"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 01/03/18 (People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones)

I am going to look at the strange story behind a proverb, and that proverb is, "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". In other words, beware of criticing someone if you youself to exactly the same criticism. It makes transparent sense, if you excuse the pun, but there is actually an interesting story behind it. First of all, it started off as something a little bit different. It warned against throwing stones atan enemy whose head was made of glass. That's how in was in Chaucer's day, and then it crossed over to houses, when the use of glass in domestic architecture was really increasing. This is around the 17th century, when it is really came to the fore, when the rich were afforded the luxury of fully glazed houses and windows. The poor still had to make do with no windows at all or wooden shutters, etc. But it was a real indicator of wealth if you could afford glass. Thomas More in his Utopia wrote of a land where windows are made of glass to allow light in an the wind with it. Worth remembering that "window" goes back to "vindauga", which is a very old word, meaning the eye of the wind, which I always think is quite beautiful. Anyway, in Elizabethan England, glass window were still a luxury, so much so if you look at the wills of the time, you'll find  that windows were bequeathed to heirs, cos glass was seen as being so valuable. That gives you a little background to the story, to the proverb, but it doesn't tell you the whole story. The reason why its began to involve glass houses may lie in the exploits of the Duke of Buckingham. He was a favourite and possible lover of James I, and James I call hin Steenie, after St Stephen, who had the face of an angel, so he was very enamoured of him, and when the Scottish-born king acceded to the throne in Britain... in England in 1603, it's said that London was flooded with Scotsmen, and at this time, JAmes I didn't have a very good relationship whith the Scotich nobility. He thought they were always trying to do him down, and he wanted to ingratiate himself with the English nobility. So the Duke of Buckingham, on his behalf, really, mounted a campaign of harassment against all these Scots who'd arriver in the capital city, and that included hiring mobs to go and throw objects at their windows at night, causing a complete havoc. Unsurprisingly, the Scots retaliated and it was completely chaos, but they went to the duke's house, which was known as the Glass House cos it had so many windows, and they did exactly the same thing. They threw stones, anything they coulf find, at the windows and smashed them in the process, and it's said that ehen Buckingham then complaine to the king, His Majesty is said to have uttered the lines, "Steenie, Steenie, those lived in glass houses, should be careful how they fling stones".