Re: Interesting snippets ...
I now live in Derbyshire mid-way between Chesterfield and Matlock.
The Revolution House at Old Whittington, three miles north of Chesterfield on the B6052,takes it’s name from the `Glorious Revolution’ of 1688/89 which totally altered the course of our island history and laid the firm democratic foundations for the future of England and it’s people.
The Revolution House was central to a `bloodless revolution’ which changed the order of succession and saw the Catholic King James 2nd deposed in favour of the Protestant King William of Orange, (who was married to James’ daughter, Mary) by virtue of the fact that it was used as a `plotting parlour’ by the conspirators who met there in the spring of 1688.
History (and the plaque on the wall!) records that in the spring of 1688 three noblemen on horseback met on Whittington Moor `to discuss about the revolution then in agitation’, but a heavy shower of rain forced them to take shelter at the village inn, so they rode up the hill to the Cock & Pynot (
Magpie), then a wayside alehouse on the old Chesterfield to Sheffield road. Here William Cavendish the 4th Earl of Devonshire, later to become the first Duke, held conspiratorial talks with Lord Delamere, John D’Arcy, and the Earl of Danby, who had previously been minister to Charles 2nd . They planned to take the north, and then march south against the king, and they put their plans in a letter, written in cipher, which Devonshire signed and sent to the Hague, inviting William of Orange to assume the Crown of England.
The rest, as they say, is history!