This May the Words for Wednesday are over at MessyMimi's Meanderings's blog. We were given:
biscuit
reign
selection
vigorous
treatment
seal
and/or one of more of the following obsolete words
beef-witted (slow-witted; having a heavy, ox-like intellect)
fudgel (to goof off while pretending to work)
groak (to silently stare at someone who is eating, in hopes of being invited to join in)
tittynope (a small quantity of something left over)
Remember
to go back, read other peoples' stories there or follow their links
back. And please place a comment after reading. Challenges like this one
thrives on interaction.
Susan, Heidi, Lis and Tage is doing their homework on witchcraft through the ages. Sandra and Kai are in the room as well, listening and watching the four children studying and eating biscuits. Kai groaks and Susan and Heidi now and then pass him a biscuit.
"Listen to this," Lis said, "It was a hard time for witches: 'The persecution of witches, both male and female, gained momentum during the reign of Christian IV. He gave a decree - the witchcraft act of 1617 - that all witchcraft was forbidden'." Lis was reading aloud from the book on history of magic in Denmark and Norway.
"He was a stickler for unification, that one," Tage said. "I read a bit of this yesterday and looked him up in the big encyclopedia. He also had several Jesuit spies - as he called them - killed. In fact he had any and all not orthodox protestant expelled. Catholics, Anabaptists, pietists, ... get out. And he burned a lot of books not on his allowed lists."
"He's always made to be a hero and a great king in normal school," Susan said. "What with his building of nice castles, vigorous hunting games, and successful or at least righteous wars with Sweden. But his treatment of people not agreeing with him seems to have been harsh and rigorous."
"With his seal on that act he was the reason many good people died," Sandra said. "Before his time almost no witches were burned or beheaded, and as soon as he died, it went down to almost zero again. He was not a good king for us."
Blogger putter stadig tilfældige kommentarer i spamfængsel. Jeg lover at slippe dem ud hurtigst muligt.
Blogger is still randomly putting comments in spam-jail. I promise to free them as fast as possible.
Sadly power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
SvarSletI suspect he was not a good king for other groups as well...
Love your use of messymimi's prompts.
As Lord Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority."
SvarSletGreat story. So often Kings are not what they seemed when learning about them in school. Only the good is taught and the bad is ignored.
SvarSlet