmental disability as factors for leniency 
Social historian Redmer Yska has argued that such concern arose much earlier  When the National Party restored capital punishment in 1950, it became an administrative ordeal for civil servants involved, particularly those within correctional facilities like Mount Eden Prison in Auckland, law enforcement and the judiciary  Corrections staff needed to maintain suicide watch for the convicted felon, conduct regular health checks and provide pastoral care for the condemned individual's relatives, as well as insure prison security during executions Official requirements mandated the presence of a magistrate, doctor and sheriffs  During the late fifties, Attorney-General Jack Marshall accelerated the pace of executions and post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism and duodenal haemorrhaging developed amongst two of the three staff obliged to participate during execution procedures  In cases of political import, prudent reprieves and commuted penalties did occur, as happened when three Niue Islanders were sentenced to death after killing a manifestly brutal and oppressive Resident Commissioner (and were reprieved only after New Zealand prison officials had reached Niue to carry out the hangings)  On that occasion, the Public Questions Committee of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand became involved in strenuously lobbying against the verdict Class differences were also seen to affect the verdict  Dr  Senga Wintringham was convicted of manslaughter, rather than murder, in February 1955, after shooting and killing Dr Bill Saunders  Wintringham claimed that she had only meant to intimidate him, rather than kill him  The Peoples Voice, newspaper of the Communist Party of New Zealand, criticised the perceived "double standard" in this context, as the courts had just convicted and sentenced 26-year-old British migrant and itinerant labourer Frederick Foster to death, despite questions about mental illness and intellectual impairment in his context, as well as appeals from his mother  Foster had shot and killed Sharon Skeffington, his former girlfriend  Although Foster was sentenced to death and executed, defence counsel Dr Martyn Finlay succeeded in raising questions about the limited intellectual capabilities and mental health of the condemned person in this context  Similar questions would arise in the trial, conviction and execution of Albert Webb  The New Zealand Listener editorialised against the death penalty in July 1955, and received supportive feedback from its letters page correspondents Eddie Te Whiu was hanged in August 1955, after he had killed an elderly widow in Ngararatunua, near Kamo, when an attempted burglary went wrong  Abolitionist sentiment grew again, as, with the Foster and Black cases, there was perceptible anxiety about the failure of "deterrence" value in the context of violent homicides, and whether Te Whiu should have been convicted of manslaughter instead, due to his dysfunctional family origins and limited intellectual capabilities  As a result, a National Committee for Abolition of the Death Penalty was formed in November 1956, with branches in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin 
Engel and Maureen Garing have drawn attention to the involvement of Protestant Christian opposition to capital punishment  In 1941 and 1951, the Christian Social Justice League, Christchurch Anglican Diocesan Synod and Methodist Public Questions Committee supported abolition, as did individual Catholics, although their hierarchy remained neutral in this debate  The New Zealand Theosophical Society also opposed capital punishment, and the Churches of Christ and Baptist Union declared its opposition in the late fifties  As religious opposition grew, it provided opponents of capital punishment with an organisational base that was used to good effect  Redmer Yska notes that clergy often refused to participate in legitimising executions through their presence, of whatever denomination As a consequence of controversy over the perceived escalation in use of capital punishment, abolitionist petitions started to circulate as well  In 1956, a proposal for a referendum on capital punishment was put forward by the Minister of Justice, Jack Marshall  This referendum was to be voted on during the 1957 general election, but the proposal was defeated Meanwhile, Walter James Bolton (1888–1957) was executed at Mount Eden Prison in Auckland in February 1957, after he had allegedly poisoned his wife with arsenic  Given that the National Party lost that election, there were to be no further executions within New Zealand  However, while the election saw a short-lived Labour government elected, capital punishment was not debated in Parliament again before the National party regained power after the 1960 election 
In 1961, the National Party reaffirmed its support for the death penalty, although restricted its use to premeditated murders, and those committed during another crime or during an escape from custody  The issue of capital punishment generated intensive debate within the National Party—the Minister of Justice in the Second National Government, who was responsible for introducing the Crimes Bill 1961, Ralph Hanan, strongly opposed the death penalty, while Jack Marshall, the Deputy Prime Minister, had supported its use while serving as Minister of Justice and Attorney General, as noted above 

Abolition and its aftermath: 1961 onwards
Aware of growing public opposition to capital punishment, the National Party allowed its MPs to exercise a conscience vote in Parliament, and ten National MPs subsequently voted in favour of abolition  The result was a majority of 11 against capital punishment, 41–30  The ten National MPs were Ernest Aderman, Gordon Grieve, Ralph Hanan, Duncan MacIntyre, Robert Muldoon, Lorrie Pickering, Logan Sloane, Brian Talboys, Esme Tombleson and Bert Walker  The death penalty was therefore abolished for murder, being retained only for treason and other similar acts in theory  In principle, this meant that de facto abolition had occurred from that point onward These last theoretical vestiges of capital punishment were abolished under the Palmer Labour cabinet in November 1989 with the passage of the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act 1989, and there were no further executions during the interim period  Passage of the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act ended all capital punishment in New Zealand  The Cook Islands, which based its statutes on New Zealand law, formally retained the death penalty for treason until it was abolished in 2007  The death penalty was never used in the Cook Islands Occasional calls to reinstate capital punishment still occur, but no major political party has made capital punishment an element of any of their election manifestos since the 1989 Abolition act  As for minor political parties, the solitary exception was the fundamentalist Christian Heritage New Zealand, which has been defunct since 2005 
A 2004 1 News Colmar Brunton  poll found 28% were in favour of bringing back the death penalty, 67% did not want to bring the death penalty back, and 5% were undecided  In a 2013 Curia poll for TV3's The Nation, 38% of New Zealanders were in favour of the death penalty—a nominal increase from the 28% in 2004—while 55% were opposed it, and 7% were undecided  Also in the poll, 35% of Labour voters favoured the death penalty and National voters' support polled at 44%  Least likely to be in favour were Green Party voters at 19%, but the strongest support came from New Zealand First voters at 84% 

See also
Capital punishment in the Cook Islands
List of people executed in New Zealand
Passage 8:
Lakes, Cumbria
Lakes is a civil parish in Westmorland and Furness, England  In the 2001 census the parish had a population of 5,127, decreasing at the 2011 census to 4,420  It covers the town of Ambleside, and the villages and hamlets of Clappersgate, Rydal, Grasmere, Troutbeck, Chapel Stile, Elterwater, Little Langdale and Waterhead 
Lakes CP incorporates within its boundaries the wards of Ambleside, the Langdales, Rydal & Loughrigg, Grasmere and Troutbeck The parish was formed in 1934 as an urban district, despite being largely rural, under a County Review Order, by a merger of Ambleside and Grasmere urban districts and parts of Windermere Urban District, South Westmorland Rural District and West Ward Rural District The A591 road, a primary route, passes through the centre of the CP, it enters the parish from the South at the point where it crosses Trout Beck at Troutbeck Bridge village  After covering 16 km (10 mi) in road distance,(13 4 km (8 5 mi) as the crow flies) it leaves the parish at Dunmail Raise  The A592 road passes through the eastern area of the parish  The col of the Kirkstone Pass, at a point approximately 200 m north of the Kirkstone Inn, marks the northern boundary of Lakes CP It is the area covered by the Kelsick Foundation, an organisation that helps locals with the costs of extra-curricular activities for children 
The urban district had an area of 49,917 acres (202 01 km2)  or 202 km² 
The urban district was abolished in 1974, with the Patterdale ward becoming a civil parish in the Eden district, and the rest becoming a civil parish in South Lakeland 

See also
Listed buildings in Lakes, Cumbria
Passage 9:
Mountain (electoral district)
Mountain is a former provincial electoral division in Manitoba, Canada   It was created for the 1879 provincial election, and was abolished shortly before the 1958 election 
Mountain was located in southwestern Manitoba, near Portage la Prairie   The constituency was mostly rural, and included communities such as Baldur and Argyles   Premier Dufferin Roblin once referred to the division's name as "curious", given that it marked by "the gentle landscape of the Pembina escarpment" Several prominent Manitoba politicians represented Mountain, including Charles Cannon, Ivan Schultz and Premier Thomas Greenway   The constituency was shaped like an "L" in the nineteenth century, and was sometimes called "Greenway's armchair"   For most of its history, Mountain was considered safe for the Manitoba Liberal Party and its successor, the Liberal-Progressive Party  But an effort was made to put forward an Independent third-party candidate in 1914 In 1955, Mountain's population was estimated to be about 50% Anglo-Saxon, 33% French Canadian, and 16 5% Flemish 

Provincial representatives
Passage 10:
Franklin District
Franklin District was a New Zealand territorial authority that lay between the Auckland metropolitan area and the Waikato Plains  As a formal territory, it was abolished on 31 October 2010 and divided between Auckland Council in the Auckland Region (39 82 percent by land area) to the north and Waikato and Hauraki districts in the Waikato region (60 18 percent) to the south and east  The Auckland portion is now part of the Franklin ward, which also includes rural parts of the former Manukau City 
Before its abolition, it was administered from the town of Pukekohe  Out-going Franklin District Mayor Mark Ball had proposed that Franklin district become an independent unitary authority, fulfilling both the functions of a local and regional council  However, this was rejected by Minister Rodney Hide 

Location and extent
The district was bounded in the north by the start of the Auckland metropolitan area and the waters of the Manukau Harbour  Awhitu Peninsula stretches up the Tasman coast to the mouth of this harbour  Here are located several holiday spots, such as Karioitahi Beach and Matakawau 
To the south, Franklin was bounded by the fertile lowlands of the Waikato Plains  In the east, the land rises to the Hunua Ranges, then falls to the coast of the Firth of Thames  In the west is the Tasman Sea   The Waikato River mouth is at Port Waikato in the south of the region  This is renowned as a good place for surfcasting 
The area is mainly rural, with local settlements such as Waiuku and Tuakau supporting the farming industry  One industry of note is the New Zealand Steel steel mill at Glenbrook, north of Waiuku 

Mayors
Six people served as mayor of Franklin District during its 21-year existence:

Nomenclature
The name of "Franklin" probably derives from Lady Jane Franklin, an early British traveller and the wife of Captain Sir John Franklin,
who served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land (1837–1843)  Lady Franklin visited the Waikato Heads in 1841 

Media
Franklin County News, a twice-weekly newspaper based in Pukekohe, serves the former Franklin district  The Post Newspaper distributes 26,000 printed copies weekly on a Tuesday, covering Franklin and North Waikato  The Post Newspaper has an office in both Pukekohe and Waiuku  In 2015, the online events calendar and photo news Franklin Life NZ was launched 

Populated centres
Here are some of the following suburbs, towns, villages and other settlements within the former Franklin District's territorial area borders, grouped into their present-day adjacent areas:
Northern Franklin (now part of Auckland Super-City)

Wattle Bay, Orua Bay, Big Bay, Grahams Beach, Awhitu, Kauritutahi, Matakawau, Matakawau Point, Clarks Beach, Pollok, Te Toro, Glenbrook Beach, Waiau Beach, Mission Bush, Karioitahi, Waiuku, Kingseat, Waiau Pa, Patumahoe, Te Hihi, Karaka, Roseneath Road, Paerata, Pukekohe, Bombay, Ararimu, Hunua,Southern Franklin (now part of Waikato District)

Otaua, Aka Aka, Tuakau, Buckland, Paparimu, Pōkeno, Port Waikato, Mercer, Mangatāwhiri, Onewhero, Pukekawa, Glen Murray, Naike, Mangatangi, Limestone DownsNorth Eastern Franklin (now part of Hauraki District)

Waharau, Whakatīwai, Kaiaua, Miranda
Passage 11:
Mercia
Mercia (, Old English: Miercna rīċe; Latin: Merciorum regnum) was one of the three notable Anglic kingdoms founded after Sub-Roman Britain was settled by Anglo-Saxons in an era called the Heptarchy  It was centred on the River Trent and its tributaries, in a region now known as the Midlands of England 
A Latinisation of an Old English word derived from the Mercian Old English, Merce, meaning "borderland" (whence the Modern English words mark and march), the kingdom was rendered as Mierce or Myrce in the West Saxon dialect  The name is still used as a geographic designation by a wide range of organisations: military units, public, commercial and voluntary bodies The royal court moved around the kingdom without a fixed capital city  Early in its existence Repton seems to have been the location of an important royal estate  According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it was from Repton in 873–874 that the Great Heathen Army deposed the King of Mercia  Slightly earlier, King Offa seems to have favoured Tamworth  It was there where he was crowned and spent many a Christmas 
For 300 years (between 600 and 900), known as Mercian Supremacy or the "Golden Age of Mercia", having annexed or gained submissions from five of the other six kingdoms of the Heptarchy (East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex), Mercia dominated England south of the Humber estuary  During King Offa's reign, a dyke was created as the boundary between Mercia and the Welsh kingdoms  Nicholas Brooks noted that "the Mercians stand out as by far the most successful of the various early Anglo-Saxon peoples until the later ninth century", and some historians, such as Sir Frank Stenton, believe the unification of England south of the Humber estuary was achieved during Offa's reign King Peada converted to Christianity around 656, the Diocese of Mercia was founded in this year, with the first bishop (Diuma) based at Repton  The religion firmly established in the kingdom by the late 7th century  After 13 years at Repton, 669 AD, Saint Chad (the fifth bishop) moved the bishopric to Lichfield and, in 691 AD, the Diocese of Mercia became the Diocese of Lichfield  There has been a diocese based in the city ever since  For a brief period between 787 and 799 or 803 the diocese was an archbishopric  The current bishop, Michael Ipgrave, is the 99th since the diocese was established 
At the end of the 9th century, following the invasions of the Vikings and their Great Heathen Army, Danelaw absorbed much of the former Mercian territory  Danelaw at its height included London, all of East Anglia and most of the North of England 
The final Mercian king, Ceolwulf II, died in 879 with the kingdom appearing to have lost its political independence  Initially, it was ruled by a lord or ealdorman under the overlordship of Alfred the Great, who styled himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons"  The kingdom had a brief period of independence in the mid-10th century and in 1016, by which time it was viewed as a province with temporary independence  Wessex conquered and united all the kingdoms into the Kingdom of England  The kingdom became an earldom until 1071 

History
Early history
Mercia's exact evolution at the start of the Anglo-Saxon era remains more obscure than that of Northumbria, Kent, or even Wessex  Mercia developed an effective political structure and was Christianised later than the other kingdoms  Archaeological surveys show that Angles settled the lands north of the River Thames by the 6th century  The name "Mercia" is Mercian Old English for "boundary folk" (see Welsh Marches), and the traditional interpretation is that the kingdom originated along the frontier between the native Welsh and the Anglo-Saxon invaders  However, Peter Hunter Blair argued an alternative interpretation: that they emerged along the frontier between Northumbria and the inhabitants of the Trent river valley Although its earliest boundaries remain obscure, a general agreement persists that the territory that was called "the first of the Mercians" in the Tribal Hidage covered much of south Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Staffordshire and northern Warwickshire The earliest person named in any records as a king of Mercia is Creoda, said to have been the great-grandson of Icel  Coming to power around 584, he built a fortress at Tamworth which became the seat of Mercia's kings  His son Pybba succeeded him in 593  Cearl, a kinsman of Creoda, followed Pybba in 606; in 615, Cearl gave his daughter Cwenburga in marriage to Edwin, king of Deira, whom he had sheltered while he was an exiled prince The Mercian kings were the only Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy ruling house known to claim a direct family link with a pre-migration Continental Germanic monarchy 

Penda and the Mercian Supremacy
The next Mercian king, Penda, ruled from about 626 or 633 until 655  Some of what is known about Penda comes from the hostile account of Bede, who disliked him – both as an enemy to Bede's own Northumbria and as a pagan  However, Bede admits that Penda freely allowed Christian missionaries from Lindisfarne into Mercia and did not restrain them from preaching  In 633 Penda and his ally Cadwallon of Gwynedd defeated and killed Edwin, who had become not only ruler of the newly unified Northumbria, but bretwalda, or high king, over the southern kingdoms  When another Northumbrian king, Oswald, arose and again claimed overlordship of the south, he also suffered defeat and death at the hands of Penda and his allies – in 642 at the Battle of Maserfield  In 655, after a period of confusion in Northumbria, Penda brought 30 sub-kings to fight the new Northumbrian king Oswiu at the Battle of Winwaed, in which Penda in turn lost the battle and his life The battle led to a temporary collapse of Mercian power  Penda's son Peada, who had converted to Christianity at Repton in 653, succeeded his father as king of Mercia; Oswiu set up Peada as an under-king; but in the spring of 656 he was murdered and Oswiu assumed direct control of the whole of Mercia  A Mercian revolt in 658 threw off Northumbrian domination and resulted in the appearance of another son of Penda, Wulfhere, who ruled Mercia as an independent kingdom (though he apparently continued to render tribute to Northumbria for a while) until his death in 675  Wulfhere initially succeeded in restoring the power of Mercia, but the end of his reign saw a serious defeat by Northumbria  The next king, Æthelred, defeated Northumbria in the Battle of the Trent in 679, settling once and for all the long-disputed control of the former kingdom of Lindsey  Æthelred was succeeded by Cœnred, son of Wulfhere; both these kings became better known for their religious activities than anything else, but the king who succeeded them in 709, Ceolred, is said in a letter of Saint Boniface to have been a dissolute youth who died insane  So ended the rule of the direct descendants of Penda At some point before the accession of Æthelbald in 716 the Mercians conquered the region around Wroxeter, known to the Welsh as Pengwern or as "The Paradise of Powys"  Elegies written in the persona of its dispossessed rulers record the sorrow at this loss 
The next important king of Mercia, Æthelbald, reigned from 716 to 757  For the first few years of his reign he had to face two strong rival kings, Wihtred of Kent and Ine of Wessex  But when Wihtred died in 725, and Ine abdicated in 726 to become a monk in Rome, Æthelbald was free to establish Mercia's hegemony over the rest of the Anglo-Saxons south of the Humber  Æthelbald suffered a setback in 752, when the West Saxons under Cuthred defeated him, but he seems to have restored his supremacy over Wessex by 757 In July 2009, the Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold was discovered by Terry Herbert in a field at Hammerwich, near Brownhills and close to  Lichfield in Staffordshire  Lichfield functioned as the religious centre of Mercia  The artefacts have tentatively been dated by Svante Fischer and Jean Soulat to around AD 600–800  Whether the hoard was deposited by Anglo-Saxon pagans or Christians remains unclear, as does the purpose of the deposit 

Reign of Offa and rise of Wessex
After the murder of Æthelbald by one of his bodyguards in 757, a civil war broke out which concluded with the victory of Offa, a descendant of Pybba  Offa (reigned 757 to 796) had to build anew the hegemony which his predecessor had exercised over the southern English, and he did this so successfully that he became the greatest king Mercia had ever known  Not only did he win battles and dominate Southern England, but also he took an active hand in administering the affairs of his kingdom, founding market towns and overseeing the first major issues of gold coins in Britain; he assumed a role in the administration of the Catholic Church in England (sponsoring the short-lived archbishopric of Lichfield, 787 to 799), and even negotiated with Charlemagne as an equal  Offa is credited with the construction of Offa's Dyke, which marked the border between Wales and Mercia Offa exerted himself to ensure that his son Ecgfrith of Mercia would succeed him, but after Offa's death in July 796 Ecgfrith survived for only five months, and the kingdom passed to a distant relative named Coenwulf in December 796  In 821 Coenwulf's brother Ceolwulf succeeded to the Mercian kingship; he demonstrated his military prowess by his attack on and destruction of the fortress of Deganwy in Gwynedd  The power of the West Saxons under Egbert (King of Wessex from 802 to 839) grew during this period, however, and in 825 Egbert defeated the Mercian king Beornwulf (who had overthrown Ceolwulf in 823) at Ellendun The Battle of Ellendun proved decisive  At this point, Mercia lost control of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and possibly also Essex  Beornwulf was slain while suppressing a revolt amongst the East Angles, and his successor, a former ealdorman named Ludeca (reigned 826–827), met the same fate  Another ealdorman, Wiglaf, subsequently ruled for less than two years before Egbert of Wessex drove him out of Mercia  In 830 Wiglaf regained independence for Mercia, but by this time Wessex had clearly become the dominant power in England  Circa 840 Beorhtwulf succeeded Wiglaf 

Arrival of the Danes
In 852, Burgred came to the throne, and with Ethelwulf of Wessex subjugated North Wales  In 868 Danish invaders occupied Nottingham  The Danes drove Burgred from his kingdom in 874 and Ceolwulf II took his place  In 877 the Danes seized the eastern part of Mercia, which became part of the Danelaw  Ceolwulf, the last king of Mercia, left with the western half, reigned until 879  From about 883 until his death in 911 Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, ruled Mercia under the overlordship of Wessex  Alfred changed his title from 'king of the West Saxons' to 'king of the Anglo-Saxons' to reflect the acceptance of his overlordship of all southern England not under Danish rule  All coins struck in Mercia after the disappearance of Ceolwulf in c  879 were in the name of the West Saxon king  Æthelred had married Æthelflæd (c  870 – 12 June 918), daughter of Alfred the Great of Wessex (r  871–899), and she assumed power when her husband became ill at some time in the last ten years of his life After Æthelred's death in 911 Æthelflæd ruled as "Lady of the Mercians", but Alfred's successor as King of the Anglo-Saxons, Edward the Elder (r  899–924), took control of London and Oxford, which Alfred had placed under Æthelred's control  Æthelflæd and her brother continued Alfred's policy of building fortified burhs, and by 918 they had conquered the southern Danelaw in East Anglia and Danish Mercia 

Loss of independence
When Æthelflæd died in 918, Ælfwynn, her daughter by Æthelred, succeeded as "Second Lady of the Mercians", but within six months Edward had deprived her of all authority in Mercia and taken her to Wessex  Edward was succeeded as king of the Anglo-Saxons by his eldest son Æthelstan (r  924–939), who had been brought up in Mercia, and he was immediately accepted as king, but not in Wessex until the following year  In 927 he conquered Northumbria and thus became the first king of all England  Mercia briefly regained a political existence separate from Wessex in 955–959, when Edgar became king of Mercia, and again in 1016, when Cnut and Edmund Ironside divided the English kingdom between themselves, with Cnut taking Mercia  Mercia maintained its separate identity as an earldom until the Norman Conquest in 1066 

Mercian Old English
The dialect thrived between the 8th and 13th centuries and was referred to by John Trevisa, writing in 1387:
For men of the est with men of the west, as it were undir the same partie of hevene, acordeth more in sownynge of speche than men of the north with men of the south, therfore it is that Mercii, that beeth men of myddel Engelond, as it were parteners of the endes, understondeth better the side langages, northerne and southerne, than northerne and southerne understondeth either other   
J  R  R  Tolkien is one of many scholars who have studied and promoted the Mercian dialect of Old English, and introduced various Mercian terms into his legendarium – especially in relation to the Kingdom of Rohan, otherwise known as the Mark (a name cognate with Mercia)    The Mercian dialect is the basis of Tolkien's language of Rohan, and a number of its kings are given the same names as monarchs who appear in the Mercian royal genealogy, e g  Fréawine, Fréaláf and Éomer (see List of kings of the Angles) 

Mercian religion
The first kings of Mercia were pagans, and they resisted the encroachment of Christianity longer than other kingdoms in the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy Mercian rulers remained resolutely pagan until the reign of Peada in 656, although this did not prevent them joining coalitions with Christian Welsh rulers to resist Northumbria  The first appearance of Christianity in Mercia, however, had come at least thirty years earlier, following the Battle of Cirencester of 628, when Penda incorporated the formerly West Saxon territories of Hwicce into his kingdom The conversion of Mercia to Christianity occurred in the latter part of the 7th century, and by the time of Penda's defeat and death, Mercia was largely surrounded by Christian states  Diuma, an Irish monk and one of Oswiu's missionaries, was subsequently ordained a bishop – the first to operate in Mercia  Christianity finally gained a foothold in Mercia when Oswiu supported Peada as sub-king of the Middle Angles, requiring him to marry Oswiu's daughter, Alchflaed, and to accept her religion Decisive steps to Christianise Mercia were taken by Chad (Latinised by Bede as Ceadda), the fifth bishop to operate in Mercia  This controversial figure was given land by King Wulfhere to build a monastery at Lichfield  Evidence suggests that the Lichfield Gospels were made in Lichfield around 730  As in other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the many small monasteries established by the Mercian kings allowed the political/military and ecclesiastical leadership to consolidate their unity through bonds of kinship 

Subdivisions of Mercia
For knowledge of the internal composition of the Kingdom of Mercia, we must rely on a document of uncertain age (possibly late 7th century), known as the Tribal Hidage – an assessment of the extent (but not the location) of land owned (reckoned in hides), and therefore the military obligations and perhaps taxes due, by each of the Mercian tribes and subject kingdoms by name  This hidage exists in several manuscript versions, some as late as the 14th century  It lists a number of peoples, such as the Hwicce, who have now vanished, except for reminders in various placenames  The major subdivisions of Mercia were as follows:
South MerciansThe Mercians dwelling south of the River Trent  Folk groups within included the Tomsæte around Tamworth and the Pencersæte around Penkridge (roughly corresponding to southern Staffordshire and northern Warwickshire) North MerciansThe Mercians dwelling north of the River Trent (roughly corresponding to eastern Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire) Outer MerciaAn early phase of Mercian expansion, possibly 6th century (roughly corresponding to southern Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire) LindseyOnce a kingdom in its own right, disputed with Northumbria in the 7th century before finally coming under Mercian control (roughly corresponding to the historic riding of Lindsey in Lincolnshire) Middle AnglesA collection of many smaller folk groups under Mercian control from the 7th century, including the Spaldingas around Spalding, the Bilmingas and Wideringas near Stamford, the North Gyrwe and South Gyrwe near Peterborough, the West Wixna, East Wixna, West Wille and East Wille near Ely, the Sweordora, Hurstingas and Gifle near Bedford, the Hicce around Hitchin, the Cilternsæte in the Chilterns and the Feppingas near Thame (roughly corresponding to Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and southern Oxfordshire) HwicceOnce a kingdom in its own right, disputed with Wessex in the 7th century before finally coming under Mercian control  Smaller folk groups within included the Stoppingas around Warwick and the Arosæte near Droitwich (roughly corresponding to Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and southern Warwickshire) MagonsæteA people of the Welsh border, also known as the Westerna, under Mercian control from the 7th century  Smaller folk groups within included the Temersæte near Hereford and the Hahlsæte near Ludlow (roughly corresponding to Herefordshire and southern Shropshire) WreocansæteA people of the Welsh border under Mercian control from the 7th century  Smaller folk groups within included the Rhiwsæte near Wroxeter and the Meresæte near Chester (roughly corresponding to northern Shropshire, Flintshire and Cheshire) PecsæteAn isolated folk group of the Peak District, under Mercian control from the 7th century (roughly corresponding to northern Derbyshire) Land Between Ribble & MerseyA disorganised region under Mercian control from the 7th century (roughly corresponding to Merseyside, Greater Manchester, and Lancashire south of the River Ribble)  It was the most northern extent of the kingdom, and at certain times was claimed by Northumbria and Danelaw Middle SaxonsTaken over from Essex in the 8th century, including London (roughly corresponding to Greater London, Hertfordshire, and Surrey) After Mercia was annexed by Wessex in the early 10th century, the West Saxon rulers divided it into shires modelled after their own system, cutting across traditional Mercian divisions  These shires survived mostly intact until 1974, and even today still largely follow their original boundaries 

Legacy
Modern uses of the name Mercia
The term "midlands" is first recorded (as mydlonde-shiris) in 1475  John Bateman, writing in 1876 or 1883, referred to contemporary Cheshire and Staffordshire landholdings as being in Mercia  The most credible source for the idea of a contemporary Mercia is Thomas Hardy's Wessex novels  The first of these appeared in 1874 and Hardy himself considered it the origin of the conceit of a contemporary Wessex  Bram Stoker set his 1911 novel The Lair of the White Worm in a contemporary Mercia that may have been influenced by Hardy, whose secretary was a friend of Stoker's brother  Although 'Edwardian Mercia' never had the success of 'Victorian Wessex', it was an idea that appealed to the higher echelons of society  In 1908 Sir Oliver Lodge, Principal of Birmingham University, wrote to his counterpart at Bristol, welcoming a new university worthy of "   the great Province of Wessex whose higher educational needs it will supply  It will be no rival, but colleague and co-worker with this university, whose province is Mercia   " The British Army has made use of several regional identities in naming larger, amalgamated formations  After the Second World War, the infantry regiments of Cheshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire were organised in the Mercian Brigade (1948–1968)  Today, "Mercia" appears in the titles of two regiments, the Mercian Regiment, founded in 2007, which recruits in Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire, and parts of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, and the Royal Mercian and Lancastrian Yeomanry, founded in 1992 as part of the Territorial Army  In 1967, the police forces of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire were combined into the West Mercia Constabulary, which changed its name to West Mercia Police in 2009 Telephone directories across the Midlands include a large number of commercial and voluntary organisations using "Mercia" in their names, and in 2012 a new football league was formed called the Mercian Regional Football League Free Radio Coventry & Warwickshire, a commercial radio station, was originally launched in 1980 as Mercia Sound, later becoming Mercia FM 

Symbolism and attributed heraldry
There is no authentic indigenous Mercian heraldic device, as heraldry did not develop in any recognizable form until the High Middle Ages The saltire as a symbol of Mercia may have been in use since the time of King Offa  By the 13th century, the saltire had become the attributed arms of the Kingdom of Mercia  The arms are blazoned Azure, a saltire Or, meaning a gold (or yellow) saltire on a blue field  The arms were subsequently used by the Abbey of St Albans, founded by King Offa of Mercia  With the dissolution of the Abbey and the incorporation of the borough of St Albans the device was used on the town's corporate seal and was officially recorded as the arms of the town at an heraldic visitation in 1634 The saltire is used as both a flag and a coat of arms  As a flag, it is flown from Tamworth Castle, the ancient seat of the Mercian Kings, to this day  The flag also appears on street signs welcoming people to Tamworth, the "ancient capital of Mercia"  It was also flown outside Birmingham Council House during 2009 while the Staffordshire Hoard was on display in the city before being taken to the British Museum in London  The cross has been incorporated into a number of coats of arms of Mercian towns, including Tamworth, Leek and Blaby  It was recognised as the Mercian flag by the Flag Institute in 2014 The silver double-headed eagle surmounted by a golden three-pronged Saxon crown has been used by several units of the British Army as a heraldic device for Mercia since 1958, including the Mercian Regiment  It is derived from the attributed arms of Leofric, Earl of Mercia in the 11th century  It is worth noting, however, that Leofric is sometimes attributed a black, single-headed eagle instead The wyvern, a type of dragon, came to have a strong association with Mercia in the 19th century  The Midland Railway, which used a white (silver) wyvern sans legs (legless) as its crest, having inherited it from the Leicester and Swannington Railway, asserted that the "wyvern was the standard of the Kingdom of Mercia", and that it was "a quartering in the town arms of Leicester"  The symbol appeared on numerous stations and other company buildings in the region, and was worn as a silver badge by all uniformed employees  However, in 1897 the Railway Magazine noted that there appeared "to be no foundation that the wyvern was associated with the Kingdom of Mercia"  It has been associated with Leicester since the time of Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster and Leicester (c  1278–1322), the most powerful lord in the Midlands, who used it as his personal crest, and was recorded in a heraldic visitation of the town in 1619 In Bram Stoker's 1911 novel The Lair of the White Worm, explicitly set in Mercia (see above), the Mercian white wyvern sans legs of the Midland Railway was transformed into a monstrous beast, the eponymous worm of the title  The word "worm" is derived from Old English wyrm and originally referred to a dragon or serpent  "Wyvern" derives from Old Saxon wivere, also meaning serpent, and is etymologically related to viper The ultimate source for the symbolism of white dragons in England would appear to be Geoffrey of Monmouth's fictional work,  The History of the Kings of Britain (c  1136), which recounts an incident in the life of Merlin where a red dragon is seen fighting a white dragon and prevailing  The red dragon was taken to represent the Welsh and their eventual victory over the Anglo-Saxon invaders, symbolised by the white dragon The philologist and Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey has suggested that the Middle Kingdom in J  R  R  Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham, a story dominated by a dragon, is based on Mercia, the part of England where Tolkien grew up  This dragon, Chrysophylax, though mostly hostile, eventually helps Giles found a realm of his own, the Little Kingdom  Shippey states further that "the Mark", the land of the Riders of Rohan – all of whom have names in the Mercian dialect of Old English – was once the usual term for central England, and it would have been pronounced and written "marc" rather than the West Saxon "mearc" or the Latinized "Mercia" 

See also
Lichfield
List of monarchs of Mercia
List of Anglo-Saxon Mercians
Mercian Old English
Mercian Trail
Old English
Repton Abbey
Staffordshire Hoard
Tamworth, Staffordshire
Wessex
Passage 12:
Brimpton
Brimpton is a mostly rural village and civil parish in West Berkshire, England  Brimpton is centred 4 5 miles (7 2 km) ESE of the town of Newbury 

Toponymy
One suggested origin of the name of Brimpton comes from "Brynni's Town"; Brynni was an Anglo-Saxon owner of the land  A more likely explanation is that Brimpton stands on a hill, and the name comes from a Saxo-Celtic version of "Hill Town"; the Celtic word for hill being "bryn"  This name was probably coined in reference to the Iron Age settlement Brimpton has also been recorded as Brinniggetun and Bryningtune (in the 10th century) and Brintone (in the 11th century)  More recent alternative names include Brinton, Brimton, Brumton and Brumpton 

Geography
The village occupies a few square miles of land south of the Kennet and Avon Canal and the A4 road, and north of the Enborne which forms the southern then the eastern boundary between slopes of an escarpment where the two parts of the village are concentrated: the nucleus of the village and Brimpton Common   On a lower slope 0 5 miles (0 80 km) south is Hyde End which has fewer than 12 farmhouses and Victorian cottages  Other villages nearby include Aldermaston and Woolhampton  A newer settlement in the parish, Brimpton Common is on the elevated south bank of the Enborne next to Ashford Hill with Headley in Hampshire  
The east of the village is part of the Wasing Manor Estate in Wasing and the village has a few outlying farms with a large minority of its land made up of the sloped woods including Inwood Copse, Chaplain's Wood and Hyde End Wood  Two  woods south of the village are managed for timber: Bannister's Wood and Arundell's Copse, the first of these is at the edge of the flood plain of the Enborne Brimpton Pit is a site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) 

History
Evidence of Bronze Age inhabitation of Brimpton is in the five round barrows and two bell barrows in the area leading up to the border with Baughurst to the south  Known as "Borson Barrows", the tumuli were referred to in an Anglo-Saxon charter in AD 944  There have also been Iron Age and Roman settlements identified within the parish  The hypocaust of a villa was uncovered in the village, though records of its exact location no longer exist  One possible location is opposite Brimpton House near the parish church  A mediaeval bronze steelyard weight was found in the garden of the old moated house at Brimpton Manor In the 10th century, 10 hides of land in Brimpton were given to Ordulf (or Ordwulf), a thegn of Edmund I  The Domesday Book of 1086 lists the village as "Brintone", and identifies Robert FitzGerald and Ralph de Mortimer as the lords of the manors of Shalford and Brimpton respectively  It also mentions two churches, three mills, and a dairy Brimpton was visited by William Cobbett on 30 October 1822 on his way to London; he noted its name as "Brimton", but did not write further about the village  John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870–1872) described Brimpton as "a parish in Newbury district, Berks; on the rivers Emborne and Kennet"  Wilson noted that the area of the village measured 1,692 acres (685 ha) and had property to the value of £3,720 (equivalent to £378,674 in 2021)  The population was 452, divided amongst 101 homes  He described the position of vicar including vicarage, at that time under the patronage of Rev  G B Caffin, as worth £351  He wrote that the church was "good", with charities of £84  Of its history Wilson noted that a preceptory of the Knights Templar (Shalford Preceptory) was established in Brimpton in the 13th century   A medieval roll has reference to the Hospitallers as holding land here in 1251 and again in 1275–6, when they are described as of Shalford  In 1302 the king appears to have been the guest of the Knights at Brimpton — his Letters Patent were dated from Shalford manor here 29 November, and the Hospitallers continued to hold this manor till their dissolution in 1540, when it was under the Dissolution of the Monasteries seized and redistributed by Henry VIII At the centre of the village is the war memorial commemorating the twenty two former residents who died in World War I and two who died in World War II 

Social history
The village relied heavily on agriculture which covers most of the district and employed more than half of the working population in the 19th century   St  Peter's almshouses for aged married couples and aged widows were erected by Anne Bankes, then Countess of Falmouth, who by her will left £3,000 for their repair, maintenance and inmates' support   She left almost £667 in the church's trust for the school mistress' salary (combined these are equivalent to £383,584 in 2021)  The trust fund, with accumulations, was for many years the most significant in the village and produced an income of almost £80 a year in 1924, when each inmate received a small pension of a fifth of a pound a week, with an extra payment at Christmas and Easter 

Lords of the Manor
Brimpton Manor
At the time of Edward the Confessor, Brimpton Manor was owned by Godwin, Earl of Wessex (Edward's father-in-law)  It was later owned by Ralph de Mortimer (at the time of the Domesday Survey) and, subsequently, his son Hugh  Hugh's son, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, succeeded him as lord of the manor, and the ownership passed through the Mortimer of Wigmore family  The manor passed through marriage to the Earldom of March  Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March died childless in the 1420s and the manor was inherited by Richard, Duke of York  After his death in 1460, the manor was owned by his wife Cecily Neville, until its ownership was reverted to the crown on her death 

Shalford Manor
In the Domesday Survey, Shalford Manor was owned by Robert FitzGerald  It had previously been under the ownership of Brictric, a Saxon freeman and thegn to Edward the Confessor  After FitzGerald's death, his estates passed to his brother Gerald, and subsequently to Gerald's son, Roger  On Roger's death, his son – William de Roumare, Earl of Lincoln – inherited the manor  William's son predeceased him, so the manor passed to his grandson – also named William  During this ownership, Simon de Ovile – a tenant of William – granted use of the 3 5 hide estate to the Knights Hospitaller  Letters Patent dated 29 November 1302 show that the Knights hosted Edward I at Shalford The Knights held the manor until their dissolution in 1540  After this, ownership passed to the crown In 1544, Henry VIII exchanged the manor with William Wollascott for the manor of Dalehall in Lawford, Essex  Wollascott's son, also named William, purchased the manor of Brimpton in 1595  When he became lord of the manor upon his father's death in 1618, he became owner of both manors 

Demography
The mean age of residents was in 2001: 38 74, and the median was 40 

Religion
There have been at least three churches in Brimpton, two of which are still in use  The main Anglican church is dedicated to St Peter, and is a Grade II listed building  It was built in 1869 in designed in the 14th-century style  The flint building has a tower (with an octagonal shingled spire) and a wooden porch  The roof is tiled  The interior has a chancel, organ chamber, vestry, a nave with three bays and two aisles, and is faced with ashlar  The structural columns are granite  The belfry holds four bells, dating from 1624 to 1842  The oldest bell, the fourth, was recast by Mears and Stainbank in 1876 

The other operational church is Brimpton Baptist Church, which was established in 1843 The chapel of St Leonard, a 14th-century stone building, is located on Manor Farm  It was used as the place of worship of the Shalford Preceptory, a group of Knights Templar (and later Knights Hospitaller) who had formed in the 13th century  By 1614, the chapel had been converted into a barn at Brimpton Court 

Amenities
The village has a charity shop, a pub, The Three Horseshoes, and the village church  There is also a Church of England primary school  Brimpton Airfield, a mile east of the village, has a 620 metres (2,030 ft) grass runway for light aircraft 

Demography



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