Bernard de Linton Quotes
For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is not for glory, nor riches, nor honors that we are fighting, but from freedom—for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
Bernard de Linton, *, Abbot of Arbroath and Chancellor of Scotland, Declaration of Arbroath, 1320
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He had been King of Portugal and then had come to the Portuguese colony of Brazil where he led a revolution against Portugal, declared independence from the “mother country, and was elected as Emperor of Brazil. The Colony was much larger and richer in natural resources than the “mother country.”
In most revolutionary settings leaders have to persuade people who have voted with no success to turn to the rifle. In Ireland at this point, almost all the nationalsits knew that the rifle would help them but they were not sure that a vote would have the effect of a bullet.
In 1937 the U. S. Treasury Department commissioned a pair of large murals to decorate the lobby or the Ariel Rios Federal Building in Washington DC. On the mural was depicted a U. S. Mail Service from Alaska to Puerto Rico. It showed four Puerto Rican women reading a letter in the Inuit dialect presumably delivered from Alaska. The authorities loved the mural until they discovered the translation of the Inuit letter. This was a direct reference to the Puerto Rican Nationalist Independence Movement. That year 18 Puerto Rican Nationalists were killed and over 100 wounded when police fired into a crowd of demonstrators on March 21. Kent, a famous artist, planted a newspaper story with the translation and soon media all over the company were drawing attention to the Puerto Rican movement, just as Kent had intended.
The Chief Secretary, Lord Castleregh, had put forward a resolution to bring about the unification of Great Britain and Ireland under the single British Parliament at Westminster. He and his allies had bribed a number of the Irish MPs to support the union. With Union some Irish MPs would then be able to win seats representing Ireland in the British Parliament. Although Grattan and most of the Orangemen opposed the Union, 4 months later, the bill passed comfortably. Ironically, Grattan was one of the Irish MPs whose popularity won a seat in the unified British Parliament.
There is an close similarity between the Dutch revolutionary statements and that of the Founding Fathers of America. The Dutch rebels were very well aware of the American Revolution and the subsequent establishment of a republic, and emulated much of the American experience. They were the first foreign people to be inspired by the American Revolution. Many followed.
The Congress was encouraging all men volunteer for the military and defend the new nation now that the British were landing in force to put down the revolution. By modern language standards, this is a little “over the top” but it shows not only the passion felt by the Congress but the importance they placed on the struggle.
Bernard de Linton (fl. 1296) was the parson of Mordington mentioned in the Ragman Rolls of 1296, where he is styled persone del Eglife de Mordington, del counte de Berewyk, "parson of the church of Mordington, in the county of Berwick". Nothing else is known of him. He is famous because between 1726 and the 20th century he was wrongly identified with Bernard, Abbot of Kilwinning, also mentioned in the Ragman Rolls, who was later Chancellor of Scotland, Abbot of Arbroath and Bishop of the Isles.
