----- Original Message -----
Andrew Hunter replied to Juliet Mclaren's
> >>>Great Britain as a political entity was 'invented' in 1707
> a small correction. "Great Britain" came into being with the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the Great in the sense of the WHOLE of the island of Britain. Great Britain is therefore not the same as the United Kingdom, which presently includes Northern Ireland.
This tinkled a bell in my fading memory which I was able to trace. Agnes Irwin (later dean of Radcliffe) asked a student how the crowns of Scotland & England came to be united. The student replied "under James 6 of Scotland who was also James 1 of England". To which Miss Irwin "and whose son was he?" The student "I know Queen Elizabeth was his mother; I did know who was his father, but have forgotten". Miss Irwin: "I wish you try and recollect. It would throw an interesting light on history".
Gabriel Austin
*********************************************************************
Due to deletion of content types excluded from this list by policy,
this multipart message was reduced to a single part, and from there
to a plain text message.
*********************************************************************