{"id":14388,"date":"2014-04-24T11:23:22","date_gmt":"2014-04-24T10:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=14388"},"modified":"2014-04-24T11:50:14","modified_gmt":"2014-04-24T10:50:14","slug":"the-cause-of-liberty-has-had-many-heroes-but-youve-probably-never-heard-of-alergnon-sidney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=14388","title":{"rendered":"The cause of liberty has had many heroes &#8211; but you&#8217;ve probably never heard of Algernon Sidney"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been watching the four-part television series <a href=\"http:\/\/www.channel4.com\/programmes\/new-worlds\">&#8220;New Worlds&#8221;<\/a> on Channel Four. It has now concluded but it will soon be available on DVD &#8211; see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.acorndvd.com\/new-worlds.html?utm_source=Bing&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_campaign=NewWorlds\">here<\/a>. It is set in Britain and America at the time of the restoration of the British monarchy with King Charles II on the throne.<\/p>\n<p>As always with historical dramas, I learned new things. I was particular interested in the character of Algernon Sidney who wrote a tract on liberty that is still recalled today. His Wikipedia profile summarises his life as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\"><b>Algernon Sidney<\/b>\u00a0or\u00a0<b>Sydney<\/b>\u00a0(14 or 15 January 1623 \u2013 7 December 1683) was an\u00a0<a title=\"England\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/England\">English<\/a>\u00a0<a title=\"Politician\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Politician\">politician<\/a>\u00a0and member of the\u00a0<a title=\"Long Parliament\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Long_Parliament\">Long Parliament<\/a>. A republican political theorist, colonel, and commissioner of the trial of King\u00a0<a title=\"Charles I of England\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_I_of_England\">Charles I of England<\/a>, he opposed the king&#8217;s execution. Sidney was later charged with plotting against the King, in part based on his work,\u00a0<i>Discourses Concerning Government<\/i>, used by the prosecution as a witness at his trial. He was executed for treason.\u00a0\u00a0After his death, Sidney was revered as a &#8220;Whig patriot\u2013hero and martyr&#8221;.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\">You can read the full Wikipedia page on Sidney <\/span><a style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Algernon_Sidney\">here<\/a><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been watching the four-part television series &#8220;New Worlds&#8221; on Channel Four. It has now concluded but it will soon be available on DVD &#8211; see here. It is set in Britain and America at the time of the restoration of the British monarchy with King Charles II on the throne. As always with historical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14388"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14398,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14388\/revisions\/14398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}