Usurper

Preface.

King Richard III, known commonly in history as Richard the Usurper, was perhaps as bad a man as the principle of hereditary sovereignty ever raised to the throne, or perhaps it should rather be said, as the principle of hereditary sovereignty ever made.

There is no evidence that his natural disposition was marked with any peculiar depravity.

He was made reckless, unscrupulous, and cruel by the influences which surrounded him and the circumstances in which he lived, and by being habituated to believe from his earliest childhood that the family to which he belonged were born to live in luxury and splendor and to reign, while the millions that formed the great mass of the community were created only to toil and to obey.

For years, while his boys were at school and college, I acted as his confidential friend in business and many other matters, and I suppose he told me more about himself and his life than any other man now living knows.

Isabel Knowles End of preface Recording by Thomas Rose Chapter 1 of The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by James Knowles This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Chapter 1 The Prophecies of Merlin and the Birth of Arthur King Vortigern the Usurper sat upon his throne in London, when suddenly upon a certain day ran in a breathless messenger and cried aloud, Arise, Lord King, for the enemy is come, even Ambrosius and Uther, upon whose throne thou sittest, and full twenty thousand with them, and they have sworn by a great oath, Lord, to slay thee ere this year be done, and even now they march toward thee as the north wind of winter for bitterness and haste.

At those words Vortigern's face grew white as ashes, and rising in confusion and disorder he sent for all the best artificers and craftsmen and mechanics, and commanded them vehemently to go and build him straightaway in the furthest west of his lands a great and strong castle, where he might fly for refuge and escape the vengeance of his master's sons.

And moreover, cried he, let the work be done within a hundred days from now, or I will surely spare no life amongst you all.

Many of them were not Britons at all, but foreigners settled in the city for trade.

Moreover—for it is not true that the whole British people had grown unfit for war—a revolt of the Roman legions in the year four oh seven drew a large number of the young men into their ranks; and when Constantine the Usurper took them over into Gaul for the four years' fighting which followed, the country was drained of its best fighting material.

The city, then, contained a large number of wealthy merchants, native and foreign.

It also contained a great many slaves, who were occupied in the conduct of the trade; and few, since the young men went away with Constantine, who could be relied upon to fight.

Apollo: the Roman god of poetry, music, and prophecy.

Guildhall: the hall of the guild or corporation of the city of London, near Cheapside.

Usurper: one who by force seizes and holds a position which does not belong to him.

Picts: wild savages from the country which we call Scotland.

I mean, you can predict, like, the legendary Viscerai.

But you can predict, like, oh, Usurp, go again, and stuff like that.

With Malice...

I have no fucking idea what they're doing, and I'm so excited.

Dude, like, if they do that swap and make Specs a Legendary, Dio's gonna be stuck at, like, 970 for eternity.

It's gonna be so bad for Dio.

Yeah, because the issue is, whenever you're flipped, this card is just easily playable, because if you just Usurp on your first attack, then you just slam, like, let's say you draw, like, four Blues, and you have, like, a Usurp attack, you can just jam, like, your five-card, like, 22 at your opponent with, like, a bad hand.

that's without even having the

Merlin Foretells the Birth of Arthur.

King Vortigern the Usurper sat upon his throne in London when suddenly, upon a certain day, ran in a breathless messenger and cried aloud, "Arise, Lord King, for the enemy is come, even Ambrosius and Uther, upon whose throne thou sittest, and full twenty thousand with them.

And they have sworn by a great oath, Lord, to slay thee ere this year be done.

And even now they march towards thee as the north wind of winter for bitterness and haste." At those words Vortigern's face grew white as ashes and, rising in confusion and disorder, he sent for all the best artificers and craftsmen and mechanics, and commanded them vehemently to go and build him straightway in the furthest west of his lands a great and strong castle where he might fly for refuge and escape the vengeance of his master's sons.

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For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org A Short History of England by G. K. Chesterton Chapter 10 The War of the Usurpers The poet Pope, though a friend of the greatest of Tory democrats, Bolingbroke, necessarily lived in a world in which even Toryism was Whiggish.

And the Whig, as a wit, never expressed his political point more clearly than in Pope's line which ran, The right divine of kings to govern wrong.

It will be apparent when I deal with that period that I do not palliate the real unreason in divine right, as Filmer and some of the pedantic cavaliers construed it.