NÚRIA WINSOR & DAVID BOWIE'S MARS SPACE ODDITY

Today, The Winsors and The Grandma have visited The Hampstead Scientific Society (HSS). 

They have had a wonderful partner, David Bowie, the Starman, who has driven to Mars in Space Oddity with Núria Winsor to discover the red planet during a day-trip.

Before this visit, the family has studied some English grammar with the modal verb Have to/Don't have to and they have started to read Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

More information: Have to/Don't have to 

More information: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe's Creator In Prision

The Hampstead Scientific Society (HSS) in north London was founded in July 1899 as the Hampstead Astronomical and General Scientific Society by P.E. Vizard. It aims to be inclusive, promoting and nurturing an interest in all branches of science, while catering for wide levels of knowledge, from layman to expert alike. The society maintains specialist astronomy and meteorology sections and runs a programme of lectures on various scientific topics in the Hampstead area of North West London.

The HSS is a registered charity which is affiliated with the British Science Association and the Richmond Scientific Society.

More information: Hampstead Scientific Society

David Robert Jones (8 January 1947-10 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie was an English singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. 

He is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.

Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his innovative work during the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, and his music and stagecraft had a significant impact on popular music.

David Robert Jones was born on 8 January 1947 in Brixton, London.

Bowie developed an interest in music from an early age. He studied art, music and design before embarking on a professional career as a musician in 1963. He released a string of unsuccessful singles with local bands and a solo album before achieving his first top-five entry on the UK Singles Chart with Space Oddity (1969).

After a period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant and androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by the success of Starman and album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which won him widespread popularity.

In 1975, Bowie's style shifted towards a sound he characterised as plastic soul, initially alienating many of his UK fans but garnering his first major US crossover success with the number-one single Fame and the album Young Americans.

In 1976, Bowie starred in the cult film The Man Who Fell to Earth and released Station to Station. 

In 1977, he again changed direction with the electronic-inflected album Low, the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno that came to be known as the Berlin Trilogy. Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1979) followed; each album reached the UK top five and received lasting critical praise.

After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had three number-one hits: the 1980 single Ashes to Ashes, its album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) and Under Pressure (a 1981 collaboration with Queen). He achieved his greatest commercial success in the 1980s with Let's Dance (1983).

Between 1988 and 1992, he fronted the hard rock band Tin Machine before resuming his solo career in 1993. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including industrial and jungle. He also continued acting; his roles included Major Jack Celliers in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth (1986), Phillip Jeffries in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Andy Warhol in the biopic Basquiat (1996), and Nikola Tesla in The Prestige (2006), among other film and television appearances and cameos. He stopped touring after 2004 and his last live performance was at a charity event in 2006.

He returned from a decade-long recording hiatus in 2013 with The Next Day. He died two days after both his 69th birthday and the release of his final album, Blackstar.

During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at over 100 million records worldwide, made him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Often dubbed the chameleon of rock due to his constant musical reinventions, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Rolling Stone ranked him among the greatest artists in history. 

As of 2022, Bowie was the best-selling vinyl artist of the 21st century.

Bowie died in New York City on 10 January 2016.

Bowie's songs and stagecraft brought a new dimension to popular music in the early 1970s, strongly influencing its immediate forms and subsequent development.

Perone credited Bowie with having brought sophistication to rock music, and critical reviews frequently acknowledged the intellectual depth of his work and influence.

The BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz likened Bowie to Pablo Picasso, writing that he was an innovative, visionary, restless artist who synthesised complex avant garde concepts into beautifully coherent works that touched the hearts and minds of millions.

More information: David Bowie

I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity.

David Bowie

THE GREAT STORM OF 1703, AN EXTRA TROPICAL CYCLONE

Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends, Jordi Santanyí.

Jordi loves literature and climatology and they have been talking about The Great Storm, a destructive extratropical cyclone that struck central and southern England on a day like today in 1703.

The Great Storm of 1703 was a destructive extratropical cyclone that struck central and southern England on 26 November 1703 or 7 December 1703 in the Gregorian calendar in use today.

High winds caused 2,000 chimney stacks to collapse in London and damaged the New Forest, which lost 4,000 oaks. Ships were blown hundreds of miles off-course, and over 1,000 seamen died on the Goodwin Sands alone. News bulletins of casualties and damage were sold all over England –a novelty at that time.

The Church of England declared that the storm was God's vengeance for the sins of the nation. Daniel Defoe thought it was a divine punishment for poor performance against Catholic armies in the War of the Spanish Succession.

Contemporary observers recorded barometric readings as low as 973 millibars but it has been suggested that the storm deepened to 950 millibars over the Midlands. Retrospective analysis conjectures that the storm was consistent with a Category 2 hurricane.

More information: BBC

In London alone, approximately 2,000 massive chimney stacks were blown down. The lead roofing was blown off Westminster Abbey and Queen Anne had to shelter in a cellar at St James's Palace to avoid collapsing chimneys and part of the roof.

On the Thames, some 700 ships were heaped together in the Pool of London, the section downstream from London Bridge. HMS Vanguard was wrecked at Chatham. Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell's HMS Association was blown from Harwich to Gothenburg in Sweden before way could be made back to England. Pinnacles were blown from the top of King's College Chapel, in Cambridge.

There was extensive and prolonged flooding in the West Country, particularly around Bristol. Hundreds of people drowned in flooding on the Somerset Levels, along with thousands of sheep and cattle, and one ship was found 24 km inland. Approximately 400 windmills were destroyed, with the wind driving their wooden gears so fast that some burst into flames.

At Wells, Bishop Richard Kidder and his wife were killed when two chimneystacks in the palace fell on them, asleep in bed. This same storm blew in part of the great west window in Wells Cathedral. Major damage occurred to the southwest tower of Llandaff Cathedral at Cardiff in Wales.

At sea, many ships were wrecked, some of which were returning from helping Archduke Charles, the claimed King of Spain, fight the French in the War of the Spanish Succession. These ships included HMS Stirling Castle, HMS Northumberland, HMS Mary and HMS Restoration, with about 1,500 seamen killed particularly on the Goodwin Sands. Between 8,000 and 15,000 lives were lost overall.

More information: Get History

The first Eddystone Lighthouse of Plymouth was destroyed on 27 November 1703 (Old Style), killing six occupants, including its builder Henry Winstanley. John Rudyard was later contracted to build the second lighthouse on the site. A ship torn from its moorings in the Helford River in Cornwall was blown for 320 km before grounding eight hours later on the Isle of Wight. The number of oak trees lost in the New Forest alone was 4,000.

The storm of 1703 caught a convoy of 130 merchant ships sheltering at Milford Haven, along with their man of war escorts Dolphin, Cumberland, Coventry, Looe, Hastings and Hector. By 3:00pm the next afternoon, losses included 30 vessels.

The storm was unprecedented in ferocity and duration and was generally reckoned by witnesses to represent the anger of God, in recognition of the crying sins of this nation. The government declared 19 January 1704 a day of fasting, saying that it loudly calls for the deepest and most solemn humiliation of our people. It remained a frequent topic of moralising in sermons well into the 19th century.

The Great Storm also coincided with the increase in English journalism, and was the first weather event to be a news story on a national scale. Special issue broadsheets were produced detailing damage to property and stories of people who had been killed.

Daniel Defoe produced his full-length book The Storm (July 1704) in response to the calamity, calling it the tempest that destroyed woods and forests all over England. He wrote: No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it. 

Coastal towns such as Portsmouth looked as if the enemy had sackt them and were most miserably torn to pieces. Winds of up to 130 km/h destroyed more than 400 windmills. 

Defoe reported that the sails in some turned so fast that the friction caused the wooden wheels to overheat and catch fire. He thought that the destruction of the sovereign fleet was a punishment for their poor performance against the Catholic armies of France and Spain during the first year of the War of the Spanish Succession.

Download The Great Storm of November 1703 by Dennis Wheeler

It is not light that we need, but fire;
it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

Frederick Douglass

UK PARLIAMENT DECLARES 'SLAVERY ABOLITON ACT 1833'

Slavery Abolition Act, 1833

The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice book (Chapter 36). 

More info: Determiners and Pronouns I , II & III

Yesterday, she was talking about Daniel Defoe and his masterpiece Robinson Crusoe. One of the most interesting things about this book is the character of Friday, Robinson's friend who represents slavery.

Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property. A slave is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration.

On a day like today in 1833,  the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73) abolished slavery throughout the British Empire.

This Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom expanded the jurisdiction of the Slave Trade Act 1807, making the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire, with the exception of the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company, Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and Saint Helena. The Act was repealed in 1997 as a part of wider rationalisation of English statute law; however, later anti-slavery legislation remains in force.

In May 1772, Lord Mansfield's judgment in the Somersett's Case emancipated a slave in England, which helped launch the movement to abolish slavery.  

The case ruled that slavery was unsupported by law in England and no authority could be exercised on slaves entering English or Scottish soil.

Slavery in the British colonies

By 1783, an anti-slavery movement to abolish the slave trade throughout theEmpire had begun among the British public. 

In 1793 Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada John Graves Simcoe signed the Act Against Slavery. Passed by the local Legislative Assembly, it was the first legislation to outlaw the slave trade in a part of the British Empire.

In 1807, Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which outlawed the slave trade, but not slavery itself. Abolitionist Henry Brougham realized that trading would continue and as a new MP successfully introduced the Slave Trade Felony Act 1811 which at last made slave trading criminal throughout the empire.

More information: National Archives

The Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa. It did suppress the slave trade, but did not stop it entirely. Between 1808 and 1860, the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans. They resettled many in Jamaica and the Bahamas.

Britain also used its influence to coerce other countries to agree treaties to end their slave trade and allow the Royal Navy to seize their slave ships.

Slavery Abolition Act 1833

In 1823, the Anti-Slavery Society was founded in London. 

Members included Joseph Sturge, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, Henry Brougham, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Elizabeth Heyrick, Mary Lloyd, Jane Smeal, Elizabeth Pease, and Anne Knight.

William Wilberforce had prior written in his diary in 1787 that his great purpose in life was to suppress the slave trade before waging a 20-year fight on the industry.

During the Christmas holiday of 1831, a large-scale slave revolt in Jamaica, known as the Baptist War, broke out. It was organised originally as a peaceful strike by the Baptist minister Samuel Sharpe. The rebellion was suppressed by the militia of the Jamaican plantocracy and the British garrison ten days later in early 1832. Because of the loss of property and life in the 1831 rebellion, the British Parliament held two inquiries. The results of these inquiries contributed greatly to the abolition of slavery with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.

More information: Regina Jeffers

The Act had its third reading in the House of Commons on 26 July 1833, three days before William Wilberforce died. It received the Royal Assent a month later, on 28 August, and came into force the following year, on 1 August 1834. 

In practical terms, only slaves below the age of six were freed in the colonies. Former slaves over the age of six were redesignated as apprentices, and their servitude was abolished in two stages: the first set of apprenticeships came to an end on 1 August 1838, while the final apprenticeships were scheduled to cease on 1 August 1840. The Act specifically excluded the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company, or to the Island of Ceylon, or to the Island of Saint Helena. The exceptions were eliminated in 1843.

Resistance to slavery in the Belize Settlement

The Act provided for compensation for slave-owners. The amount of money to be spent on the compensation claims was set at the Sum of Twenty Million Pounds Sterling. 

Under the terms of the Act, the British government raised £20 million to pay out in compensation for the loss of the slaves as business assets to the registered owners of the freed slaves. 

In 1833, £20 million amounted to 40% of the Treasury's annual income or approximately 5% of the British GDP. To finance the compensation, the British government had to take on a £15 million loan, finalised on 3 August 1835, with banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore. The money was not paid back until 2015.

Half of the money went to slave-owning families in the Caribbean and Africa, while the other half went to absentee owners living in Britain. The names listed in the returns for slave compensation show that ownership was spread over many hundreds of British families,  many of them of high social standing. 

More information: The Canadian Encyclopedia

The majority of men and women who were awarded compensation under the 1833 Abolition Act are listed in a Parliamentary Return, entitled Slavery Abolition Act, which is an account of all moneys awarded by the Commissioners of Slave Compensation in the Parliamentary Papers 1837-8 (215) vol. 48.

On 1 August 1834, an unarmed group of mainly elderly people being addressed by the Governor at Government House in Port of Spain, Trinidad, about the new laws, began chanting: Pas de six ans. Point de six ans, Not six years. No six years, drowning out the voice of the Governor. Peaceful protests continued until a resolution to abolish apprenticeship was passed and de facto freedom was achieved. Full emancipation for all was legally granted ahead of schedule on 1 August 1838.

Captives on board a slave ship, West Coast of Africa

As a notable exception to the rest of the British Empire, the Act did not extend to any of the Territories administered by the East India Company, including the islands of Ceylon, and Saint Helena. 

Slavery was criminalised in the Company territories via the Indian Slavery Act of 1843.

A successor organisation to the Anti-Slavery Society was formed in London in 1839, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which worked to outlaw slavery worldwide. The world's oldest international human rights organisation, it continues today as Anti-Slavery International.

More information: The Guardian

It is believed that after 1833 clandestine slave-trading continued within the British Empire; in 1854 Nathaniel Isaacs, owner of the island of Matakong off the coast of Sierra Leone was accused of slave-trading by the governor of Sierra Leone, Sir Arthur Kennedy. Papers relating to the charges were lost when the Forerunner was wrecked off Madeira in October 1854. In the absence of the papers, the English courts refused to proceed with the prosecution.

In Australia, blackbirding and the holding of indigenous workers' pay in trust continued, in some instances into the 1970s.

Modern slavery, both in the form of human trafficking and people imprisoned for forced or compulsory labour, continues to this day.

The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was repealed in its entirety by the Statute Law Repeals Act 1998. The repeal has not made slavery legal again, with sections of the Slave Trade Act 1824, Slave Trade Act 1843 and Slave Trade Act 1873 continuing in force. In its place the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporates into British Law Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights which prohibits the holding of persons as slaves.

Download The Slavery Abolition Act 1833

The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. 

The last name of my forefathers was taken from them 

when they were brought to America and made slaves, 

and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, 

we reject that name today and refuse it. 

I never acknowledge it whatsoever.

Malcolm X

DANIEL DEFOE, ROBINSON CRUSOE'S CREATOR IN PRISON

Daniel Defoe

Today, The Grandma has been studying a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Chapter 35).

More information: Articles 2

Charles Dickens had a suffered childhood because his father was in prison for debts. It's the same experience that Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, had when he was arrested and placed in a pillory on a day like today in 1703. He was prosecuted by his political activities.

Daniel Defoe (13 September 1660-24 April 1731) born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, which is second only to the Bible in its number of translations.

Defoe is noted for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Aphra Behn and Samuel Richardson, and is among the founders of the English novel. Defoe wrote many political tracts and often was in trouble with the authorities, including prison time. Intellectuals and political leaders paid attention to his fresh ideas and sometimes consulted with him.
 

Defoe was a prolific and versatile writer, producing more than three hundred works  -books, pamphlets, and journals- on diverse topics, including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology, and the supernatural. He was also a pioneer of business journalism and economic journalism.

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Foe, his original name, was born on 13 September, 1660, likely in Fore Street in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, London. 

Defoe later added the aristocratic-sounding De to his name, and on occasion claimed descent from the family of De Beau Faux. His birthdate and birthplace are uncertain, and sources offer dates from 1659 to 1662, with the summer or early autumn of 1660 considered the most likely. His father James Foe was a prosperous tallow chandler and a member of the Worshipful Company of Butchers.

In Defoe's early life, he experienced some of the most unusual occurrences in English history: in 1665, 70,000 were killed by the Great Plague of London, and next year, the Great Fire of London left standing only Defoe's and two other houses in his neighbourhood. In 1667, when he was probably about seven, a Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway via the River Thames and attacked the town of Chatham in the raid on the Medway. His mother Annie had died by the time he was about ten.

Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe First Edition

Defoe was educated at the Rev. James Fisher's boarding school in Pixham Lane in Dorking, Surrey. 

His parents were Presbyterian dissenters, and around the age of 14, he attended a dissenting academy at Newington Green in London run by Charles Morton, and he is believed to have attended the Newington Green Unitarian Church and kept practising his Presbyterian religion. During this period, the English government persecuted those who chose to worship outside the Church of England.

As many as 545 titles have been ascribed to Defoe, ranging from satirical poems, political and religious pamphlets, and volumes.

More information: Yale University Press

Defoe's first notable publication was An essay upon projects, a series of proposals for social and economic improvement, published in 1697. From 1697 to 1698, he defended the right of King William III to a standing army during disarmament, after the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) had ended the Nine Years' War (1688–97). His most successful poem, The True-Born Englishman (1701), defended the king against the perceived xenophobia of his enemies, satirising the English claim to racial purity. 

Daniel Defoe in the pillory

In 1701, Defoe presented the Legion's Memorial to Robert Harley, then Speaker of the House of Commons, and his subsequent employer, while flanked by a guard of sixteen gentlemen of quality. It demanded the release of the Kentish petitioners, who had asked Parliament to support the king in an imminent war against France.

The death of William III in 1702 once again created a political upheaval, as the king was replaced by Queen Anne who immediately began her offensive against Nonconformists.

Defoe was a natural target, and his pamphleteering and political activities resulted in his arrest and placement in a pillory on 31 July 1703, principally on account of his December 1702 pamphlet entitled The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church, purporting to argue for their extermination. In it, he ruthlessly satirised both the High church Tories and those Dissenters who hypocritically practised so-called occasional conformity, such as his Stoke Newington neighbour Sir Thomas Abney. It was published anonymously, but the true authorship was quickly discovered and Defoe was arrested. 

More information: The Guardian

He was charged with seditious libel. Defoe was found guilty after a trial at the Old Bailey in front of the notoriously sadistic judge Salathiel Lovell.

Lovell sentenced him to a punitive fine of 200 marks, to public humiliation in a pillory, and to an indeterminate length of imprisonment which would only end upon the discharge of the punitive fine. 

Daniel Defoe in the pillory

According to legend, the publication of his poem Hymn to the Pillory caused his audience at the pillory to throw flowers instead of the customary harmful and noxious objects and to drink to his health. The truth of this story is questioned by most scholars, although John Robert Moore later said that no man in England but Defoe ever stood in the pillory and later rose to eminence among his fellow men.

After his three days in the pillory, Defoe went into Newgate Prison. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, brokered his release in exchange for Defoe's co-operation as an intelligence agent for the Tories. In exchange for such co-operation with the rival political side, Harley paid some of Defoe's outstanding debts, improving his financial situation considerably.

Within a week of his release from prison, Defoe witnessed the Great Storm of 1703, which raged through the night of 26/27 November. It caused severe damage to London and Bristol, uprooted millions of trees, and killed more than 8,000 people, mostly at sea. The event became the subject of Defoe's The Storm (1704), which includes a collection of witness accounts of the tempest. Many regard it as one of the world's first examples of modern journalism.

More information: Luminarium

In the same year, he set up his periodical A Review of the Affairs of France which supported the Harley Ministry, chronicling the events of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–14). The Review ran three times a week without interruption until 1713. Defoe was amazed that a man as gifted as Harley left vital state papers lying in the open, and warned that he was almost inviting an unscrupulous clerk to commit treason; his warnings were fully justified by the William Gregg affair.

Robinson Crusoe

When Harley was ousted from the ministry in 1708, Defoe continued writing the Review to support Godolphin, then again to support Harley and the Tories in the Tory ministry of 1710–14.  

The Tories fell from power with the death of Queen Anne, but Defoe continued doing intelligence work for the Whig government, writing Tory pamphlets that undermined the Tory point of view.

Not all of Defoe's pamphlet writing was political. One pamphlet was originally published anonymously, entitled A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal the Next Day after her Death to One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury the 8th of September, 1705. It deals with interaction between the spiritual realm and the physical realm and was most likely written in support of Charles Drelincourt's The Christian Defense against the Fears of Death (1651). It describes Mrs. Bargrave's encounter with her old friend Mrs. Veal after she had died. It is clear from this piece and other writings that the political portion of Defoe's life was by no means his only focus.

The extent and particulars are widely contested concerning Defoe's writing in the period from the Tory fall in 1714 to the publication of Robinson Crusoe in 1719. Defoe comments on the tendency to attribute tracts of uncertain authorship to him in his apologia Appeal to Honour and Justice (1715), a defence of his part in Harley's Tory ministry (1710–14). Other works that anticipate his novelistic career include The Family Instructor (1715), a conduct manual on religious duty; Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager (1717), in which he impersonates Nicolas Mesnager, the French plenipotentiary who negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht (1713); and A Continuation of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy (1718), a satire of European politics and religion, ostensibly written by a Muslim in Paris.

Robinson Crusoe First Edition, London, 1720

From 1719 to 1724, Defoe published the novels for which he is famous. 

In the final decade of his life, he also wrote conduct manuals, including Religious Courtship (1722), The Complete English Tradesman (1726) and The New Family Instructor (1727). He published a number of books decrying the breakdown of the social order, such as The Great Law of Subordination Considered (1724) and Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business (1725) and works on the supernatural, like The Political History of the Devil (1726), A System of Magick (1727) and An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727). 

His works on foreign travel and trade include A General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1727) and Atlas Maritimus and Commercialis (1728). Perhaps his greatest achievement with the novels is the magisterial A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain (1724–27), which provided a panoramic survey of British trade on the eve of the Industrial Revolution.

Daniel Defoe died on 24 April 1731, probably while in hiding from his creditors. He often was in debtors' prison. The cause of his death was labelled as lethargy, but he probably experienced a stroke. He was interred in Bunhill Fields, today Bunhill Fields Burial and Gardens, Borough of Islington, London, where a monument was erected to his memory in 1870.

More information: BBC

It is better to have a lion at the head 

of an army of sheep, 
than a sheep at the head 

of an army of lions.

Daniel Defoe