Suffragette suffragettes chaining themselves to railings, setting fire to post box contents, smashing windows and eventually detonating bombs. Some radical techniques used by the suffragettes were learned from Russian exiles from tsarism who had escaped to England. In 1914, at least seven churches were bombed or set on fire across the United Kingdom, including Westminster Abbey, where an explosion aimed at destroying the 700-year-old Coronation Chair, only caused minor damage. One suffragette, Emily Davison, died under the King's horse, Anmer, at The Derby on 4 June 1913. It is debated whether she was trying to pull down the horse, attach a
Emily Davison and who knew Davison, described her as "a fanatic" who was prepared to die but did not mean to. Other observers, such as Purvis, and Ann Morley and Liz Stanley—Davison's biographers—agree that Davison did not mean to die. Davison was a staunch feminist and a passionate Christian whose outlook "invoked both medieval history and faith in God as part of the armor of her militancy". Her love of English literature, which she had studied at Oxford, was shown in her identification with Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale", including being nicknamed "Faire Emelye". Much of Davison's writing reflected the doctrine of