September 3rd in History

Coronation Procession, Richard Lionheart

1189    Richard I of England is crowned at Westminster.  He earned the soubriquet of Lionheart in the crusades, or as the Saracens called him, Melek-Ric. 
 Before that he was Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Lord of Ireland, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Count of Nantes, Overlord of Brittany.  Although he was born in England, Richard spent very little time in England, he actually spent little time there and spoke very little English.

Richard's coronation was an eventful episode in English history, not only for the usual reasons.  He had barred women and Jews from attending, it was a superstition at the time that it was bad luck to have Jews present for the ceremony. When Jewish leaders attempted to present gifts to the new king, he had them stripped, flogged, and thrown out.  This led to a rumor that Richard had issued an order for Jews to be killed, which in turn led to a massacre of London Jews.  Some were robbed and beaten to death, some were burned alive when houses in the Jewish ghetto, and businesses were burned to the ground with people inside them.  Those who tried to leave the burning buildings were killed.  A few Jews were forcibly baptised.  Jacob of Orleans, considered one of the most learned men of his era was among those killed, becoming a Jewish martyr.  Richard punished some of the rioters, hanging those who accidentally burned down Christian houses by mistake.   While romanticized historic novels have portrayed the medieval Jews of England as having willingly donated large sums to ransome Richard Lionheart back to England, coerced large donations were closer to the truth.

Burned out stone remains of
Clifford's Tower, site of the
March 1290 Jewish Massacre of York

Richard did issue a writ that Jews were not to be persecuted, but there was another massacre, this time in York only six months later, as well as at Lynn, Bury St. Edmonds, Lincoln, Colchester, Thetford, Ospinge.  In the York massacre, the local Jews had taken refuge in a tower that was mobbed by local rioters seeking their forced conversion.  Rather than give up their religion, the Jews under the guidance of their leaders followed the tradition of the Masada with the male head of the household killing their wives and children and then the leader killing the remaining men. A few Jews survived this mass suicide, and instead surrendered and were proimsed safe passage out of the tower, but were instead killed when they came out, and then the tower itself was burned.  Jews were expelled from England entirely in 1290.

Mameluke Cavalry Training
Manual Illustration

1260   The Mamluks defeat the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine, marking their first decisive defeat and the point of maximum expansion of the Mongol Empire.  Mamluks or Mameluks, were slaves who converted to Islam, usually white Christians.  They became a prominent and powerful military caste within this period, seizing the Sultanate of Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517.  They not only fought off the Mongols, they successfully fought on behalf of the Moslems in the crusades.  Despite being slaves, many of the Mameluks held positions of trust and power greater than those of free Moslems.  They were noted in particular for their excellence in horsemanship as well as their overall military prowess.

Sir Edward Coke

1634   Death of Sir Edward Coke, English jurist and Member of Parliament (b. 1552)  Coke wrote formative legal opinions on common law which continued to be influential long after his death.  He became Solicitor General, and Attorney General, under Queen Elizabeth I.  He was the prosecutor of Sir Walter Raleigh and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators in the historic treason trial.  He was later made an important Judge in different positions, including Lord Chief Justice of England.  James I didn't like him as much as the earlier monarchs, removing him from the bench. So Coke (pronounced COOK) moved over to Parliament, to the House of Commons, where he was an author of the document limiting the powers of the Monarchy, the Petition of Right, a sort of 1628 English predecessor to the U. S. Bill of Rights, affirming Enlightenment political philosophy opposing royal absolutism. 

                              The Petition of Right stipulated:

                         No Taxation without Parliament's consent

                         No Forced loans
                         No Arbitrary arrest
                         No Imprisonment contrary to Magna Carta 
                         No Arbitrary interference with property rights
                         Enforcement of habeas corpus
                         No Forced billeting of troops
                         No Imposition of martial law in peace time
                         No Exemption of officials from due process

Coke also wrote an 11 volume Coke's Reports still used in English legal practice, and the 4 volume Institutes of the Lawes of England.

1651   Third English Civil War, in the Battle of Worcester, the Charles II of England is defeated in this final major battle.

1658    Death of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England from malaria (b. 1599) and possible septicemia from an infection secondary to kidney stones.  Charles II returned to the throne of England in 1660, and in 1661 had the remains of Cromwell exhumed, and posthumously executed for having signed the warrant for the execution of Charles I, on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I.  Cromwell's body was hanged in chains at Tyburn, and his decapitated head was displayed on a pole outside Westminster Hall until 1685. Cromwell's head had a series of owners, including a sale in 1814 to Josiah Wilkinson; it was eventually buried (without the rest of his body) at Sidney Suxxex College, Cambridge, in 1960.  Also posthumously executed along with Cromwell were John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton who was Cromwell's son-in-law, another signatory to the execution of Charles I, and John Bradshaw, the chief presiding judge at Charles I's trial.  Bradshaw and Ireton were, like Cromwell, also beheaded and their severed heads put on display outside Westminster Hall.

1783    The American Revolutionary War ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1803   English scientist John Dalton begins using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.

1811  Sin, Sex, Salvation, and Silverware - Birth of  John Humphrey Noyes, American political and religious figure (d. 1886)  He founded the Oneida Community in Oneida, New York in 1848.  Noyes believed, by careful calculation, that the second coming of Christ had occurred already, back in 70 A.D.  He coined the term 'free love', and was an American utopian socialist. At various times his beliefs, both religious and sexual caused him trouble with the local authorities, including an arrest for adultery, and pursuit for statutory rape.  His religious community encompassed a number of successful businesses and industries, engaged in plural marriage, and believed that they could lead lives without sin,  philosophy called perfectionism.  They believed they could bring about Christ's millenial kingdom, along with a list of what might charitably be called unusual beliefs and practices in the communities.

The Oneida Community formally dissolved, and converted to a joint stock company in 1881.  The communities' industries were consolidated under Noye's son Pierrepont, and became the largest producer of flatware for most of the 20th century.


1838   Dressed in a sailor's uniform and carrying identification papers provided by a Free Black seaman, future abolitionist Frederick Douglass boards a train in Maryland on his way to freedom from slavery.

1855    In Nebraska, 700 soldiers under United States General William S. Harney avenged the Grattan Massacre, attacking a Sioux village, killing 100 men, women, and children.

1861   Confederate General Leonidas Polk invades neutral Kentucky, prompting the state legislature to ask for Union assistance.

1875    Birth of Ferdinand Porsche, Austrian automotive engineer (d. 1951)

1929   The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 381.17, the pre-crash stock market high.

1935   Sir Malcolm Campbell reaches speed of 304.331 miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, becoming the first person to drive an automobile over 300 mph

1941   Karl Fritzsch, deputy camp commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, experiments with the use of Zyklon B in the gassing of Soviet POWs.

1942   In response to news of its coming liquidation, Dov Lopatyn leads an uprising in the Lakhva Ghetto.

1944   Holocaust: Diarist Anne Frank and her family are placed on the last transport train from Westerbork to Auschwitz, arriving three days later.

1962   Death of E. E. Cummings, American poet (b. 1894)

1967  Dagen H in Sweden: traffic changes from driving on the left to driving on the right overnight without major accidents.

1976   The Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars.

1994    Russia and the People's Republic of China agree to de-target their nuclear weapons against each other.

2003   Death of Paul Jennings Hill, American anti-abortion murderer (b. 1954)

2005   Death of  William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States (b. 1924)