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 1: 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
Context 2: Passage 1:
Veera Ballala II
Veera Ballala II (Kannada: ವೀರ ಬಲ್ಲಾಳ 2) (r  1173–1220 CE) was the most notable monarch of the Hoysala Empire  His successes against the Yadavas of Devagiri, the Southern Kalachuris, the Pandyas of Madurai and the waning Western Chalukya Empire, and his domination over the diminishing Cholas of Tanjore took the Hoysalas to their peak of power  The historian Chaurasia claims by the end of the 12th century, Ballala II's conquests had made the Hoysalas the most powerful dynasty of the Deccan  According to historian Derrett, Ballala II was "the most outstanding among Hoysala kings", and historian William Coelho in comparing Ballala II to King Vishnuvardhana writes, "he vied in glory with his grandfather" His court was adorned with some of the most notable of medieval Kannada language poets including the Jain poets Janna and Nemichandra, and the Brahman poet Rudrabhatta  According to the historians Chopra et al , during his rule, the Hoysala kingdom consolidated into an independent empire commencing an age of "Hoysala imperialism"  His architectural legacy includes among numerous ornate temples, the Kedareshwara temple, the Veera Narayana temple and the Amrutesvara temple  He was ably supported in war and in administrative matters by his son, prince Vira Narasimha II, and crowned queen Umadevi  His other queen Cholamahadevi was a Chola princes  His daughter Somaladevi was given in marriage to the Chola monarch Kulothunga Chola III 

Wars against the neighbouring kingdoms
Ballala II's ascendancy to the Hoysala throne in c  1173 was preceded by his successful rebellion against his weak father Narasimha I with the help of some malnad chiefs, such as the Chengalvas and the Kongalvas  He later ensured the same chiefs' could not rise against him  In the late 12th century, the weakening Chalukya throne became the bone of contention between the main vassals, the Yadavas, the Hoysalas and the Kalachuris  Around c 1168, the Kalachuri King Bijjala II had gained control of the Chalukyan capital Basavakalyan (then called Kalyani, in modern Bidar district of Karnataka state)  According to historian Kamath, in c 1171, an ambitious Ballala tasted first victory against Pandya king Kavadeva of the Uchchangi family  This was followed by the annexation of Hangal in c 1178  But an attempt by him to invade Belvola-300 in c 1179 led to his defeat by Kalachuri commander Sankama who seized Hangal  According to Chopra et al , in c 1179, a Kalachuri invasion into the Hoysala territory resulted in a truce with Ballala II agreeing to accept nominal subordination and to help the Kalachuri in their designs against the Chalukyas  However, by c 1183, the Kalachuris themselves were in serious decline due to the inept rule of the sons of Bijjala II  The last Chalukya scion, Someshvara IV, was back in control of his capital Basavakalyan with help from the Kalachuri commander Brahma 
The real contention now, for the territories in the Krishna-Tungabhadra doab region was between the Yadava King Bhillama V and the Hoysala monarch Ballala II  By c 1189, Basavakalyana had fallen to Bhillama V who nevertheless failed to gain recognition from Chalukya vassals such as the Rattas, the Kadambas of Banavasi and the Shilahara  Taking advantage of this uncertainty, Ballala II led several expeditions to Banavasi against the exiled Chalukya King Someshvara VI and defeated him by c 1190  In c 1191, the Hoysala monarch gained the upper hand over Yadava Bhillama V in the critical battles of Soratur and Lakkundi (in the modern Gadag district) where he appears to have spent much time consolidating his gains  Thus, Ballala II was able to push the northern boundaries of the Hoysala empire up to the Malaprabha river and Krishna rivers  By c 1192, Ballala II had crowned himself the emperor over the entire modern Karnataka region  A record of his dated c 1196 claims him victorious over several minor ruling families including those of Banavasi, Hangal, Halashi, Nolambavadi (Nolamba dynasty), Bagalkot, and Gulbarga (Yelburgi) indicating he had complete control over the rich Tungabhadra-Krishna river region  After c 1212, he lost all these territories north of the Tungabhadra river to Yadava king Singhana II 

Relationship with Cholas
Around c 1216, Maravarman Sundara Pandya ascended the throne at Madurai  To seek revenge for the humiliation of his elder brother Jatavarman Kulashekara by the Chola monarch Kulothunga III, he invaded the Chola territory and drove Kulothunga into exile  Kulothunga III sought the help of the Hoysalas  Ballala II promptly sent his forces under the command of prince Narasimha II who succeeded in repulsing the Pandya and re-establishing the Chola kingdom  With this victory, Ballala II not only assumed imperial titles such as Cholarajyapratishtacharya ("Establisher of the Chola kingdom"), Hoysala Chakravarti ("Hoysala emperor") and Dakshina Chakravarti ("Emperor of the south"), he also brought under his direct control parts of the rich Kaveri plains around Srirangam (central Tamil Nadu)  A Hoysala army was left standing in Kanchi to pursue hostilities with the Telugu Chodas and their overlords, the Kakatiya dynasty  In words of historian John Keay, "Gloriously if briefly the Hoysalas were paramount throughout most of the Kannada speaking Deccan, and could pose a arbiters in the lusher lands below the Eastern Ghats" 

Patron of art and architecture
Veera Ballala II was a great patron of Kannada literature  Janna, one of the most influential Kannada poets of the 13th century, graced his court and was honored with the title Kavichakravarthi ("Emperor among poets")  His most noteworthy writing and magnum opus, the Yashodhara Charitre (c 1209) deals with Jain tenets  Nemichandra was court poet to both Ballala II and the Shilahara King Lakshmana of Kholapur  He wrote Lilavati Prabandha (about c 1170), the earliest available romantic true fiction in Kannada, and an unfinished Jain epic called Neminathapurana at the instance of Ballala II's minister  Rudrabhatta, a noteworthy Brahman writer of the late 12th century was patronized by the king and one of his ministers  He composed the Jagannatha Vijaya in c 1180, the earliest available Vaishnava epic in the Kannada language Ballala II's rule saw the proliferation of the temple construction adhering to the Vesara architecture, a style first made popular by the Western Chalukyas  Some of the best known temples built during his rule were the Kedareshwara temple at Halebidu, the Veera Narayana temple at Belavadi, the Amrutesvara Temple at Amruthapura and the twin ensemble of the Chennakeshava and Nageshvara temples at Mosale Ballala II donated Meruhalli village and other lands in 1174 CE for providing food to Jain monks  He further gifted two villages to Vajranandi-Siddhantadeva for the same purpose  Nanjedevaragudda stone inscription of 1192 CE describes the donations by Hoysala rulers and subjects for Jain monks at Abhinava Shantideva temple at Somepur, Hassan district 
Passage 2:
George VI
George VI (Albert Frederick Arthur George; 14 December 1895 – 6 February 1952) was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death on 6 February 1952  He was also the last Emperor of India from 1936 until the British Raj was dissolved in August 1947, and the first Head of the Commonwealth following the London Declaration of 1949 
The future George VI was born in the reign of his great-grandmother Victoria; he was named Albert at birth after his great-grandfather Albert, Prince Consort, and was known as "Bertie" to his family and close friends  His father ascended the throne as George V in 1910  As the second son of the king, Albert was not expected to inherit the throne  He spent his early life in the shadow of his elder brother, Prince Edward, the heir apparent  Albert attended naval college as a teenager and served in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force during the First World War  In 1920, he was made Duke of York  He married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1923, and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret  In the mid-1920s, he engaged speech therapist Lionel Logue to treat his stutter, which he learned to manage to some degree  His elder brother ascended the throne as Edward VIII after their father died in 1936, but Edward abdicated later that year to marry the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson  As heir presumptive to Edward VIII, Albert thereby became the third monarch of the House of Windsor, taking the regnal name George VI 
In September 1939, the British Empire and most Commonwealth countries—but not Ireland—declared war on Nazi Germany  War with the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan followed in 1940 and 1941, respectively  George VI was seen as sharing the hardships of the common people and his popularity soared  Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Blitz while the King and Queen were there, and his younger brother the Duke of Kent was killed on active service  George became known as a symbol of British determination to win the war  Britain and its allies were victorious in 1945, but the British Empire declined  Ireland had largely broken away, followed by the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947  George relinquished the title of Emperor of India in June 1948 and instead adopted the new title of Head of the Commonwealth  He was beset by smoking-related health problems in the later years of his reign and died at Sandringham House, aged 56, of a coronary thrombosis in 1952  He was succeeded by his elder daughter, Elizabeth II 

Early life
Albert was born at York Cottage, on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria  His father was Prince George, Duke of York (later King George V), the second and only surviving son of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra)  His mother, the Duchess of York (later Queen Mary), was the eldest child and only daughter of Francis, Duke of Teck, and Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck  His birthday, 14 December 1895, was the 34th anniversary of the death of his great-grandfather Albert, Prince Consort  Uncertain of how the Prince Consort's widow, Queen Victoria, would take the news of the birth, the Prince of Wales wrote to the Duke of York that the Queen had been "rather distressed"  Two days later, he wrote again: "I really think it would gratify her if you yourself proposed the name Albert to her "The Queen was mollified by the proposal to name the new baby Albert, and wrote to the Duchess of York: "I am all impatience to see the new one, born on such a sad day but rather more dear to me, especially as he will be called by that dear name which is a byword for all that is great and good " Consequently, he was baptised "Albert Frederick Arthur George" at St Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham on 17 February 1896  Formally he was His Highness Prince Albert of York; within the royal family he was known informally as "Bertie"  The Duchess of Teck did not like the first name her grandson had been given, and she wrote prophetically that she hoped the last name "may supplant the less favoured one"  Albert was fourth in line to the throne at birth, after his grandfather, father and elder brother, Edward 
Albert was ill often and was described as "easily frightened and somewhat prone to tears"  His parents were generally removed from their children's day-to-day upbringing, as was the norm in aristocratic families of that era  He had a stutter that lasted for many years  Although naturally left-handed, he was forced to write with his right hand, as was common practice at the time  He had chronic stomach problems as well as knock knees, for which he was forced to wear painful corrective splints Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1901, and the Prince of Wales succeeded her as King Edward VII  Prince Albert moved up to third in line to the throne, after his father and elder brother 

Military career and education
Beginning in 1909, Albert attended the Royal Naval College, Osborne, as a naval cadet  In 1911 he came bottom of the class in the final examination, but despite this he progressed to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth  When his grandfather Edward VII died in 1910, his father became King George V  Prince Edward became Prince of Wales, with Albert second in line to the throne Albert spent the first six months of 1913 on the training ship HMS Cumberland in the West Indies and on the east coast of Canada  He was rated as a midshipman aboard HMS Collingwood on 15 September 1913  He spent three months in the Mediterranean, but never overcame his seasickness  Three weeks after the outbreak of World War I he was medically evacuated from the ship to Aberdeen, where his appendix was removed by Sir John Marnoch  He was mentioned in dispatches for his actions as a turret officer aboard Collingwood in the Battle of Jutland (31 May – 1 June 1916), the great naval battle of the war  He did not see further combat, largely because of ill health caused by a duodenal ulcer, for which he had an operation in November 1917 In February 1918 Albert was appointed Officer in Charge of Boys at the Royal Naval Air Service's training establishment at Cranwell  With the establishment of the Royal Air Force Albert transferred from the Royal Navy to the Royal Air Force  He served as Officer Commanding Number 4 Squadron of the Boys' Wing at Cranwell until August 1918, before reporting for duty on the staff of the RAF's Cadet Brigade at St Leonards-on-Sea and then at Shorncliffe  He completed a fortnight's training and took command of a squadron on the Cadet Wing  He was the first member of the British royal family to be certified as a fully qualified pilot Albert wanted to serve on the Continent while the war was still in progress and welcomed a posting to General Trenchard's staff in France  On 23 October, he flew across the Channel to Autigny  For the closing weeks of the war, he served on the staff of the RAF's Independent Air Force at its headquarters in Nancy, France  Following the disbanding of the Independent Air Force in November 1918, he remained on the Continent for two months as an RAF staff officer until posted back to Britain  He accompanied King Albert I of Belgium on his triumphal re-entry into Brussels on 22 November  Prince Albert qualified as an RAF pilot on 31 July 1919 and was promoted to squadron leader the following day In October 1919, Albert went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied history, economics and civics for a year, with the historian R  V  Laurence as his "official mentor"  On 4 June 1920 his father created him Duke of York, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killarney  He began to take on more royal duties  He represented his father and toured coal mines, factories, and railyards  Through such visits he acquired the nickname of the "Industrial Prince"  His stutter, and his embarrassment over it, together with a tendency to shyness, caused him to appear less confident in public than his older brother, Edward  However, he was physically active and enjoyed playing tennis  He played at Wimbledon in the Men's Doubles with Louis Greig in 1926, losing in the first round  He developed an interest in working conditions, and was president of the Industrial Welfare Society  His series of annual summer camps for boys between 1921 and 1939 brought together boys from different social backgrounds 

Marriage
In a time when royalty were expected to marry fellow royalty, it was unusual that Albert had a great deal of freedom in choosing a prospective wife  An infatuation with the already-married Australian socialite Lady Loughborough came to an end in April 1920 when the King, with the promise of the dukedom of York, persuaded Albert to stop seeing her  That year, he met for the first time since childhood Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the youngest daughter of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore  He became determined to marry her  Elizabeth rejected his proposal twice, in 1921 and 1922, reportedly because she was reluctant to make the sacrifices necessary to become a member of the royal family  In the words of Lady Strathmore, Albert would be "made or marred" by his choice of wife  After a protracted courtship, Elizabeth agreed to marry him Albert and Elizabeth were married on 26 April 1923 in Westminster Abbey  Albert's marriage to someone not of royal birth was considered a modernising gesture  The newly formed British Broadcasting Company wished to record and broadcast the event on radio, but the Abbey Chapter vetoed the idea (although the Dean, Herbert Edward Ryle, was in favour) 

From December 1924 to April 1925, the Duke and Duchess toured Kenya, Uganda, and the Sudan, travelling via the Suez Canal and Aden  During the trip, they both went big-game hunting Because of his stutter, Albert dreaded public speaking  After his closing speech at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley on 31 October 1925, one which was an ordeal for both him and his listeners, he began to see Lionel Logue, an Australian-born speech therapist  The Duke and Logue practised breathing exercises, and the Duchess rehearsed with him patiently  Subsequently, he was able to speak with less hesitation  With his delivery improved, Albert opened the new Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, during a tour of the empire with the Duchess in 1927  Their journey by sea to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji took them via Jamaica, where Albert played doubles tennis partnered with a black man, Bertrand Clark, which was unusual at the time and taken locally as a display of equality between races The Duke and Duchess had two children: Elizabeth (called "Lilibet" by the family, and the future Elizabeth II) who was born in 1926, and Margaret who was born in 1930  The close family lived at White Lodge, Richmond Park, and then at 145 Piccadilly, rather than one of the royal palaces  In 1931, the Canadian prime minister, R  B  Bennett, considered Albert for Governor General of Canada—a proposal that King George V rejected on the advice of the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, J  H  Thomas 

Reign
Reluctant king
King George V had severe reservations about Prince Edward, saying "After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months" and "I pray God that my eldest son will never marry and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne " On 20 January 1936, George V died and Edward ascended the throne as King Edward VIII  In the Vigil of the Princes, Prince Albert and his three brothers (the new king, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince George, Duke of Kent) took a shift standing guard over their father's body as it lay in state, in a closed casket, in Westminster Hall 
As Edward was unmarried and had no children, Albert was the heir presumptive to the throne  Less than a year later, on 11 December 1936, Edward abdicated in order to marry Wallis Simpson, who was divorced from her first husband and divorcing her second  Edward had been advised by British prime minister Stanley Baldwin that he could not remain king and marry a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands  He abdicated and Albert, though he had been reluctant to accept the throne, became king  The day before the abdication, Albert went to London to see his mother, Queen Mary  He wrote in his diary, "When I told her what had happened, I broke down and sobbed like a child "On the day of Edward's abdication, the Oireachtas, the parliament of the Irish Free State, removed all direct mention of the monarch from the Irish constitution  The next day, it passed the External Relations Act, which gave the monarch limited authority (strictly on the advice of the government) to appoint diplomatic representatives for Ireland and to be involved in the making of foreign treaties  The two acts made the Irish Free State a republic in essence without removing its links to the Commonwealth Across Britain, gossip spread that Albert was physically and psychologically incapable of being king  No evidence has been found to support the contemporaneous rumour that the government considered bypassing him, his children and his brother Prince Henry, in favour of their younger brother Prince George, Duke of Kent  This seems to have been suggested on the grounds that Prince George was at that time the only brother with a son 

Early reign
Albert assumed the regnal name "George VI" to emphasise continuity with his father and restore confidence in the monarchy  The beginning of George VI's reign was taken up by questions surrounding his predecessor and brother, whose titles, style and position were uncertain  He had been introduced as "His Royal Highness Prince Edward" for the abdication broadcast, but George VI felt that by abdicating and renouncing the succession, Edward had lost the right to bear royal titles, including "Royal Highness"  In settling the issue, George's first act as king was to confer upon his brother the title "Duke of Windsor" with the style "Royal Highness", but the letters patent creating the dukedom prevented any wife or children from bearing royal styles  George VI was forced to buy from Edward the royal residences of Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House, as these were private properties and did not pass to him automatically  Three days after his accession, on his 41st birthday, he invested his wife, the new queen consort, with the Order of the Garter 

George VI's coronation at Westminster Abbey took place on 12 May 1937, the date previously intended for Edward's coronation  In a break with tradition, his mother Queen Mary attended the ceremony in a show of support for her son  There was no Durbar held in Delhi for George VI, as had occurred for his father, as the cost would have been a burden to the Government of India  Rising Indian nationalism made the welcome that the royal party would have received likely to be muted at best, and a prolonged absence from Britain would have been undesirable in the tense period before the Second World War  Two overseas tours were undertaken, to France and to North America, both of which promised greater strategic advantages in the event of war The growing likelihood of war in Europe dominated the early reign of George VI  The King was constitutionally bound to support British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler  When the King and Queen greeted Chamberlain on his return from negotiating the Munich Agreement in 1938, they invited him to appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with them  This public association of the monarchy with a politician was exceptional, as balcony appearances were traditionally restricted to the royal family  While broadly popular among the general public, Chamberlain's policy towards Hitler was the subject of some opposition in the House of Commons, which led historian John Grigg to describe George's behaviour in associating himself so prominently with a politician as "the most unconstitutional act by a British sovereign in the present century" 

In May and June 1939, the King and Queen toured Canada and the United States; it was the first visit of a reigning British monarch to North America, although George had been to Canada prior to his accession  From Ottawa, George and Elizabeth were accompanied by Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King, to present themselves in North America as King and Queen of Canada  Both Mackenzie King and the Canadian governor general, Lord Tweedsmuir, hoped that George's presence in Canada would demonstrate the principles of the Statute of Westminster 1931, which gave full sovereignty to the British Dominions  On 19 May, George personally accepted and approved the Letter of Credence of the new U S  ambassador to Canada, Daniel Calhoun Roper; gave royal assent to nine parliamentary bills; and ratified two   international treaties with the Great Seal of Canada  The official royal tour historian, Gustave Lanctot, wrote "the Statute of Westminster had assumed full reality" and George gave a speech emphasising "the free and equal association of the nations of the Commonwealth" The trip was intended to soften the strong isolationist tendencies among the North American public with regard to the developing tensions in Europe  Although the aim of the tour was mainly political, to shore up Atlantic support for the United Kingdom in any future war, the King and Queen were enthusiastically received by the public  The fear that George would be compared unfavourably to his predecessor was dispelled  They visited the 1939 New York World's Fair and stayed with President Franklin D  Roosevelt at the White House and at his private estate at Hyde Park, New York  A strong bond of friendship was forged between Roosevelt and the royal couple during the tour, which had major significance in the relations between the United States and the United Kingdom through the ensuing war years 

Second World War
Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the United Kingdom and the self-governing Dominions other than Ireland declared war on Nazi Germany  The King and Queen resolved to stay in London, despite German bombing raids  They officially stayed in Buckingham Palace throughout the war, although they usually spent nights at Windsor Castle  The first night of the Blitz on London, on 7 September 1940, killed about one thousand civilians, mostly in the East End  On 13 September, the couple narrowly avoided death when two German bombs exploded in a courtyard at Buckingham Palace while they were there  In defiance, Elizabeth declared: "I am glad we have been bombed  It makes me feel we can look the East End in the face " The royal family were portrayed as sharing the same dangers and deprivations as the rest of the country  They were subject to British rationing restrictions, and U S  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt remarked on the rationed food served and the limited bathwater that was permitted during a stay at the unheated and boarded-up Palace  In August 1942, the King's brother, the Duke of Kent, was killed on active service 

In 1940, Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, though personally George would have preferred to appoint Lord Halifax  After the King's initial dismay over Churchill's appointment of Lord Beaverbrook to the Cabinet, he and Churchill developed "the closest personal relationship in modern British history between a monarch and a Prime Minister"  Every Tuesday for four and a half years from September 1940, the two men met privately for lunch to discuss the war in secret and with frankness  George related much of what the two discussed in his diary, which is the only extant first-hand account of these conversations Throughout the war, George and Elizabeth provided morale-boosting visits throughout the United Kingdom, visiting bomb sites, munitions factories, and troops  George visited military forces abroad in France in December 1939, North Africa and Malta in June 1943, Normandy in June 1944, southern Italy in July 1944, and the Low Countries in October 1944  Their high public profile and apparently indefatigable determination secured their place as symbols of national resistance  At a social function in 1944, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, revealed that every time he met Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, he thought Montgomery was after his job  George replied: "You should worry, when I meet him, I always think he's after mine!"In 1945, crowds shouted "We want the King!" in front of Buckingham Palace during the Victory in Europe Day celebrations  In an echo of Chamberlain's appearance, the King invited Churchill to appear with the royal family on the balcony to public acclaim  In January 1946, George addressed the United Nations at its first assembly, which was held in London, and reaffirmed "our faith in the equal rights of men and women and of nations great and small" 

Empire to Commonwealth
George VI's reign saw the acceleration of the dissolution of the British Empire  The Statute of Westminster 1931 had already acknowledged the evolution of the Dominions into separate sovereign states  The process of transformation from an empire to a voluntary association of independent states, known as the Commonwealth, gathered pace after the Second World War  During the ministry of Clement Attlee, British India became the two independent Dominions of India and Pakistan in August 1947  George relinquished the title of Emperor of India, and became King of India and King of Pakistan instead  In late April 1949, the Commonwealth leaders issued the London Declaration, which laid the foundation of the modern Commonwealth and recognised George as Head of the Commonwealth  In January 1950, he ceased to be King of India when it became a republic  He remained King of Pakistan until his death  Other countries left the Commonwealth, such as Burma in January 1948, Palestine (divided between Israel and the Arab states) in May 1948 and the Republic of Ireland in 1949 In 1947, George and his family toured southern Africa  The prime minister of the Union of South Africa, Jan Smuts, was facing an election and hoped to make political capital out of the visit  George was appalled, however, when instructed by the South African government to shake hands only with whites, and referred to his South African bodyguards as "the Gestapo"  Despite the tour, Smuts lost the election the following year, and the new government instituted a strict policy of racial segregation 

Illness and death
The stress of the war had taken its toll on George's health, made worse by his heavy smoking, and subsequent development of lung cancer among other ailments, including arteriosclerosis and Buerger's disease  A planned tour of Australia and New Zealand was postponed after George developed an arterial blockage in his right leg, which threatened the loss of the leg and was treated with a right lumbar sympathectomy in March 1949  His elder daughter and heir presumptive, Elizabeth, took on more royal duties as her father's health deteriorated  The delayed tour was re-organised, with Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, taking the place of the King and Queen 
George was well enough to open the Festival of Britain in May 1951, but on 4 June it was announced that he would need immediate and complete rest for the next four weeks, despite the arrival of Haakon VII of Norway the following afternoon for an official visit  On 23 September 1951, he underwent a surgical operation where his entire left lung was removed by Clement Price Thomas after a malignant tumour was found  In October 1951, Elizabeth and Philip went on a month-long tour of Canada; the trip had been delayed for a week due to George's illness  At the State Opening of Parliament in November, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Simonds, read the King's speech from the throne  The King's Christmas broadcast of 1951 was recorded in sections, and then edited together On 31 January 1952, despite advice from those close to him, George went to London Airport to see Elizabeth and Philip off on their tour to Australia via Kenya  It was his last public appearance  Six days later, at 07:30 GMT on the morning of 6 February, he was found dead in bed at Sandringham House in Norfolk  He had died in the night from a coronary thrombosis at the age of 56  His daughter flew back to Britain from Kenya as Queen Elizabeth II From 9 February George's coffin rested in St Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham, before lying in state at Westminster Hall from 11 February  His funeral took place at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on the 15th  He was interred initially in the Royal Vault until he was transferred to the King George VI Memorial Chapel inside St George's on 26 March 1969  In 2002, fifty years after his death, the remains of his widow, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and the ashes of his younger daughter, Princess Margaret, who both died that year, were interred in the chapel alongside him  In 2022, the remains of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, were also interred in the chapel 

Legacy
In the words of Labour Member of Parliament (MP) George Hardie, the abdication crisis of 1936 did "more for republicanism than fifty years of propaganda"  George VI wrote to his brother Edward that in the aftermath of the abdication he had reluctantly assumed "a rocking throne" and tried "to make it steady again"  He became king at a point when public faith in the monarchy was at a low ebb  During his reign, his people endured the hardships of war, and imperial power was eroded  However, as a dutiful family man and by showing personal courage, he succeeded in restoring the popularity of the monarchy The George Cross and the George Medal were founded at the King's suggestion during the Second World War to recognise acts of exceptional civilian bravery  He bestowed the George Cross on the entire "island fortress of Malta" in 1943  He was posthumously awarded the Order of Liberation by the French government in 1960, one of only two people (the other being Churchill in 1958) to be awarded the medal after 1946 Colin Firth won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as George VI in the 2010 film The King's Speech 

Titles, honours and arms
As Duke of York, Albert bore the royal arms of the United Kingdom differenced with a label of three points argent, the centre point bearing an anchor azure—a difference earlier awarded to his father, George V, when he was Duke of York, and then later awarded to his grandson Prince Andrew, Duke of York  As king, he bore the royal arms undifferenced 

Issue
Ancestry
Notes
Passage 3:
The King's Speech
The King's Speech is a 2010 historical drama film directed by Tom Hooper and written by David Seidler  Colin Firth plays the future King George VI who, to cope with a stammer, sees Lionel Logue, an Australian speech and language therapist played by Geoffrey Rush  The men become friends as they work together, and after his brother abdicates the throne, the new king relies on Logue to help him make his first wartime radio broadcast upon Britain's declaration of war on Germany in 1939 
Seidler read about George VI's life after learning to manage a stuttering condition he developed during his own youth  He started writing about the relationship between the therapist and his royal patient as early as the 1980s, but at the request of the King's widow, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, postponed work until her death in 2002  He later rewrote his screenplay for the stage to focus on the essential relationship between the two protagonists  Nine weeks before filming began, the filmmakers learned of the existence of notes written by Logue that were being used by his grandson Mark and Peter Conradi as the basis of a book, and were granted permission to incorporate material from the notes and book into the script 
Principal photography took place in London and around Britain from November 2009 to January 2010  Hard light was used to give the story a greater resonance and wider-than-normal lenses were employed to recreate the Duke of York's feelings of constriction  A third technique Hooper employed was the off-centre framing of characters 
The King's Speech was a major box office and critical success  It was widely praised by film critics for its visual style, art direction, screenplay, directing, score, and acting  Other commentators discussed the film's representation of historical detail, especially the reversal of Winston Churchill's opposition to abdication  The film received many awards and nominations, particularly for Colin Firth's performance, which resulted in his first Academy Award for Best Actor  At the 83rd Academy Awards, The King's Speech received 12 Oscar nominations, more than any other film in that year, and subsequently won four, including Best Picture  Censors initially gave it adult ratings due to profanity, though these were later revised downwards after criticism by the makers and distributors in the UK and some instances of swearing were muted in the US  On a budget of £8 million, it earned over £250 million internationally 

Plot
At the official closing of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium, Prince Albert, Duke of York, the second son of King George V, addresses the crowd with a strong stammer  His search for treatment has been discouraging, but his wife, Elizabeth, persuades him to see the Australian-born Lionel Logue, a non-medically trained Harley Street speech defects therapist  "Bertie", as he is called by his family, believes the first session is not going well, but Lionel, who insists that all his patients address him as such, has his potential client recite Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy while hearing classical music played on a pair of headphones  Bertie is frustrated at the experiment but Lionel gives him the acetate recording that he has made of the reading as a souvenir 
After Bertie's father, King George V, broadcasts his 1934 Royal Christmas Message, he explains to Bertie that the wireless will play a significant part in the role of the royal family, allowing them to enter the homes of the people, and that Bertie's brother's neglect of his responsibilities make training in it necessary  The attempt at reading the message himself is a failure, but that night Bertie plays the recording Lionel gave him and is astonished at the lack of stutter there  He therefore returns for daily treatments to overcome the physical and psychological roots of his speaking difficulty 
George V dies in 1936, and his eldest son David ascends the throne as King Edward VIII  A constitutional crisis arises with the new king over a prospective marriage with the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson  Edward, as the supreme governor of the Church of England, cannot marry her, even if she receives her second divorce, since both her previous husbands are alive 
At an unscheduled session, Bertie expresses his frustration that, while his speech has improved when speaking to most people, he still stammers when talking to David, at the same time revealing the extent of Edward VIII's folly with Simpson  When Lionel insists that Bertie himself could make a good king, Bertie accuses Lionel of speaking treason and quits Lionel in anger  Bertie must now face the Accession Council without any assistance 
Bertie and Lionel only come together again after King Edward decides to abdicate in order to marry  Bertie, urged ahead by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, ascends the throne as King George VI and visits Lionel's home with his wife before their coronation, much to the surprise of Mrs  Logue when she comes upon Queen Elizabeth having tea at her dining room table  This is the first time that she learns who her husband's patient has been 
Bertie and Lionel's relationship is questioned by the King's advisors during the preparations for his coronation in Westminster Abbey  The archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, brings to light that George never asked for advice from his advisors about his treatment and that Lionel has never had formal training   Lionel explains to an outraged Bertie that at the time he started with speech defects there were no formal qualifications and that the only known help that was available for returning Great War shell-shocked Australian soldiers was from personal experience  Bertie remains unconvinced until provoked to protest at Lionel's disrespect for King Edward's Chair and the Stone of Scone  Only at this pivotal moment, after realising he has just expressed himself without impairment, is Bertie able to rehearse with Lionel and complete the ceremony 
As the new king, Bertie is in a crisis when he must broadcast to Britain and the Empire following the declaration of war on Nazi Germany in 1939  Lionel is summoned to Buckingham Palace to prepare the king for his speech  Knowing the challenge that lies before him, Lang, Winston Churchill, and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain are present to offer support  The King and Logue are then left in the broadcasting room  He delivers his speech with Logue conducting him, but by the end he is speaking freely  Preparing to leave the room for the congratulations of those present, Logue mentions to the King that he still has difficulty enunciating w and the King jokes back, "I had to throw in a few so they'd know it was me "
As the Royal Family step onto the palace balcony and are applauded by the crowd, a title card explains that Logue, who received the Royal Victorian Order for service to the Crown, was always present at King George VI's speeches during the war and that they remained friends until the King's death from lung cancer in 1952 

Cast
Colin Firth as King George VI
Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue
Helena Bonham Carter as Queen Elizabeth
Guy Pearce as King Edward VIII
Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill
Derek Jacobi as Cosmo Gordon Lang
Jennifer Ehle as Myrtle Logue
Michael Gambon as King George V
Freya Wilson as Princess Elizabeth
Ramona Marquez as Princess Margaret
Patrick Ryecart as Lord Wigram
Simon Chandler as Lord Dawson of Penn
Claire Bloom as Queen Mary
Orlando Wells as Prince George, Duke of Kent
Tim Downie as Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester
Eve Best as Wallis Simpson
Anthony Andrews as Stanley Baldwin
Andrew Havill as Robert Wood

Production
Development
As a child, David Seidler developed a stammer, which he believes was caused by the emotional trauma of World War II and the murder of his grandparents during the Holocaust  King George VI's success in overcoming his stammer inspired the young Seidler, "Here was a stutterer who was a king and had to give radio speeches where everyone was listening to every syllable he uttered, and yet did so with passion and intensity " When Seidler became an adult, he resolved to write about King George VI  During the late 1970s and 1980s he voraciously researched the King, but found a dearth of information on Logue  Eventually Seidler contacted Valentine Logue, who agreed to discuss his father and make his notebooks available if the Queen Mother gave her permission  She asked him not to do so in her lifetime, and Seidler halted the project 

The Queen Mother died in 2002  Three years later, Seidler returned to the story during a bout of creative work inspired by a recovery from cancer  His research, including a chance encounter with an uncle whom Logue had treated, indicated he used mechanical breathing exercises combined with psychological counselling to probe the underlying causes of the condition  Thus prepared, Seidler imagined the sessions  He showed the finished screenplay to his wife, who liked it, but pronounced it too "seduced by cinematic technique"  She suggested he rewrite it as a stage play to focus on the essential relationship between the King and Logue  After he had completed it, he sent it to a few friends who worked in theatre in London and New York for feedback In 2005, Joan Lane of Wilde Thyme, a production company in London, received the script  Lane started talking with Simon Egan and Gareth Unwin of Bedlam Productions, and they invited Seidler to London to rewrite the play again, this time for the screen  Together, Lane and Bedlam Productions organised a reading of the play in Pleasance Theatre, a small house in north London, to a group of Australian expatriates, among whom was Tom Hooper's mother  She called her son and said, "I've found your next project" Instead of trying to contact his agent, Lane asked an Australian staff member to hand-deliver the script to Geoffrey Rush's house, not far away from hers in Melbourne  Unwin reports that he received a four-page e-mail from Rush's manager admonishing them for the breach of etiquette, but ending with an invitation to discuss the project further  Iain Canning from See-Saw Films became involved and, in Gareth Unwin's words: "We worked with ex-chair of BAFTA Richard Price, and started turning this story about two grumpy men sitting in a room into something bigger " Hooper liked the story, but thought that the original ending needed to be changed to reflect events more closely: "Originally, it had a Hollywood ending     If you hear the real speech, he's clearly coping with his stammer  But it's not a perfect performance  He's managing it "

The production team learned – some nine weeks prior to the start of filming – of a diary containing Logue's original notes on his treatment of the Duke, which was in the process of being turned into a non-fiction book by Logue's grandson Mark and journalist Peter Conradi, titled The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy  Striking an agreement with the authors, they then went back and re-worked the script to reflect what was in the notes and the book  Some lines, such as at the climax, when Logue smiles and says, "You still stammered on the W" to the King, who replies, "I had to throw in a few so they would know it was me" were direct quotations from Logue's notes  Changes from the script to reflect the historical record included Michael Gambon improvising the ramblings of George V as he signed away authority, and the decision in the opening scene to dress the Duke in an overcoat rather than regal finery Seidler thought Paul Bettany would be a good choice to play King George VI, while Hooper preferred Hugh Grant, though both actors declined the offer  Once they met with Firth and heard him read for the part, Seidler and Hooper were convinced of his suitability for the role The UK Film Council awarded the production £1 million in June 2009  Filming began in December 2009, and lasted 39 days  Most was shot in the three weeks before Christmas because Rush would be performing in a play in January  The schedule was further complicated by Bonham Carter's availability: she worked on Harry Potter during the week, so her scenes had to be filmed during the weekend 

Location and design
The film depicted both regal opulence and scruffy, depression-era London  On 25 November 2009 the crew took over the Pullens buildings in Southwark and gave it the appearance of a street from 1930s London  Large advertisements for (among other things) Bovril and fascism were added to walls, and grit and grime to streets and buildings  To reproduce London smog of the time – thick enough that cars might need guidance from someone walking ahead – so much artificial smoke was used that fire alarms were triggered On 26 November, a week's filming with Firth, Rush, and Jacobi began at Ely Cathedral, the location used for Westminster Abbey  The production had asked for permission to film in the Abbey but were denied due to the demands of tourism  Though Lincoln Cathedral is architecturally a closer match to the Abbey, they preferred Ely, a favoured filming location  Its size allowed them to build sets showing not just the coronation, but the preparations before it Lancaster House, an opulent government-owned period house in London, was rented (at £20,000 per day) for interior scenes of Buckingham Palace  The 1936 Accession Council at St  James's Palace, where George VI swore an oath, was filmed in the Livery Hall of Drapers' Hall  The room, ornate and vast, met the occasion: the daunting nature of the new King's responsibilities was shown by surrounding him with rich detail, flags and royal portraiture The crew investigated Logue's former consultation rooms, but they were too small to film in  Instead, they found a high, vaulted room not far away in 33 Portland Place  Eve Stewart, the production designer, liked the mottled, peeling wallpaper there so much that she recreated the effect throughout the entire room  In his DVD commentary, Hooper said he liked Portland Place as a set because it felt "lived in", unlike other period houses in London  The scenes of the Duke of York at home with his family were also filmed here; showing the Prince living in a townhouse "subverted" expectations of a royal drama 

The opening scene, set at the closing ceremony of the 1925 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium, was filmed on location at Elland Road, home of Leeds United, and Odsal Stadium, home of Bradford RLFC  Elland Road was used for the speech elements of the prince stammering his way through his first public address, and Odsal Stadium was selected because of the resemblance of its curved ends to Wembley Stadium in 1925  The crew had access to the stadium only at 10 pm, after a football game  They filled the terraces with inflatable dummies and over 250 extras dressed in period costumes  Live actors were interspersed to give the impression of a crowd  Additional people, as well as more ranks of soldiers on the pitch, were added in post-production with visual effects Other locations include Cumberland Lodge, Harley Street, Knebworth, Hatfield House, the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, Queen Street Mill Textile Museum in Burnley, and Battersea Power Station, which doubled as a BBC wireless control room  The final cut of the film was completed on 31 August 2010 

Dialogue
In developing his portrayal of George VI's stammer, Firth worked with Neil Swain, the voice coach for the film  His sister, Kate Firth, also a professional voice coach to actors, proposed exercises the King might have done with Logue, and made suggestions on how to imagine Logue's mix of physical and psychological coaching for the film In addition, Firth watched archive footage of the King speaking  In an interview with Allan Tyrer published by the British Stammering Association, Swain said: "[It] was very interesting while we were working on the film just to think tonally how far we could go and should go with the strength of George's stammer  I think a less courageous director than Tom [Hooper] – and indeed a less courageous actor than Colin [Firth] – might have felt the need to slightly sanitise the degree and authenticity of that stammer, and I'm really really pleased that neither of them did " In May 2011 Firth said he was finding traces of the stammer difficult to eliminate: "You can probably hear even from this interview, there are moments when it's quite infectious  You find yourself doing it and if I start thinking about it the worse it gets  If nothing else it's an insight into what it feels like "

Music
The film's original music is composed by Alexandre Desplat, which consisted of a sparse arrangement of strings and piano  The London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Terry Davies, limited orchestral score by only adding oboe and harp in one cut, to convey the character of the king, while also using single note to represent the stickiness of the King's speech  Old microphones extracted from the EMI archives, specially made for the royal family, had been used to record the score, to create a dated sound The use of the 2nd movement (Allegretto) of Beethoven's 7th Symphony, played during the broadcast of the 1939 radio speech from the film's climax, was played as a temp track added by editor Tariq Anwar  Desplat did not want to change the track and defended Anwar's suggestion, as the theme has a universal quality  Hooper further remarked that the stature of the piece helps elevate the status of the speech to a public event  The score album also featured Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Marriage of Figaro overture  The score was nominated for several awards, including Best Original Score at the Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs, winning the latter award  The score also won a Grammy at the 54th Grammy Awards 

Visual style
Hooper employed a number of cinematic techniques to evoke the King's feelings of constriction  He and cinematographer Danny Cohen used wider than normal lenses to photograph the film, typically 14mm, 18mm, 21mm, 25mm and 27mm, where the subtle distortion of the picture helps to convey the King's discomfort  For instance, the subjective point of view shot during the Empire exhibition speech used a close up of the microphone with a wider lens, similar to the filming technique used for one of the Duke's early consultations with a physician  In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote that the feeling of entrapment inside the King's head was rendered overly literal with what she believed to be a fisheye lens, though in these scenes the wider lenses were used  Hooper also discussed using the 18mm lens, one he likes "because it puts human beings in their context" Roger Ebert noted that the majority of the film was shot indoors, where oblong sets, corridors, and small spaces manifest constriction and tightness, in contrast to the usual emphasis on sweep and majesty in historical dramas  Hooper used wide shots to capture the actors' body language, particularly that of Geoffrey Rush, who trained at L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris and "is consequently brilliant in the way he carries his body"  Hooper widened his scope first to capture Rush's gestures, then full body movements and silhouettes  The approach carried over to Firth as well  In the first consultation scene, the Duke is squeezed against the end of a long couch framed against a large wall, "as if to use the arm of the sofa as a kind of friend, as a security blanket?" Martin Filler praised the "low-wattage" cinematography of Danny Cohen's, as making everything look like it has been "steeped in strong tea" At other times, the camera was positioned very close to the actors to catch the emotion in their faces: "If you put a lens 6 inches from somebody's face, you get more emotion than if you're on a long lens 20 feet away," Cohen said in an interview  Hooper sought a second subtlety while filming the first consultation room scene between the two men, having placed the camera 18 inches from Colin Firth's face: "I wanted the nervousness of the first day to percolate into his performances," he said Historical dramas traditionally tend to use "soft light", but Hooper wanted to use a harsher glare, which gives a more contemporary feel, and thus a greater emotional resonance  To achieve the effect, the lighting team erected huge blackout tents over the Georgian buildings and used large lights filtered through Egyptian cotton 

Historical accuracy
Several events in the film did not happen, or were exaggerated  The visual blog Information is Beautiful deduced that, while taking creative licence into account, the film was 74 4% accurate when compared to real-life events, summarising: "Some nips and tucks of the historical record, but mostly an accurate retelling of a unique friendship" 

Relationship with Lionel Logue
The filmmakers not only tightened the chronology of the events to just a few years but even shifted the timeline of treatment  The Duke of York actually began working with Logue in October 1926, ten years before the abdication crisis, and the improvement in his speech was apparent in months rather than years as suggested by the film  When he was dispatched to Australia to open their new Parliament House in Canberra in 1927, the Duke gave numerous speeches during the journey and performed well despite Logue not accompanying him on the trip  He wrote to Logue from the Caribbean, "You remember my fear of 'The King'  I give it every evening at dinner on board  This does not worry me any more " Of his speech opening Parliament it was observed that he spoke "resonantly and without stuttering" Robert Logue, a grandson of Lionel, doubted the film's depiction of the speech therapist, stating "I don't think he ever swore in front of the King and he certainly never called him 'Bertie'"  Andrew Roberts, an English historian, states that the severity of the King's stammer was exaggerated and the characters of Edward VIII, Wallis Simpson, and George V made more antagonistic than they really were, to increase the dramatic effect 

Politics
Christopher Hitchens and Isaac Chotiner have criticised the film for failing to indict the appeasement of the era or to portray Edward VIII's sympathetic attitude to Nazi Germany   The Guardian also corrected the portrayal of Stanley Baldwin as having resigned due to his refusal to order Britain's re-armament, when he in fact stepped down as "a national hero, exhausted by more than a decade at the top"  Stanley's grandson, Earl Baldwin, was particularly unhappy with this film due to its factual distortions and portrayal of his grandfather as a dithering fool who misunderstood Hitler's intentions Hugo Vickers, an adviser on the film, agreed that the alteration of historical details to preserve the essence of the dramatic story was sometimes necessary  The high-ranking officials, for instance, would not have been present when the King made his speech, nor would Churchill have been involved at any level, "but the average viewer knows who Churchill is; he doesn't know who Lord Halifax and Sir Samuel Hoare are "Hitchens and Chotiner also challenged the film's portrayal of Winston Churchill's role in the abdication crisis  It is well established that Churchill encouraged Edward VIII to resist pressure to abdicate, whereas he is portrayed in the film as supportive of the Duke of York and not opposed to the abdication  Hitchens attributes this treatment to the "cult" surrounding Churchill's legacy  In a smart, well-made film "would the true story not have been fractionally more interesting for the audience?", he wondered 

Realism
Martin Filler acknowledged that the film legitimately used artistic licence to make valid dramatic points, such as in the probably imagined scene when George V lectures his son on the importance of broadcasting  Filler cautions that George VI would never have tolerated Logue addressing him casually, nor swearing, and the King almost certainly would have understood a newsreel of Hitler speaking in German  Filler makes the larger point that both the King and his wife were, in reality, lukewarm towards Churchill because of the latter's support for his brother during the abdication crisis Commenting on the film's final scene on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, Andrew Roberts has written, "The scene is fairly absurd from a historical point of view – Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill were not present and there were no cheering crowds outside Buckingham Palace " However, Roberts praises the film overall as a sympathetic portrayal of the King's "quiet, unassuming heroism [   ] The portrayals by Firth and Bonham Carter are sympathetic and acute, and the movie's occasional factual bêtises should not detract from that "

Release
Cinema release
The film had its world première on 6 September 2010 at the Telluride Film Festival in the United States  It was screened at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, on Firth's 50th birthday, where it received a standing ovation and won the People's Choice Award  The cinema release poster was re-designed to show an extreme close-up of Firth's jaw and a microphone after Hooper criticised the first design as a "train smash"  Tim Appelo called the original, air-brushed effort, which showed the three leads, "shockingly awful" though the new one "really is worthwhile" The film was distributed by Transmission Films in Australia and by Momentum Pictures in the United Kingdom  The Weinstein Company distributed it in North America, Germany, Benelux, Scandinavia, China, Hong Kong, and Latin America  The film was released in France on 2 February 2011 by Wild Bunch under the title Le discours d'un roi 

Ratings controversy
The film was initially given a 15 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification, due to a minute-long scene where Logue encourages the King to swear, which he could do without stuttering  At the London Film Festival, Hooper criticised the decision, questioning how the board could certify the film "15" for bad language but allow films such as Salt (2010) and Casino Royale (2006) to have "12A" ratings, despite their graphic torture scenes  Following Hooper's criticism, the board lowered the rating to "12A", allowing children under 12 years of age to see the film if they are accompanied by an adult  Hooper levelled the same criticism at the Motion Picture Association of America, which gave the film an "R" rating, preventing anyone under the age of 17 from seeing the film without an adult  In his review, Roger Ebert criticised the "R" rating, calling it "utterly inexplicable", and wrote, "This is an excellent film for teenagers "In January 2011 Harvey Weinstein, the executive producer and distributor, said he was considering having the film re-edited to remove some profanity, so that it would receive a lower classification and reach a larger audience  Hooper refused to cut the film, though he considered covering the swear words with bleeps  Helena Bonham Carter also defended the film, saying, "[The film] is not violent  It's full of humanity and wit  [It's] for people not with just a speech impairment, but who have got confidence [doubts] " After receiving his Academy Award, Colin Firth noted that he does not support re-editing the film; while he does not condone the use of profanity, he maintains that its use was not offensive in this context  "The scene serves a purpose", Firth states  An alternative version, with some of the profanities muted out, was classified as "PG-13" in the United States; this version was released to cinemas on 1 April 2011, replacing the R-rated one  The PG-13 version of this film is not available on DVD and Blu-ray 

Reception
Box office
In Great Britain and Ireland, the film was the highest earning film on its opening weekend  It took in £3,510,000 from 395 cinemas  The Guardian said that it was one of the biggest takes in recent memory, and compared it to Slumdog Millionaire (2008), which, two years earlier, earned £1 5 million less  The King's Speech continued a "stunning three weeks" atop the UK Box office, and earned over £3 million for four consecutive weekends, the first film to do so since Toy Story 3 (2010)  After five weeks on UK release, it was hailed as the most successful independent British film ever In the United States The King's Speech opened with $355,450 (£220,000) in four cinemas  It holds the record for the highest per-cinema gross of 2010  It was widened to 700 screens on Christmas Day and 1,543 screens on 14 January 2011  It eventually made $138 million in North America overall In Australia The King's Speech made more than A$6,281,686 (£4 million) in the first two weeks, according to figures collected by the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia  The executive director of Palace Cinemas, Benjamin Zeccola, said customer feedback on the film was spectacular  "It's our No 1 for all the period, all throughout the country      I think this is more successful than Slumdog Millionaire and a more uplifting film  It's a good example of a film that started out in the independent cinemas and then spread to the mainstream cinemas "Of the film's net profit, estimated to amount to $30–40 million (£20–25 million) from the cinema release alone, roughly 20% was to be split between Geoffrey Rush (as executive producer), Tom Hooper and Colin Firth, who were to receive their bonuses before the other stakeholders  The remaining profit was to be split equally between the producers and the equity investors  The UK Film Council invested £1 million of public funds from the United Kingdom lottery into the film  In March 2011 Variety estimated that the return could be between fifteen and twenty times that  The Council's merger into the British Film Institute means that the profits were to be returned to that body 

Critical response
The King's Speech has received widespread critical acclaim, with Firth's performance receiving universal praise  Bonham Carter and Rush were also widely praised with both going on to win BAFTAs and receiving Academy Award nominations  Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 94% based on reviews from 297 critics; the film's average rating was calculated as 8 60/10  The website's critical consensus reads: "Colin Firth gives a masterful performance in The King's Speech, a predictable but stylishly produced and rousing period drama " Metacritic gave the film a weighted score of 88/100, based on 41 critical reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim"  CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film a rare "A+" grade  Empire gave the film five stars out of five, commenting, "You'll be lost for words " Lisa Kennedy of The Denver Post gave the film full marks for its humane qualities and craftsmanship: "It is an intelligent, winning drama fit for a king – and the rest of us", she said  Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film a full four stars, commenting that "what we have here is a superior historical drama and a powerful personal one " Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave four stars out of five, stating, "Tom Hooper's richly enjoyable and handsomely produced movie     is a massively confident crowd-pleaser "Manohla Dargis, whilst generally ambivalent towards the film, called the lead performances one of its principal attractions  "With their volume turned up, the appealing, impeccably professional Mr  Firth and Mr  Rush rise to the acting occasion by twinkling and growling as their characters warily circle each other before settling into the therapeutic swing of things and unknowingly preparing for the big speech that partly gives the film its title," she wrote  The Daily Telegraph called Guy Pearce's performance as Edward VIII "formidable     with glamour, charisma and utter self-absorption"  Empire said he played the role well as "a flash harry flinty enough to shed a nation for a wife " The New York Times thought he was able to create "a thorny tangle of complications in only a few abbreviated scenes"  Hooper praised the actor in the DVD commentary, saying he "nailed" the 1930s royal accent  Richard Corliss of Time magazine named Colin Firth's performance one of the Top 10 Movie Performances of 2010 

Allociné, a French cinema website, gave the film an average of four out of five stars, based on a survey of 21 reviews  Le Monde, which characterised the film as the "latest manifestation of British narcissism" and summarised it as "We are ugly and boring, but, By Jove!, we are right!", nevertheless admired the performances of Firth, Rush, and Bonham Carter  It said that, though the film swept British appeasement under the carpet, it was still enjoyable Slovenian Marxist philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek has incorporated the film into his critique of ideology by describing it as "reactionary," interpreting the king's stutter as evidence that he "displays a minimum of common sense, experiencing the stupidity of seriously accepting that one is king by divine will" and claiming that "the task of the Australian voice-coach is to render him stupid enough to accept his being a king as his natural property " Žižek thus interprets the king's stutter as a case of what is referred to in Lacanian psychoanalysis as "symbolic castration "Queen Elizabeth II, the daughter and successor of King George VI, was sent two copies of the film before Christmas 2010  The Sun newspaper reported she had watched the film in a private screening at Sandringham House  A palace source described her reaction as being "touched by a moving portrayal of her father"  Seidler called the reports "the highest honour" the film could receive 

Depiction of stuttering
The British Stammering Association welcomed the release of The King's Speech, congratulating the film makers on their "realistic depiction of the frustration and the fear of speaking faced by people who stammer on a daily basis " It said that "Colin Firth's portrayal of the King's stammer in particular strikes us as very authentic and accurate " The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists welcomed the film, and launched their "Giving Voice" campaign around the time of its commercial release Disfluency advocate Jonah Lehrer called the film "an inspiring tale" and praised its portrayal of the troubles suffered by Firth's character 
 However, Lehrer and other advocates criticized the film's depiction of stuttering as a result of emotional repression and childhood trauma  The treatment performed by Rush's character also drew criticism  Lehrer did admit it was a necessary artistic license: "[the film] would have been a rather tedious piece of entertainment if the climactic scene involved Logue telling the monarch that his primary motor cortex was to blame "Science journalist Jeremy Hsu wrote that the film "mainly succeeds by tackling the social stigma that surrounds stuttering " However, similar to Lehrer, he disapproved that it perpetuated myths about the condition, namely its relationship with childhood trauma and overly strict parenting Columnist Jane Ahlin praised the film as it "brings out of the shadows a common problem figuring into the lives of children and adults from every culture around the world " At the same time, she stated, "heartwarming though the movie The King's Speech is, as someone who married a stutterer and is the mother of a stutterer, I'm not sure it does anything to put myths about stuttering to rest " She criticized the depiction of family and social dynamics as causes of the condition, as well as the portrayal of stutterering as connected to emotional or psychological problems 

Awards and nominations
At the 83rd Academy Awards, The King's Speech won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director (Hooper), Best Actor (Firth), and Best Original Screenplay (Seidler)  The film had received 12 Oscar nominations, more than any other film in that year  Besides the four categories it won, the film received nominations for Best Cinematography (Danny Cohen) and two for the supporting actors (Bonham Carter and Rush), as well as two for its mise-en-scène: Art Direction and Costumes At the 64th British Academy Film Awards, it won seven awards, including Best Film, Outstanding British Film, Best Actor for Firth, Best Supporting Actor for Rush, Best Supporting Actress for Bonham Carter, Best Original Screenplay for Seidler, and Best Music for Alexandre Desplat  The film had been nominated for 14 BAFTAs, more than any other film  At the 68th Golden Globe Awards, Firth won for Best Actor   The film won no other Golden Globes, despite earning seven nominations, more than any other film At the 17th Screen Actors Guild Awards, Firth won the Best Actor award and the entire cast won Best Ensemble, meaning Firth went home with two acting awards in one evening  Hooper won the Directors Guild of America Awards 2010 for Best Director  The film won the Darryl F  Zanuck Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture at the Producers Guild of America Awards 2010 The King's Speech won the People's Choice Award at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, Best British Independent Film at the 2010 British Independent Film Awards, and the 2011 Goya Award for Best European Film from the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España (Spanish Academy of Cinematic Art and Science) 

See also
Bertie & Elizabeth (2002), a television film which also addresses the stammering of the king (played by James Wilby)  It was a co-production of PBS (Masterpiece Theatre) and Carlton Television 
Passage 4:
H  Vernon Watson
H  Vernon Watson (1886–1952), better known under his stage name Nosmo King, was a popular English variety artist  He was touring the music halls before World War I, but he remained relatively obscure until the 1920s, when he went by Nosmo King  He was the father of actor Jack Watson 

Early years
Coming from a rural background near Peterborough, Watson showed a leaning towards things theatrical and it was evident that he had a rare talent for mimicry  In 1911, he turned professional, using his real name, doing impressions of the leading comedians of the day 
Then, when Frank Tinney, the American black-faced comedian, came to the UK, Watson added an impression of him to his repertoire  He noticed that this impression gained him great applause, and when Tinney returned to the United States, Watson gave thought to a different style of act based on a black-faced personality 

Fame
Opportunity for this came about in the early 1930s in Leeds, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, which boasted two variety theatres, run by two rival organisations  The Great Depression was beginning to bite, and on hearing that the rival theatre had lost its comic, he determined to double his income by doing both shows (four performances a night), travelling between the two theatres by taxi, disguising himself by blacking up 
Watson had the black-face study ready, but was stuck for a name  Then inspiration came to his aid  The scene dock doors backstage were partly open and the two halves read "No Smo" & "king"  That was it  From then on, the character would be Nosmo King 
Nosmo King became a huge star and a household name  The stage act of Nosmo King & Hubert developed when his son Jack Watson joined him as straight man directly from school  Vernon Watson made his last bow and he was to be Nosmo for good when his speciality became long comic monologues 
During a later interview, he made two remarkable confessions  Someone pointed out that a cigar-smoking figure was hardly compatible with the name and suggested he gave up  This he found remarkably difficult, but he eventually accomplished it with the aid of snuff  The second confession was that he had never at any time set eyes on Frank Tinney 
During World War II, Nosmo King reverted to going solo, the reason being that his son, playing "Hubert," had joined up 
The end came for Nosmo King early in 1952 when Watson died in his sleep in his Chelsea flat 
He is buried in Thorney Cemetery near Peterborough, with "Nosmo King" on his headstone 

Acts
One of Nosmo's act starters was when a young pageboy would come over to him carrying his luggage  Once he had handed it to Nosmo, Nosmo would say to him "how much do I owe you" and the boy would say "2 nicker" (a colloquialism for two pounds) whilst making a V sign at him  Nosmo took this as an insult and would slap the boy across the face, then the boy would slap Nosmo across his face in return 

See also
Paul Shannon, a Pittsburgh radio announcer, also used the name 'Nosmo King' for a character 
Nosmo King was the name of a 1994 album by jazz guitarist John Abercrombie and Andy LaVerne 
See also English singer Jonathan King who appeared on Top of the Pops in the early 1970s as Nosmo King  When he was asked about the name, he said it was a pun which I didn't get at the time as I was very young  He also implied that he had come up with the name himself 
Context 3: Passage 1:
Roman numerals
Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages  Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, each letter with a fixed integer value  Modern style uses only these seven:

The use of Roman numerals continued long after the decline of the Roman Empire  From the 14th century on, Roman numerals began to be replaced by Arabic numerals; however, this process was gradual, and the use of Roman numerals persists in some applications to this day 
One place they are often seen is on clock faces  For instance, on the clock of Big Ben (designed in 1852), the hours from 1 to 12 are written as:

The notations IV and IX can be read as "one less than five" (4) and "one less than ten" (9), although there is a tradition favouring representation of "4" as "IIII" on Roman numeral clocks Other common uses include year numbers on monuments and buildings and copyright dates on the title screens of movies and television programs  MCM, signifying "a thousand, and a hundred less than another thousand", means 1900, so 1912 is written MCMXII  For the years of the current (21st) century, MM indicates 2000  The current year is MMXXIII (2023) 

Description
Roman numerals use different symbols for each power of ten and no zero symbol, in contrast with the place value notation of Arabic numerals (in which place-keeping zeros enable the same digit to represent different powers of ten) 
This allows some flexibility in notation, and there has never been an official or universally accepted standard for Roman numerals  Usage varied greatly in ancient Rome and became thoroughly chaotic in medieval times  Even the post-renaissance restoration of a largely "classical" notation has failed to produce total consistency: variant forms are even defended by some modern writers as offering improved "flexibility"  On the other hand, especially where a Roman numeral is considered a legally binding expression of a number, as in U S  Copyright law (where an "incorrect" or ambiguous numeral may invalidate a copyright claim, or affect the termination date of the copyright period) it is desirable to strictly follow the usual style described below 

Standard form
The following table displays how Roman numerals are usually written:
 The numerals for 4 (IV) and 9 (IX) are written using subtractive notation, where the smaller symbol (I) is subtracted from the larger one (V, or X), thus avoiding the clumsier IIII and VIIII  Subtractive notation is also used for 40 (XL), 90 (XC), 400 (CD) and 900 (CM)  These are the only subtractive forms in standard use 
A number containing two or more decimal digits is built by appending the Roman numeral equivalent for each, from highest to lowest, as in the following examples:

   39 = XXX + IX = XXXIX 
  246 = CC + XL + VI = CCXLVI 
  789 = DCC + LXXX + IX = DCCLXXXIX 
2,421 = MM + CD + XX + I = MMCDXXI Any missing place (represented by a zero in the place-value equivalent) is omitted, as in Latin (and English) speech:

  160 = C + LX = CLX
  207 = CC + VII = CCVII
1,009 = M + IX = MIX
1,066 = M + LX + VI = MLXVIThe largest number that can be represented in this manner is 3,999 (MMMCMXCIX), but this is sufficient for the values for which Roman numerals are commonly used today, such as year numbers:

1776 = M + DCC + LXX + VI = MDCCLXXVI (the date written on the book held by the Statue of Liberty) 
1918 = M + CM + X + VIII = MCMXVIII (the first year of the Spanish flu pandemic)
1944 = M + CM + XL + IV = MCMXLIV (erroneous copyright notice of the 1954 movie The Last Time I Saw Paris)
2023 = MMXXIII (this year)Prior to the introduction of Arabic numerals in the West, ancient and medieval users of Roman numerals used various means to write larger numbers; see large numbers below 

Other forms
Forms exist that vary in one way or another from the general standard represented above 

Other additive forms
While subtractive notation for 4, 40 and 400 (IV, XL and CD) has been the usual form since Roman times, additive notation to represent these numbers (IIII, XXXX and CCCC) continued to be used, including in compound numbers like XXIIII, LXXIIII, and CCCCLXXXX  The additive forms for 9, 90, and 900 (VIIII, LXXXX, and DCCCC) have also been used, although less often 
The two conventions could be mixed in the same document or inscription, even in the same numeral  For example, on the numbered gates to the Colosseum, IIII is systematically used instead of IV, but subtractive notation is used for XL; consequently, gate 44 is labelled XLIIII Modern clock faces that use Roman numerals still very often use IIII for four o'clock but IX for nine o'clock, a practice that goes back to very early clocks such as the Wells Cathedral clock of the late 14th century  However, this is far from universal: for example, the clock on the Palace of Westminster tower (commonly known as Big Ben) uses a subtractive IV for 4 o'clock 

Several monumental inscriptions created in the early 20th century use variant forms for "1900" (usually written MCM)  These vary from MDCCCCX for 1910 as seen on Admiralty Arch, London, to the more unusual, if not unique MDCDIII for 1903, on the north entrance to the Saint Louis Art Museum Especially on tombstones and other funerary inscriptions 5 and 50 have been occasionally written IIIII and XXXXX instead of V and L, and there are instances such as IIIIII and XXXXXX rather than VI or LX 

Other subtractive forms
There is a common belief that any smaller digit placed to the left of a larger digit is subtracted from the total, and that by clever choices a long Roman numeral can be "compressed"  The best known example of this is the ROMAN() function in Microsoft Excel, which can render "499" (usually CDXCIX) into LDVLIV, XDIX, VDIV or ID depending on the "Form" setting   There is no indication this is anything other than an invention by the programmer, and the universal-subtraction belief may be a result of modern users trying to rationalize the syntax of Roman numerals 

There is, however, some historic use of subtractive notation other than that described in the above "standard": in particular IIIXX for 17, IIXX for 18, IIIC for 97, IIC for 98, and IC for 99  A possible explanation is that the word for 18 in Latin is duodeviginti, literally "two from twenty", 98 is duodecentum (two from hundred), and 99 is undecentum (one from hundred)  However, the explanation does not seem to apply to IIIXX and IIIC, since the Latin words for 17 and 97 were septendecim (seven ten) and nonaginta septem (ninety seven), respectively 
There are multiple examples of IIX being used for 8  There does not seem to be a linguistic explanation for this use, but it is one stroke shorter than VIII  XIIX was used by officers of the XVIII Roman Legion to write their number  The notation appears prominently on the cenotaph of their senior centurion Marcus Caelius (c  45 BC – 9 AD)  On the publicly displayed official Roman calendars known as Fasti, XIIX is used for the 18 days to the next Kalends, and XXIIX for the 28 days in February  The latter can be seen on the sole extant pre-Julian calendar, the Fasti Antiates Maiores 

Rare variants
While irregular subtractive and additive notation has been used at least occasionally throughout history, some Roman numerals have been observed in documents and inscriptions that do not fit either system  Some of these variants do not seem to have been used outside specific contexts, and may have been regarded as errors even by contemporaries 

IIXX was how people associated with the XXII Roman Legion used to write their number  The practice may have been due to a common way to say "twenty-second" in Latin, namely duo et vice(n)sima (literally "two and twentieth") rather than the "regular" vice(n)sima secunda (twenty second)  Apparently, at least one ancient stonecutter mistakenly thought that the IIXX of "22nd Legion" stood for 18, and "corrected" it to XVIII 
There are some examples of year numbers after 1000 written as two Roman numerals 1–99, e g  1613 as XVIXIII, corresponding to the common reading "sixteen thirteen" of such year numbers in English, or 1519 as XCVXIX as in French quinze-cent-dix-neuf (fifteen-hundred and nineteen), and similar readings in other languages In some French texts from the 15th century and later, one finds constructions like IIIIXXXIX for 99, reflecting the French reading of that number as quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (four-score and nineteen)  Similarly, in some English documents one finds, for example, 77 written as "iiixxxvii" (which could be read "three-score and seventeen") A medieval accounting text from 1301 renders numbers like 13,573 as "XIII  M  V  C  III  XX  XIII", that is, "13×1000 + 5×100 + 3×20 + 13" Other numerals that do not fit the usual patterns – such as VXL for 45, instead of the usual XLV — may be due to scribal errors, or the writer's lack of familiarity with the system, rather than being genuine variant usage 

Non-numeric combinations
As Roman numerals are composed of ordinary alphabetic characters, there may sometimes be confusion with other uses of the same letters  For example, "XXX" and "XL" have other connotations in addition to their values as Roman numerals, while "IXL" more often than not is a gramogram of "I excel", and is in any case not an unambiguous Roman numeral 

Zero
As a non-positional numeral system, Roman numerals have no "place-keeping" zeros  Furthermore, the system as used by the Romans lacked a numeral for the number zero itself (that is, what remains after 1 is subtracted from 1)  The word nulla (the Latin word meaning "none") was used to represent 0, although the earliest attested instances are medieval  For instance Dionysius Exiguus used nulla alongside Roman numerals in a manuscript from 525 AD  About 725, Bede or one of his colleagues used the letter N, the initial of nulla or of nihil (the Latin word for "nothing") for 0, in a table of epacts, all written in Roman numerals The use of N to indicate "none" long survived in the historic apothecaries' system of measurement: used well into the 20th century to designate quantities in pharmaceutical prescriptions 

Fractions
The base "Roman fraction" is S, indicating 1⁄2  The use of S (as in VIIS to indicate 71⁄2) is attested in some ancient inscriptions and also in the now rare apothecaries' system (usually in the form SS): but while Roman numerals for whole numbers are essentially decimal, S does not correspond to 5⁄10, as one might expect, but 6⁄12 
The Romans used a duodecimal rather than a decimal system for fractions, as the divisibility of twelve (12 = 22 × 3) makes it easier to handle the common fractions of 1⁄3 and 1⁄4 than does a system based on ten (10 = 2 × 5)  Notation for fractions other than 1⁄2 is mainly found on surviving Roman coins, many of which had values that were duodecimal fractions of the unit as  Fractions less than 1⁄2 are indicated by a dot (·) for each uncia "twelfth", the source of the English words inch and ounce; dots are repeated for fractions up to five twelfths  Six twelfths (one half), is S for semis "half"  Uncia dots were added to S for fractions from seven to eleven twelfths, just as tallies were added to V for whole numbers from six to nine  The arrangement of the dots was variable and not necessarily linear  Five dots arranged like (⁙) (as on the face of a die) are known as a quincunx, from the name of the Roman fraction/coin  The Latin words sextans and quadrans are the source of the English words sextant and quadrant 
Each fraction from 1⁄12 to 12⁄12 had a name in Roman times; these corresponded to the names of the related coins:

Other Roman fractional notations included the following:

Large numbers
The Romans developed two main ways of writing large numbers, the apostrophus and the vinculum, further extended in various ways in later times 

Apostrophus
Using the apostrophus method, 500 is written as IↃ, while 1,000 is written as CIↃ  This system of encasing numbers to denote thousands (imagine the Cs and Ↄs as parentheses) had its origins in Etruscan numeral usage 
Each additional set of C and Ↄ surrounding CIↃ raises the value by a factor of ten: CCIↃↃ represents 10,000 and CCCIↃↃↃ represents 100,000  Similarly, each additional Ↄ to the right of IↃ raises the value by a factor of ten: IↃↃ represents 5,000 and IↃↃↃ represents 50,000  Numerals larger than CCCIↃↃↃ do not occur 

Sometimes CIↃ is reduced to ↀ for 1,000  Similarly, IↃↃ for 5,000 is sometimes reduced to ↁ; CCIↃↃ for 10,000 to ↂ; IↃↃↃ for 50,000 to ↇ (ↇ); and CCCIↃↃↃ (ↈ) for 100,000 to ↈ 
IↃ and CIↃ most likely preceded, and subsequently influenced, the adoption of "D" and "M" in Roman numerals 
John Wallis is often credited for introducing the symbol for infinity ⟨∞⟩, and one conjecture is that he based it on ↀ, since 1,000 was hyperbolically used to represent very large numbers 

Vinculum
Using the vinculum, conventional Roman numerals are multiplied by 1,000 by adding a "bar" or "overline", thus:
IV = 4,000
XXV = 25,000It was a common alternative to the apostrophic ↀ during the Imperial era around the Roman world (M for '1000' was not in use until the Medieval period)  It continued in use in the Middle Ages, though it became known more commonly as titulus, and it appears in modern editions of classical and medieval Latin texts In an extension of the vinculum, a three-sided box (now sometimes printed as two vertical lines and a vinculum) is used to multiply by 100,000, thus:

XIII XXXII p  = 1,332,000 paces (1,332 Roman miles) Vinculum notation is distinct from the custom of adding an overline to a numeral simply to indicate that it is a number  Both usages can be seen on Roman inscriptions of the same period and general location, such as on the Antonine Wall 

Origin
The system is closely associated with the ancient city-state of Rome and the Empire that it created  However, due to the scarcity of surviving examples, the origins of the system are obscure and there are several competing theories, all largely conjectural 

Etruscan numerals
Rome was founded sometime between 850 and 750 BC  At the time, the region was inhabited by diverse populations of which the Etruscans were the most advanced  The ancient Romans themselves admitted that the basis of much of their civilization was Etruscan  Rome itself was located next to the southern edge of the Etruscan domain, which covered a large part of north-central Italy 
The Roman numerals, in particular, are directly derived from the Etruscan number symbols: ⟨𐌠⟩, ⟨𐌡⟩, ⟨𐌢⟩, ⟨𐌣⟩, and ⟨𐌟⟩ for 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 (they had more symbols for larger numbers, but it is unknown which symbol represents which number)  As in the basic Roman system, the Etruscans wrote the symbols that added to the desired number, from higher to lower value  Thus, the number 87, for example, would be written 50 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 1 + 1 = 𐌣𐌢𐌢𐌢𐌡𐌠𐌠 (this would appear as 𐌠𐌠𐌡𐌢𐌢𐌢𐌣 since Etruscan was written from right to left )The symbols ⟨𐌠⟩ and ⟨𐌡⟩ resembled letters of the Etruscan alphabet, but ⟨𐌢⟩, ⟨𐌣⟩, and ⟨𐌟⟩ did not  The Etruscans used the subtractive notation, too, but not like the Romans  They wrote 17, 18, and 19 as 𐌠𐌠𐌠𐌢𐌢, 𐌠𐌠𐌢𐌢, and 𐌠𐌢𐌢, mirroring the way they spoke those numbers ("three from twenty", etc ); and similarly for 27, 28, 29, 37, 38, etc  However, they did not write 𐌠𐌡 for 4 (nor 𐌢𐌣 for 40), and wrote 𐌡𐌠𐌠, 𐌡𐌠𐌠𐌠 and 𐌡𐌠𐌠𐌠𐌠 for 7, 8, and 9, respectively 

Early Roman numerals
The early Roman numerals for 1, 10, and 100 were the Etruscan ones: ⟨𐌠⟩, ⟨𐌢⟩, and ⟨𐌟⟩  The symbols for 5 and 50 changed from ⟨𐌡⟩ and ⟨𐌣⟩ to ⟨V⟩ and ⟨ↆ⟩ at some point  The latter had flattened to ⟨⊥⟩ (an inverted T) by the time of Augustus, and soon afterwards became identified with the graphically similar letter ⟨L⟩ The symbol for 100 was written variously as ⟨𐌟⟩ or ⟨ↃIC⟩, and was then abbreviated to ⟨Ↄ⟩ or ⟨C⟩, with ⟨C⟩ (which matched the Latin letter C) finally winning out  It might have helped that C was the initial letter of CENTUM, Latin for "hundred" 
The numbers 500 and 1000 were denoted by V or X overlaid with a box or circle  Thus, 500 was like a Ɔ superimposed on a ⋌ or ⊢, making it look like Þ  It became D or Ð by the time of Augustus, under the graphic influence of the letter D  It was later identified as the letter D; an alternative symbol for "thousand" was a CIↃ, and half of a thousand or "five hundred" is the right half of the symbol, IↃ, and this may have been converted into D The notation for 1000 was a circled or boxed X: Ⓧ, ⊗, ⊕, and by Augustinian times was partially identified with the Greek letter Φ phi  Over time, the symbol changed to Ψ and ↀ  The latter symbol further evolved into ∞, then ⋈, and eventually changed to M under the influence of the Latin word mille "thousand" According to Paul Kayser, the basic numerical symbols were I, X, C and Φ (or ⊕) and the intermediate ones were derived by taking half of those (half an X is V, half a C is L and half a Φ/⊕ is D) 

Classical Roman numerals
The Colosseum was constructed in Rome in CE 72–80, and while the original perimeter wall has largely disappeared, the numbered entrances from XXIII (23) to LIIII (54) survive, to demonstrate that in Imperial times Roman numerals had already assumed their classical form: as largely standardised in current use  The most obvious anomaly (a common one that persisted for centuries) is the inconsistent use of subtractive notation - while XL is used for 40, IV is avoided in favour of IIII: in fact, gate 44 is labelled XLIIII 

Use in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Lower case, or minuscule, letters were developed in the Middle Ages, well after the demise of the Western Roman Empire, and since that time lower-case versions of Roman numbers have also been commonly used: i, ii, iii, iv, and so on 

Since the Middle Ages, a "j" has sometimes been substituted for the final "i" of a "lower-case" Roman numeral, such as "iij" for 3 or "vij" for 7  This "j" can be considered a swash variant of "i"  Into the early 20th century, the use of a final "j" was still sometimes used in medical prescriptions to prevent tampering with or misinterpretation of a number after it was written Numerals in documents and inscriptions from the Middle Ages sometimes include additional symbols, which today are called "medieval Roman numerals"  Some simply substitute another letter for the standard one (such as "A" for "V", or "Q" for "D"), while others serve as abbreviations for compound numerals ("O" for "XI", or "F" for "XL")  Although they are still listed today in some dictionaries, they are long out of use 
Chronograms, messages with dates encoded into them, were popular during the Renaissance era  The chronogram would be a phrase containing the letters I, V, X, L, C, D, and M  By putting these letters together, the reader would obtain a number, usually indicating a particular year 

Modern use
By the 11th century, Arabic numerals had been introduced into Europe from al-Andalus, by way of Arab traders and arithmetic treatises  Roman numerals, however, proved very persistent, remaining in common use in the West well into the 14th and 15th centuries, even in accounting and other business records (where the actual calculations would have been made using an abacus)  Replacement by their more convenient "Arabic" equivalents was quite gradual, and Roman numerals are still used today in certain contexts  A few examples of their current use are:

Names of monarchs and popes, e g  Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Pope Benedict XVI  These are referred to as regnal numbers and are usually read as ordinals; e g  II is pronounced "the second"  This tradition began in Europe sporadically in the Middle Ages, gaining widespread use in England during the reign of Henry VIII  Previously, the monarch was not known by numeral but by an epithet such as Edward the Confessor  Some monarchs (e g  Charles IV of Spain and Louis XIV of France) seem to have preferred the use of IIII instead of IV on their coinage (see illustration) 
Generational suffixes, particularly in the U S , for people sharing the same name across generations, for example William Howard Taft IV  These are also usually read as ordinals 
In the French Republican Calendar, initiated during the French Revolution, years were numbered by Roman numerals – from the year I (1792) when this calendar was introduced to the year XIV (1805) when it was abandoned 
The year of production of films, television shows and other works of art within the work itself  Outside reference to the work will use regular Arabic numerals 
Hour marks on timepieces  In this context, 4 is often written IIII 
The year of construction on building façades and cornerstones 
Page numbering of prefaces and introductions of books, and sometimes of appendices and annexes, too 
Book volume and chapter numbers, as well as the several acts within a play (e g  Act iii, Scene 2) 
Sequels to some films, video games, and other works (as in Rocky II, Grand Theft Auto V, Myst III: Exile) 
Outlines that use numbers to show hierarchical relationships 
Occurrences of a recurring grand event, for instance:
The Summer and Winter Olympic Games (e g  the XXI Olympic Winter Games; the Games of the XXX Olympiad) 
The Super Bowl, the annual championship game of the National Football League (e g  Super Bowl XLII; Super Bowl 50 was a one-time exception) 
WrestleMania, the annual professional wrestling event for the WWE (e g  WrestleMania XXX)  This usage has also been inconsistent 

Specific disciplines
In astronautics, United States rocket model variants are sometimes designated by Roman numerals, e g  Titan I, Titan II, Titan III, Saturn I, Saturn V 
In astronomy, the natural satellites or "moons" of the planets are designated by capital Roman numerals appended to the planet's name  For example, Titan's designation is Saturn VI In chemistry, Roman numerals are sometimes used to denote the groups of the periodic table, but this has officially been deprecated in favour of Arabic numerals  They are also used in the IUPAC nomenclature of inorganic chemistry, for the oxidation number of cations which can take on several different positive charges  They are also used for naming phases of polymorphic crystals, such as ice 
In education, school grades (in the sense of year-groups rather than test scores) are sometimes referred to by a Roman numeral; for example, "grade IX" is sometimes seen for "grade 9" 
In entomology, the broods of the thirteen- and seventeen-year periodical cicadas are identified by Roman numerals 
In graphic design stylised Roman numerals may represent numeric values 
In law, Roman numerals are commonly used to help organize legal codes as part of an alphanumeric outline 

In mathematics (including trigonometry, statistics, and calculus), when a graph includes negative numbers, its quadrants are named using I, II, III, and IV  These quadrant names signify positive numbers on both axes, negative numbers on the X axis, negative numbers on both axes, and negative numbers on the Y axis, respectively  The use of Roman numerals to designate quadrants avoids confusion, since Arabic numerals are used for the actual data represented in the graph 
In military unit designation, Roman numerals are often used to distinguish between units at different levels  This reduces possible confusion, especially when viewing operational or strategic level maps  In particular, army corps are often numbered using Roman numerals (for example the American XVIII Airborne Corps or the WW2-era German III Panzerkorps) with Arabic numerals being used for divisions and armies 
In music, Roman numerals are used in several contexts:

Movements are often numbered using Roman numerals 
In Roman numeral analysis, harmonic function is identified using Roman numerals 
Individual strings of stringed instruments, such as the violin, are often denoted by Roman numerals, with higher numbers denoting lower strings In pharmacy, Roman numerals were used with the now largely obsolete apothecaries' system of measurement: including SS to denote "one half" and N to denote "zero" In photography, Roman numerals (with zero) are used to denote varying levels of brightness when using the Zone System



ground_truth: 918

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

Question: Who played the monarch at the end of WW2 in The King's Speech?

The following are given passages.
Context 3: 
In seismology, Roman numerals are used to designate degrees of the Mercalli intensity scale of earthquakes 
In sport the team containing the "top" players and representing a nation or province, a club or a school at the highest level in (say) rugby union is often called the "1st XV", while a lower-ranking cricket or American football team might be the "3rd XI" 
In tarot, Roman numerals (with zero) are often used to denote the cards of the Major Arcana 
In theology and biblical scholarship, the Septuagint is often referred to as LXX, as this translation of the Old Testament into Greek is named for the legendary number of its translators (septuaginta being Latin for "seventy") 

Modern use in European languages other than English
Some uses that are rare or never seen in English speaking countries may be relatively common in parts of continental Europe and in other regions (e g  Latin America) that use a European language other than English  For instance:
Capital or small capital Roman numerals are widely used in Romance languages to denote centuries, e g  the French XVIIIe siècle and the Spanish siglo XVIII (not XVIII siglo) for "18th century"  Slavic languages in and adjacent to Russia similarly favor Roman numerals (xviii век)  On the other hand, in Slavic languages in Central Europe, like most Germanic languages, one writes "18 " (with a period) before the local word for "century" 

Mixed Roman and Arabic numerals are sometimes used in numeric representations of dates (especially in formal letters and official documents, but also on tombstones)  The month is written in Roman numerals, while the day is in Arabic numerals: "4 VI 1789" and "VI 4 1789" both refer unambiguously to 4 June 1789 

Roman numerals are sometimes used to represent the days of the week in hours-of-operation signs displayed in windows or on doors of businesses, and also sometimes in railway and bus timetables  Monday, taken as the first day of the week, is represented by I  Sunday is represented by VII  The hours of operation signs are tables composed of two columns where the left column is the day of the week in Roman numerals and the right column is a range of hours of operation from starting time to closing time  In the example case (left), the business opens from 10 AM to 7 PM on weekdays, 10 AM to 5 PM on Saturdays and is closed on Sundays  Note that the listing uses 24-hour time 

Roman numerals may also be used for floor numbering  For instance, apartments in central Amsterdam are indicated as 138-III, with both an Arabic numeral (number of the block or house) and a Roman numeral (floor number)  The apartment on the ground floor is indicated as 138-huis 
In Italy, where roads outside built-up areas have kilometre signs, major roads and motorways also mark 100-metre subdivisionals, using Roman numerals from I to IX for the smaller intervals  The sign IX/17 thus marks 17 9 km 
Certain romance-speaking countries use Roman numerals to designate assemblies of their national legislatures  For instance, the composition of the Italian Parliament from 2018 to 2022 (elected in the 2018 Italian general election) is called the XVIII Legislature of the Italian Republic (or more commonly the "XVIII Legislature") 
A notable exception to the use of Roman numerals in Europe is in Greece, where Greek numerals (based on the Greek alphabet) are generally used in contexts where Roman numerals would be used elsewhere 

Unicode
The "Number Forms" block of the Unicode computer character set standard has a number of Roman numeral symbols in the range of code points from U+2160 to U+2188  This range includes both upper- and lowercase numerals, as well as pre-combined characters for numbers up to 12 (Ⅻ or XII) 
One justification for the existence of pre-combined numbers is to facilitate the setting of multiple-letter numbers (such as VIII) on a single horizontal line in Asian vertical text  The Unicode standard, however, includes special Roman numeral code points for compatibility only, stating that "[f]or most purposes, it is preferable to compose the Roman numerals from sequences of the appropriate Latin letters" 
The block also includes some apostrophus symbols for large numbers, an old variant of "L" (50) similar to the Etruscan character, the Claudian letter "reversed C", etc 

See also
Passage 2:
Warren Covered Bridge
The Warren Covered Bridge is a wooden covered bridge that crosses the Mad River in Warren, Vermont on Covered Bridge Road   It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 The bridge is of queen post truss design   A sign on the bridge also identifies it as the Lincoln Gap covered bridge, despite no official reference to that name   A unique oddity with this bridge is the fact that the eastern portal extends further over the approaching roadway than the western, according to a sign posted in the bridge by the Vermont Festival of the Arts   This trusses on this bridge are covered not only on the outside, but on the inside as well    one of only two bridges left in the state with similar construction (the other being the School House Covered Bridge) 

Recent history
The bridge deck was strengthened and roof replaced in 1995   In 1999 it was closed to all traffic after inspections found problems that were being hidden by the covering on the inside of the trusses   The bridge was extensively rehabilitated and re-dedicated on October 6, 2000 On August 28, 2011, one of the abutments of the bridge received damage due to flooding caused by Hurricane Irene   It appears the bridge itself was not damaged and as of 2020 the bridge is open to traffic 

See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Washington County, Vermont
List of Vermont covered bridges
List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Vermont
Passage 3:
Flatford
Flatford is a small hamlet close to East Bergholt  in Suffolk  It is most famous for Flatford Mill, Willy Lott's Cottage and Bridge Cottage, immortalised in the paintings of John Constable 

Access by road
Flatford is accessible by Road from East Bergholt, with a limited access route looping down to the main Flatford Car park  The route is a two way road at the top section, allowing access to the properties there  From the car park onwards though the route is one way, back into East Bergholt, emerging near the village War memorial and the church 

Access by foot and public transport
As well as being able to walk from East Bergholt along the road route, Flatford can also be accessed on foot from Manningtree and Dedham, Essex  The hamlet is approximately 1 5 miles (2 4 km) from Manningtree railway station, to which it is linked by an off-road footpath 

External links
 Media related to Flatford at Wikimedia Commons
Passage 4:
Goodpasture Bridge
The Goodpasture Bridge spans the McKenzie River near the community of Vida in Lane County, Oregon, United States  It is the second longest covered bridge and one of the most photographed covered bridges in the state  The Goodpasture Bridge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places 

History
Lane County was the first Oregon county to build covered bridges on a large scale  Today, the county has more surviving covered bridges than any other county west of the Mississippi River, with a total of 17 bridges, including 14 that are still open to traffic  The county's engineering division maintains the covered bridges that are open to traffic, including the Goodpasture Bridge The Goodpasture Bridge was built in 1938, and cost $13,154 to construct  It was named for Benjamin Franklin Goodpasture, a pioneer farmer who had settled near the bridge site  The bridge crosses the McKenzie River two miles west of the community of Vida  At 165 feet (50 m) long, it the second longest covered bridge in Oregon  Because of its unique scenic beauty and its importance to Oregon's transportation history, the Goodpasture Bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 Over time, bridge traffic significantly weakened the structure  In 1987, Lane County officials decided to restore the original covered bridge instead of bypassing it with a modern concrete span  The county spent $750,000 to renovate the bridge structure, road surface, and approaches  The project also added a right-turn lane for traffic exiting Oregon Route 126 onto the bridge, and built a concrete retaining wall along the north bank of the McKenzie River to stabilize the area  Today, the Goodpasture Bridge handles a normal load of traffic including logging trucks In 2005, the Lane County Public Works Department began issuing a series of 17 commemorative coins to honor the county's covered bridges  Income from coin sales is used to help maintain the historic bridges  The first coin, struck in the fall of 2005, honored the Goodpasture Bridge   The remaining sixteen coins are being released at a rate of two per year through 2013 In 2010, Lane County reported receiving $2 million in a federal transportation grant to repair the bridge and raise its derated load limit from 15 short tons (14 t) back to 40 short tons (36 t) beginning in 2012 It was rumored that the bridge was destroyed in the Holiday Farm wildfire on September 8, 2020, but these was later confirmed to be false 

Structure
The Goodpasture Bridge was designed by the Oregon State Highway Department (now the Oregon Department of Transportation) and was built by Lane County  A C  Striker was the county bridge superintendent at the time of its construction  It was built to allow local families and commercial logging trucks to cross the McKenzie River The Goodpasture Bridge is a classic covered bridge in design  The deck is 17 7 feet (5 4 m) wide with a vertical clearance of 15 3 feet (4 7 m)  The bridge's two foundation tiers were concrete  Its wooden floor planks and shingled roof were intact, as is the weatherboard housing that protects the Howe truss infrastructure from the weather Most of Oregon's covered bridges, including the Goodpasture Bridge, were built using the Howe truss system, developed in 1840 by the Massachusetts architect William Howe  The system uses heavy timbers reinforced with iron or steel rods  The trusses have central beams and crossed timbers with adjustable, vertical iron rods to support the structural load The Goodpasture Bridge is one of the most photographed bridges in the state of Oregon  The bridge's architectural detailing includes false end beams, semi-elliptical portals, and ten Gothic style louvered windows on each side  The windows were built to allow light into the long covered structure so drivers could see oncoming traffic  During the Christmas season, the bridge is hung with decorations, attracting many winter visitors 

See also
List of bridges documented by the Historic American Engineering Record in Oregon
List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Oregon
List of Oregon covered bridges
Passage 5:
Carleton Bridge
The Carleton Bridge (or Carlton Bridge) is a historic wooden covered bridge that carries Carlton Road over the South Branch Ashuelot River in East Swanzey, New Hampshire   The bridge was built in 1869, and is the region's only surviving example of a 19th-century Queenspost truss bridge   The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 

Description and history
The Carleton Bridge is located in central eastern Swanzey, in a rural setting on Carlton Road east of New Hampshire Route 32   Carlton Road is one of the main routes connecting Swanzey village with East Swanzey   The bridge is a single span 67 feet 3 inches (20 50 m) in length and 16 feet 6 inches (5 03 m) wide, resting on granite abutments   Its roadway is 12 feet 4 inches (3 76 m) wide, sufficient for one lane of traffic   Its exterior is sheathed in vertical board siding and is topped by a gabled roof   Its trusses have been reinforced with iron tie rods and other metal elements The bridge was built in 1869 on a site that is believed to have had a bridge since 1789   It is believed to be the only example of a Queenspost truss bridge in southern New Hampshire   This truss method is quite old, and is based on techniques used for building large structures such as churches and barns 

See also
List of New Hampshire covered bridges
List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in New Hampshire
National Register of Historic Places listings in Cheshire County, New Hampshire

Notes
Passage 6:
Orlando furioso (Vivaldi, 1714)
Orlando furioso RV 819 (Italian pronunciation: [orˈlando fuˈrjoːzo, -so], Teatro San Angelo, Venice 1714) is a three-act opera surviving in manuscript in Antonio Vivaldi's personal library, only partly related to his better known Orlando furioso (RV 728) of 1727  It is a recomposition of an Orlando furioso written by Giovanni Alberto Ristori which had been very successfully staged by Vivaldi and his father's impresa in 1713, and whose music survives in a few fragments retained in the score of RV 819  Therefore, Vivaldi's first cataloguer Peter Ryom did not assign the opera a RV number, but catalogued it as RV Anh  84  The libretto was by Grazio Braccioli 

Authorship
Federico Maria Sardelli, according to the studies of Reinhard Strohm, argues that Orlando RV 819 was entirely recomposed by Vivaldi, starting from the original Ristori's opera that Vivaldi himself had already changed during the numerous representations of the season 1713  He assigned to it the catalogue number RV 819  One suggestion is that Vivaldi avoided putting his own name on the opera having himself only recently taken direction of the Teatro San Angelo  Against this others consider that the bulk of the opera is a copy of Ristori's lost work 

Opera
Unlike the Orlando furioso (RV 728) of 1727, in which the role of Orlando is sung by a contralto, the 1714 opera assigns the title role to a bass  The third act is missing and the rest of the score (evidently used in performances by the composer) is incomplete  Two arias are lost, seven arias are incomplete (only the bass part is extant) and three arias are identical with extant arias in RV 727 and RV 729 

Recording
The French label Naïve, which had already recorded the more famous Orlando furioso and Orlando finto pazzo for its Vivaldi Edition, released a recording of the July 20, 2012 première at the Festival de Beaune, with Sardelli conducting Modo Antiquo and singers including Riccardo Novaro as Orlando, Gaëlle Arquez as Angelica, Romina Basso as Alcina and Teodora Gheorghiu as Bradamante  Given the heavily defective nature of the surviving manuscript, Sardelli had to reconstruct or compose ex novo the seven incomplete arias, in a Vivaldian style 

See also
List of operas by Antonio Vivaldi
Passage 7:
Royal Albert Bridge
The Royal Albert Bridge is a railway bridge which spans the River Tamar in England between Plymouth, Devon and Saltash, Cornwall  Its unique design consists of two 455-foot (138 7 m) lenticular iron trusses 100 feet (30 5 m) above the water, with conventional plate-girder approach spans  This gives it a total length of 2,187 5 feet (666 8 m)  It carries the Cornish Main Line railway in and out of Cornwall  It is adjacent to the Tamar Bridge which opened in 1961 to carry the A38 road 
The Royal Albert Bridge was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel  Surveying started in 1848 and construction commenced in 1854  The first main span was positioned in 1857 and the completed bridge was opened by Prince Albert on 2 May 1859  Brunel died later that year and his name was then placed above the portals at either end of the bridge as a memorial  During the 20th century the approach spans were replaced, and the main spans strengthened  It has attracted sightseers since its construction and has appeared in many paintings, photographs, guidebooks, postage stamps and on the UK £2 coin  Anniversary celebrations took place in 1959 and 2009 

Cornwall Railway
Two rival schemes for a railway to Falmouth, Cornwall, were proposed in the 1830s  The 'central' scheme was a route from Exeter around the north of Dartmoor, an easy route to construct but with little intermediate traffic  The other, the 'coastal' scheme, was a line with many engineering difficulties but which could serve the important naval town of Devonport and the industrial area around St Austell  The central scheme was backed by the London and South Western Railway while the coastal scheme was promoted by the Cornwall Railway and backed by the Great Western Railway which wanted it to join up with the South Devon Railway at Devonport  The Cornwall Railway applied for an Act of Parliament in 1845 but it was rejected, in part because of William Moorsom's plan to carry trains across the water of the Hamoaze on the Devonport-to-Torpoint Ferry  Following this Isambard Kingdom Brunel took over as engineer and proposed to cross the water higher upstream using a bridge at Saltash instead  The Act enabling this scheme was passed on 3 August 1846 

Design
The structure was the third in a series of three large wrought iron bridges built in the middle of the 19th century  It was influenced by the preceding two, both of which had been designed by Robert Stephenson  The two central sections of Brunel's bridge are novel adaptations of the design Stephenson employed for the High Level Bridge across the River Tyne in Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1849  Brunel was present when Stephenson raised the girders of his Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait in the same year  From 1849 to 1853 Brunel was erecting an iron bridge of his own; the Chepstow Railway Bridge carried the South Wales Railway across the River Wye and featured a main truss of 300 feet (91 m) with a curving tubular main member and three conventional plate-girder approach spans of 100 feet (30 m), a similar solution to that adopted for crossing the River Tamar at Saltash The river is about 1,100 feet (340 m) wide at Saltash  Brunel's first thoughts had been to cross this on a double track timber viaduct with a central span of 255 feet (78 m) and six approach spans of 105 feet (32 m) with 80 feet (24 m) clearance above the water  This was rejected by the Admiralty, who had statutory responsibility for navigable waters, so Brunel produced a revised design to give 100 feet (30 m) clearance, with two spans of 300 feet (91 m) and two of 200 feet (61 m)  The Admiralty again rejected this plan, stipulating that there should not be more than one pier in the navigable part of the river 
Brunel now abandoned plans for a double track timber structure and instead proposed a single track wrought iron design consisting of a single 850-foot (259 1 m) span  As the cost of this structure would have been around £500,000 at 1846 prices (equivalent to £51,510,000 in 2021), he amended the design to one of two main spans of 455 feet (138 7 m) with 100 feet (30 5 m) clearance above mean high spring tide; this was approved by the Admiralty and the directors of the Cornwall Railway The two spans are lenticular trusses with the top chord of each truss comprising a heavy tubular arch in compression, which tend to expand in length under load, while the bottom chord comprises a pair of chains, which tend to contract in length under load  By design, these two effects cancel so that there is no net change in length under load  This in turn enables each of the trusses to be supported with no horizontal thrust exerted on the piers, which is crucial in view of the curved track on either side  Between these two chords are supporting cross-bracing members and suspension standards which hang beneath the bottom chord to carry the railway deck which is a continuous plate beam  There are also 17 shorter and more conventional plate-girder approach spans on the shore  On the Cornish side there are ten which measure (from Saltash station towards the river): 67 5 feet (20 6 m), 69 5 feet (21 2 m), 69 5 feet (21 2 m), 69 5 feet (21 2 m), 69 5 feet (21 2 m), 69 5 feet (21 2 m), 72 5 feet (22 1 m), 78 0 feet (23 8 m), 83 5 feet (25 5 m), 93 0 feet (28 3 m), and seven on the Devon side of (from the river towards St Budeaux): 93 0 feet (28 3 m), 83 5 feet (25 5 m), 78 0 feet (23 8 m), 72 5 feet (22



ground_truth: Colin Firth

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

Question: What is the name of the famous bridge located in the birthplace of the composer of Nulla in mundo pax sincera?

The following are given passages.
Context 3: 1 m), 69 5 feet (21 2 m), 69 5 feet (21 2 m), 69 5 feet (21 2 m)  This gives a total length for the nineteen spans of 2,187 5 feet (666 8 m) 

History
Construction
The first work was to properly survey the river bed  On 26 April 1848 a 6-foot (1 8 m) iron cylinder 85 feet (25 9 m) tall was launched into the Tamar  From the bottom of this the bed of the river could be examined to identify its nature and the location of solid foundations  The Cornwall Railway at this time was finding it difficult to raise funds and so most operations were suspended that summer, but a small fund was allowed for Brunel to continue the survey  The cylinder was positioned at 35 different places and a total of 175 borings made In 1853 the tenders for the bridge were considered by the Cornwall Railway Board, and it was decided to let the work to Charles John Mare, a shipbuilder from Blackwall who had built the ironwork for the Britannia Bridge  The fee he sought for building the Saltash Bridge was £162,000, but on 21 September 1855 while constructing the first of the two trusses he filed for bankruptcy  Brunel proposed that the company should complete this first truss itself by its own direct labour, to which the company agreed  A contract for the remainder of the building was awarded to Messrs Hudson and Male 

Mare's first task had been to establish an erecting yard on the Devon shore with a jetty and workshops  He then proceeded to construct a 37-foot (11 3 m) iron cylinder 90 feet (27 4 m) tall which was to form the work base for the construction of the central pier  This was launched in May 1854 and moored in the centre of the river between four pontoons  The bottom had been shaped to follow the rock surveyed in 1848  Once it was settled on the river bed the water was pumped out, the mud within it excavated, and a solid masonry pier built up clear of the water  This was completed in November 1856 The landward piers on the Cornish side of the river were completed in 1854 and the girders for these spans were hoisted up to their correct positions  Next to be built was the main truss for the Cornwall side of the river  The lower ties of the trusses formed of chains made from 20 feet (6 1 m) links  Many were obtained from the suspended works for Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge and others rolled new for Saltash  The Cornwall span was floated into position on 1 September 1857 and jacked up to full height in 3-foot (0 9 m) stages as the piers were built up beneath it, the central pier using cast iron octagonal columns; the landward one using ordinary masonry 

With the yard now cleared of the first truss, work could start on the main Devon span  This was similarly floated into position on 10 July 1858 and then raised in a similar manner  It was in its final position by 28 December 1858  After this had been removed, part of the yard had to be cleared to allow the construction of the final landward pier and then the Devon approach spans could be raised up to their final position  The work was sufficiently advanced that directors were able to make an inspection by train on 11 April 1859 The Cornwall span had been tested before it was launched  The two ends were supported on substantial timber piers and the remaining scaffolding removed  Static loads of 1 25 and 2 25 long tons per foot (4 2 and 7 5 t/m) were placed on the deck, the deflections measured and any permanent change measured once the load was removed  Now that it was completed, the bridge had its statutory inspection and tests by Colonel Yolland on behalf of the Board of Trade on 20 April 1859  He ran a heavy train over the bridge and measured deflections in the main trusses of 1 14 inches (29 mm) in the Devon truss, and 1 20 inches (30 mm) in the Cornwall one  Overall he described it as 'highly satisfactory' 

Opening day
Prince Albert had agreed to the bridge being named after him as early as 1853  He was invited to perform the opening ceremony, and on 2 May 1859 he travelled from Windsor on the Royal Train  Several thousand spectators attended that day, although guests from Cornwall were late for the ceremony as their train broke down at Liskeard  Illness prevented the attendance of Brunel who was instead represented by his chief assistant Robert Brereton   Public services commenced on 4 May 1859 

Changes since 1859
After Brunel's premature death on 15 September 1859 the directors of the Cornwall Railway Company decided to make the bridge a memorial to him by adding the words I K  BRUNEL, ENGINEER, 1859 in large metal letters on either end of the bridge  In 1921, new access platforms were added that obscured the lettering but in 2006 Network Rail relocated the platforms, allowing the name to be clearly seen again  The walkways had previously been temporarily removed in 1959 and the bridge floodlit during its centenary year Over the weekend of 21–22 May 1892 the track gauge on the bridge was converted from 7 ft 1⁄4 in (2,140 mm) to 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) during the final conversion of the whole Great Western Railway 401 new cross-girders were fitted in 1905 to allow heavier locomotives to pass over  In 1908 the two spans nearest Saltash station were replaced with wider ones to accommodate a new track layout  The remaining approach spans were replaced on both sides of the river during 1928 and 1929  During the 1930s new cross-bracing and diagonal sway-bracing were added between the vertical standards to further strengthen the bridge and keep the suspension chains hanging in the correct shape 

The bridge was Grade 1 listed in 1952 Additional links between the suspensions chains and the decking were added in 1969 to further strengthen the bridge  In 2011 Network Rail began a three-year £10 million refurbishment involving replacing 50,000 bolts and installation of 100 tonnes of new steelwork  The bridge has also been stripped back to the bare metal and repainted in the Goose Grey colour originally applied in 1952 

Viewing the bridge
The bridge can be crossed using a train on the Cornish Main Line which affords far-reaching views of the Tamar  Cruise boats operate between Phoenix Wharf, Plymouth, from Saltash, and Calstock  Main view points are:

Saltash railway station (50 40719°N 4 20924°W﻿ / 50 40719; -4 20924)The Cornish approach spans start right at the platform end  These were replaced in 1908 so that the single line on the bridge could split into two lines before reaching the station Saltash Quay (50 40779°N 4 20614°W﻿ / 50 40779; -4 20614)The foreshore at Saltash runs right up to the pier that supports the Cornish end of the main span   An inscribed stone commemorating the bridge can be found beneath the bridge on the hillside alongside Fore Street Tamar Bridge (50 40777°N 4 19974°W﻿ / 50 40777; -4 19974)The road bridge runs parallel to and slightly higher, on the north side   A toll-free foot and cycle path is on the south side of the road bridge from which it is possible to examine the bridge in detail   An area of grass beside the motor vehicle toll booths affords a view of the Devon end of the railway bridge Saltash Passage, St Budeaux (50 40585°N 4 20069°W﻿ / 50 40585; -4 20069)The Devon piers can be reached from the waterfront at St Budeaux   The yard where the spans were constructed was situated alongside the bridge at the foot of the road down the hill 

Cultural impact
The construction of such a large and distinctive bridge soon caught the attention of the general public  The launching of the Cornish span in 1857 attracted a crowd of around 20,000, with similar numbers said to have witnessed the launch of the Devonport span and the opening day  During its construction it was photographed many times and after its opening it was the subject for many paintings, including those by Devonport-born artist Alfred Wallis  It has also been the subject of many photographs and postcards It was already a feature in guidebooks in the year of its opening: "It is a labour of Hercules, but Mr Brunel has accomplished the feat," proclaimed one, and went on to report in detail the design and construction of the bridge that "for novelty and ingenuity of construction stands unrivalled in the world"  More than 100 years later it continues to appear in many travel guides and features  John Betjeman summed up its impact on the traveller:

The general grey slate and back gardens of Plymouth, as seen from the Great Western made the surprise of Saltash Bridge all the more exciting  Up and down stream, grey battleships were moored in the Tamar and its reaches  Hundreds of feet below, the pathetic steam ferry to Saltash from the Devon bank tried to compete with Brunel's mighty bridge 
The bridge has become a symbol of the transition from Devon to Cornwall  In the Great Western Railway's The Cornish Riviera travel guide, SPB Mais regarded it as "an almost magic means of transporting travellers from a county, which, if richer than others, is yet unmistakingly an English county, to a Duchy which is in every respect un-English  You shut your eyes going over the Saltash Bridge only to open them again on a foreign scene" The bridge is the backdrop of ITV1's The West Country Tonight during the old westcountry region 

Special events
Special occasions have been marked over the years by special events:

1859 – The bridge was opened by Prince Albert two days before the railway was opened to the public  He arrived by special train from Windsor, was shown around the bridge and the works yard, and then left aboard the Royal Yacht 
1959 – Floodlights lit up the bridge during 1959 in celebration of its centenary 
2006 – The 200th anniversary of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's birth was celebrated by Network Rail permanently removing the access ways that covered his name above the portals 
2009 – During the bank holiday weekend of 2–4 May there were many special events to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the opening of the bridge including a guided walk across the bridge and a re-enactment of the opening day 
Passage 8:
Rialto Bridge
The Rialto Bridge (Italian: Ponte di Rialto; Venetian: Ponte de Rialto) is the oldest of the four bridges spanning the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy  Connecting the sestieri (districts) of San Marco and San Polo, it has been rebuilt several times since its first construction as a pontoon bridge in 1173, and is now a significant tourist attraction in the city 

History
The first dry crossing of the Grand Canal was a pontoon bridge built in 1181 by Nicolò Barattieri  It was called the Ponte della Moneta, presumably because of the mint that stood near its eastern entrance The development and importance of the Rialto market on the eastern bank increased traffic on the floating bridge, so it was replaced in 1255 by a wooden bridge  This structure had two ramps meeting at a movable central section, that could be raised to allow the passage of tall ships  The connection with the market eventually led to a change of name for the bridge  During the first half of the 15th century, two rows of shops were built along the sides of the bridge  The rents brought an income to the State Treasury, which helped maintain the bridge 
Maintenance was vital for the timber bridge  It was partly burnt in the revolt led by Bajamonte Tiepolo in 1310  In 1444, it collapsed under the weight of a crowd rushing to see the marriage of the Marquis of Ferrara and it collapsed again in 1524 
The idea of rebuilding the bridge in stone was first proposed in 1503  Several projects were considered over the following decades  In 1551, the authorities requested proposals for the renewal of the Rialto Bridge, among other things  Plans were offered by famous architects, such as Jacopo Sansovino, Palladio and Vignola, but all involved a Classical approach with several arches, which was judged inappropriate to the situation  Michelangelo also was considered as designer of the bridge The present stone bridge, a single span designed by Antonio da Ponte, began to be constructed in 1588 and was completed in 1591  It is similar to the wooden bridge it succeeded  Two ramps lead up to a central portico  On either side of the portico, the covered ramps carry rows of shops  The engineering of the bridge was considered so audacious that architect Vincenzo Scamozzi predicted future ruin  The bridge has defied its critics to become one of the architectural icons, and top tourist attractions, in Venice 

Other names
It was called Shylock's bridge in Robert Browning's poem "A Toccata of Galuppi's" 

See also
Miracle of the Relic of the Cross at the Ponte di Rialto (depiction of wooden bridge)
List of buildings and structures in Venice
Passage 9:
Dufferin Street bridges
The Dufferin Street bridges are two inter-connected vehicular bridges in Toronto, Ontario, Canada  The bridges carry Dufferin Street over a railway corridor and the Gardiner Expressway to Exhibition Place  The bridges closed to vehicular traffic in 2013  Temporary structures were built in 2013-2014 to allow a resumption of traffic in early 2014  As of March 2019 the spans over the Gardiner Expressway remain in place and the bailey bridges replacing the older outer pedestrian bridges of the northern span with the inner vehicular steel plate box girder bridge still in place 

North span
The truss bridge is a 30 metres (98 ft) steel truss bridge, built from 1911 to 1912 to cross over railway tracks south of Springhurst Avenue  Four tracks pass under the bridge  A 2013 engineering study determined that the bridge was unsafe and not viable to be repaired  However, in 2014, Bailey bridges were added for pedestrian traffic on the east and west sides, while the inner steel plate box girder bridge for vehicular traffic remains in place 

South span
The south span is a 35 metres (115 ft) concrete overpass built in 1958 after demolition of the old Dufferin Gate to allow for clearance for the Gardiner Expressway below 

Deterioration and replacement
After a report from external inspections conducted in 2007 the city decided to replace both spans with a single span:
1911 steel plate girder bridge over rail corridor is structurally unsafe for vehicular traffic
lack space below to expanded rail corridor
need to provide space for future LRT corridor to the south end of the bridge
1958 concrete bridge over Gardiner Expressway needs maintenance to keep it structurally safe
eliminate the existing 10 metres (33 ft) gap between the two existing bridges spans
From June 2013 the bridges have been closed to vehicular traffic  In November 2013-early 2014, the north bridge superstructure were replaced by three temporary bridges - two for traffic, and a third for pedestrians  The temporary bridges were opened in 2014 and are still used as of September 11, 2021  

Toronto tried deciding the type of bridge that will span over the tracks, but the decision was canceled as of September 11, 2021    The four types were:

Steel plate box girder
Hung arch
Cable stay
Concrete box girder

Gallery
Passage 10:
Mundo Civilizado
Mundo Civilizado is the second solo album by American musician Arto Lindsay 

Critical reception
Rock critic Robert Christgau named the album his favorite of 1997 in the annual Pazz & Jop poll published by The Village Voice and among his 10 best albums from the 1990s 

Track listing
"Complicity" – 4:07
"Q Samba" – 3:27
"Simply Beautiful" (Al Green cover) – 3:59
"Mundo Civilizado" – 4:24
"Titled" – 3:19
"Horizontal" – 3:32
"Mar da Gávea" – 2:43
"Imbassaí" – 3:18
"Pleasure" – 2:38
"Erotic City" (Prince cover) – 5:02
"Clown" – 3:50
Passage 11:
Nulla in mundo pax sincera
Nulla in mundo pax sincera, RV 630, is a sacred motet composed by Antonio Vivaldi in 1735 to an anonymous Latin text, the title of which may be translated as "In this world there is no honest peace" or "There is no true peace in this world without bitterness"   Written in the key of E major and in the typical lyrical Italian Baroque style, it is scored for solo soprano, two violins, viola and basso continuo, this would normally be a cello and keyboard instrument, in Vivaldi's case often the organ  The text dwells on the imperfections of a world full of evil and sin, and praises Jesus for the salvation he offers from it   It is considered to be one of Vivaldi's most beautiful solo motets The motet consists of three parts (Aria; Recitative; Aria), followed by a concluding Alleluia  A full performance of the piece takes approximately 13 minutes 

Text
In popular culture
The first aria, sung by Jane Edwards, was featured in the 1996 film Shine 

Media
The instrumental version of Nulla in mundo pax sincera is used as the song for the phonograph in the video game We Need to Go Deeper

External links
Nulla in mundo pax sincera: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
Performance of Nulla in mundo pax sincera by A Far Cry with Amanda Forsythe (soprano) from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in M4A format
Passage 12:
Giovanni Cifolelli
Giovanni Cifolelli was an Italian mandolin virtuoso and dramatic composer whose date and place of birth are unknown  In 1764 he made his appearance in Paris as a mandolin virtuoso and was highly esteemed, both as a performer and teacher  He published his Method for the mandolin while residing in Paris, which met with great success throughout France, being the most popular of its period 
His chief works were the operas L'Italienne and Pierre et Lucette, the former being an opera bouffe in one act (with the storyline or libretto by Nicolas-Étienne Framery)  These works were commissioned by the Comedie Italienne, Paris, and were produced at this theatre successfully, in 1770 and 1774  Several of the songs and duets in Pierre and Lucette were exceedingly popular in France, and they were republished in Paris in 1775 and 1780 

Works
L'Italienne  : comédie en 1 acte, mêlée d'ariettes (Paris, 1770)
Pierre et Lucette, comédie en deux actes et en prose mêlée d'ariettes (Paris, 1774)
Airs détachés de Perin et Lucette, comédie en deux actes, mêlées d'ariettes par M  Davesne (Paris, 1775)
Ariette nouvelle avec accompagnement de deux violons et basse
Non, laisse moi, laisse moi, Lucas  Duo (1775)
Passage 13:
Mariefred Charterhouse
Mariefred Charterhouse, sometimes referred to as Gripsholm Charterhouse (Swedish: Mariefreds kloster, Latin: Monasterium Pacis Mariae or Pax Mariae), was a Carthusian monastery, or charterhouse, in the present town of Mariefred in Södermanland, Sweden, to which it gave its name; before the building of the monastery the place was known as Gripsholm  It was the only Carthusian monastery in Scandinavia, and one of the last monasteries established in Sweden before the Reformation 

History
The establishment of a Carthusian monastery in Sweden was brought about by the efforts of Jakob Ulvsson, Archbishop of Uppsala, and Kort Rogge, Bishop of Strängnäs, who in 1493 persuaded Sten Sture the elder, Regent of Sweden, to have the monks Fikke Dyssin and Johannes Sanderi together with two lay brothers sent from the Marienehe Charterhouse near Rostock to Sweden for a meeting with the riksrådet (Privy Council of Sweden)  Later that year Sten Sture enfeoffed the Carthusians with the Gripsholm estate in Selebo härad in Södermanland and in 1502 gave them other lands round about  
The monastery church was dedicated on 15 February 1504, and Sten Sture was buried here  The monastery was built on the high ground close to Gripsholm Castle on the site where Mariefred Church now stands In 1498 the lay brothers set up a printing press  The only book now known from this press is a tract for an ecstatic devotional movement based on the veneration of the rosary, the "Brotherhood of the Psalter of the Virgin Mary"  This was distributed across the whole of Europe, and had a powerful effect on the devotional life of late medieval period 
Mariefred Charterhouse was short-lived: in 1526 it was one of the first monasteries secularised by Gustav Vasa  In December 1525 he claimed its assets from the heirs of Sten Sture the Elder, who had given the estate to the monastery on the condition that it should pass to the right heirs of the monastery if it were ever wound up  This claim was legitimated by the Privy Council in January 1526 
Virtually no trace of the monastic buildings now remains above ground: Gustav Vasa had them dismantled for the construction of Gripsholm Castle  A cellar and a few traces of walls have been discovered to the south of the church  A small collection of stones discovered during excavations in the monastery grounds, is in the church tower 

Mariefred Church
Mariefred Church (Mariefreds kyrka) was built in 1621-1624 over the ruins of the old Carthusian monastery  It was built of stone and was burned down in 1682 but  rebuilt and  completed in 1697  Today it is the parish church of Mariefred and is associated with the Diocese of Strängnäs 
Next to the church stands the Sten Sture stone, erected in 1905, marking the site of the monastery  The inscription reads: "Sten Sture, riddare till Gripsholm, rikets föreståndare, grundade här klostret Mariefred och fick här sin lägerstad år 1504 " ("Sten Sture, knight at Gripsholm, regent of the realm, founded here the monastery of Mariefred and received here his resting place in the year 1504") 

Literary reference
August Strindberg describes the monks calling in an artist to paint an altarpiece for the newly built monastery  in the chapter entitled Utveckling from  his  collection of short stories entitled Svenska öden och äventyr  (Alb  Bonniers  1913) 

Notes and references
Further reading
Berg, Per E, 1949: August Strindberg och Sörmland  Årsboken Sörmlandsbygden 1949
Berg, Per E, 1949: Sörmländska kloster  Södermanlands Nyheter
Berntson, Martin, 2003: Klostren och reformationen  Artos och & Normas bokförlag
Collmar, Magnus, 1968: När klostermurarna revos  Årsboken Sörmlandsbygden 1968
Medeltidens ABC (2nd edition)  SHM 1985
Nordisk Familjebok  Uggleupplagan, nd
Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och biblioteksväsen, Årg  XXII, 1935



ground_truth: Rialto Bridge

Ponte di Rialto