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Home Period Viking Top 11 monarchs in British history

Top 11 monarch in ritih hitor

From William I who conquered England following victory
at the battle of Hastings in 1066, to George V who proved
to be an incredibly popular monarch, here's a selection of
11 signi�cant monarchs in English – and then British –
history since 1066…

November 13, 2018 at 3:55 pm

Andrew Gimson, author of Gimson’s Kings and Queens: Brief

Lives of the Monarchs Since 1066, selects his top 11 monarchs
in English – and then British – history since 1066…

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1 William I (‘William the Conqueror’),

r1066–87

William I conquered England. This brave, brutal, illiterate but

clever Norman warlord attained at the battle of Hastings (14
October 1066) the most durable victory of any monarch in
English history. At the head of 5,000 knights, he made himself
master of a kingdom with perhaps 1.5 million inhabitants. The
English ruling class was wiped out, its lands taken over by the
invaders, and French replaced English as the language of
government.

Read more:

• 10 surprising facts about William the Conqueror and the

Norman conquest

• 1066: eight days that rocked England (exclusive to The

Library)
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William the Conqueror, as he became known, was able to pass on

the throne to his sons and his more remote descendants, who
hold it to this day. Yet his origins were not as grand as his later
achievements might lead one to suppose. He was the bastard son
of Duke Robert of Normandy, also called ‘Robert the Devil’, and
of Herleve (also known as Arlette), whose father, Fulbert, was a
tanner: a trade deemed disgusting and carried out by despised
people.

When William was just eight years old his father died and
Normandy descended into anarchy. But the boy grew into a
formidable warrior who �rst regained control of Normandy and
then mounted a successful invasion of England. And he knew
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ever possessed a more unwavering ability to enforce his own
will.

2 Richard I (‘Richard the Lionheart’),

r1189–99

Richard I was the most famous knight-errant of his age – perhaps

of any age. He sought adventures in which he could prove his
military skill, chivalric virtues and generosity. Indeed, Richard
was called Coeur de Lion, or ‘Lionheart’, in recognition of his
dauntless valour, and he looked the part: more than six feet tall,
immensely strong, with blue eyes and reddish-gold hair. He spent
only 10 months of his 10-year reign in England, where he
complained about the weather, but he became one of the great
English heroes.

Read more:

• 8 facts about Richard the Lionheart

• Richard the Lionheart: King of war (exclusive to The

Library)
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The Third Crusade (1189–92), the aim of which was to retake

Jerusalem, presented Richard with an impeccably religious
motive for glory, �ghting and pillage. His only use for England
was to raise money for this venture. In July 1191 he captured the
port of Acre, after which he had 2,700 Muslim prisoners – men,
women and children – put to death. As Scottish philosopher,
historian and economist David Hume later put it, Richard “was
guilty of acts of ferocity, which threw a stain on his celebrated
victories”.

Richard fell out with his fellow crusaders, and although he got
within 12 miles of Jerusalem, was not strong enough to
recapture the city. Upon his return through mainland Europe he
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from gangrene contracted after being hit by a crossbow bolt
while besieging a minor fort.

3 dward I, r1272–1307

Edward I became known as the Hammer of the Scots, but he

actually conquered the Welsh. Before ascending the throne of
England, he crushed the rebellion led by Simon de Montfort
against his father, Henry III.

Read more:

• Edward I: man of principle or grasping

opportunist? (exclusive to The Library)

• 7 medieval kings of England you should know about

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Llewelyn ap Gru�ydd, Prince of Wales, refused to do homage to

Edward, and believed he could always take refuge from the
English in the mountains of Snowdonia. But Edward rendered
those mountains uninhabitable by building a chain of castles
along the coast of north Wales, which prevented supplies of grain
getting through from Anglesey. Llewelyn saw his cause was
hopeless, and perished in battle. Edward made his son Prince of
Wales – a title still borne by the heir to the throne.

While Edward was campaigning in Wales, one of his mounted

knights was hit by an arrow �red from a longbow. This pierced
the thick hauberk (or chain mail) protecting the knight’s thigh,
drove through the upper leg – including the bone – penetrated
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armies almost invincible.

c1264, Edward I (1239-1307), known as ‘Hammer of the Scots’. (Photo by Hulton

Archive/Getty Images)

4 Henr V, r1413–22

By defeating the French at the battle of Agincourt on 25 October

1415, Henry V united the English. He was the last great warrior-
king of the Middle Ages, and Shakespeare drew an immortal
picture of him as a leader who on the way to victory at
Agincourt inspired his followers not just by his courage, but by
mingling with them in the dark hours before the battle. Here is
English patriotism in its most cheerful form: “We few, we happy
few, we band of brothers.”

Read more:

• 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about Henry V

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In 1420, Henry achieved the still more astonishing feat of

combining the English and French crowns. He married the
daughter of the French king, but his luck had run out, and soon
afterwards he died of an illness, probably dysentery, contracted
while besieging the town of Meaux.

Historians tend to draw Henry as a less sympathetic �gure, who

looked and behaved more like a monk than a happy-go-lucky
�rst among equals.

5 Henr VII, r1485–1509

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the panache of a warlord. He was born in Wales and imposed
peace on England by establishing a strong new dynasty, the
Tudors. When he died, he left to his son, Henry VIII, a united
country, a submissive nobility, and a vast amount of money.

Read more:

• How did Henry VII spend his money?

• Henry VII’s hated henchmen (exclusive to The Library)

Henry’s most disagreeable characteristic was his avarice: he was

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much of the nobility had perished.

E�ciency in collecting taxes is a somewhat uncharming

characteristic, and by the end of his reign Henry was deeply
unpopular. The current chancellor, George Osborne, has,
however, named him as his favourite king of England.

Henry VII, painting by unknown artist, 1505. (Photo by Apic/Getty Images)

6 Henr VIII, 1509–47

No English monarch has treated those close to him with such

ruthlessness as Henry VIII. The older he got, the more he
behaved like a petulant, self-obsessed teenager with a loaded
revolver. But although he degenerated from a Renaissance prince
into a tyrant, casting o� wives and servants with merciless
�nality, he did make England independent.

By breaking with Rome in 1534 when the pope refused to annul

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venture, and in the dissolution of the monasteries.

Read more:

• 5 things you (probably) didn’t know about Henry VIII

• Henry VIII: like father, like son? (exclusive to The

Library)

The di�culty Henry’s wives had in providing him with the

longed-for male heir helps to explain why Henry got rid of them.
Catherine of Aragon gave birth to a girl, Mary. She was replaced
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Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, had a son, Edward, but died
two weeks later. Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, was
considered so unattractive that Henry was unable to consummate
the marriage. The �fth, Catherine Howard, was young and ‘sexy’,
but took lovers, so was executed. The last of Henry’s wives,
Katherine Parr, was an amiable widow from the Lake District
who looked after him in his declining years.

7 lizaeth I, r1558–1603

Elizabeth I’s reign developed into a love a�air with her people,
and with every eligible man, conducted in many di�erent moods:
teasing, �irtatious, romantic, haughty, procrastinating. In 1588 it
reached its ecstatic climax when together they de�ed the Armada
sent by Philip of Spain to subdue them.

Read more:

• 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Elizabeth I

• What did Elizabeth I really look like at 60?

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France descended at this time into the horrors of religious civil

war. England did not, because Elizabeth steered a successful
course between Roman Catholicism and puritanism. She
promoted the Church of England as a compromise between
religious extremes, and she was herself tolerant of private
di�erences of belief. For 20 years she resisted entreaties to have
her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, put to death: only Mary’s
�agrant plotting to seize the throne with a foreign, Catholic force
rendered her execution unavoidable.

Elizabeth had amorous friendships, but never married. She

employed outstanding ministers, but never allowed herself to be
dominated. In her speech in 1588 to her army at Tilbury she
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stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.” She is, in my
view, England’s greatest monarch.

Elizabeth I, 1575. The Phoenix portrait attributed to Nicholas Hilliard. From the Tate
Gallery, London. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

8 Charle II, r1660–85

Charles II is, in my view, the wittiest monarch in English history.

He was courageous, tolerant, lazy, duplicitous and pleasure-
loving: his return from exile in 1660 inaugurated the most
conspicuous change in manners – from extreme puritanism to
unbridled licentiousness – this country has seen. But he
conducted the restoration of the Stuart dynasty with such tact,
and rode every later crisis with such skill, that he was never in
serious danger of being unseated.

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His father, Charles I, was executed after refusing to reach a

compromise with his opponents. The same fault led to the
downfall of Charles II’s successor – his younger brother, James II
and VII, who was in 1688 chased out of England for attempting
to impose his personal, Roman Catholic, preferences.

James on one occasion warned Charles II not to go for a walk

without guards, to which Charles replied, with characteristic
humour: “You may depend upon it that nobody will ever think of
killing me to make you king.”

9 William III and II, r1689–1702

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deposing James II, or at negotiating the terms for a monarchy
more acceptable to parliament. But even in his lifetime, this
bold, cold, asthmatic Dutchman was not popular. Only by
Loyalists in Northern Ireland is King Billy remembered as a hero;
the victor of the battle of the Boyne (fought in 1690 between the
Catholic James II and the Protestant William III who, with his
wife, Mary II, had overthrown James in England in 1688).

Read more:

• How glorious was the Glorious Revolution? (exclusive

to The Library)

• The 8 most famous royal weddings in British history

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landing in Devon with a printing press as well as an army. His
grasp of the need to present himself as a reasonable king for a
reasonable people was as strong as James II’s was defective. But
for him, the Glorious Revolution, as the constitutional settlement
reached in 1688–89 came to be known, might not have been
very glorious at all.

10 Victoria, r1837–1901

Queen Victoria reigned for longer than any of her predecessors.

She rescued the monarchy from the contempt in which it was
held for several decades before 1837, and became the grand
unifying �gure, at once majestic and domestic, in a Britain that
dominated the globe.

Here was an empress who had a startling a�nity with the middle
class: the class to which even the aristocracy felt it must now
defer. Her views about politics, and especially about foreign
a�airs, were so strong, and expressed with such partisan
sincerity, that it was impossible to kick her upstairs, to the less
exciting region above politics that her successors came to
occupy.

Read more:

• Queen Victoria timeline: 9 milestones in the monarch’s

life

• Queen Victoria’s Indians (exclusive to The Library)

• Queen Victoria’s children

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Her personality was of “irresistible potency”, as her greatest

biographer, Lytton Strachey, put it. But though Victoria was
passionate, she possessed also a devout desire for self-
improvement, fully shared by her husband, Prince Albert, who
was from Coburg. His early death on 14 December 1861 led her
to retire for many years from public life.

Benjamin Disraeli, the most theatrical of Victoria’s prime

ministers, lured her out of this mournful seclusion in 1868.
Victoria proceeded to rout incipient republicanism by
establishing an emotional link with her subjects that no anti-
monarchist could rival.
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families, including the Romanovs, the Hohenzollerns and the
Hapsburgs, were overthrown. George helped to avert that fate by
welcoming the Labour party into power.

Read more:

• How George and Mary saved the royal

family (exclusive to The Library)

• 7 memorable moments in the history of Buckingham

Palace
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grandmother, Queen Victoria, would have thought, but was
himself favourably impressed: “I must say they all seem to be
very intelligent and they take things very seriously. They have
di�erent ideas to ours as they are all socialists, but they ought to
be given a chance and ought to be treated fairly.”Here was the
king as the upholder of the national idea of fair play. Like a
cricket umpire, he could be depended upon to remain impartial.
He also became, through his Christmas broadcasts, extremely
popular.

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George V set a pattern of conscientious monarchy that his eldest

son, Edward VIII, felt unable to uphold – hence the abdication of
1936. But George’s second son, who at the end of that year
became George VI, was just as determined to be a dutiful
monarch.

So too was George VI’s elder daughter, who upon his death in
1952 became Elizabeth II. She had learned from her father and
grandfather how a constitutional monarch should behave, which
is one reason why even leftwing Labour politicians show no real
desire to overthrow her.
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Andrew Gimson is the author of Gimson’s Kings and Queens:

Brief Lives of the Monarchs Since 1066 (illustrated by Martin
Rowson, published by Square Peg, £10.99).

Tags Medieval kings and queens Elizabeth I Henry VIII

Richard the Lionheart William the Conqueror

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