Wuolah Free TODOS LOS APUNTES DE CULTURA

TODOS-LOS-APUNTES-DE-CULTURA-.
pdf
Cam1la
Cultura de las Islas Británicas
2º Grado en Estudios Ingleses
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Universidad de Oviedo
Reservados todos los derechos.

No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
Unit 1
A GEOGRAPHICAL APPROACH TO THE BRITISH ISLES
• There are over 6,000 isles in the British Isles.

• The name of the largest one is Great Britain, and the second
largest is Ireland.
• There was a time in history when these islands were not islands,
they were attached to the continent. They were separated from
the continent in 6,000 BC, when the sea level rises separated
them.
• The sea is an obstacle, but it is also a defensive wall during wars:
Napoleon failed, Hitler failed.

The Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Ulster
The Republic of Ireland was declared a republic in 1949, with 4 provinces:
Connacht, Munster, Leinster, and Ulster, which has 9 counties Londonderry (Derry),
Antrim, Down, Tyrone, Armagh, Fermanagh, Cavan, Monaghan, and Donegal. Six
of these counties belong to Northern Ireland.
The formation of the British Isles

• The British Isles appeared in 6000 BC.
• Before, they were attached to the European continent, when the river Thames and the river Rhine were
just one river.
• The first island to split from Europe was Ireland, followed by Great Britain.
The climate in the British Isles

• The location of the British Isles is almost privilege because of the climate.
o This climate is mild, like Asturias, being the Gulf Stream/Drift the cause: the warm water
flows from the Gulf of Mexico northwards until it clashes with cold water, causing the existing
humidity that ensures a fertile and rich land.
• The British Isles have always been appealing to invaders because of its degree of fertility.
Two divisions
• Great Britain is divided by a line, the Celtic Fringe, into two halves.
o The Southeast is a big green flatted area known as the Lowlands.
o The Northwest is known as the Highlands.
o Historically, in GB, the invaders preferred settling in the Lowlands, which were easier to live
in, rather than in the Highlands.
▪ That is the reason why the Lowlands have always been more populated and the political
power rests there. For instance, the Romans settled and built a wall to separate
themselves from the Scots.
a64b0469ff35958ef4ab887a898bd50bdfbbe91a-5584569
Unit 2
2.1 - THE BRITISH ISLES: PREHISTORY
28,000-10,000 BC: Upper Paleolithic

• Last glacial age
• DNA evidence shows human presence on the British Isles 25,000 years ago.
• Great Britain joined to the continent.
10,000-5,000 BC: The Mesolithic
• Human beings returned to the British Isles in the wake of a retraining Ice Age before land bridges
between the islands and the continent were finally washed away.
• This period – of hunting, fishing and food gathering – was followed (4,000 BC) by the introduction of
agriculture and the establishment of settled communities by migrants from the Mediterranean.
o This was the so-called Neolithic Revolution.
o Megalithic tombs erected during this period indicate the high priority which these societies
accorded to the afterlife.
• 6,000 BC the British Isles became islands, separated from the continent (the first was Ireland, so there
is a specific type of flora and fauna, for example there are no snakes).
• Under extremely hard conditions, several groups of hunters had to visit the British Isles.

• Cheddar man (7,500BC) could have been one of the first visitors of the British Isles.
8,000-4,300 Bc: the Maglemosians

• Rapid warming
• Forest clearance
• Herding
5,000 – 4,000 BC: The Neolithic Revoution
• Switch from hunting and gathering to breeding of plants and animals.
o Brought into the British Isles by migrants from mainland Europe, c. 4300 BC.
o Transformation of nomadic foragers into sedentary agricultural communities.
o Tamed animals, ploughing, sowing and harvesting offered a lower-quality but reliable food
supply.
o Steady food supplies and better housing encourage population growth.
o Gradual process: it took about 2,000 years to spread throughout the British Isles.
o Settled life accelerates technological progress and the development of culture.
• New ceremonial monuments: chambered tombs, earthen barrows, earth circles (henges) and stone
circles.
4,300-3,700 BC: Early Neolithic

• Climate optimum
• In general terms we can talk about an Iberian population from the south moving towards the West
and North and ending in the British Isles.
o These were the people responsible of Stonehenge and others, and of the metal culture.
• Causewayed camps
3,700-3,200 BC: Middle Neolithic
Llévate 1 año de WUOLAH PRO con BBVA. ¿Cómo? ¡+Info aquí!

• Henges
o Found mostly in England and Scotland, more rarely in Wales and Ireland.
o Is a roughly circular area ringed by a ditch which is in turn, encircled by a bank.
o The central area often contained structures made of wood or stone, such as a stone circle.
• Hill-forts
• Burial mounds and long burrows with burial chambers inside.
o Rectangular earthen mounds
o Often flanked or enclosed by ditches, some with an inner stone chamber.
o Average length 30–90 metres.
o Main period 3800–2800 BC; died out by 2500 BC.
o Communal tombs, holding from one to fifty adults and children.
3,200-2,200 BC: Late Neolithic
• Wooden tracks (the Somerset Levels)
• Wooden (ash) idol (Bell Track, Somerset)
• Chalk fertility goddess (Grimes Graves, Norfolk, a flint mine)
• A preserved village: Skara Brae, Orkney
o Discovered in 1850

o Occupied between 3100–2500 BC
o Ten houses, with capacity for about 30 people.
o Laid out for protection against the weather:
▪ Below ground level.
▪ 1-metre-thick walls
▪ Stone furniture: fireplaces, cupboards, beds, shelves …
• Tombs
o Preserved largely intact
o Religious beliefs a close relationship with death.
▪ Elaborate rituals connected with the bones of the dead.
o They may also have acted as territory markers
▪ In the new agricultural society tombs housing the remains of ancestors could signal
the right to possess the surrounding land.
o Regional variations across Britain.
▪ Two main models imported from mainland Europe, both around 4300 BC.
• Earthen long barrows
• Megalithic tomb buildings
o Passage graves
▪ Bryn Celli Ddu (c. 1900 BC), in Anglesey, started as a stone circle surrounded by a
bank and internal ditch.
▪ In the centre was a standing stone covered in carvings, including spirals and zigzag
patterns.
▪ A passage grave was then built inside the ditch, with a North-east entrance.
▪ As with many other sites, it appears to have been aligned to the summer solstice.
2400 BC: Expansion of Bronze Age culture
• Neolithic culture began to be transformed in the British Isles and then gradually disappeared.
• This was partly due to the arrival of new settlers from the Steppes of Sourthern Russia bringing
new customs and technology, such as bronze-smelting, horse-riding and wheels.

• Stone circles, for instance, became smaller in diameter and were made of smaller stones: eventually
the practice disappeared altogether.
• Communal tombs were replaced with smaller, individual mounds.
• Population growth would have caused conflict and led to the emergence of a class of professional
warriors to fight for territories.
• Individuals might have come to the fore as charismatic warlords and heroes, with rich graves,
palaces, forts, and an aristocracy.
• These invaders, who brought bronze weapons, tools, and ornaments with them, may have been the
first speakers of Indo-European languages.
3,000 – 2,500 BC: The Bronze Age
• Arrival of Beaker People

• Wheels, stone battle axes, bronze tools, gold-working
o The introduction of metalworking in bronze led to the creation of economic conditions
▪ Trade across the Irish Sea in Irish copper and Cornish tin took place on a regular
basis.
• The appearance of bronze is not isolated, that means that the people that has settled in the Lowlands
had very strong connections with the people coming from the continent.
•

One important thing that begins to happen (1,500 BC) is the appearance of sculptures
o A strong tower made of stone which is usually located on the coast.
o They are evidence that a threat, was coming from the sea, invaders.
1,000 BC: change.

 The old threat has become real and has given birth to a new reality
o The Lowlands are becoming conquered by people who manage a new metal: IRON.
o They were the Celts.

2.2 - INVASIONS, ACCULTURATIONS, AND SETTLEMENTS
The Celts
Ancestors
• Bronze age
o The Scythians and the Urnfild people.
▪ Horse riders from the steppes of southern Russia
▪ They were known for their funeral urns.
• (+/- 700 BC- 400 BC)

o There are two moments of Celtic development in the continent:
▪ Hallstatt (Austria)

▪ La Téne (Switzerland).
• Celtic culture reached its peak.
Celtic tribes in the British Isles

• There is a new development of new material, a new technology: iron (metal).
o It is more a clash of Iron Era (age) and the Bronze Era.
• Celts arrived in the British Isles in at least great waves, distinguished by their language:
o The Goidelic or Gaelic
▪ Indo-European (Q-Celts: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, etc)
▪ Eknos>equos (horse)
o The Cymric or Britannic

▪ (P-Celts: Welsh, Cornish, Breton, etc)
▪ Ekvos>epos
• When Julius Caesar conquered Britain the Belgae (P-Celts) were still expanding on both sides of the
English Channel
o The Celts went across the country towards the West.
o In the 5th century B.C. they conquered the best land of the country.
• They were the first civilization to be written bout by others, such as the Romans historians documenting
their customs: Diodorus Sicilius (60-30 BC)
o Because they were outside of the roman civilization, they were considered savages and barbarians.
o Their aspect is terrifying…, they were very tall, of very white skin and blond hair – or artificially bleached with lime – and combed straight back to
make it thick and shaggy like a horse’s mane, and their faces either clean-shaven or (the higher ranks) with a large moustache: they look like wood
demons.
o Furor celticus: before fighting, they challenged and insulted their enemy, they sang loudly, praising the deeds of their ancestors and their own
prowess, they shouted and made noise with “discordant horns” beating their swords rhythmically against their shields. After long preparation,
they attacked furiously, disorderly, in a rage for blood.
o This image of the ‘savage Celtic warrior’ has prevailed until now, due to the Romans
demonization of their customs.
Economy
• Hunting/fishing • Bee-keeping
• Shepherding
• Occasionally agriculture with heavy • Often looting neighbours, e.g. in cattle-
iron-ploughs raids.
• Bartering (later trade with coins)
• The Celts had double duties: farming and cultivating as well as fighting.
o It was a disadvantage against the Romans since they had professionally trained men to
fight.
Religion and Culture

• Celts had animalistic beliefs: worshippers of the sun, trees and groves, springs and lakes.
o Certain objects have soul and life.
• Antropomorphic divinity
o Sky god Lug o Sea god Llyr
• Within the society we find the figure of a druid; this person had multiple capacities.
o Druids oversaw religious rituals and ceremonies; they supposedly had the power of divination (see
into the future).
o They followed a lunar calendar
o A priestly class
▪ They could travel freely between tribes and judge in “international conflicts”.
o Their rituals involved animals sacrifice and using them entrains to see the future and keep balance.
o Druids and druidesses had three kings of knowledge: natural medicine, astrology and mythology.

Society and Politics
• Divided into tribes or clans, with their own territories, electing their leader amonsg members od
ruling families.
o This was a sort of tribe with a national entity.
o These tribes were divided into different clans.
▪ A clan is a group of people that share a common ancestor.
o Politically talking most tribes had an elected king.
▪ He becomes the sacred figure responsible for providing the “tuath” with victories,
cattle… otherwise they could be deposed.
▪ Women could inherit their husbands’ rights, and become rulers or tribal chiefs
commanding armies.
▪ There is also a vast group of free men.
• They lived in circular stone or wooden houses with thatched roofs and used hill-forts not only
as a defense but also for social gatherings.
• Cultural identity was also preserved by poets, who were both bards and historians
▪ They recorded and memorized all the important aspects of the tribe by means of
songs and poems.
• A rigid custom-law transmitted orally by professional jurists (until the 16th century in Ireland)
▪ They studied different cases and they gave a final sentence (the Irish used to follow
the Brehon Laws until the 16th century, which were bases on compensation).
• Crafts
o Weaving (colourful striped or checked patterns, cloaks fastened by a pin or brooch)
o Wickerwork
o Carpentry
o metalwork (esp. iron, for tools and for weapons: swords, shields, helmets, chariots … ;
also gold, e.g. torques)

The Romans
Julius Caesar
• Julius Caesar sets his eye on Britain
o Why he decided to cross the English Channel and put his soldiers into danger to arrive at an
unknown land?
o The reason for that campaign is that the tribes in France were finding a lot of support from near
Celtics.
• The Roman Conquest of Gaul led to permanent military presence in Belgic Gaul (and the Rhineland)
The conquest begins

• Julius Caesar arrives in 55 BC in the Trinovantes’ land.
• He defeats Vercingetorix in 54 BC
o He puts the prince of the Trinovantes on the throne and made and alliance with him against the
other Celtics
o The variety of Celtic tribes made a lack of cohesion which was one of the advantages the Romans
had.
• He imposes tributes

Emperor Claudius
• Julius Caesar is assassinated
o There is a period of several civil wars
• Claudius, in need of reputation with the troops and respect with the senate, takes the Romans to Britain,
in 43 BC.
o 40,000 legionaries and 40,000 auxiliary troops came across the channel.
o It was in the land of the Trinovantes that kept connections with Rome.
o The Romans have come to stay, until 410 AD, approximately, in the territory they called Britannia.
Britannia as a province
• With a Roman governor
• A provincial procurator for administration
• A “client” king.
• This period is divided in three scopes of time:
1) 43 – 122 AD - The road to conquest

• It is not completed until the year 122 AD
o because of the Hadrian’s Wall construction at the north of the province,
▪ After the Flavian period (AD 69-96) of urbanization, Hadrian visited the province and
decided to limit his empire to a manageable size
• Separating the areas of Scotland and England.
o It separated Roman lands from Barbarians.
o A defensive settlement that would defend the limit of the province.
• Britannia had an administrational center capital known as Londinium

o The reason was the facilities that the navigable river Thames offered

▪ An easy access from the continent, not very far from it, easing their communications
and connections to the continent and Britannia through the channel.
▪ They set up a network of roads, for financial and military control
• Then routes for trade and rebellion
• It was a difficult enterprise because of the numerous resistances.
• The year 67 AD was a critical year for the conquest as they were about to rule everything.
• There was a general revolt in 60-61 AD lead by Queen Boudicca of the Iceni.
o Roman abuses during Nero´s reign led to a general rebellion, including the Trinovantes, because
they wouldn’t recognize the Celtic right of a woman to inherit her husband’s role, prohibiting
Boudica from reigning.
o In the end, this revolt was suffocated by the Romans brutally, and by the rule of terror the romans
were to dominate the land along with the techniques of the “sheik and carrot”, offering Roman
civilization’s luxury as a soft approach combined with the force.
• The period of conquest became an administration process, having assimilated languages, gods, and
customs.
• One indication of the incomplete administrative process is the wall zones in many of the Roman cities
that counted with defence walls
o Although the romans did not like to build walls around cities expect when needed, this may be
a proof of the incomplete Romanization of Britannia.
• The Celt would elect a king or a chieftain as a semi-sacred.

o This figure has a place of residence, this place would become civitas, these would develop into
cities.
• Freemen became roman citizens
• Roman fashions
o Agricola ( A roman governor) encouraged the building of temples, public squares and houses
after the Roman Fashion.
o They built civitates (based on tribal territories), coloniae (for Roman citizens, such as ex-army
officers, e.g Camulodunum = Colchester), and fortresses
o The Britons adopted the Roman toga, and many other commodities.
o In the late empire there was a new increase in construction, especially of villas with mosaics
2) 122 – 367 AD
• The rise, the golden age of the Romans, Britannia is part of the Empire.
• The Romans created a certain number of roads.
o They were radial and in Britannia their origin was in Londinium, and then divided on different
roads.
▪ Many of these roads were in full use until the 18th century.
o These roads are an indicator of the grade of splendor they achieved. Hence the division of
Britannia in Britannia superior (with London as capital) and Britannia inferior (with York as
capital).
• Many of the cities and towns were built in this period.
• London acquires the supreme qualities of political and economic entity of the province but also
establishes great connections and trade, and London begins to be the great metropolis.
o The first traces of division between cities and towns.
• In 146 AD the reign of Marcus Aurelius in Britannia is characterized by barbarian pressure on the
borders of the empire.
o Increasing military influence in the Roman government.
o Provinces like Britain became more isolated, walls were built around towns.

o They appointed a “Dux Britaniarum” to control northern tribes.
The coming of Christianity
• The Dioclecian’s reform (296) reorganized the provinces in dioceses ruled by vicarii (to whom
governors were made responsible)
o Created a tied peasantry (the coloni) by law, to avoid massive migration, as taxes rose
• The first Christian emperor Constantine the Great (306-)
o Turned Christianity into a state religion (monotheistic, close to Emperor Cult), which spread
among the British aristocracy, building chapels in their villas.
• From the 4th century onwards, with the death of Constantine, the Barbarians pressured the Romans.
o These pressures were dealt with a tremendous effect on the Rivers Rhine and Danube.
o Rome had become accustomed to continuous attacks.
o This degree of danger and pressure comes to climax in the year 367 AD, a mysterious historical
episode takes place, “The Barbarian Conspiracy”.

The barbarian conspiracy
o In AD 367 Roman Britain was attacked at the same time by the Picts, Gaels, Irish and Saxons.
o The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus called it ‘barbarica conspiratio.’
o It is impossible to say if the enemies of Rome planned their attacks together but for a year the
Empire fought battles on all sides.
▪ The Alamanni, Sarmatians, Quadi, Austoriani and Goths attacked the Romans from
Gaul to Africa and around the Danube.
▪ North (Caledonites crossing Hadrian’s Wall)
▪ Irish from the West crossing the sea
▪ Saxons and Agles from the East.
o The consequences were devastating.
▪ Although romans could stop the Barbarian conspiracy, they did never recuperate.
3) 367 – 410 AD (approximately)

• There was a social division which had not been there before, a tiny group of wealthy citizens and a growing
number of poor people.
o The bridge between rich and poor had become very acute.
• The Barbarian Conspiracy was not an isolated event, there were attacks through many years, also in the
continent.
o Soldiers had to be used to defend the capital, heart of the Empire, Rome.
o The leaving of the Roman defenses of the Roman lands marked the beginning of the end.
o Defense became private.
o Several war leaders or tyrants organized defensive points.
The Roman Empire splits up

• Theodosius’ death (AD 395) led to a division of the empire for his two sons (Honorius and Arcadius)
o The West remaining in the hands of a powerful landed aristocracy (often of local roots), which
became “tyranni” (like the legendary Vortingern)
o The East, Greek-speaking, was known as Byzantium, and lasted until 1453.
The Anglo-Saxon Invasion
Rome falls
• In the year 476 AD with the dominion of the Roman Empire in the West.
• This was because of the massive movement of the West and South by Visigoths, vandals, Goths, etc. making
pressure on the Roman fronters.
• The strength of the Empire is not the same as before and there is internal conflict.
• Its fall cannot be described as a mere destruction but as a chain effect.
o The attack of the Huns from the Hills of China makes a terrorized population push themselves to the
West, attacking the Roman Empire.
Anglo-Saxon conquest
• A new wave of Invaders would arrive in massive numbers with military capacity to settle down.
o The newcomers were the Angles and Saxons
▪ Coming from the area of Denmark, France, and Germany.
o This period would become very Dark within a few years
• The attack of Anglo-Saxon takes a long time in Britannia with prolonged pressure.
o The remaining defenses of Britannia were veterans and mercenaries, as usual in the Roman Army.
o There was several Anglo-Saxons hired to detain other Anglo-Saxons from coming in.

▪ There were two leaders (brothers) Heugist and Horsa, that were hired but eventually opened the door
to the barbarians. There was a gradual invasion.
o The method of penetration was probably made possible by little Bends (groups that began to take
possession of different places).
Gildas the first British Historian
• “Then all the members of the council, together with a proud tyrant [Vortingern], were struck blind: the protection -
or rather the method of self-destruction- they devised for our land was that the ferocious Saxons (name not to be
spoken!), hated by man and God, should be let into the island like wolves into the fold, to beat back the peoples of
the north [Scots and Picts]. Nothing more destructive, nothing more bitter has ever happened to the land. ...
• All the major towns were laid low by the repeated battering of enemy rams; laid low, too, all the inhabitants -
church leaders, priests, and people alike, as the swords glinted all around and the flames crackled. It was a sad sight.
In the middle of the squares the foundation-stones of high walls and towers that had been torn from their base, holy
altars, fragments of corpses ..., looked as though they had been mixed in some dreadful wine-press. ...”
The Anglo Saxons settlement.
• There is no unity but tension.

• The inhabitants of the old Britannia took refuge on the lands of the West
o The others were turned to slaves or killed
o Wales – Wealh “land of slave” in Angle language.
• Year 650 – 600: Partition of the Lowlands into 7 kingdoms, the Time of Heptarchy
(7th century)
o Northumbria East Anglia
o Mercia Essex
o Wessex Kent
• There is a total urban collapse
o Cities and towns remain and kept by the Angles because of the defensive use romans had given them.
o However, there was no urban life, civitas did not have their administrative functions.
o This urban life will be brought to life with the posterior commercial relations.

• The English was brought by the Angle-Saxons.
o They would influence Old English
▪ Modern English would be influenced by Latin words of the Norman invasions later.
The social structure of the Seven Kingdoms
• Divided into eorla (earls, noblemen) and ceorla (churls, commoners)

o The weregeld (man-price) compensation for death or murderer.
• A royal figure at the top elected by the second highest class, the warrior class, that is the King.
o In the third step of the ladder, we have free persons working the land.
o The fourth part are the slaves of landmen, people with no rights of ownership and treated like cattle.
• The warrior elite were named the Thanes.
o They decide the election of the King and the witan
▪ An assembly of warrior where decisions were made, political and warlike.
▪ Some historians consider the witan was the roots of parliament.
• The Anglo-Saxon witan is not like the parliament though.
o The warlord rewarded his companions with gold, drink, and epic songs at the banqueting hall.
• There is a western barrier in the Kingdom of Mercia “Offa’s Dyke” separating Mercia from Wales
o Offa was the Mercian king that built the dyke and one of the first to mint money
▪ First Anglo-Saxon king to mint money (Offa’s pennies).
o These meant that Anglo-Saxon was quite advanced in economy and commercial activities whereas the

rest of the kingdoms would have trade.
The return of Christianity and Christian book culture
• From two directions

o Ireland: survivors of the Roman Christian Empire came to Britain in the 7th century.
▪ St Patrick founds a tribal church in Ireland
▪ Their monks tried to expand the religion from the North, Christianizing Picks and Scots.
▪ St Columba builds the Monastery of Iona in Scotland, the first Christian Monastery.
▪ From that first root Christianity goes down South.
o Rome: The Church survived the end of the Roman Empire.

▪ The Pope regains what had been before.
▪ Christian missionaries to Christianize Anglo-Saxons, among others.
• St Augustine is responsible of another Christian settlement in the south at Canterbury.
• They moved to the North
• The King Oswy of Northumbria, a Bretwalda (high king), adopted Roman Christianity through his wife.
o A crucial event took place in the year 664 AD known as the Synod of Whitby (a religious meeting) with
the rest of kingdoms of the Heptarchy.
▪ They discussed weather to follow Gaelic or the Roman Church.
▪ The Gaelic Church had been isolated, they had different festivities and doctrines.
▪ The Roman Christianity defended its originality and their doctrines.
o By the end of the century the 7 kingdoms were Roman Christian Kingdoms.
• The Roman Church has the support (ideologically) of the old Roman Empire.
o Having a lot to offer (not only doctrinaire) but also knowledge, reading, writing in an illiterate world of
the Anglo-Saxons.
o A quid pro quo arrangement was set exchanging doctrine and administration, therefore a land between
Church and Monarchy depending one on each other.

• In the 12th century, England would launch an attack into Ireland, an English settlement in Ireland.
o This attack took the form of a crusade.
o Behind the attack, the Roman Church wished to establish and impose itself in the land.
o Otherwise, there is no sense on invading Cristian population and no pagan people, they worked to
officialize the Roman Church.
The return of the heathen

• First Viking attacks 787 BC
o Sack of the monastery of Lindisfarne Priory 793 BC
o Jarrow, where Bede livid and Iona also were attacked
o Fall of Northumbria and Mercia
• Rise of King Alfred of Wessex

o In 886 Alfred captures London and is recognized as king of all England (except for the Danelaw)
o Consolidated the fyrd (a regular army)
o Built up a navy
o Strengthened towns
o Created schools
o Commissioned translations from the main Latin books and the writing of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
• Victories over Vikings

o Ashdown (871) and Edington (878)
• The Treaty of Wedmore in 878

o Forced Danish king Guthrum to accept Christianity and retreat to the Danelaw.

The Vikings
Who were the Vikings?
• Originally describes not a person but an activity: going on expeditions, whether for piracy, exploration, or trade.
o The term ‘Viking’ usually is used much later.
o They were called ‘Northmen’ or Dane (from Denmark).
o Negative connotations given to the word by Icelandic sagas in 14th 15th century.
o Nowadays used to refer to people of Scandinavian origin who raided or settle in other parts of Europe.
• Their place of origin is placed in the coast of Norway.

o They would start moving to different directions according to their place of origin.
o Political strife
o Population pressure
o Social standing in their communities

o Easy targets
Not just pirates
• Sharing languages and cultures with the English, The Danes, The Norse and other Scandinavians had a greater
instinct for trade and developed prosperous colonies and towns like Dublin and York.
o The Norse and Danes shared parts of the British Isles for centuries, and left a deep mark in culture, including
an influence of the English language.
The Viking ship

• A ship that would dominate the seas in the years to come.
o The Drakkar was strong enough to face North Atlantic waters and at the same time very light, giving the crew
the possibility to be carried on their shoulders.
o Knarr for trade and long-distance voyages.
Year 793
• Written records of the first attack of the Danes in the British Isles.
o These attacks were carried by a small group of one or 2 Drakars.
o They attacked rich places that were, as a rule, undefended against religious houses near the coast.
▪ Iona, Lindisfarne and Jarrow, all three monasteries suffered cruel attacks, raid, quick, surprising attacks
with law possibilities of reaction, acting like pirates.
▪ The reasons of those attacks were found in their place of origin, having a lot of signs of their dedication
to piracy. Most of them were dedicated to fishing. They were good fishermen, however, there was a
drastic diminution on the fishing of herring creating a food scarcity.
• Because of their great knowledge of navigation, they knew that they would eventually find land.
• Gradually, bigger groups, with more violent attacks would come to new lands with the intention of staying, leaning
on their capacity to launch surprise attacks.
820 AD – Onwards
• Attacks come to stay. By attacking the North, they penetrated the South.
• By the 850’s, Viking groups were wintering in England
• In 865 AD, isolated raids give away to systematic invasion.
• A large Danish force enters East Anglia, commanded by Ragnar Lodbrok and his sons, most famously Ivar the the
Boneless. With an army supplied by the East Angles, they march North and Conquer York.
o The great kingdom fell to them, Northumbria 867 AD, Mercia 874 AD and the rest.
o The only Anglo-Saxon kingdom that was not defeated by Vikings was Wessex.
o The now name given by Vikings to the conquered land was Danelaw.
• The Lowlands divided in the Danelaw and Wessex.
• In the Danelaw, there are places ending in ‘-thern’ and ‘-by’, indicating that those places were Viking settlements.
• In Ireland there were two settlements of Viking origin, Dublin and Wessex withstand the Viking invasion to their
crucial figure King Alfred the Great, a young king of Wessex that succeeded to the crown.
o Seen as the next Viking victim, with great intelligence, Alfred overcome and resisted them.
o Of all his measures adopted, the position of Wessex was the best advantage, their western location gave
them a critical advance: time.
o The amount of time given to Alfred helped him prepare for the war against Vikings.
o King Alfred could be considered the first King of England as the land adopted the name of ‘Angleland’
(lands that were not invaded by Vikings) The term Angleland would be derivate to England.
o Alfred’s defensive strategy
▪ the creation of the fyrd: selected militia or group of men exclusively dedicated to war, professional
soldiers supported by local lords.
▪ The construction of “The first Navy” avoid the Vikings for landing, stopping them as the sea to
make the land safer.
▪ The construction of 33 burhs: a fortification where farmers would protect themselves, in case of
attack, as the near parts of the river would be attacked by Vikings.
• This would turn the fast and quick attack of Vikings into long sieges.
o In cultural terms, Alfred started the Anglo-Saxon chronicle

▪ A chronicle of historical events year after year.
▪ All the mayor events were recorded, associating a linguistic development as well.
o Alfred not only stopped the Viking attack but also began the reconquest of the land.
▪ London was taken back by the Kingdom of Wessex.
▪ Gradually (after 4 generations) takes place the conquest of the Danelaw.

• After Alfred’s victory at the battle of Edington, 878 AD, the Danish leader, Guthrum, converts to Christianity and
returns to East Anglia.
Alfred’s descendants
• A king that could conquer a unified land, King Edgard (959-75).

o With Edgard the term Angleland is established, a golden, peaceful period with great importance of the Church,
a monastic expansion.
o England also maintained connections with the continent, commercial and national currency.
o However, things would change rapidly with his son, King Aethelred (the unready), that alias indicates the
management (posterior) of the kingdom.
• Harold Bluetooth is a viking, a great military leader from the North, coming to the Lowlands with a massive forth.
Herald starts those attacks continued by his son Swein. This attack would continue over the years, being the quest
of Aethelred to fight them.
• The first solution of Aethelred is money “BUY PEACE”.
o After being defeated at the Battle of Maldon (992) he creates a tax, collected from everyone is known as the
‘Danegeld’ of ‘Gold for the Dane’.
o It did not word although it was a brief solution. Taxation appears in history.
• The second measure adopted, with importance on the long run is: POLITICAL ALLIANCES.
o Establish a political alliance with Normandy.
o Forces working in 2 directions, anyone who were attacked would be helped by the other (Quid pro Quo).
o Normandy had been a land conquered by Vikings although they had adopted Christianity.
o The alliance seemed natural, it was established by marriage with Aethelred and the daughter of the Duke of
Normandy, creating a political alliance and support against any danger.
• One third measure in the year 1002, a terrible measure: GENERAL MEASURE.
o Ordered by Aethelred to kill people that had family connections and roots of Vikings.
o Many people of Viking origin stayed in the land of Aethelred under the idea of their support to the Viking
invaders. “An enemy from the inside”.
o It is not known how general the measure was, not a genocide but certainly created the opposite purpose. That
roused the inner people to help invaders and Aethelred took refuge in Normandy with his royal family.
o His children grow in Normandy, forces to abandon their home. His son Edward (the Confessor) will become
important.

• King Sweyn of Denmark and Norway attacks, and then in 1013 invades with an imperial army led by his son Cnut,
who will become king (1016-1035).
o Aethelred flees to his wife Emma’s birthplace, Normandy
o During these years England is ruled by Vikings that took possession of the land.
o Cnut was intelligent, he respected Anglo-Saxon possessions, institutions and cultures blending both cultures and
peoples in a very effective way.
o He kept the Great Anglo-Saxon institution of the Witan.
The Norman connection
• Emma of Normandy was married to Aethelred the Unready (1002), then to Cnut the Great (1016), and was great-
aunt of William the Conqueror.
The end of Viking England
• Cnut became a Christian and reinstated Anglo-Saxon laws previous to Aethelred.

• His North Sea Empire split up as his successors separated Denmark, Norway and England
• The English crown returned to the Wessex dynasty with Edward the Confessor, who would be the last Anglo-Saxon
king.

Unit 3
THE RISE AND FALL OF FEUDAL KINGDOMS
The invasion of the Normans
c.800 – 1066
• After the two communities were united, the Witan named a new King, Edward.
o Reeducated in the Norman culture of French and Latin
▪ The return of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy
o Edward “the confessor” was highly religious.
▪ Edward initiated the construction of Westminster Abbey.
• He does not guarantee the succession by not having an heir
o He married a woman of the strongest Anglo-Saxon family, becoming a very prominent family on the throne.
• After Edward’s death the Witan chooses a new King, having this time 3 claimants.
o A Viking: Harold Hardrada

▪ his reason is coming from the Viking royal family and its direct connections
▪ A certain rightful claim to the throne.
o William, Duke of Normandy
▪ His reason is his precedence of the line of Aethelred and the Duke of Normandy’s daughter.
o Harold Godwinson

▪ The strongest and only Anglo-Saxon claimant.
▪ He is chosen to be the King in 1066.
The Battle of Hastings
• Before the King’s death, Harold, who was the king’s brother-in-law, was sent to Normandy to talk with William.
o There He made an oath of loyalty to William and promised that he would be the next King.
• After Edward’s death, Harold is chosen to be the next king of Britain
o This which results in the other 2 claimants deciding to attack Britain to fight for their right to the throne.
o From the North led by Harold Hardrada and from the south led by William Duke of Normandy, in the year 1066.
▪ This took place 2 weeks before the Battle of Hastings.
• As Harold was fighting the attack from the North, he had a disadvantage against the Normans.
• On the 14th of October the Battle of Hastings took place.
o William led his forces out to battle, which ended in a decisive victory against Harold’s men.
o Harold was killed–shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend–and his forces were destroyed
• On Christmas Day of 1066, he was crowned the first Norman king of England, in Westminster Abbey, and the
Anglo-Saxon phase of English history came to an end.
The conquest of England
• The army of William was made up by 25,000 soldiers and they managed to defeat two million men.
o 10 years after the conquest there are no more than 4 Anglo-Saxon lords of the land.
o The Normans become the masters of the land.
• But how did these men manage to conquer the land in such a short time?
o They did it by means of terror and castles (motte and bailey castles).
o They could build a huge castle in only two days. This way they gradually imposed their rule. Later on they started
to replace the wood in the castles by stone and built “actual” castles.
• The ones that lost the war were simply bounded to the land.
• The poor people, peasants, spoke old English: it became an “underground” language.
o Normans mostly spoke French and Latin.
o There will be a long time until an English king, born in England that spoke English, rules. Therefore, there is no
sort of “Englishness” at that moment.

The Norman Kings
• William the Conqueror, being Duke of Normandy, was a Vessel of the King of France
o But he also became King of England
o This meant the emergence of tensions between England and France: the status was greater than the King’s.
• The King needed to have knowledge of the land (how exploitable it was, how rich or poor his servants were…)
o By 1086, this knowledge of the land was recorded in a book: Doomsday Book
▪ It contained a highly detailed record of the land and livestock so that the services could be stipulated by the
king and how much revenue he ought to receive yearly from each.
▪ He also caused them to write down how much land belonged to his archbishops, to his bishops, his abbots
and his earls, and, that I may be brief, what property every inhabitant of all England possessed in land or in
cattle, and how much money this was worth.
▪ When royal officers visited any of the servants and found them suspects of hiding something from them they
were killed.
• Year 1137. They greatly oppressed the wretched people of the land by making them work at the castles.
o When the castles were built, they filled them with devils and wicked men.
o Then they took those whom they suspected to have any goods, both by night and day, men, and women alike;

they imprisoned them and put them to unspeakable tortures to obtain gold and silver …
Death of William the Conqueror (1087)
• It is a complicated moment because there are three men for succession of the throne.
o William had three children: Richard, William, and Henry.
▪ Robert ‘Curthose’ (Normandy)
▪ William ‘Rufus’ (England)
• William inherited the lands that his father acquired so he was William II or William ‘Rufus’.
▪ Henry ‘Beauclerc’ (money)
• This age is dominated by tension, there are several titles in several heads: Robert and William.
o It could be expected that the barons are totally divided between the two brothers, some kind of civil war.
• In the case of England, there is a problematic situation because of this division and money.
o War is a very expensive affair and because of those financial difficulties he took some measures, and one of
them concerns the church, bishops and archbishops
▪ Bishops are chosen by the King, this is because they were high religious figures and feudal lords.
▪ A new bishop is invested into an archbishop in a ceremony where the king makes him a bishop.
• When a see remains empty, the benefits of that see goes straight to the king.
• There is a reform in Europe known as the Gregorian Reform with the aim of gaining independence from the Crown.
• The church wanted to gain a degree of independence in this question, and there was also the problem of the money,
that the benefits of the see goes to the crown.
o What did William II do which became a problem?
o He deliberately kept sees empty, there was a moment when there was empty bishopric.
o It is a problem, to the extent that William’s death is believed to be made by the Church.
• The reign of William II was short, and the next king was his brother, Henry I.
o Henry’s reign is going to be a moment of glory because he became King of England and Duke of Normandy.
Henry I, the great reformer
• The first great issue concerns administration

o A well-established division of England into shires.
o In every shire he imposes the presence of a shire reeve, the officer of the crown in charge of a shire (this led to
the word ‘sheriff’).
o In connection with this, he imposes a new system of taxation, exchequer.
▪ Once a year, the sheriff collects the money in taxes, and when they have the money, they travel to London
where they deposit the money on a chequer-cloth.
▪ This gives financial stability to the crown. With this, the legend of Robin Hood begins to sound.
• The second great problem is the one that concerns the Church
o The king renounces to invest bishops, so the Church makes it.
▪ The ceremony is entirely religious, and the king plays no part in it, which gives a kind of independence.
▪ However, the king retains the choice, it is the king who choses who is going to be a bishop.
o Only one problem remains, the question of the law
▪ There are two systems of the law, one is civil/royal-law and the other is canonical-law (of the Church).
▪ There is one thing that is object of debate, what happens with criminal clerks (religious figure)?
• There was no solution, it will be ever present.
• The third question concerning Henry was succession

o We know that Henry I had 20 bastards but only one legitimate child, his daughter Mathilde.
▪ When he died, she was crowded Queen, but problems started immediately, because there were barons that
would not accept the reign of a woman.
o A section of the nobility chose an alternative figure, Stephen of Blois, Henry’s nephew, who counted with the
support of the Church.
▪ He became king Stephen, and that led to a period of Civil War.
• This period of tremendous tension is known as the 19 Winters of King Stephen or the Anarchy of King
Stephen. All stability is lost.
• The war was practically permanent, and it was long because Mathilde counted with the hand of her
husband, Geoffrey of Anjou/Plantagenet
o He was Count of Anjou, a rich area in France, he counted with a personal army and he himself
fought in the crusades.
o The word Plantagenet derives from the Latin words Hanta Genista, a little flower which was his
personal semblance.

o It finishes with a compromise, the Treaty of Westminster
▪ Stephen would be allowed to die King of England if Mathilde’s son inherited the throne.
▪ That solution was put into effect in the year 1154, when Mathilde’s son, Henry, became Henry II Plantagenet,
with a glorious reign.
• He married Eleanor of Agritaine, so he was King and Duke of many places
• While Matilda the Empress fights Stephen for the throne

o Economic growth, more markets open, even unlincenced, (burhs>) boroughs prosper
o Continuation the 12th-Century Renaissance: foundation of new monastic orders (Cistercians, Templars …),
Gothic architecture, first European universities
the period of Plantagenet Empire or Angevin Empire.
• In theory, Henry II is the vessel of the King of France but became even more powerful than him since the King of
England ruled practically half of France.
o There was an unbalance of power between England and France.
o English kings subject Wales, failing in Scotland
o Started the Hundred Years’ War to conquer France.
• He kept the taxation method but also developed some reforms

o He imposed a general system of justice all over his possessions.
o Henry held court sessions with experts, called assizes, to make decisions in law
o Circuit courts presided over by itinerant justices enforced the “King’s peace”
o Instead of trials by ordeal of battle or compurgation, sworn evidence was given by men who were familiar with
the case: a jury system
o The decisions of royal justices became the basis for decissions made in the king’s courts, and superseded local
feudal justice, creating a body of Common Law
▪ They kept a written record of every case and circumstance to apply the same degree of justice.
▪ This new system becomes effective in a legal meeting: the ‘Assize of Clarendon’ in 1166.
o The only problem was that the king wanted justice for everyone, including ecclesiastical figures.
▪ The Church thought of that as something that went against them and their Canonical Law.
• As the clergy remained outside royal justice, in 1164 he made the Constitutions of Clarendon to deal
with “criminous clerks”.

▪ Henry II thought of that appointing his best friend, Thomas Beckett as “archbishop of Canterbury” was a
brilliant idea, and it would solve the problem with the Church. It went the wrong way though.
• When Beckett became the archbishop, he saw himself in a really high position and became a true
defender of God’s will, and eventually, became Henry’s worst enemy and made things even more
difficult for him.
• This situation led to the ‘murder in the Cathedral’: Beckett was killed in 1170, becoming known as St.
Thomas Beckett, and making Canterbury’s Cathedral a pilgrimage.
o The king was forced to do public penance, admit clerical immunity, become protector of the Irish
church, and promise to go on a crusade.
The Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland
• The Anglo-Norman earl Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, was sent by Henry II after King Diarmait
• Strongbow took control of Leinster and began to push in other directions.
o At first the Norman’s superior weaponry made it easy to defeat the clans.
• Mac Murchada solicited help because the High King of Ireland had deprived him of the kingdom of Leinster for
abducting another king’s wife.
How the empire was lost, and Magna Carta was won
• Henry died in 1189.

o Succeeded by Richard I 'Lionheart'.
• Richard spent most of his reign on crusade.

o Returned in 1194: died in 1199.
o Succeeded by John I 'Softsword’
▪ Nicknamed as the monarch who managed to lose most of the vast Angevin empire.
• In 1099 John married Isabella of Angoulame.
o Isabella Westminster was the key piece in a dispute between rival families.
o John was summoned to appear before the French king, his overlord, but he refused. War broke out.
o By 1206. John had lost Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and parts of Poitou.
• Re-conquest required money
o He increased taxes and enforced his feudal rights ever more harshly
▪ Discontent increased among his barons and civil war broke out in May 1215
o John was defeated, and on 19 June at Rurnnymede, he accepted the baronial terms embodied in the Magna Carta.
Magna Carta and The British Constitution
• Magna Carta was written by barons to protect their rights and property against a tyrannical king.
o It is concerned with many practical matters relevant to the feudal system under which they lived
• In its original form Magna Carta consisted of 63 articles.
o One of its most emblematic sections is Chapter 39
▪ No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or diseased or outlawed or exiled or in any way victimized.
Neither will we attack him or send anyone to attack him. Except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by
the law of the land.
▪ This principle, and others in the Charter, established that a ruler, just like everyone else, is subject to the
rule of law.
• Executive power could no longer be employed simply in pursuit of the King's own private projects, as had been
under the Angevin kings.
o Now it had to respect individual rights and the good of the community.
• Common Law and Magna Carta are two of the pillars of the British Constitution.
From Magna Carta to Parliament
• Though Archbishop Stephen Langton had helped the barons’ petition of Magna Carta, John denounced it and the
Pope suspended Langton from office
• John’s son Henry III continued to rule with papal and French support against baronial claims

• A confederation of barons rose in arms led by the Gascon Simon de Mónfort
o Defeated the king and made him take an oath to the Provisions of Oxford (similar to M.C.)
▪ Formed by a Council of 15 magnates, 12 elected barons, 2 citizens per borough and 2 knights.
• Henry III never accepting the legality of the “parlemenz” (discussions) reorganized his troops and defeated them.
o It was Henry’s son Edward I who decided to start using a Model Parliament in 1295 to get consent for taxes
and assert his English national identity, though still using French for most parliamentary debates
English national expansionism
• Edward I, known as “Langshanks” or “The Hammer of the Scots”, revived English expansionism through
Parliament
o He participated in the Crusades
o He defeteated Welsh rebellions and made his son the first Prince of Wales
o He also had a temporary victory in the Scottish Wars of Independence, and put the Scottish Kings’
Stone of Destiny under his throne in Westminster Abbey
o He identified with the lengendary King Arthur to enhance his political claims
• He formally expelled all Jews from England, appropriating their loans and properties
• He made a military campaign in Flanders to gain support against the King of France
• His wars meant a financial strain for the Crown and the nation, which was taxed through Parliament.
The Scottish independence
• “The Hammer of the Scots” faced a new war of Independence famously led by a commoner, William Wallace

o Wallace was finally captured and torn apart as a traitor, which only led to further rebellion
▪ Now led by a nobleman of Norman descent, Robert de Bruce, later Robert I of Scotland
• Edward I died without subduing Scotland, and his son Edward II was finally defeated at Bannockburn (1314)
• The Scottish barons sent a letter, the Declaration of Arbroath, to the Pope, including the famous words
o 'It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone,
which no honest man gives up but with life itself.'

The Middle Ages
Far from their dour reputation, the Middle Ages were a period of massive social change, burgeoning nationalism,
international conflict, terrible natural disaster, climate change, rebellion, resistance, and renaissance.
Norman legacy
• In December 1154, the young and vigorous Henry II became king of England following the anarchy and civil war
of Stephen’s reign.
o Stephen had acknowledged Henry, grandson of Henry I of England, as his heir-designate.
▪ His eldest son, Eustace, had died in 1153, but his younger son, who might have succeeded, lives on
as count of Mortain. Primogeniture was not then established in England.
• The Britain of Henry II, and his sons Richard I and John,
o was experiencing rapid population growth
o clearance of forest for fields

o establishment of new towns
o outward-looking crusading zeal.
• The country also witnessed the cultural feast of the ‘12th century renaissance’ in the arts
o exemplified by the Winchester Bible of c. 1160, created from the skins over 300 calves and lavishly
decorated with lapis lazuli and gold applied by a team of manuscript illuminators from continental Europe.
• Legacies of the Norman invasion of 1066 remained.
The aristocracy spoke French until after 1350, so saxon ‘ox’ and ‘swine’, for example, came to the table as
French boeuf and porc.
• North of ‘sassenach’ (Saxon) England, Normanised lowland Scotland (which shared a common vernacular dialect
with England North of the Humber) remained distinct from the Highlands where Gaelic flourished.
• The families of Balliol, Bruce and Wallace, dominant in Scottish medieval history, all derived from French origins
– a minority overlaying the population of Scots.
• Ireland was less dominated by Normans. However, much of the regional indigenous culture survives despite Norman
monarchy and aristocracy.
English nationalism
A combination of external factors made England more inward-looking and more dissonant after 1200.
Internationally the crusading ideal was weakening. The Battle of Hattin and the recapture of Jerusalem by Muslims in
1187 were considerable blows to western hopes. Richard I’s subsequent failure to recapture the city in his campaign
against Saladin was discouraging.
Worse still, the crusading ideal was fractured in 1204 with the siege and capture of Christian Constantinople by a
crusading force destined for infidel Egypt, and led by Venetians. Crusading never recovered.
John’s loss of French lands soon after 1200 also made England more inward-looking and frustrated.
Population continued to rise in the 1200s, primogeniture became more established and there were many younger warrior
sons looking for lands and glory.
Henry III (1216-1272) was not a soldierly king. His half-hearted campaigns in France were unsuccessful in regaining
lands lost by his father, John. By the Treaty of Paris (1259) he admitted failure and secured remote Gascony by giving
up claims to lands in northern France, including iconic Normandy.
Henry III’s reign witnessed many closer links with France, where Louis IX (St Louis) was his brother-in-law.
French culture was echoed in Britain, especially in Gothic architecture. But despite Frenchness of manners and names,
English barons became increasingly conscious of their Englishness, which they declared in anti-foreign attitudes which
focused on immigrant courtiers.
It is not accident that scholars have dubbed the spare, simple Gothic architecture of the 13 th century ‘Early English’,
epitomized by Salisbury Cathedral, largely built between 1220 and 1258.
England dominant
Crusading continued during the 13th century, indeed Edward I (1272 – 1307) was away crusading when his father died
in 1272 and did not return for two years.
Such a smooth transition was a tribute to effective government administration in England. Incredibly, centralized
financial record-keeping on the great roll of the exchequer survives unbroken from early in Henry II’s reign.
Tributes to growing institutions of English government – and hints of a less dominant monarchy – are prevalent in this
period: Richard I’s realm was governed successfully in his absence for almost his entire reign; Henry III inherited
from his unpopular father as a child of nine, with a regency lasting almost a decade; and the transition of power from
Henry III to Edward I, when the latter was absent for two years.
There was a downside to effective financial organization. The prosperity arising from peasant agriculture, growing
urbanism and burgeoning population growth meant England could focus more directly on its near neighbours Wales,
Scotland and to a lesser extent Ireland, in the 13th and early 14th centuries:
Wales was partly subdued by Edward I, who put his government’s wealth into building the great castles through which
he gained control of north Wales.
Scotland regained the Western Isles from Scandinavian colonists following the Battle of Largs in 1263. An opportunity
arose for England to become involved at the centre of Scottish politics with the untimely death of Alexander III, who
died in a riding accident in 1289.
Edward I was called upon to judge different claimants to the Scottish throne, which he did, and his pre-eminence is
displayed in a contemporary manuscript illumination which shows him with Llywelyn, Prince of Wales, and Alexander,
King of Scotland, on his right and left, respectively.
Rebellion
th
In the last quarter of the 13 century, English dominance over Ireland, Scotland and Wales was apparently being
achieved. But that famous image of Edward I with Scots and Welsh rulers illustrates a high point of English
predominance.

From the last quarter of the 13th century, fundamentals underlying the dynamics of development in Britain and Ireland
changed.
Population growth slowed down, inflation began to affect wealth and bloody civil was as a way of managing royal
power became tempered by embryonic parliamentary developments.
Henry III’s struggle with Simon de Montfort, who the king defeated and killed at Evesham in 1265, exemplifies this.
De Montfort’s unofficial ‘model parliament’ of 1263 and Edward I’s official model of 1295 were designed by magnates
to curb royal power by increasing representations of counties and boroughs.
Problems with the feudal army also emerged at the 1295 parliament when the earl marshal refused to serve abroad unless
the king was present. He was threatened with hanging, but neither served or was he hanged.
The remainder of the period from 1300 to 1485 is traditionally seen as a disastrous period in English history, which in
many ways it was. However, Scotland and Ireland achieved growing independence during this period.
A Scottish highlight in the ‘wars of independence’ was the victory of Robert the Bruce over Edward II at Bannockburn
near Stirling in 1314.
The Avignon papacy recognized an independent anointed Scottish monarchy before Bruce’s untimely death in 1329,
and the long-term ‘auld alliance’ with France from 1296 secured Scotland’s independence.
Rebellions in Wales, especially that of Owen Glyn Dwr between 1400 and 1409, are testament to some Welshmen’s
continuing struggle for independence, although their own princes were replaced by English princes of Wales form the
time of Edward I.
Famine and plague

The long view of the period from 1300 to 1485 suggests climate and demographic change were probably key
determinants of developments in Britain and Ireland.
Climatic deterioration began from about 1300, with colder winters and wetter summers. These conditions contributed
to the Great European Famine of 1315 – 1322, in which millions perished.
Chronic malnourishment weakened the population, perhaps making people more susceptible to the Black Death, the
worst disease in recorded history, which arrived in Europe in 1347 and in England the following year.
The disease killed 50% of the population within a year, but the main effect was that it returned with alarming regularity
in 1361, 1374 and regularly thereafter until it disappeared from Britain in about 1670.
The population of Britain and Ireland before the Black Death may have been eight million, of which three-quarters lived
in England.
Decline continued until about 1450, when the population was perhaps two or three million, lowest count during the last
millennium. By 1485 the population was beginning to rise again.
Succession struggle

Climate change and plague were not the only external factors to affect Britain and Ireland. The Capetian royal dynasty
in France, which had produced male heirs since 987 AD, died out in 1328, provoking a succession struggle in which
Edward II and his son Edward (III to be) were prime claimants.
These claims lay dormant for several years, as Edward II’s French wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer invaded
England in 1326, imprisoned and murdered Edward II and brought Isabella’s son Edward III to the throne in January
1327. Isabella and Mortimer were effectively in power, but in 1330 Edward III asserted himself, had Mortimer executed,
and staked a claim to the throne of France.
This led to the Hundred Years’ War, which lasted from 1337 until the English were defeated and driven from France,
expect Calais, in 1453. The war was not without English successes both over France (Crécy in 1346, Poitiers in 1356,
Agincourt in 1415) and over the Scots (Neville’s Cross in 1346).
Kings of Scotland spent considerable periods in English captivity, such as David II who was in captivity from 1346 –
1357, and James I who spent 18 of his 31 years as king in prison between 1406 and 1424. But by this period Scotland,
like England, could function effectively without a king for long periods.
The church and its leading institutions, the papacy, like the monarchy so strong in the 12th and early 13th centuries, also
became weak and disorganized in the later Middle Ages. The conflict between Henry II and Archbishop Thomas
Becket, who was killed in his cathedral church at Canterbury in 1170 by royal knights, was an early manifestation of
church-state struggle in this period.
A more legalistic approach was followed by Edward I, whose Statute of Mortmain in 1279 was designed to prevent
the ‘dead hand’ of the church gaining further gifts of land to add to its already large land-base, thereby enabling land to
circulate within lay society, and making land more easily taxable by the crown.
Nationalism triumphs
The exile of the papacy from Rome to Avignon from 1305 distanced the English from the papacy seen to be dominated
by an increasingly powerful French monarchy. Almost all the Avignon popes and cardinals were French.

In 1378, a schism developed in the church, with rival popes based in Avignon and Rome. Inevitably Christendom split
and predictably France and Scotland were on the side of Avignon, and England on that of Rome.
When the Conciliar movement of the early 15th century was established, no fewer than three rival popes had to be
deposed by the Council of Constance in 1417, which duly elected a fourth, Martin V.
Division in the papacy exacerbated growing nationalism in western countries. At the Council of Constance
representatives voted by ‘nations’ as England, France and Germany, and later Spain.
Throughout Europe, bloody civil wars resulted as rival magnates fought for power during this period. In France some
magnates, such as the dukes of Burgundy, sided with the English, prolonging the Hundred Years’ War.
When the war was over, rival groups of magnates in England fought among themselves. Lancastrians, who had usurped
the throne from Richard II in 1399, against Yorkists, whose forebears had a better claim in 1399.
Kings came and went, for example Charles VII in France, who was banned from inheritance by his parents in 1420, and
Henry VI, deposed in England during the Wars of the Roses.
Royal families were so intermarried that mental instability was passed across the Channel from Charles VI of France
to his grandson Henry VI of England.
Propaganda
Upheavals occurred lower down the social scale following the Black Death and during the wars. The Peasants’ Revolt
of 1381 was one manifestation of this, while Jack Cade’s rebellion in 1450 another.
In France, the peasant girl Joan of Arc moved centre stage for two years, advising the heir to the French throne and
even leading forces in war from 1429 until 1431, when she was captured and burnt as a heretic and sorcerer by the
English.
The topsy-turvy world of late medieval Britain and Ireland did not stabilize abruptly when, as Shakespeare put it, the
Tudor Henry VII rescued the crown of England from a bush on Bosworth Field after the defeat of the reigning monarch
Richard III in August 1485. Much of what the Tudors claimed as ‘new government’ was already in place in Yorkist
England.
War against France and Scotland continued, while Ireland remained semi-independent. At the end of the War of the
Roses at Bosworth in 1485, England actually came under the Welsh dynasty.
Much of the bad press of the 1400s derives from Tudor propaganda. There was, in fact, much to praise in 15 th-century
Britain.
The defeating clash of arms produced as many heroes as villains. The extraordinary Grace Dieu, Henry V’s giant ship
of 1,600 tons, not rivalled again until the reign of Charles II and Victory, was a unique achievement and brought peace
to the Channel, discouraging invasion.

Unit 4
+REFORMATION AND THE ENGLISH NATION STATE
The Northern Renaissance

The renaissance of Chaucer, Gower, Barbour and Dunbar percolated society. Libraries, such as that of Humphrey Duke
of Gloucester, were established and the art of biography began.
Universities increased in number and scope. Oxford and Cambridge were joined by Scotland’s St Andrews in 1410 and
two other Scottish universities by 1500.
Ideals of internationalism faltered, including crusading, the universal church, monasticism. Nationalism triumphed.
Royalty in many respects were as disreputable at the beginning of the period as at the end.
Throughout England much that we recognize today was established and survives: the parish churches with their towers,
now fossilized in their late medieval form by the Reformation; oak-framed timber buildings scattered across the country;
universities and schools.
Ireland, Scotland and Wales all enjoy similar cultural characteristics. Maybe it was the wars of the period that led the
Scots to place their faith in education with their several universities and the Welsh and Irish to develop their bardic and
oral traditions during a turbulent but heroic period of British and Irish history.
And what of the ordinary people? In 1485 over 95% of the people of Britain lived in the countryside, towns and despite
their small share of national populations had an impact far outweighing their demographic significance.
The period between the Black Death of 1348 and 1485 was, among much else, a golden age for women. War and
depopulation allowed them to contribute much more effectively and influentially to society.
But the cold wind of climate change, disease and war was by no means to everyone’s disadvantages.
Henry II

It is impossible to divorce the question of Henry II and imperialism from the nature of 'feudalism' and his own obsession
with his rights. The debate as it stands can be broadly broken down into two camps. There are those who believe that
Henry's actions early in his reign were dictated by his desire to get back or define what was rightfully his, and that his
later invasion of Ireland was in reaction to the growth of private Norman power there. Others argue that Henry was very
aggressive, making claims over and above those he could legitimately make, and that Henry and the English viewed the
Celtic kingdoms on their borders as barbarians whom it was legitimate to conquer.
By a close reading of the major events of Henry's reign, we can show that Henry was a consummate opportunist who
succeeded in exploiting the chances he was given to consolidate his power. Just how deliberate this was is the central
question of the debate.
Henry ruled over a vassalage system, in which the personality of the king is central. This is crucial to our understanding
of everything Henry did. He did not view himself as King of England, any more than he viewed himself as Duke of
Normandy or Count of Anjou. He was Lord of His Domain, which included England, Normandy, Maine, Anjou and on
the periphery, Brittany and Wales. As he saw it, he held England by indisputable right of blood, and he held Normandy
and Anjou by that same right but as a vassal of the French king. Brittany, Wales and Maine came to him by right of
conquest, handed down to him in part by his predecessors, but requiring the final seal to be set on them, and the blessing
of the French king for those lands in France. These lands had all once belonged to Henry I, through conquest, marriage
or inheritance, and it was therefore Henry II's inalienable right as he saw it to stamp his authority upon them.
Added to this was Aquitaine, placed into his responsibility by his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152. If we are
talking in terms of imperialism, the acquisition of Aquitaine can be seen as the first great coup of Henry II. It occurred
even before he became king, and it completely redefined the map of France. Eleanor had been the queen of King Louis
VII of France until he had the marriage annulled because she had not borne him a son. While she and Louis were aligned,
the King of France directly controlled three quarters of his country; but the minute Henry married Eleanor, control of
more than half the country fell into the hands of one single over-powerful vassal, the duke of Normandy. The relationship
between Louis and his vassal Henry would never be the same again, and from that point on, one overriding aim of the
French kings was to prevent the dukes of Normandy from seizing control of any more of their land. Henry, on the other
hand, had secured the southern borders of Anjou, and at a single stroke had elevated his status from duke of Normandy
and pretender to the English throne, to major European player. It was a great coup, but it was to dog the kings of England
for centuries to come.
Its long-term implications can be seen in the first real 'imperial' venture of Henry's actual reign. Henry gained an interest
in Toulouse (south-eastern France) through his marriage to Eleanor, who claimed it as part of the Duchy of Aquitaine.
However, Louis could not afford to let Henry gain control of it, and had a duty of care to the Count of Toulouse as his
vassal. After some failed diplomatic efforts, Henry prepared a massive campaign in 1159, intended to browbeat the
Count of Toulouse into submission; but Louis pre-empted him, marching an army into Toulouse and daring Henry to
attack him.

This, Henry could not afford to do. Not only was he not powerful enough to take on the French army in a heavily-
defended city, but he had only just succeeded in stamping his authority on his own recalcitrant barons. He dared not set
his vassals the very bad example of attacking his technical overlord, so he was forced to back off ignominiously. It was
one of the few miscalculations of his reign, caused by the brash assertiveness of youth and the failure to recognise that
there were limits beyond which he should not push. The King of France could countenance his claims to Toulouse just
so long as he did not seek to enforce them. As soon as Henry tried to set those rights in stone, Louis was forced to act.
This was a lesson that Henry took some time to learn. He made a similar mistake with Becket and the Church over the
Constitutions of Clarendon and also with Wales, though here he was as much a victim of bad luck as of bad judgement.
The Welsh princes had always enjoyed a somewhat ambivalent relationship with their technical Norman overlords.
During Stephen's reign, they had been able to regain some of the territory they had lost to the Norman barons in Wales,
who had been carving out private empires since the days of King William I. Henry set out to stop the rot. He mounted
three punitive campaigns into Wales between 1157 and 1163, which reasserted royal authority over the princes of
Gwynedd and Deheubarth, the major principalities in Wales.
Then he overreached himself. In 1163, he attempted to firmly define his rights as feudal overlord of the Welsh princes
by demanding oaths of vassalage from them at the Council of Woodstock. The Welsh rebelled and Henry responded in
1165 with a major campaign. It was the largest military venture attempted in his reign, but as such it was unwieldy and

suffered from the inherent problems of campaigning in Wales: bad weather, poor supply lines and difficult terrain.
Despite that, it would have succeeded if he hadn't picked the wettest summer in memory to mount the campaign. He
was quite literally washed out of the Welsh valleys.
After that, Wales was never a high enough priority for Henry to bother again. He left the Welsh to their own devices,
and only paid any real attention when the Welsh themselves rebelled in 1183 (in response to the technical defaulting of
Glamorgan into royal hands on the death of its lord). The Welsh meanwhile continued to encroach onto the lands of the
Norman barons, even overrunning the royal castles of Cardigan and Rhuddlan.
This was why the Normans moved into Ireland. It is generally agreed that Henry was not particularly concerned with
Ireland at the beginning of his reign. In 1155, just after he came to power, Henry discussed the possibility of invading
Ireland with a group of churchmen at Winchester. The initiative probably came from the Church at Canterbury, which
was concerned about the recent recognition of the Irish Church by the pope. Henry considered it seriously enough to get
a papal bull giving him dispensation to bring the Irish into the Catholic fold. Eventually, he shelved it. He had more
important things to do. The story is that his mother vetoed the idea, but no-one can seriously believe that Henry would
have paid any notice to her if he'd actually wanted to get involved.
He was equally uninterested when, in 1166, Dermot MacMurrough, the exiled king of Leinster, appealed to him for aid.
There was a history of friendship between the Plantagenets and Dermot, which meant that Dermot was so confident of
Henry's goodwill that he travelled all the way to Aquitaine to see him. However, Henry was not willing to intervene
personally in Ireland as he had problems elsewhere. Instead, he gave Dermot permission to recruit mercenaries from
among his Norman knights.
For Dermot, the most obvious place to go for recruits was among the Norman landholders of south Wales, strategically
situated on the sailing routes to his Irish ports. The Norman knights leaped at the chance. Ever since 1165, the Welsh
princes had been eating away at their lands, and they were looking for somewhere to go to revive their failing fortunes.
Among these landless men was one Robert fitzStephen, about whom we know a lot because his story is told in great
detail by his nephew, Gerald of Wales. Robert was a vassal of the lord of Ceredigion, who had become effectively
dispossessed when prince Rhys of Deheubarth overran his lands. He was actually Rhys's prisoner when the call to arms
came from across the sea, and he negotiated his freedom on the terms that he go to Ireland and leave Wales behind. At
the other end of the scale was Richard fitzGilbert, lord of Clare and Strigoil, known to all as 'Strongbow', a powerful
baron with a failing fortune.
Strongbow had made the mistake of supporting Stephen during the 'tempus werre' ('time of war'), and as a result, Henry
had deprived him of the earldom of Pembroke. So his fortunes were definitely on the wane. William of Newburgh says
he went to Ireland to escape his creditors, while Gerald of Wales claims that Dermot wanted him because 'he had a great
name rather than great prospects'. Even so, he had much to lose by moving to Ireland, and he was only finally persuaded
when Dermot offered him the hand of his daughter, Aífe, in marriage and the prospect of succeeding to Leinster on
Dermot's death. The chronology of what follows is crucial, both to understand Strongbow's motives and why Henry
finally got involved.
In May 1169, Robert fitzStephen crossed to Ireland, accompanied by Strongbow's uncle, Hervey de Montmorency, and
helped Dermot regain his kingdom, capturing the port of Wexford in 1170. The High-King of Ireland, Rory O'Connor,
demanded Dermot's son as a hostage for good behaviour. In Autumn 1169 and Spring 1170, more of Strongbow's men
arrived to help Dermot, and advised him to offer Aífe to their lord. Strongbow crossed to Ireland in August 1170 and at
this point, Henry II took notice. He closed all the ports to Ireland and ordered all those who had crossed to return,
threatening to confiscate Strongbow's lands if he failed to obey.
Strongbow married Aífe in Autumn 1170 and in revenge, Rory executed Dermot's son, removing the last remaining
legitimate heir (in Norman eyes) to Dermot's kingdom. In May 1171, Dermot died 'within a short time of Strongbow's
arrival in Ireland' and Strongbow immediately asserted his claim to Leinster. Rory responded by marching on Dublin.
After a two month siege, things looked dire for Strongbow and his men. "Surely we are not looking to our own people
for help?" said one of his captains. "For we are caught between two stools. Just as we are English to the Irish, so are we
Irish to the English." Forced to rely on their own resources, they sallied out of the city walls and routed Rory's army.
Meanwhile, the men of Wexford had risen up against Robert and imprisoned him. The Irish appealed to Henry for aid,
and while he was waiting to cross to Ireland, the men of Wexford came to Pembroke and offered him Robert as the man
who had initiated the Norman encroachment into Ireland. Robert languished in prison until 1172. Throughout 1171,
Strongbow sent emissaries to Henry, and eventually went to Henry in person, offering to surrender his lands in return
for their fief as a vassal of the king. Henry landed in Ireland in October 1171, where he was met by the sub-kings of
Leinster and other kingdoms who did homage to him in the Irish fashion. He spent Christmas in Dublin and left in 1172,
leaving Strongbow in charge of Leinster, but with the strategically important locations of Wexford, Limerick, Cork and
Wicklow Castle in royal hands.
What do we gather from this? First, Strongbow himself only got involved in Ireland once he could guarantee that he
was going to profit from it, and the timing of Dermot's death does not inspire confidence. Secondly, Henry seemed
indifferent to Ireland until one of his great landholders put himself in a position of power there (like Henry and
Aquitaine!). At this point, he tried to prevent Normans from going over there. Only when this failed, and the High-King
of Ireland failed to assert control over this rogue vassal, did Henry intervene personally, seemingly at the invitation of
those Irish opposed to their ineffective High-King. Thirdly, the Irish themselves seem to have treated Henry like an
alternative High-King, even building a ritual hall in which to give their submission.

Like Wales, once the situation had resolved, Henry seems to have lost interest. He left Ireland in 1172 with Strongbow
in control of Meath and Leinster, and Rory still High-King. In 1173, he was so preoccupied with the revolt of Henry the
Younger that Rory could devastate Meath with impunity; then in 1175, he came to an agreement with Rory in the Treaty
of Windsor. This recognised Rory's right to his ancestral kingdom of Connacht, but retained direct Norman control over
Meath and Leinster. Rory agreed to hold the rest of Ireland as Henry's vassal, and was given control of Limerick and
Cork.
In this respect, Henry had taken over Ireland, holding one quarter of it through Strongbow and his heirs, while exerting
feudal overlordship of the rest through Rory O'Connor. Rory remained High-King of Ireland and had a free hand, but
was unable to control the rapaciousness of the Norman incomers, who had several generations of practice in Wales to
fall back on. In 1177, Henry once again intervened, granting the lands of Thomond and Desmond to the Normans who
had taken them and taking back control of Limerick and Cork. At this time, Robert fitzStephen, who had rehabilitated
himself in Henry's service in 1173, was given a half-portion of Cork to look after. Since Rory did not complain, this
could be seen as Henry reasserting control over his unruly Norman barons before they got completely out of hand.
Rory retired to a monastery in 1183, leaving his daughter in marriage to Henry's vice-regent in Leinster, Hugh de Lacy
(Strongbow had died in 1176). Henry responded by making his own son John vice-regent, but John was even more
ineffectual than Rory had been, and succeeded only in alienating both the Irish and the Normans, even prompting Rory
to come back out of retirement against him. He returned to England frustrated in 1185, leaving Rory attempting to wrest
control of Connacht back from his son, Connor, with the help of Norman mercenaries.
There is no doubt that Henry exploited the Irish situation ruthlessly, treating the land taken by the Normans as conquered
territory which he could do with as he wished, and ending up as the recognised power in the realm. However, he did
this largely with the tacit co-operation of those Irishmen who were opposed to Rory O'Connor, and finally with the co-
operation of Rory himself. It was only when Rory failed to control his Norman neighbours that Henry intervened, and
even then he only did so half-heartedly. With the exception of the Norman lands and certain strategically important
cities, Henry seemed quite happy to leave the Irish to their own devices, just so long as they recognised him as their
feudal overlord.
This attitude can be seen even more strongly in Scotland. Under Stephen, King David of Scotland had gained control of
Carlisle, and it is undoubtedly true that Henry reneged on his word when he browbeat David's successor, Malcolm, into
restoring it to the English king. This created bad blood, which led to Malcolm's successor, William, joining the rebellion
of Henry the Younger and invading England, but he was captured in battle and imprisoned.
In 1175, Henry released him on condition that he swear fealty to Henry as his liege and surrender key castles such as
those at Edinburgh and Stirling. Yet despite the harshness of these terms, Henry did not enforce them rigidly and even
returned the ancestral Scots kings' honour of Huntingdon to him in 1185.

This is the key to Henry's 'imperialism'. He seems much less concerned with conquering territory than with exerting
what might be termed feudal control over his neighbours. This is what he tried in Toulouse in 1159 and in Wales in
1165. When Strongbow's successes threatened to set him up independently in Ireland, Henry intervened to curb this,
and conquered Ireland almost by default. His immediate reaction was to find a spokesman he could work with and
establish a vassal relationship with him, which only truly broke down when Rory retired, leaving Hugh de Lacy in an
even stronger position than Strongbow had been. In 1175, we can see Henry deliberately consolidating these vassal
relationships with the rulers of Ireland and Scotland, and in 1177 he did the same thing with the rulers of Wales.
Only in one instance does this model not seem to work. In 1170, Henry claimed out of the blue the right to appoint an
archbishop in Bourges, despite its ancestral links with France. He renewed these claims in 1177. Both times, we should
see Bourges as a bargaining counter in his endemic dispute with the King of France, and not as any serious attempt to
extend his territory beyond the boundaries he had set himself.
Henry's definition of 'Empire' was through feudal control. By that I mean a vassal/lord relationship in which the former
swears fealty to the latter in return for control of the lands which he owns. It was a highly personal relationship which
had much more to do with individual loyalties than with the direct control of land, and it should not surprise us that by
these lights Henry's actions took on an imperialist tinge. The drive to imperialism was almost a function of so-called
'feudal' kingship: kings were still expected to exert their authority over their vassals and weaker neighbours, and to dole
out conquered land to their loyal subjects. This would inevitably impinge on Henry's desire to restore the 'status quo
ante' as he saw it. In pursuing a feudal authority, he set the terms by which the Kings of England were to interact with
their neighbours in France, Scotland, Wales and Ireland for much of the rest of their history; and established the first
English partition of Ireland, which was to prove as unsuccessful as all the rest.
King John and Richard I: Brothers and Rivals

The story of King John is a story of failure - he was the last of the Angevin kings, the one who failed to hold onto his
territory in western France, lost his crown and many valuables in the mud of East Anglia, drove his subjects to impose

the Magna Carta, and almost lost the Kingdom of England. It is the tragedy of a flawed genius, crippled by his own
inheritance.
By contrast, his brother Richard has been seen by his contemporaries, and by later historians, as a superstar - his
nickname, the 'Lionheart', says it all.
The popular image of John is of a classically bad king: a scheming, untrustworthy coward consumed by greed, whose
rapaciousness drove his subjects to impose their will upon him. His acts of apparent cruelty are well documented. He
hanged 28 hostages, sons of rebel Welsh chieftains in 1212 and starved to death William de Braose's wife and son in a
royal prison.
Attempts to rehabilitate him have highlighted his administrative genius and his unstinting personal attention to his
kingdom, but this view involves a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of kingship in the Middle Ages.
Richard was a superstar precisely because he was an absentee warrior king. He had the dash and flair to risk all on the
most slender of odds. He was prepared to bury the hatchet and put his faith in even his most inveterate enemies and he
understood that in the realpolitik of the day, you had to give in order to receive. He also left the administration of
England to his subordinates, removing himself from their more unpopular measures.
John, on the other hand, lacked flair. Although a perfectly able strategist, he would always make the percentage play,
opening himself up to the charge of cowardice. Nor could he, in Warren's words: '...miss the opportunity to kick a man
while he was down'. This habit created enmities that festered into feuds.
Yet John's greatest weakness was an inability to trust. The truism that 'a liar won't believe in anyone else', was never
more apt than when applied to John. Time and again, when he should have trusted someone and given them power, a
free rein and a say in things, he shied away, never daring to put his faith entirely in anyone. It lost him friends. It also
lost him opportunities.
John's paranoia would overwhelm him, and instead of striking while the iron was hot, he would hesitate for fear of
betrayal. He stayed in England 'biting his nails' because he could not believe that anyone would support him, and this
of course proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Add to this his obsession with detail, which meant he could not avoid becoming involved, and which therefore meant
that all the ills of the Angevin administration were blamed on him. It did not help matters that John's most cherished
hobby was collecting jewellery. He was born to be a Bond villain.
The sad thing is that, from an objective point of view, John was really no worse than his contemporaries. His father
Henry II had a reputation for untrustworthiness, matched only by the utter faithlessness of the French kings Louis and
Philip Augustus.
His brother Richard pulled financial stunts so rapacious that John actually felt the need to repeal his worst excesses. Yet
they had a flair born of success and John's ultimate, most unforgivable crime was failure.

Richard was crowned king on 3 September 1189. He made John the Count of Mortain and granted him extensive lands
in England (including Nottingham). The new king also had enough respect for John's troublemaking tendencies to ban
him from England for three years whilst he (Richard) went on crusade. However, against Richard's better judgement,
he was prevailed upon by his mother Eleanor to allow John back into England. This was a mistake.
John conspired against Richard's regent, William Longchamp, and set himself up as King in all but name. A plot to
divvy up the Angevin empire between himself and the new French King, Philip Augustus, was only just forestalled by
his mother, when she intercepted him as he was about to take ship from Southampton. When Richard was imprisoned
on his return from the crusades, by Duke Leopold of Austria, John again conspired with the French King to seize the
kingdom.
Richard was unimpressed. 'My brother is not a man to win land for himself if there is any resistance', he said. He was
proved right when Eleanor rallied support among the English barons, and besieged John's castles.
It was from the chaos and outlawry of this time that the legend of Robin Hood was probably born. On Richard's release
John fled to France, but he was soon forgiven by his brother, who himself returned to France, where he died in 1199.
On his deathbed Richard named John as his heir, although by the law of primogeniture Arthur, the son of an older
brother, Geoffrey, should have succeeded him.
Thus, despite their rivalry, Richard and John conspired to keep the crown in the family, and John's coronation took place
at Westminster Abbey, on 27 May the same year.
In 1209, John had been excommunicated in a dispute over the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He had
used this as an excuse to confiscate church property and sell it back to his bishops at a profit.
Part of the money raised by these exactions was used to create a fledgling English Navy. John had used this to invade
Ireland in 1210, and on 30 May 1213, the Earl of Salisbury destroyed a French armada poised to invade the British Isles
at Damme.
However, it could also be used by his barons to justify their lack of support for his continental ventures. This delayed
John's return to the continent until 1214, but following the success at Damme, John was able to launch an invasion of

Poitou.
Once again, the Lusignans were pivotal. They were persuaded to switch allegiance to John, but at the critical point in
the campaign, they refused to fight. John patched up a truce and retreated back to England, but once again he was tainted
by the stain of cowardice through little fault of his own.
This gave the discontented barony their opportunity. They chose as their leader the East Anglian baron, Robert
FitzWalter, who styled himself 'Marshal of the Host of God and the Holy Church'.
From the start, they were a minority movement, as their choice of leader illustrates. FitzWalter was a somewhat
unsavoury character with a series of grudges against John and a history of disaffection. He also had little regard for law
or custom.
In a quarrel over property rights with St Albans, he had resorted to violence and only went to the law after this failed.
Once when John tried his son-in-law for murder, FitzWalter had turned up at court with 500 armed knights. He had been
prominent in the plots against John in 1212, and saw this as another means for him to strike at the king. Other barons in
the lists had similarly disreputable histories.
By contrast, most of the barony simply did not want to get involved. Few of them declared for the king, but among those
that did was William Marshal. His son joined the rebels, and this seems to have been the solution adopted by many
baronial families.
The rebels declared against the king on 3 May 1215. Ironically, their demands were based upon the so-called 'Unknown
Charter' developed from the laws of Henry I.
In their efforts to break away from the harsh Angevin régime created by Henry II, they were harking back to the same
'Golden Age' that he had used to justify his actions. Their attempts to besiege Northampton Castle met with failure, but
they scored a great coup when London opened its gates to them on 17 May (prompted in part by FitzWalter's castellany
of Baynard's Castle in London itself).
John havered, engaging in protracted negotiations. It was these that eventually led to the signing of Magna Carta at
Runnymede in June 1215.
Magna Carta should not be seen as a sign of surrender. In John's mind, it was only ever a stalling action, intended to
demonstrate his reasonableness to the undecided baronial majority in the run-up to inevitable hostilities. It was a
bargaining chip: nothing more.
It probably meant little more to the rebels either, and the fact that they reneged on their agreement to surrender London
after the signing demonstrates their disdain of the Runnymede proceedings. Still, the articles of the charter show that
John had pushed his barony too far.
After an opening chapter guaranteeing the rights of the Church, the next 15 chapters were provisions designed to curb
the king's exploitation of loopholes in feudal custom: limiting scutages and relief payments, and banning the abuses of
privilege common in wardship. A further ten chapters dealt with finances, and another important block confirmed
people's rights under the Common Law.

It is these latter that have been seen as crucial, as they subjected the king to the law of the land for the first time in
Britain's history, and this clause is the only one that remains on the statute books today. Finally, they sought to ensure
that the king carried out his promises, safeguarded the rebels from any comebacks, demanded that he fire his hated
mercenary captains and tied the king to a council of 25 members in an effort to ensure his co-operation.
It was doomed to failure. Magna Carta lasted less than three months.
By November 1215, John had the rebels' backs to the wall. He had recaptured Rochester Castle (which had been
surrendered to them in September), and was poised to strike at London.
The rebels, for their part, had offered the crown of England to Philip's son, Prince Louis of France, and he hurried
reinforcements into London. John failed to grasp the nettle. Instead of striking at London in one final, decisive blow, he
took the percentage option and began ravaging the rebels' heartlands.
This gave Louis time to muster an army, and on 22 May 1216, he landed at Sandwich. John had been ready to receive
them, but overnight his navy was scattered by a storm and his supporters, unwilling to trust his largely mercenary force,
advocated retreat. Once again, John played the percentages and withdrew.
It was one withdrawal too many. Disenchanted by the perceived cowardice of their king, fully two thirds of the English
barony threw in their lot with Louis. John was harried northwards, and it is during these dark days that the celebrated
incident on the Wash occurred, where he lost his entire treasury and his collection of jewellery to the sea.

At this point, the fate of Britain hung in the balance. If John failed, not only would he have lost the Angevin Empire,
but the kingdom of England would have fallen into French hands. It would have been the Norman Conquest all over
again.
Yet in a pathetic twist of fate, John's final act was the ultimate percentage play. He contracted dysentery as a result of
over-indulgence and died during the night of 18 October 1216. His death pulled the rug out from under the feet of Prince
Louis.
With John out of the way, the regency council, led by William Marshal, declared John's son as king Henry III and
reissued Magna Carta, removing a major part of the rebels' platform. All those barons who had been prepared to oppose
John now flocked to his son's standard, and the conflict shifted from a civil war over baronial rights to a war of resistance
against foreign invasion. Louis was defeated at Lincoln and Sandwich, by land and sea, and agreed to withdraw in
September 1217.
It was the final ironic twist in the story of Henry II and his sons. By their own actions, they had won and lost an empire;
and by his death, John saved the kingdom of England.
The Hundred Years War

Historical tradition dates the Hundred Years War between England and France as
running from 1337 to 1453.
In 1337, Edward III had responded to the confiscation of his duchy of Aquitaine by King
Philip VI of France by challenging Philip’s right to the French throne, while in 1453 the
English had lost the last of their once wide territories in France, after the defeat of John
Talbot’s Anglo-Gascon army at Castillon, near Bordeaux.
The overseas possessions of the English kings were the root cause of the tensions with the
kings of France, and the tensions reached right back to 1066. William the Conqueror was
already duke of Normandy when he became king of England. His great-grandson Henry
II, at his accession in 1154, was already count of Anjou by inheritance from his father
and duke of Aquitaine (Gascony and Poitou) in right of his wife Eleanor.
These trans-Channel possessions made the kings of England easily the mightiest of the
king of France’s vassals, and the inevitable friction between them repeatedly escalated
into open hostilities. The Hundred Years War grew out of these earlier clashes and their
consequences.
England's King John lost Normandy and Anjou to France in 1204. His son, Henry III,
renounced his claim to those lands in the Treaty of Paris in 1259, but it left him with
Gascony as a duchy held under the French crown. The English kings’ ducal rights there
continued to be a source of disquiet, and wars broke out in 1294 and 1324.
The 1294 outbreak coincided with Edward l’s first clash with the Scots, and
thenceforward the French and Scots were allied in all subsequent confrontations with
England. It was indeed French support for David Bruce of Scotland, in the face of
Edward III’s intervention there, that triggered the breakdown between England and
France and culminated in Philip VI’s confiscation of Aquitaine in 1337 - the event that
precipitated the Hundred Years War.
Edward’s 1337 riposte - challenging Philip's right to the French throne - introduced a
new issue that distinguished this war from previous confrontations. In 1328, Charles IV of
France had died without a male heir. A claim for the succession had been made for
Edward, then 15 years old, through the right of his mother Isabella, daughter of Philip IV
and Charles IV’s sister. But he was passed over in favour of Philip, the son of Philip IV’s

younger brother, Charles of Valois.
Edward now revived his claim, and in 1340 formally assumed the title 'King of France
and the French Royal Arms'. Historians argue about whether Edward really believed he
might actually attain the French throne. Irrespective, his claim gave him very important
leverage in his dealings with Philip.
He could use it to stir up trouble by encouraging French malcontents to recognise him as
king instead of Philip. He could also use it as a powerful weapon in negotiation, by
offering to renounce his claim against very large territorial concessions, for instance the
independence of Aquitaine from France - possibly even the cession of Normandy and
Anjou on the same terms.
Edward skilfully played on his claim to the French throne during the 1340s and 1350s
to lure discontented French princes and provinces into alliance with him.
Among these were the Flemings, always open to English pressure on account of their
commercial links with England; the Montfort claimants to the duchy of Brittany in the
succession war that broke out there in 1342; and Charles of Navarre, of the French blood
royal and a great Norman vassal and landowner, in the 1350s.
These alliances enabled Edward to render substantial regions of France virtually
ungovernable from Paris, and to keep the fighting on French soil going in between
occasional English expeditions.

Though intermittent, these expeditions had a very major impact. They took the form of
large-scale, swift-moving military raids (chevauchées) deep into France and were
intended, through systematic plundering and the burning of crops and buildings, to
damage the economy and undermine French civilian morale.
The conquest of territory was not an object, but Edward was quite ready to engage a
pursuing French army in open battle if he could do so in advantageous circumstances. He
rightly reckoned that economic damage and defeat in the field would force his adversary
to the negotiating table.
Edward III’s great chevauchée of 1346 climaxed in his victory at Crécy, and was followed
by the successful siege of Calais, securing for England a key maritime port on the French
channel coast.
The two chevauchées that his heir, Edward the 'Black Prince', led out from Bordeaux in
1355 and 1356 were even more glamorously successful in terms of plunder. The second of
these culminated in the victory at Poitiers, where John of France, Philip’s successor, was
taken prisoner.

Between 1356 and 1360, chaos engulfed the kingless French kingdom, with Charles of
Navarre in revolt and temporarily controlling Paris in 1358. There was also a major
peasant rising in the same year, in the central provinces (the 'Jacquerie'), and freebooting
companies of soldiers on the rampage almost everywhere.
Under these conditions, it is not surprising that in 1359 Edward III’s
last chevauchée was aimed at Rheims, in the clear hope of a coronation there. But Rheims
did not open its gates and nor did Paris. The abortive expedition ended instead in the
opening of negotiations with Charles, the dauphin (heir apparent to the French throne),
which led in May 1360 to the sealing of the Treaty of Brétigny.
The principle terms of the treaty were that France should pay three million crowns for
King John’s ransom, and that he would cede to Edward an enlarged Aquitaine, wholly
independent of the French crown. In return, Edward would renounce his clam to the
French throne.
For the next nine years Edward did indeed cease to use the title king of France.
ln 1369 the peace of Brétigny broke down, largely as a result of French and English
backing opposite sides in an internal Spanish dispute for Castile’s throne.
By 1375, the French under the leadership of the shrewd new king, Charles V, and his
great constable, Bertrand du Guesclin, succeeded in wresting from the English the greater
part of the principality of Aquitaine. This reduced England's, effective authority to a
coastal strip between Bordeaux and Bayonne.

With wise caution, Charles made a point of not challenging the chevauchées the English
carried out in 1370 and 1373. But he did retaliate with the help of his Castilian allies by
launching a series of damaging naval raids on English south coast ports.
By the time Charles V died in 1380, however, the French military revival was running out
of steam, and both sides were becoming war-weary. Over the two decades that followed,
fighting was desultory and punctuated by truces. Under the English King Richard II
indeed, there were serious efforts to find a way towards a negotiated and final peace.
Things began to change again after Richard II’s deposition in 1399. In France, rivalry
was escalating between the dukes of Burgundy and Orléans for control of government for
the insane Charles VI. Following the assassination of Louis of Orléans in 1407, the
confrontation slid into civil war between Burgundy and allies of Orléans known as the
Armagnacs. This opened clear opportunities for an ambitious English intervention, which
Henry V, who succeeded in 1413, boldly seized.
In 1415, Henry V crossed with a royal host to Normandy, took Harfieur and,
marching chevauchée-style across northern France, met and overwhelmingly defeated the

pursuing French army at Agincourt in Picardy on 25 October. The French battle
casualties were horrific, and the royal dukes of Orléans and Bourbon were taken prisoner.
Henry returned to France in 1417, opening a new campaign in new style - this time
aiming at the conquest of territory. A campaign of sieges ensued, in which Henry correctly
calculated that the rivalry between Burgundians and Armagnacs would prevent either
French party attempting the relief of beleaguered towns and castles.
After the fall of Rouen, the Norman capital, in January 1419, the English were able to
bring the whole duchy under their control, and the way to Paris lay open before them.
At this dire pass, the French parties at last agreed to meet at Montereau to coordinate
resistance to the English. But when they met on the bridge there on 19 September 1419,
John, Duke of Burgundy, was struck down by the Armagnac followers of the dauphin
Charles, thereby avenging Louis of Orléans.
Rather than ally with his father’s assassins, John’s heir, Philip, agreed to ally with the
English, and to broker an agreement with the ailing Charles VI whereby Henry should
marry Charles’s daughter Catherine and be recognised as his heir to the French throne.
Henry would then act as regent for Charles while he lived.
These became the terms of the Treaty of Troyes of 1420. Henry further promised to make
war on the formally disinherited dauphin’s party, in order to avenge John, Duke of
Burgundy.
These terms were widely accepted in northern France, but not in the south. When Henry V
died in August 1422, followed by Charles VI in October, the nine-month-old Henry VI of

England (son of Henry and Catherine) was recognised as king of France in Paris. But in
the south, the Armagnacs upheld the succession of the dauphin, Charles.
The regency for Henry VI in France was taken up by his eldest surviving uncle, John,
Duke of Bedford, and with it the task of seeking to win acceptance of the Troyes settlement
throughout France. Militarily, Bedford needed to carry the war forward successfully into
the 'dauphinist' lands south of the Loire.
But before he could push south, Bedford needed to consolidate Anglo-Burgundian authority
north of the Loire. In August 1424, his great victory at Verneuil on the borders of Maine
and Normandy effectively destroyed the dauphin Charles’s formidable Franco-Scottish
army, which in Henry V’s absence had beaten the English at Baugé three years earlier.

By 142S, after some vigorous mopping-up, the position looked sufficiently secure for an
offensive southward, and the first English objective was the key bridgehead on the Loire
south of Paris, Orléans.
Orléans was invested in September 1428, but the besieging force was too small to attempt
an immediate storming. The aim had to be to starve the garrison out. At first it looked as
if there was little chance of a relief for the defenders, but in February 1429, Joan of Arc
arrived at the dauphin’s court at Chinon with her story of the voices that had given her the
mission of ridding France of the English.
Her charisma breathed new confidence into the relieving army that she led to Orléans in
May, and it successfully broke the siege. On 12 June at Jargeau and again at Patay on
17 June, she defeated the retreating English. Just a month later, on 16 July, she watched
as her ‘gentle dauphin’ was solemnly crowned Charles VII of France in Rheims
cathedral.
After Joan’s capture in the following year and her subsequent execution for heresy, the
English succeeded in recovering some of the towns they had lost in the wake of her victories
and more or less held their own for a while. But in 1435, Philip, Duke of Burgundy,
abandoned his English alliance at the Congress at Arras, and recognised Charles VII as
his king. This dealt a mortal blow to English hopes of making the Troyes settlement stick.
Paris opened its gates to Charles's general, Arthur, Constable de Richemont, in April
1436, and though the English still controlled most of Normandy and campaigned
vigorously along its borders, the prospects for their cause began to look very gloomy indeed.
Negotiations formed a continuous background to the fighting from 1435. They finally bore
fruit in 1444 with a general truce agreed at Tours. It was hoped that the arranged
marriage there between Henry VI of England and the French princess Margaret of Anjou
would help to make the truce a step toward full peace terms.
Then in 1449, an English force sacked and looted Fougères in Brittany. Charles VII, who
had used the break in fighting to reorganise his royal army, declared himself no longer
bound by the terms of the truce.
His forces rapidly overran Normandy during 1449-1450. In 1451, he repeated this success
in Gascony. The veteran English commander John Talbot arrived there the following
year with a force from England and retook Bordeaux. But on 17 July 1453, his army was
disastrously defeated at Castillon and Talbot himself killed.
Soon after, with Bordeaux once more in French hands, there was nothing left of the former
English territories in France, bar Calais. The war was effectively over, even though it
would not officially end for many years yet.
The English armies of the Hundred Years War were small by modern standards. Henry
V probably had fewer than 7,000 men at Agincourt, Talbot at Castillon maybe 6,000.
Forces were raised principally by voluntary recruitment and organised by aristocratic
leaders who contracted to serve the crown with a stated number of men-at-arms (knights

and esquires) and archers. The terms, recorded in a written indenture, stipulated wages
and an agreed length of service, such as six months or a year, with the possibility of
extension.
These aristocratic leaders contracted in their turn with those that they recruited into their
companies. This method of raising an army ensured an effective command structure much
superior to that of the hastily assembled French armies that fought at Crécy and
Agincourt). Archers as well as men-at-arms were usually mounted, ensuring a high
degree of mobility. Both usually dismounted for battle. The men-at-arms were armed
with lance and sword, the archers with the famous longbow.
The longbow played an important part in the English victories in the field. Its special
qualities were its accuracy and penetrating power over a long range (approximately 200
metres) and the ease of rapid discharge, which was much faster than the rate of fire of
French crossbowmen. The fire of well-positioned longbowmen was decisive against
charging French cavalry at Crécy, and at Agincourt against both cavalry in the first
attacking wave and the dismounted men-at-arms in the second wave.
Archery contributed to victory again at Poitiers, but in this very hard fought battle,
charging Anglo-Gascori cavalry had a decisive impact at a critical juncture. The
longbow did not make the English invincible. Archers were always very vulnerable if
they could be taken in the flank. At Jargeau, Joan of Arc’s cavalry successfully rode
down the English bowmen.

Archers also played an important part in naval warfare. The longbow’s range and
rapid rate of fire could be of great advantage as ships were closing to grapple. This was
thought to be the key to Edward III’s naval victory at Sluys in 1340. Both he and Henry
V well understood the importance of safeguarding the Channel for the transport and
supply of English forces in France, as well as for the protection of English overseas
commerce.
In the siege-dominated fighting in France post-1417, gunnery became seriously
important. Henry V’s great sieges at Rouen (1418-1419) and Meaux (1421-1422)
ultimately succeeded only by starving out the defence, as had Edward III’s 1347 siege of
Calais. But at Maine (1424-1425), bombardment was a key to English success. There
was brisk artillery fire from defenders as well as attackers at Orleans in 1428-1429.
The final French victory at Castillon in 1453 was the first major field engagement of the
war to be decided by gunfire.
The shock in England over the loss of its formerly wide overseas empire was very great.

Popular rage against the counsellors and commanders deemed responsible had much to
do with the outbreak in the mid-1450s of civil war (the 'Wars of the Roses'). The recovery of
the lost lands in France long remained a wishful national aspiration, but in material
terms the consequences of their loss, for Englishmen living in England at least, was not
very great.
Fears that English commerce would suffer now that the Norman Channel harbours were
back in French hands proved largely groundless. The only real sufferers from the loss
were the professional soldiers and those Englishmen who had sought to settle in France.
Their numbers were not seriously significant in social terms.
Although most noblemen and a good many among the gentry saw some war service,
among the total population the proportion that fought was decidedly low. Since virtually
all the fighting was on French soil, there was no English experience comparable to the
devastation and dislocation of economic life in the French countryside. Plagues, recurrent
after the 1348 Black Death, had much more significant effects on the conditions and
living standards of ordinary working people in town and country than the war ever did.
Where the impact of war was most directly felt by most people was in increased taxation.
Campaigning abroad called for high government expenditure, and the only means of
raising the necessary funding was through taxes. This required the assent of the
Commons in parliament, which meant the war period witnessed a considerable rise in
the importance and frequency of parliaments, and in the influence of the Commons. This
in turn set in train parliament’s future central constitutional role.

Publicity for the war effort, in which, the church played an important part (with royal
encouragement), fostered a patriotic sense of English identity. Prayers were regularly
ordered for armies serving overseas, and in thanksgiving for victories. Edward III’s
promotion of the cult of St George as England’s warrior patron saint played deliberately
to nascent national sentiment.
A proud patriotism, nourished by royal propaganda and pulpit oratory, and also,
emphatically, by the euphoria of such dramatic English victories as Crécy, Poitiers and
Agincourt, was probably the most lasting legacy of the Hundred Years War.
Its origins in national war experience gave that patriotism a chauvinistic edge that
continued to colour English popular attitudes to foreigners and especially to the French for
a very long time. Francophobia runs as a recurrent thread through the English story
from the 15th century down to the start of the 20th, when finally the Germans replaced
the French as England’s natural adversaries in the popular eye.
Invasion of Ireland from 1170 – 1320

The devastating wars of the British nations, which had seen Edward I invade Wales
and then Scotland in the 13th century, left Ireland largely unaffected.
However, Edward, the Caesar of Britain, had inherited the English Crown's claim to be
Lord of Ireland, along with the rest of his estates. Irish gold contributed to his campaigns
in Wales, 3,000 Irish men invaded Scotland with him, and while Irish grain fed his
war machine, Edward never visited the island himself; indeed no English king did so
between John and Richard II.
Significantly, and for the first time, the grant of Ireland to Edward: 'provided that the
land of Ireland shall never be separated from the crown of England...', and so left it
forever a part of the Plantagenet estate.
Anglo-Norman lords had settled in Ireland in the 12th century and never left. Its
landscape now featured Norman castles and abbeys, just like the British mainland.
With the king of England so distracted at home, it came as no surprise that many
English lords equally stayed away from their Irish estates, allowing the gradual
reassertion of influence by the native Irish princes and kings. It was into the middle of
this vacuum that Robert the Bruce dispatched his ambitious brother, Edward, in 1315.
For all the devastating completeness of the Scots victory at Bannockburn in 1314, Robert
I, King of Scotland, knew that it was only a battle that he had won there, certainly not
the whole war.
A year later, his claim to the crown of Scotland had still not been recognised by Edward
II, King of England. Bruce and the Scottish nation also knew there was always the

possibility that before long another great army of English knights and Welsh archers
would come lumbering up over the Tweed.
All his instincts - strategically sharp as always - told Bruce he needed to hit the
English while they were still on the floor, and hit them where it hurt. The war was taken
over the border into Northumbria, now subjected to raids of unsparing ferocity. For over 20
years the Scots held the initiative in northern England, terrorising the population and
carrying off their goods.
And then in May 1315, Bruce did something much, much, bolder. His brother, Edward,
landed a formidable Scottish army, at least 5,000 strong, near Carrickfergus in the
north-east of Ireland. In effect, this opened a second front in the war against the English
empire.

Robert had smoothed his brother's way by writing a remarkable letter to: 'all the kings of
Ireland, the prelates and clergy and to the inhabitants of all Ireland, our friends'.
The Scots would come, he said, not as invaders but as liberators, for: 'our people and your
people, free in times past, share the same national ancestry and are urged to come
together more eagerly and joyfully in friendship by a common language and common
custom'.
What he was proposing was a Gaelic alliance, across the Irish Sea, 'so that God willing,
nostra natio - our nation - may be restored to her former liberty'.
How, and when, had their liberty been taken from the Irish?
The 'when' is easy enough to pinpoint - the fateful decade when an Anglo-Norman colony
of barons established itself in northern and eastern Ireland; and the fateful year, 1171,
when the kings of Ireland had knelt before Henry II, in a specially built palace made of
wattle, and had submitted to him as their overlord and High King.
So you would suppose that the 'how' is also a story of depressing simplicity. The
aggressive, expansionist English - under the king most famous for gobbling up duchies
and kingdoms - take a look out west, see something they fancy, push their horses onto
ships, bludgeon their way into the land they want with blood and fire, and force
themselves on the peaceful natives as conquerors. Then they sit there for the next 800
years, daring the conquered people to do something about it.
But that's not what happened. What did happen is ugly enough - and reflects no credit
on the English intruders - but it was, as history often is - both more complicated and
more tragic, than any simple 'natives against imperialists' story could possibly suggest.
Just as in Scotland a century later, the trouble with the English began with a civil war
among the natives. In 1166, the King of Leinster, Diarmait MacMurchada was forced to
flee from Dublin and from his kingdom by an alliance of Irish enemies, including the
new High King, Ruaidri Ua Conchobair. 'Awful the deed done in Ireland today', wrote the
chronicler of Leinster, 'the expulsion overseas by the men of Ireland of Diarmait...'.
And awful were its consequences. For Diarmait landed in Bristol and asked for help
from King Henry II to get his throne back. Now what happens when you ask the Godfather
for a favour? He expects something, some day, in return.
But these were the years of Henry's great crises: the feud with Becket and the church - and
the coming wars with his son, the future Richard I. In 1155, the Pope had asked Henry to
invade Ireland to clean up what was reported to be a corrupt and lax Christianity.
But then, as now, Henry had more urgent things to do than get directly involved in an
obscure island west of England's shores. On the other hand, Diarmait's appeal had
presented him with a windfall too good to turn down. So he gave Diarmait permission to
recruit help from among his barons.
This is when the trouble became big trouble. For Diarmait promptly went shopping for

mercenaries among the nastiest and greediest possible bunch of knights. These were the
Anglo-Normans who, around the 1160s, seemed to be on the losing end of the war against
the Welsh princes of Gwynedd.
They had lost castles, land and peasants. They were in an ugly mood and they were
looking for somewhere to recoup their losses. Enter Diarmait.
Spread the word, the likes of Robert fitzStephen and Richard fitzGilbert de Clare (known
to his friends, and especially to his many enemies, as 'Strongbow') must have said:
'Forget about Wales; forget about those unpleasantnesses in the mountains and valleys.
Come west young knights. Ireland will be a piece of cake. It's said that the natives are
primitive. But the pastures are green. So what are you waiting for?'.
Within a year Diarmait had his throne back in Dublin. But he also now had an army of
Anglo-Normans who weren't about to go away now that the job was done. In fact, from
the beginning, Diarmait had known this. He not only expected but wanted the likes of
Strongbow to stick around, lest his old enemies get ideas of booting him out again.
Robert fitzStephen was quite right when he told his followers that Diarmait 'loves our
race; he is encouraging our race to come here and has decided to settle them in this island
and give them permanent roots...'. And Diarmait even went to the trouble of marrying his
daughter to Strongbow to make sure that the alliance had staying power.
Their agreement spelled out that if none of Diarmait's sons survived (and one had been
blinded, another been taken hostage, another was illegitimate), then Strongbow could
even inherit the throne of Leinster himself!

At which point Henry II suddenly sat up and took notice of what was going on in the
west. He had meant to use Diarmait's appeal to get a foothold in Ireland.
What he had inadvertently created was a monster: a colony of Anglo-Normans, who
answered to exactly the kind of jumped-up superbaron Henry was busy sitting on in every
other part of his enormous empire.
So in the winter of 1171, Henry crossed the Irish Sea himself, coming with an army big
enough to give the likes of Strongbow serious second thoughts. It was then, in the wattle
palace of Dublin, that he took the homage of all the six Irish kings, including Ruadrai Ua
Conchobair.
And though everything that happened afterwards in the sad history of England and
Ireland wants to say this was the moment when Ireland lost her freedom, no one at the
time saw it that way at all.
The Irish kings did homage to Henry as they would to any High King, building the ritual
hall through which they entered as his men, promising him one of every ten of their cattle
hides in tribute.

And they saw him not as imperial conqueror at all, but as their protector against the
Strongbows and the Anglo-Norman barons.
At the Treaty of Windsor in 1175, Henry in his turn made it clear that he also thought of
himself as protector rather than conqueror, since he restored Ruadrai to his kingship of
Connacht and to all the rights and honours he had had from other Irish lords before the
coming of the English.
It wasn't Henry II's presence in Ireland that lost them their freedom, then, but his
absence. With Henry in France, fighting off his children, his wife and the King of France,
the Anglo-Norman barons had absolutely no intention of making his Irish settlement,
with its careful attention to the claims of native Irish rulers, work.
What they wanted was a colony; the nice, obedient, feudal territory they had lost over in
Wales, transplanted to Ulster and the east coast. And the first thing they did to make
sure they got it, was to do what barons do best - build a castle that said - unmistakably
- 'We're in charge'.
At first the castles were a primitive throwback to Norman history - just a heaped up earth
motte with an encircling wooden 'bailey' wall. But it was enough to do the job of
dominating the countryside against Irish attacks.
In due course came the much more formidable stone buildings, such as Carrickfergus
Castle, which entrenched their power in Ulster beyond any possibility of eviction.

And from these power-bases, something utterly new was created in Ireland: feudalism.
Within two or three generations, northern and eastern Ireland had been totally
transformed, from a country living off herding and horses, and ruled by clans, to a place
of manors.
The land taken - and taken is the word - by the Anglo-Normans, was divided up in the
usual way and given to their knights, as reward for military service.
But somehow - and does this sound familiar everyone? - they weren't quite English
either. Almost from the beginning they knew this, since one of the Anglo-Normans,
Maurice fitzGerald, rather pathetically complained that no one would help his kind: 'for
just as we are English as far as the Irish are concerned, likewise to the English we are
Irish and the inhabitants of this island and of the other assail us with an equal degree
of hatred'.
By the time that Edward Bruce arrived in 1315, there was an entrenched English colony
in eastern Ireland. But the native Irish kings and much of their way of life had

managed to hold on in the centre and west of the country - taking advantage of the chaos
of English politics in the middle of the 12th century.
So there was reason for the Bruces to hope that their clarion call to revolt would be heard
loud and clear, and that oppressed Ireland would rush to their banner to evict the
imperial conquerors, much as they had done in Scotland.
Together the Gaelic brothers would rid Caledonia and Hibernia of the English scourge.
And the two Bruces - Robert in Edinburgh and a King Edward in Dublin would rule the
Irish Sea.
This is not what happened. And perhaps it served them right. For all their ringing
national rhetoric, some of it undoubtedly sincere, Robert and Edward Bruce were
transparently using Ireland to force the English to divert resources away from Scotland
to this second front, and to make them accept their claim to the crown in Scotland.
That, in the end, they didn't give two hoots about Ireland was obvious when, in return for
the English government (now in the hands of Queen Isabella and the Lord Mortimer)
recognising the independence of Scotland, King Robert promised that he would never aid
any rebellion against the English in Ireland. So much for the Gaelic brotherhood of
nations!
And perhaps you could have forecast this from what actually happened once Edward
Bruce's campaign got under way. For it proceeded with the usual indiscriminate
slaughters and burnings - without making any nice distinctions between Gaelic friends
and English foes.

Perhaps things might have been different had not the years of the Scottish campaigns
also been those of the worst famine in medieval history; so that there was nothing for the
Scots soldiers to eat unless they took from the Irish. Which they did.
And even then they were reduced to such desperate straits, that it was said by one
chronicler that the Scots soldiers dug up freshly made graves to eat the corpses. It was the
usual story: a victory over the Ulster English; then a march down towards Dublin.
There the inhabitants tore down churches to use the stones to reinforce their walls. So they
evidently were far from seeing the Scots as liberators. The city was never taken.
Then at an immense and bloody battle between opposed Irish camps in the west, where
10,000 men were said to have lost their lives, the pro-Scots side came off worst. In 1318
Edward Bruce was himself was killed in battle at Fochart, and by the end of the year

the Scots were gone.
As grim as the story was, the Scots in Ireland had left something behind apart from
widows and tragic ballads. The Anglo-Norman colony stopped expanding out from
Ulster and Leinster. And just as in Scotland, the idea of the unstoppable English Empire
of the Plantagenets had had the shine knocked off its myth of invincibility.
And, not least, the Bruces had given Irish leaders such as Domnal O'Neill, Edward's
main ally, their voice of resistance. They wrote a 'Remonstrance of the Irish Princes' to the
Pope, justifying the bestowing on Edward of the crown of Ireland.
To, 'shake off the harsh and insupportable yoke of servitude and to recover our native
freedom...', the Irish princes were, '... compelled to enter a deadly war ... preferring under
the compulsion of necessity to face the dangers of war like men in defence of our right, than
go on bearing their cruel outrages like women...'.
In this you hear a language - eloquent, fierce, righteously belligerent - and you hear a
voice which, for better or worse, would shout, roar and lament, down through the centuries.
This was 1317. Three years later - a case perhaps of the Irish teaching the Scots rather
than the other way about - something remarkably like it was spelled out at Arbroath,
once again in a letter to the Pope.
And so the wars of Britain had once again spilled into Ireland, with bloody
consequences. The English estates remained, subdued to a degree but it would be over half
a century before another English king set foot in Ireland to restore the crown's authority.
It was Richard II who turned Ireland into his personal crusade, only this time it was to
cost the English king his throne - and his life.
The English conquest of Wales c. 1200 – 1415
By the 13th century most of Wales had felt at least the tentative grasp of the mailed
Norman fist, while large areas of it had settled into uneasy rule by Anglo-Norman
barons.
Only the ancient principality of Gwynedd maintained its theoretical independence. After
the conquest of Britain that followed the victory at Hastings in 1066, Norman power
expanded throughout the British isles, penetrating into the heart of Wales, and across the
Irish sea into Ireland itself.
With it came feudalism, knights, monasteries and manors; together they dragged Wales
from its native British past into a European future. In response Wales became renewed, its
native culture was redefined, and its national identity was codified for the first time.
Some historians argue that many of the institutions we take to be Norman are actually
the developments of existing Anglo-Saxon tools of government, given Norman names and
housed in the castles and abbeys that we still see as the greatest physical legacy of the
conquest.
William I and his heirs built hundreds of castles across the British isles, both as shelter

for their unwelcome lords and as symbols to cower the local population; to remind them
that while they formed the overwhelming majority of the population, the Norman lords
held power over them.
It should be remembered, however, that before the 13th century, the Norman and then
Angevin kings paid little attention personally to extending their authority into Wales or
Ireland.
Before the loss of Normandy and most of the other Angevin lands in France by King
John, the Angevins understandably devoted their attention to their primary French
estates. Henry II only intervened in Ireland to stop his own barons becoming too powerful
there, and royal policy remained largely 'reactive', according to Professor Davies.
The barons moved into the 'hinterland' and the crown only intervened when it felt it to be
necessary, or was threatened. At all times, any lands taken by the advancing barons
remained in their possession only by the grace of their king.
One of the reasons that many of the Norman lords followed William the Bastard in his
highly risky invasion of Britain in 1066, was the promise of reward.
To them, the many powerful warrior lords squabbling over the relatively modest size of
Normandy itself, the 'fringe' of Britain offered the opportunity to turn themselves into
mini-magnates, with their own estates. The only thing between them and power was the
local population and its traditional leaders.
The best land went to the king and his inner circle and so it was in Wales (and then
Ireland) that the most ambitious lords found their challenge and opportunity. The

Angevin kings realised that their authority could only reach into central Wales through
the power of their own nobility.
This action of extending power through ambitious individuals (often without the crown's
consent), however, turned out to be a two-edged sword. In order to subdue the native
population, these lords would need to raise and maintain a significant military presence.
These forces could be just as easily used against the king in Westminster as to attack the
Welsh princes in Gwynedd.
However compromised, the Norman and Angevin kings allowed this settlement to continue
and so by the reign of Henry III (1216-72), Wales could be called a 'half conquered
country', in Professor Bartlett's words. Needless to say, only the lords were Norman; the
vast bulk of the settlers that followed in their wake were Saxon-English and brought
their native tongue with them.
On the eve of the wars unleashed by Edward I's invasion in 1276, Wales had essentially
become divided into three zones. The outer one, along the south coast and traditional

English border, belonged to the so-called 'Marcher' lords, the descendants of those first
advancing Norman barons and the crown itself.
Often branches of the great noble houses and bitter rivals, these 'Marcher' lords were the
first line of England's defence against Welsh invasion; they also formed the shock troops of
noble and Crown incursions into central Wales.
As befitted such a strange nether-land of authority and conflict, the Marches enjoyed
their own law for many generations. It was a hybrid of local customs and the common
law. The central area of Wales changed hands on many occasions, depending on who
had the initiative at any one time.
If a strong Welsh prince won the support of his rivals and faced a weak or divided
English Crown, like that of Henry III, then the Welsh prince's influence would extend to
the centre.
When faced by a strong English king or an aggressive generation of Marcher lords, the
native Welsh princes would be hemmed within the ancient principality of Gwynedd in the
north-west: greater Snowdonia and neighbouring Anglesey. Here we can see a clear
continuation of a separate Welsh society, with clear traditions, customs and native laws.
We should not forget that the Vikings continued to raid north-west Wales well into the
1130s. In the 11th century, parts of Wales remained Norse lands, and it was only the
increasing incursions of the Normans that shifted the Welsh perspective on the world from
Scandinavian centred to Anglo focused.

From then on, Wales became internally divided, with the native inhabitants spending
as much time fighting each other as the Anglo-Normans.
The first half of the 13th century saw the native Welsh on the offensive. They were led by
a prince, who was one of many to be called Llywelyn, but the only one to earn himself the
title, 'Great.'
Having expanded his power as far south as Powys by 1208, he then fought off the attempt
by King John to conquer Wales in 1211-12. Due to the humbling of King John (1199-1216)
by his barons (they forced him to agree to the rulings of the Magna Carta), the French
invasion of 1216, and the succession of Henry III, aged only nine, the English Crown had
lost its authority.
The Treaty of Worcester in 1218 recognised Llywelyn's authority in Wales, and secured
the dominance of Welsh as the main language, but with Norman French making inroads
through the nobility.
Llywelyn had married Henry III's sister, but this did not stop the two of them disputing

jurisdiction over Wales. For 20 years Llywelyn the Great ruled most of Wales, but failed to
pass his power on to his son.
By 1255 his grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd had gained power in Gwynedd, just as
Henry III sought to extend his influence there through force of arms. However, the king
failed to conquer Wales, or win the personal loyalty and support of the crucial Marcher
lords.
The Civil War in England between Henry III and his barons, meant that from 1258 the
crown's attention was drawn back to the heart of the kingdom. Indeed, it was Henry's
failure to defeat the Welsh that gave his enemies another stick with which to beat his
government.
This left the ambitious regional lords room to expand their influence, and so Llywelyn
gained more land, defeated the royal army, established links with the Scots, and
declared himself the first and last native Prince of Wales.
Llywelyn then allied his cause with that of Simon de Montfort, the last baron to stand
unequivocally against Henry III. De Montfort defeated the king at the battle of Lewes in
1264, and then recognised Llywelyn's title as Prince of Wales in return for a promised
payment of £20,000.
The Treaty of Montgomery, in 1267, ratified the deal, signed now by the restored Henry
III. It marked the peak of Llywelyn's power, with the notion of a Welsh Principality
recognised to have its own statehood elements.

Llywelyn now faced the problems of having no heir, rival brothers who claimed their
traditional inheritance (which by Welsh law should have been split between them all)
and only a £5,000 income to pay the £16,000 he owed Henry III to secure the treaty!
These constraints forced Llywelyn to levy high taxation and exert an oppressive rule,
surrounded all the time by his own noble rivals and the ever present Marcher lords.
Never one to sit around and be attacked, Llywelyn went on the offensive and besieged the
massive Marcher fortress at Caerphilly in the south east, built to stop the Welsh ever
reaching the river Severn. Now at the peak of his power, he ruled three quarters of the
Welsh population.
He led a nation secure in its past, with a strong oral tradition of myths and legends, but
one somewhat behind the social change wrought in the rest of north Europe. Only one in

ten of the Welsh lived in towns, but their national business, sheep, secured vital wheat
and iron imports in return for the wool exports that underpinned the economy.
These vast sheep ranges remained the main source of the wealth of Wales, and with the
limited use of coinage, land remained the main medium of exchange for everything,
including military service.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Welsh princes remained vassals of the English king,
holding their estates at his will, for which they had to pay public homage.
In 1274, the Coronation of a new king took place at Westminster, one recently returned
from crusade and paying homage to the King of France for his own lands in France.
Edward I, known to history as the 'Hammer of the Scots' had every right to expect and
demand that Llywelyn paid homage to his new king. However, the Welsh prince refused a
total of five summons to pay this homage, and then tried to marry the daughter of
Edward's old enemy, Simon de Montfort.
Two years later Edward I's patience ran out. He led the largest army seen in England
since 1066 into Wales, with 9,000 of the 15,000 infantry actually being raised in Wales.
Edward, a significant warlord in how own right, marched into Gwynedd and forced
Llywelyn's submission. The Treaty of Aberconwy restricted Llywelyn's influence to the
west of Conway Castle. Edward then set about building and rebuilding the first of the
castles, which endure to this day, constructed as the 'symbols of subjugation' around the
throat of native Welsh independence.
Edward I now controlled more of Wales than any previous English king ever had. It is
unlikely that he would have sought any further conquest if the Welsh had remained 'loyal'
subjects by his own definition. Instead, it transpired that Edward eventually destroyed
Welsh independence, stamped on her customs and then imposed the rule of English law.
In 1282 the Welsh, chaffing under English overlordship rebelled. Limited outbreaks of
resistance become a united uprising. This was eventually led by Llywelyn himself, who
captured key castles and defeated the royal army. Edward responded by leading an even
greater host into Wales.
Seeing that the two sides would not be easily reconciled, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
John Peckham, tried to negotiate a settlement. He offered Llywelyn land and titles in
England if he would relinquish his position in Wales.
The Welsh council, however, in a statement that is a foretaste of the Scottish 'Declaration
of Arbroath', told the Archbishop that Edward had broken his words and treaties, and
said that he 'exerts a very cruel tyranny over the churches and ecclesiastical persons'.
It went on to say that acceding to the English would be worse than being ruled by the
Saracens.
Spurred on in what was by now a true war of national liberation, the Welsh fought on,
attacking the lumbering English knights and disappearing into the woods and hills,

spurring Edward to clear paths through the woods.
In a significant blow to their cause, Llywelyn was killed in a skirmish with an English
foot soldier, almost by accident, and his severed head was then sent off to be shown in
London as proof of his death.
The revolt faltered, but sustained itself for several months into 1283. With the death of
their internationally known leader, uncertainty set in and the Welsh eventually
submitted.
Edward now established settler towns, built even more castles, encouraged English
migration and kept all local offices in English hands. As one Welsh historian wrote: 'the
idea of "Wales" lives thereafter in the words of the poets'.
The Statute of Rhuddlan (1284) codified the settlement and saw the imposition of English
common law in the principality, on all matters, except land claims. Gwynedd (the heart
of the principality as defined by the Welsh claimants to the title of prince) was divided
into the counties of Anglesey, Caernarfonshire, Flint and Merionethshire.
Wales was left with its language, but daily business increasingly took place in English.
Taxes were collected in coin for the first time, and the burden of tax fell hardest on the
poor.
The cost of all this fighting and colonisation cost England over £240,000, including
£40,000 spent on the castles. It left the crown dependent upon massive loans from the
Ricardi bankers, and parliamentary grants of taxation.

One unforeseen consequence of the Welsh and later Scots wars was to fundamentally
change the place and role of the English parliament. The fighting and castles had to be
paid for and only by regular grants of taxation could the king raise the necessary funds.
This meant regularly calling a parliament and extending its membership, and
therefore those who paid tax, to the commoners, as well as the nobles and clergy. In time,
the Welsh would also be summoned to the English parliament.
The greatest visible legacy of the conquest remains the castles designed by Master James
of St George from Savoy, using the latest European ideas.
Beaumaris in Anglesey, the last one to be built, is the best designed while Caernarfon
remains the most impressive structure, inspired as it is by the walls of Constantinople.
Harlech, standing proudly upon the cliff edge that used to form the coastline, seems to best
represent the symbolism of subjection that Edward I intended.
Together, this ring of stone reflected both the nature of subjugation and the realisation
that castle strongholds are the only way to control a dissident rural population. Many of
the northern Welsh towns that we know today grew up beside the castles, which are

many-walled for protection, and all placed along the coast to allow trade and re-supply
in times of war.
English settlers, enticed by free land grants and the jurisdiction of their own laws,
arrived by the thousand. They destroyed native churches, rebuilt others, and gradually
brought Wales into the orbit of Canterbury. Thus they denied the Welsh their claim to
appeal directly to the Pope.
Edward's conquest had now become nothing short of a deliberate attempt to stamp out
Welsh national identity, and to make the Welsh his subjects, just as the English were. As
Professor Davies has written: 'Such a conquest entailed the eradication of the memory of
the conquered peoples'.
Wales's most treasured national artefacts were taken to London, including the royal
insignia and Y Groes Naid, said to be a fragment of the true cross on which Christ was
crucified. To Edward, the principality just became another 'land' for him to own, ruled
from Westminster just like the rest of his kingdom.
Although his attempt at forced union would eventually fail in Scotland, Edward I's
attempted colonial domination of Wales, 'had given way to an ideology of unity,
uniformity and conquest.'
Ironically, it probably did more than anything else in the Middle Ages to forge a sense
of unity and identity in the native Welsh. They may have lost their political
independence, but the Welsh gained a written statement of a national consciousness that
survives to this day.

The statute of Rhuddlan covered Gwynedd, and left the Marcher lands and royal estates
to the south and east unchanged. Continued rebellion in the north, most notably in 1294,
where many of the new, but half-finished castles quickly fell, demonstrated the vital
position of the Marcher lords in a crisis.
Seven of Edward's ten earls possessed Marcher estates, including the powerful Mortimer,
Fitzalan, Bohun and de Clare families. Edward had to be careful in not alienating them,
while also reducing their capability to oppose him, or fight amongst themselves. A strong
king won their respect, a weak one alienated them at his peril.
With defeat at home, the Welsh infantry retained and increased their place at the heart of
royal armies, forming 10,000 of the 12,000 foot soldiers led by Edward to defeat William
Wallace at Falkirk in 1298. Around 5,000 of these soldiers served at Bannockburn (1314)
and Crecy (1346), dressed in their distinctive white and green.
They remained, however, disobedient and riotous soldiers, on one occasion almost killing
Edward I himself in a camp dispute in Scotland. Undisciplined in combat, the Welsh

mercenaries often murdered, rather than captured, opponents with ransom value. T
he gradual rehabilitation of the Welsh gentry helped restore their discipline, as the Welsh
soldiers only really obeyed their own native officers. Within a generation, the Welsh were
again allowed to hold positions as Sheriffs and in government.
The last great national rising against English rule in the 13th century came in 1294,
as the impact of the great 1290 tax demand fell on the Welsh - at the same time as
Edward demanded soldiers to fight for him in France.
These pressures pushed the Welsh into their last revolt for a century. Edward I led the
35,000 men raised to fight in France into the principality, and on one occasion killed
500 rebels as they slept.
Perhaps the most resonant irony of the conquest remains the installation of the son of the
English king as Prince of Wales, that most honoured title in an independent Wales.
Knowing this, Edward I made his son, later to be Edward II, the first English Prince of
Wales in 1301.
Born in Caernarfon by Edward senior's deliberate design, the young Edward inherited
the principality and all the royal estates in Wales.
By the time of his brutal death after his removal from the throne, the Welsh remained one
of the few groups to be loyal to their king. The main force used in his removal, needless to
say, followed the Marcher lords.

The new English king, Edward II (1307-27,) had reason to fear a union between his
Scots, Irish and Welsh enemies. Never the warrior his father was, Edward junior
inherited the debts and bitter legacies of Edward I's wars.
While the fighting did spread to Ireland, however, after the Scots' victory at
Bannockburn, and the Welsh princes received some encouragement from Robert the Bruce,
the feared alliance never became reality.
What did happen was that the collective threat from his neighbours allowed Edward II to
settle some old scores, and he moved against Roger Mortimer, one of the most powerful
Marcher lords, who led the reforming opposition to the king.
Mortimer ruled Carmarthen and south central Wales in a way that angered the local
population. One of the reasons why Edward may have won the eventual loyalty of the

Welsh was that, while his enemy Mortimer attacked them, Edward made them feel part of
things. No longer just a subjugated people but subjects of the realm, occasionally they were
called to the king's parliament in some number.
By 1322 the king was strong enough to arrest Mortimer, but the latter escaped from the
Tower in 1324 and fled to Paris, becoming the estranged queen's lover. Together they
invaded England, and forced Edward II's flight into Wales, where he was arrested. In
1328 Mortimer became the first Earl of March, and ruled England with the queen, until
the legitimate heir, Edward III removed him in 1330.
Edward II's deposition and death, as legend has it, by a red-hot poker up the rectum (his
ornate tomb rests near the Welsh border in Gloucester cathedral), showed that even the
Crown was no longer sacrosanct. Only the Welsh seemed to mourn him, and the
chronicler Walsingham noted '...the remarkable way in which he was revered by the
Welsh'.
The Welsh continued to revolt against English hegemony from time to time but gradually
their middling sort, the 'gentry', accepted English law and language in order to gain
office and position for themselves.
Increasing numbers sent their heirs to élite universities in England, but Welsh culture
lived on, in the stories of the bards and the preaching of the native clergy in the
principality.
The cult of the Britonic-Welsh hero, King Arthur (once used by Edward I to justify his
claim to rule all Britain,) was renewed again, with the prediction by Merlin that one
day Wales would again rule England.
Black Death
Most historians are willing to agree that the Black Death killed between 30-45% of the
population between 1348-50.
• 1317: Great Famine in England
• May 1337: Declaration of the Hundred Years War by Edward III.
• June 1348: Black Death arrives at Melcombe Regis (Weymouth)
• Aug 1348: Black Death hits Bristol
• Sept 1348: Black Death reaches London
• Oct 1348: Winchester hit - Edendon's 'Voice in Rama' speech
• Jan 1349: Parliament prorogued on account of the plague.
• Jan-Feb 1349: Plague spreads into E. Anglia and the Midlands.
• April 1349: Plague known in Wales.
• May 1349: Halesowen hit.
• 18th June 1349: Ordinance of Labourers.
• July 1349: Plague definitely hits Ireland.
• Autumn 1349: Plague reaches Durham. Scots invade northern England and bring

back plague with them.
• Spring 1350: Massive outbreak of plague in Scotland.
• Sept 1350: First pestilence dies out.
• 9th Feb 1351: Statute of Labourers.
• 1361-64: Second Pestilence: 'The Plague of Children'.
• 1367: Birth of Richard II in Bordeau.
• 1368-69: Third Pestilence
• 1371-75: Fourth Pestilence (variously dated 1371 or 1373-5)
• 1381: The Peasant Revolt
The plague returned in a series of periodic local and national epidemics. The plague only
finally stopped at the end of the Seventeenth century.
Life in Britain in the fourteenth century was 'nasty, brutish and short', and it had been
that way for the peasantry since long before the Black Death. Britain in the early
fourteenth century was horrendously overpopulated. This was very good for the land-
owning classes, since it meant that they had a vast reserve of inexpensive manpower upon
which they could draw. In fact, there was such a surplus on manpower, that most
landlords found it convenient to relax the old feudal labour dues owed to them on the
grounds that men could always be found to perform them.
We can see in the example of Farnham the immediate consequence of the plague: a slash
in the cost of livestock and inflation in the cost of labour. This pattern was repeated up

and down the country. The immediate reaction of the elite was to legislate against this.
The Ordinance of Labourers was published on 18th June 1349, limiting the freedom of
peasants to move around in search of the most lucrative work.
The reign of Richard II, 1377 to 1399

The reign of Richard II illustrates the changing nature of the crown and society after the
Black Death wiped out almost half the population from 1348. Richard's downfall has also
been called the first round in what the Victorians named the 'Wars of the Roses,' the
bloody, noble civil wars that devastated England from around 1450 to 1487. But the
legacy of his rule laid the foundation for that conflict and together with the impact of the
plague achieved a social transformation that changed Britain forever.
Richard's rule can be viewed as a critical moment in Britain's history. It provides the
first opportunity to assess the impact of the Black Death on all levels of the nations; as
society realigns itself, the young king struggles to restore the prestige and authority of the
crown. Key issues of the day colour Richard's reign: the ongoing war with France, the

power of the nobles, religious change, extending royal authority into the regions and the
continuing conflict in Ireland and with Scotland.
There is significant cultural and linguistic advance, new social groups such as the
'gentry' are emerging and by 1500, leave us with a pubescent modern nation state,
firmly in possession of defensible borders and one 'common' language. The Peasants'
Revolt, the first major 'headline' result of the series of plagues that swept across Europe,
was a judgement on those who were governing the country in Richard's name. However, the
king's reaction to the revolt was perhaps the highpoint of his personal activity. But it is the
rapid fall of Richard II, from his position as a secure, wealthy and respected monarch
that sheds the most light on the reality of medieval power.
Richard ruled as a mature monarch for little more than a decade from 1389, after
inheriting the throne from his grandfather in 1377, at the age of 10. He spent his final
days alone and died, either from starvation, or by murder on the orders of Henry IV.
The son of England's greatest warrior lord, the Black Prince, and a renowned European
beauty, Joan of Kent, Richard was born in Bordeaux, 1367. His christening was attended
by three kings. Educated in a European style for the first four years of his life, Richard
would bring a new sense of class and civility to the English throne. He probably spoke
French first and foremost but also learnt English, the language that was rapidly
becoming the main tongue of the English nobility.

Richard is the first king that we know for sure what he looked like, in part because of his
own conscious attempts to raise the personal place of the monarch, through the active use of
imagery and artistic representation, the most notable example being the Wilton Diptych,
a portable altarpiece and Richard's own portrait, which now hangs in Westminster
Abbey. Richard constructed the first royal bathhouse, may well have invented the pocket
handkerchief and used a spoon for the first time. In his patronage of architecture and
personal piety, his reign has a powerful legacy in some of the key parts of Westminster
Great Hall, York Minster and Canterbury Cathedral. Richard built the magnificent
hammer beam roof for the hall, which can be seen to this day. The medieval parliament
and king's court often sat under its carved angels and it was from here that the kingdom
was ruled.
The greatest cultural legacy of the period is the work of Chaucer, a contemporary of
Richard and personally known to him but, perhaps surprisingly, not someone who
benefited from the king's generous financial patronage. Chaucer's work and use of the
English language are legacies of Richard's reign despite the king, not because of his

actions; however 'cultured' his court became Richard neglected some of the major trends of
his age.
Richard never learnt that the myth of the prince who rules by divine right and is
answerable only to God, is one thing; the reality of power is quite another. Personally tall
and imposing, Richard is the first king to recruit a full time bodyguard of loyal Cheshire
bowmen, often deployed to intimidate his foes. Professor Nigel Saul has argued that
Richard personally abhorred Christians killing one another and this may explain his
determination to make peace with France. However, it did not stop him personally leading
armies into Scotland and Ireland. Richard's foreign policy went against all
contemporary tradition and proved highly unpopular. The so-called 'Hundred Years War'
(1337 - 1453) started in the reign of his grandfather Edward III and had provided
Richard's father with stunning victories. Many in England gained financially from the
ongoing conflict and few would agree to see the territorial gains handed back to the
French. Despite this, Richard sought peace with France, whilst becoming involved in Irish
affairs to no long-term gain for the monarchy, but at the eventual cost of his own throne.
Richard II appears to have been self-obsessed and aware only of his own needs and
feelings. Any slight had to be avenged whilst the king's person sought constant praise,
respect and even worship. Impressed by imagery and symbols, Richard adopted the sign
of the white hart, financed lavish memorials for loyal supporters and designed for
himself a tomb in Westminster Abbey that few could fail to be impressed by. As with so

much about Richard, the reality of his leadership failed to rise to the majesty of its
appearance.
Richard II inherited the throne of a great military power with titles to England, France,
Ireland and Wales. England, the heart of the kingdom, had a population of two to three
million and the crown enjoyed a healthy income from its estates and customs revenues on
wool exports (£70,000 pa.) Royal authority extended to all areas of the kingdom via
sheriffs and the loyal nobility. English armies, proven by their victories at Crecy and
Poitiers, were well respected, managed, led and equipped. The Hundred Years War
continued to drain the economy but provided its own rewards to the nobility and gave
England a continental presence in defence of her own interests.

On the death of the now senile Edward III in 1377, the ten year-old Richard II inherited
a throne that ruled with parliament and in front of which he had to swear to uphold the
laws of the people. For a prince who sought to raise the monarchy above human restraints
it was an inauspicious start. Parliament selected a regency council that excluded the
king's uncle and leading lord, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. With interests split
between Gaunt, parliament and the council, government became disorganised.
The conflicts with England's neighbours dragged on, draining the economy.
Maintaining the basic border forts in France, Scotland and Ireland cost £46,000 pa
and by 1381 three regressive poll taxes had been passed by parliament and extracted
from an unwilling population, barely recovering from the ravages of the Black Death.
This rebellion, "the most significant in English History," occurred for a combination of
reasons, virtually all of which were prompted by the Black Death. The plague that struck
Britain from 1348 killed almost half the population. Those agricultural workers who
survived now found their wages rising (by 200-300 per cent) as demand for their
services by competing landlords increased. However, the landlords were reluctant to pay
the higher wages or allow workers to move to rival estates. Hit by this, three poll taxes and
legislation which stated that wages could not rise above pre-plague levels, the ambitious
and assertive Yeomen, (but not the poorest), of Essex and Kent rebelled. The 'Poll Tax' of
1380 became particularly hated, as it took no account of individual wealth or earnings
and demanded the same sum from all, rich or poor.
Starting in Brentwood, Essex (May 1381) the mob rose against the tax collectors, joined
with their colleagues in Kent and thousands of people sacked the City of London. The
government lacked any significant military capability and so decided to follow a policy
of conciliation with the King meeting the mob and their leader, Wat Tyler, first at Mile
End and then Smithfield. The king heard and accepted Tyler's demands and then
watched as his bodyguards slew the rebel leader, with or without provocation. Seeing him
dead, Richard rode alone into the middle of the rebel host crying: "You shall have no
captain but me. Just follow me to the fields without, and then you can have what you
want." With that, the rebel hoard left central London and dispersed. Its leaders were
subsequently tried and many hanged. Richard had personally seen off the greatest
popular threat to the medieval English monarchy; it was an achievement that would not
be matched for the remainder of his reign.
The Parliament that was then called to finance the clear up and sustain royal finances
generally, now demanded reforms of its own. Reflecting demands that became their motto
in the Wars of the Roses, the Commons insisted that the king "live of his own", followed
"good government", better represented the different factions in the council and restored
respect for the authority of the law. In this case, the nobility in parliament sided with the
crown, against the Commons, splitting the political nation. By the end of this reign and
throughout the fifteenth century, this situation became reversed as the 'undermighty' crown

succeeded in alienating both halves of parliament.
Richard's reign is also notable for the significant impact of John Wyclif and his Lollard
followers, who formed the first recognised critics of the established church since the fifth
century. Born in Yorkshire in the 1330s, Wyclif was a theologian at Balliol College,
Oxford and a 'realist' who believed that one's knowledge derived from within rather than
through the senses. He rejected the human church, preferring one which comprised the body
of the elect with all authority derived from the scriptures. He denied transubstantiation
and believed in the spiritual Eucharist rather than the physical one. Wyclif wanted the
church reformed, with its landed wealth and tax exemptions removed.
The Lollards who followed Wyclif, often called "mumblers" (probably reflecting their
scriptural based worship) represented a general, but very limited, minority theological
reform movement. The most important Lollards were a group of knights who formed part of
the king's court. These included Sir William Neville, Sir John Montague and Sir
William Beachamp who enjoyed sympathetic support and active protection from the Black
Prince and Gaunt, at least from 1371 to 1382.
Wyclif's aim was for a reformation of the church but his movement failed for various
reasons, amongst which were limited literacy levels and the lack of the printing press as
a tool of dissemination. Wyclif was an important figure but the extent of his influence was
limited, and the crucial contextual requirements that allowed the Reformation to occur
were completely non-existent during Richard's reign. Furthermore, if the Lollards had

become a greater threat, they would have faced the full assault of the united crown, church
and law. After the Peasants' Revolt, when the association with any kind of opposition
brought condemnation, the influence of Lollardy waned. Years later, Henry IV attacked
their heresy more vociferously and the Lollards fell into isolation after the failure of the
Oldcastle revolt in 1414.
Richard personally possessed a strong faith. Yet he did little to stamp out the Lollards
and tolerated key adherents to their beliefs in his own court. Again, Richard II is so self-
absorbed that he fails to see that there are many currents and movements in society
which exist outside his own world. But his personal piety makes any chance of further
tolerance on his part highly unlikely. In fact, by the mid-1380s, Richard had started
an active campaign against heresy in the kingdom, attacking heretical works, arresting
Lollards and supporting the church authorities. However, no new statutes were passed.
Richard's personal faith blossomed in the 1390s and a number of artefacts survive from
this time, such as the Wilton Diptych, many gifts to the shrine of St. Edward the
Confessor at Westminster, and his investment in Westminster Abbey and York Minster.

Following attacks upon the king in the Salisbury parliament of 1384 over the peace policy
favoured by the government and combined with the loss of Flanders to French influence,
England was now forced on the defensive by the Auld alliance, between France and
Scotland.
The French sent a force to aid the invading Scots and threatened England's southern
shore with their fleet. Facing this crisis, the feudal levy was summoned for the last time
in the Middle Ages and Richard led an invasion of Scotland at the head of a 14,000
man army, a quarter of whom were provided by Gaunt. The Scots, unable to match this
force, retreated and refused to be drawn into battle, leaving Richard to burn the border
abbeys and depart without gain. Parliament demanded further reforms and refused to
pay off the government's debts while the French raised 30,000 men only to find that they
too could not afford to actually invade England. Despite all this chaos on his doorstep,
Richard II preferred to plan an invasion of Ireland.
Richard's government was making just about every mistake possible and now fell in the
face of a parliamentary backlash. Parliament now made unprecedented demands on the
monarchy, it won the sacking of Chancellor de la Pole and then impeached him for good
measure.
In 1386-7, an alliance between the disaffected Commons and key lords in parliament
ended up examining royal finances and putting the Duke of Gloucester in charge.
Expenditure was cut and grants to favourites reduced. The king's authority had been

fatally undermined as the narrow power base of his administration had nothing to fall
back on. Facing humiliation on all sides Richard left London for one of his 'gyrations'
around the kingdom. During this period he sought advice from leading judges that
publicly defined the royal prerogative.
Richard II could finally put his own mark onto royal government and follow his own
instincts towards peace, which had the secondary advantage of freeing the king from
parliament's hold over financial provision. He could also develop his own idea of a more
'absolute' rule.
Using his 1390 Book of Statutes Richard now rebuilt his government, authority and
image. He had learnt to create his own loyal retinue, to put trusted men in office and to
end the war with France and thereby the crown's dependence on parliamentary grants
of taxation to pay for the fighting. The question remained whether or not the substance
could match the facade. Gaunt was carefully nurtured until 1394, when the king had
gained the authority he needed.

He built up the power of a new courtier nobility such as John Holand, his half-brother
and Earl of Huntingdon, the new chamberlain and rival to the Courtenay, Earls of Devon.
This alienation of yet another powerful local family showed the king had not learnt all
the lessons of his minority and would not be forgotten in 1399, when the king was
challenged once again.
Richard's personal confidence was growing. At court, he insisted on being called Majesty.
No-one could look the king in the eye and all deferred to him in a public and effusive way.
The council often met daily, kept minutes and actually ran the government. However, these
reforms failed to address all the financial problems and the king still spent more than
he earnt, due largely to his extravagant personal expenditure. In 1397 he gained a
taxation grant without there being the requirements for war, for the first time; a
dangerous precedent for the king to rely upon. Peace at home led the government to look
abroad and Richard's attention turned to reasserting the crown's authority in Ireland.
Richard II became the first king to visit Ireland since 1210 and the last to do so before
the 1690s. His involvement in Irish affairs did little to increase English influence, and it
also reflected Richard's failure to assess his own position of strength and determine the
correct priorities of government. His interest derived from a natural wish to extend royal
authority to all edges of his kingdoms, ruling via local fiefs.
On the death of his wife, Richard decided to visit Ireland in 1394. He found that the
entrenched 'English' settlements in the north and east had declined further as the native

Irish attacked estates run largely by absentee lords. Leading several thousand men and
virtually all of the loyal nobility, Richard defeated the Irish chieftains in the Southeast.
He also set about redefining the balance and nature of authority in Ireland, attempting
to break down the old definitions of groups and alliances, replacing it with a broadly
defined hegemony whose first loyalty was to the king personally. A 28 year truce with
France in 1396, sealed with Richard's betrothal to a French princess left Richard free to
look westwards again.
In 1398 the Duke of Surrey replaced the Earl of March as Lieutenant of Ireland on
Richard's orders, as the Earl's claims to the succession had become a source of increasing
anxiety for the king. Richard made his second ill-fated trip to Ireland in June 1399,
making some military advances before Bolingbroke landed in north England. Richard

left Irish affairs in a state of flux and in no way enhanced the long term position of the
English crown. Attempting to add more substance to his titles interested Richard II
greatly. Only his timing left something to be desired.
The last two years of Richard's reign are traditionally described as a period of tyranny
with the government levying forced loans, carrying out arbitrary arrests and murdering
the king's rivals. Richard's regime went on the offensive exacting revenge for past
humiliations and attempting to bring substance to the imagery now associated with the
king's rule.
The cause of Richard's actions has often been considered a result of the death of his queen,
who may have provided a restraining influence. But his tyranny reflected a reaction to a
new environment: one of renewed fear. Always carrying resentment against the
Appellants, the king now felt threatened again, seized the initiative and had the three
senior Appellants, Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick, arrested. Evidence of a plot against
the king is unclear but he had every reason to suspect one. Sparked by a long-running
dispute between the earl of Warwick and the now loyal Nottingham and the need to fund
the French alliance, the king called a loyal parliament. He raised 2000 men in Cheshire,
caught the Appellants off guard and tried them in parliament. Warwick was sent to
prison, the Duke of Gloucester was probably murdered by Nottingham's men in Calais
and Arundel was executed.
The king had his revenge and now handed out a slew of titles and land making,
amongst others, Nottingham the Duke of Norfolk and Derby the Duke of Hereford. Rarely if
ever had so many high offices been created at one time. Cleverly, Richard went out of his
way to split up the estates of the removed Appellants so as to avoid any one nobleman
benefiting with too much power; he consciously set out to water down the great houses. In
the process the traditional power bases were alienated and the political map of England
redrawn.
However, Richard's methods, as usual, proved counter productive. Apart from alienating the
otherwise loyal families in the regions who saw the 'new' men attempt to gain interest
locally, a general fear entered the kingdom as the king alienated his subjects. For
example, he did not go anywhere without his 311 man bodyguard of royal archers, and
favour at court once again concentrated on a handful of loyalists that owed everything to
the king. The final and fatal crisis of the reign derived from Richard's continuing
inability to deal with the nobility. A conflict between the two leading noblemen of the
younger generation and the legacies of the death of the most powerful duke in the kingdom
led to Richard's fall just at a time when he had never seemed more secure in office. Again,
decisions made directly and personally by the king drove events.
On paper, Richard seemed in a very strong position in 1399. The £83,000 dowry from
the French crown meant that the king possessed assets for the first time, with over

£43,000 in his reserves. The reorganisation of the government around the king's court
and the fact that his appointees dominated the nobility and provinces, left seemingly
little room for weakness. The marriage treaty had secured peace with France, while the
one power in the land who had posed a real threat to Richard's position was dead.
Indeed, the king felt so secure that he went marching off to Ireland for the second time,
taking his best and most loyal men with him. This expedition achieved little, partly
because it was cut short by news that Bolingbroke had landed with a small force in
Yorkshire.
Stranded in Ireland with no means of returning to Wales and then England, Richard
had to watch while the greatest nobles of the land deserted him to join Bolingbroke.
Motivated in part by fear for their own inheritances and general antipathy to Richard's
rule, the west and east of England quickly fell to Bolingbroke. The king's last hope, the
north west, failed to rally to the cause after the fall of Chester, again without a fight.
Finally back in Britain, Richard II surrendered in Conway Castle after talks with the
Earl of Northumberland, who promised that the king's position would be respected. With
the exception of an abortive raid by the remainder of the royal bodyguard, the king passed
into Bolingbroke's custody in the Tower, without any further resistance.
Isolated, Richard now heard Bolingbroke's demand that he relinquish the throne and
pass it to Bolingbroke by right of succession in the male line, following noble and
European tradition. The king resigned under pressure on 29 September 1399, bringing
his 22 year reign to an end. Taken to Pontefract castle, the failure of another loyalist plot

reminded Henry of Lancaster how great a liability the live Richard II would be. By the
end of February 1400, Richard of Bordeaux had starved to death. His passing receiving
little contemporary comment or record.
Henry Bolingbroke proclaimed himself king and took the throne as Henry IV. Initially
buried in Kings Langley, Henry V later placed Richard's body in the tomb that he had
designed for himself in the Confessor's chapel of Westminster Abbey.
Replaced at the height of his power, Richard had been compromised by the narrowness of
his own power base and his personal inability to live up to the image that he created for
the crown. He failed because he misread the signs around him, and was unable to raise
the monarchy as an institution with himself at its head. A good king ruled through and
with the nobility, whose respect he had to win and maintain. The gleaming but fragile
house of cards came tumbling down, and Richard II became the first of several ruling
monarchs to be deposed, murdered, executed or killed in civil war during the fifteenth
century. Just as the Black Death shook the foundations of society from below, so the fall of
Richard II and subsequent Wars of the Roses would redefine it from above.

Nigel Saul concludes his 467 page magisterial biography by saying that Shakespeare
actually caught the character of Richard very well, that he was able to: 'capture the
essence of his subject... [Richard's] tragedy was that he mistook the illusion of the stage for
the reality of the world around him.'
War of the Roses: Houses of Lancaster and York
Wars of the Roses, (1455–85), in English history, the series of dynastic civil wars whose
violence and civil strife preceded the strong government of the Tudors. Fought between the
houses of Lancaster and York for the English throne, the wars were named many years
afterward from the supposed badges of the contending parties: the white rose of York and
the red rose of Lancaster.
Both houses claimed the throne through descent from the sons of Edward III. Since the
Lancastrians had occupied the throne from 1399, the Yorkists might never have pressed a
claim but for the near anarchy prevailing in the mid-15th century. After the death
of Henry V in 1422 the country was subject to the long and factious minority of Henry
VI (August 1422–November 1437), during which the English kingdom was managed by
the king’s council, a predominantly aristocratic body. That arrangement, which probably
did not accord with Henry V’s last wishes, was not maintained without difficulty.
Like Richard II before him, Henry VI had powerful relatives eager to grasp after power
and to place themselves at the head of factions in the state. The council soon became their
battleground.

Great magnates with private armies dominated the countryside. Lawlessness was rife
and taxation burdensome. Henry later proved to be feckless and simpleminded, subject to
spells of madness, and dominated by his ambitious queen, Margaret of Anjou, whose
party had allowed the English position in France to deteriorate.
Between 1450 and 1460 Richard, 3rd duke of York, had become the head of a great
baronial league, of which the foremost members were his kinsmen, the Nevilles, the
Mowbrays, and the Bourchiers. Among his principal lieutenants was his
nephew Richard Neville, the earl of Warwick, a powerful man in his own right, who had
hundreds of adherents among the gentry scattered over 20 counties. In 1453, when Henry
lapsed into insanity, a powerful baronial clique, backed by Warwick, installed York, as
protector of the realm. When Henry recovered in 1455, he reestablished the authority of
Margaret’s party, forcing York to take up arms for self-protection. The first battle of the
wars, at St. Albans (May 22, 1455), resulted in a Yorkist victory and four years of
uneasy truce.
A new phase of the civil war began in 1459 when York, goaded by the queen’s

undisguised preparations to attack him, rebelled for the last time. The Yorkists were
successful at Blore Heath (September 23) but were scattered after a skirmish at Ludford
Bridge (October 12). York fled to Ireland, and the Lancastrians, in a packed parliament
at Coventry (November 1459), obtained a judicial condemnation of their opponents and
executed those on whom they could lay hands.
From then on the struggle was bitter. Both parties laid aside their scruples and struck
down their opponents without mercy. The coldblooded and calculated ferocity that now
entered English political life certainly owed something to the political ideas of the
Italian Renaissance, but, arguably, it was also in part a legacy of the lawless habits
acquired by the nobility during the Hundred Years’ War.
In France Warwick regrouped the Yorkist forces and returned to England in June 1460,
decisively defeating the Lancastrian forces at Northampton (July 10). York tried to claim
the throne but settled for the right to succeed upon the death of Henry. That effectively
disinherited Henry’s son, Prince Edward, and caused Queen Margaret to continue her
opposition.
Gathering forces in northern England, the Lancastrians surprised and killed York
at Wakefield in December and then marched south toward London, defeating Warwick on
the way at the Second Battle of St. Albans (February 17, 1461). Meanwhile, York’s eldest
son and heir, Edward, had defeated a Lancastrian force at Mortimer’s Cross (February
2) and marched to relieve London, arriving before Margaret on February 26. The young
duke of York was proclaimed King Edward IV at Westminster on March 4. Then Edward,

with the remainder of Warwick’s forces, pursued Margaret north to Towton. There, in the
bloodiest battle of the war, the Yorkists won a complete victory. Henry, Margaret, and their
son fled to Scotland. The first phase of the fighting was over, except for the reduction of a
few pockets of Lancastrian resistance.
The next round of the wars arose out of disputes within the Yorkist ranks. Warwick, the
statesman of the group, was the true architect of the Yorkist triumph. Until 1464 he was
the real ruler of the kingdom. He ruthlessly put down the survivors of the Lancastrians
who, under the influence of Margaret and with French help, kept the war going in the
north and in Wales. The wholesale executions that followed the battle of Hexham
(May1464) practically destroyed what was left of the Lancastrian party, and the work

seemed complete when, a year later, Henry VI was captured and put in the Tower of
London.
Warwick made an equally vigorous effort to put the government of the realm in better
shape, to restore public order, to improve the administration of justice, and, by
confiscations and economies, to make the crown solvent. At the same time, both Warwick
and his master were caught in the diplomatic schemes of the astute Louis XI, who had
succeeded Charles VII as the king of France in 1461. He was still preoccupied with the
power of Burgundy, and the English were to be the pawns in the game he intended to
play for the humbling of Charles the Bold.
Yet Edward IV was not prepared to submit indefinitely to Warwick’s tutelage, efficient
and satisfactory though it proved to be. It was not that he deliberately tried to oust
Warwick; rather he found the earl’s power irksome. Edward’s hasty and secret marriage
to Elizabeth Woodville in 1464 was the first overt sign of his impatience. The Woodvilles, a
family with strong Lancastrian connections, never achieved real political influence, but
they climbed into positions of trust near the king, thus estranging Warwick still further.
The open breach between the king and the earl came in 1467. Edward dismissed
Warwick’s brother, George Neville, the chancellor; repudiated a treaty with Louis XI that
the earl had just negotiated; and concluded an alliance with Burgundy against which
Warwick had always protested. Warwick then began to organize opposition to the king. He
was behind the armed protest of the gentry and commons of Yorkshire that was called the
rising of Robin of Redesdale (April 1469). A few weeks later, having raised a force
at Calais and married his daughter Isabel without permission to the Edward’s rebellious
brother, George Plantagenet, duke of Clarence, Warwick landed in Kent. The royal army
was defeated in July at Edgecote (near Banbury), and the king himself became the earl’s
prisoner, while the queen’s father and brother, together with a number of their friends,
were executed at his command.
By March 1470, however, Edward had regained his control, forcing Warwick and
Clarence to flee to France, where they allied themselves with Louis XI and (probably at
Louis’s instigation) came to terms with their former enemy Margaret. Returning
to England (September 1470), they deposed Edward and restored the crown to Henry VI,
and for six months Warwick ruled as Henry’s lieutenant. Edward fled to
the Netherlands with his followers.
Warwick’s power was insecure, however, for the Lancastrians found it difficult to trust one
who had so lately been their scourge, while many of the earl’s Yorkist followers found the
change more than they could bear. There was thus little real opposition to Edward, who,
having secured Burgundian aid, returned from Flushing to land at Ravenspur (March
1471) in a manner reminiscent of Henry IV. His forces met those of Warwick on April 14 in
the Battle of Barnet, in which Edward outmaneuvered Warwick, regained the loyalty of

the duke of Clarence, and decisively defeated Warwick, who was slain in the battle. On the
same day, Margaret and her son, who had hitherto refused to return from France,
landed at Weymouth. Hearing the news of Barnet, she marched west, trying to reach the
safety of Wales, but Edward won the race to the Severn. In the Battle of
Tewkesbury (May 4) Margaret was captured, her forces destroyed, and her son killed.
Shortly afterward Henry VI was murdered in the Tower of London; Margaret remained
in custody until being ransomed by Louis XI in 1475. Edward’s throne was secure for the
rest of his life (he died in 1483).
In 1483 Edward’s brother Richard III, overriding the claims of his nephew, the
young Edward V, alienated many Yorkists, who then turned to the last hope of the
Lancastrians, Henry Tudor (later Henry VII). With the help of the French and of Yorkist
defectors, Henry defeated and killed Richard at Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485,
bringing the wars to a close. By his marriage to Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth
of York in 1486, Henry united the Yorkist and Lancastrian claims. Henry defeated a
Yorkist rising supporting the pretender Lambert Simnel on June 16, 1487, a date which
some historians prefer over the traditional 1485 for the termination of the wars.
1453 – 1547
The Battle of Bosworth Field

One of the most important battles
Date: 22nd August 1485
in English and Welsh history
War of the Roses
took place at Bosworth during the
Near Market Bosworth, Leicestershire
15th century Wars of the Roses.
Belligerents: Lancastrians and Yorkists (and
Early in August 1485 the would-
the Stanley family who remained at the edge
be Lancastrian king, Henry
of the battlefield until they decided which side
Tudor sailed across the English
to support)
Channel from France to south
Victors: Lancastrians
Wales with a force of around
Numbers; Lancastrians 5,000; Yorkists
2,000 men.
Marching through the Welsh countryside the ranks of the Lancastrian army swelled,
until by the time they crossed the border into Shrewsbury their number had more than
doubled in size.
On hearing the news of Henry’s landing, King Richard III began to muster his Yorkist
army at Leicester. With his royal army now almost 10,000 strong, the king deployed his

troops on a hilltop, just south of Market Bosworth in Leicestershire.
On an adjacent hilltop stood the forces of Henry’s stepfather Thomas, Lord Stanley, with a
fairly substantial private army totalling around 6,000 men. In the bloody battle that
followed, Stanley elected to simply stand and spectate.
As the battle swayed first one way and then the other, Richard appears to have decided to
bring the encounter to a swift end by leading a charge aimed directly at Henry.
On seeing Richard separated from his main force, Lord Stanley finally decided to join
the battle on the side of his stepson. After his horse became trapped in boggy ground, the
king continued to fight on foot before he was finally overwhelmed.
Richard was the last Plantagenet king of England, and the last English monarch to be
killed in battle. On seeing their leader’s fate, the Yorkist army abandoned the field.
Richard’s crown was brought to Henry who was proclaimed king on the nearby Crown
Hill.
The new Tudor dynasty would rule England for the next hundred years. Richard’s body
was interred in a plain unmarked tomb at Greyfriars in Leicester and forgotten about,
until it was rediscovered under a car park by archaeologists in September 2012.
Henry VIII
Henry VIII, (born June 28, 1491, Greenwich, near London, England—died January 28,
1547, London), king of England (1509–47) who presided over the beginnings of the
English Renaissance and the English Reformation. His six wives were,

successively, Catherine of Aragon (the mother of the future queen Mary I), Anne
Boleyn (the mother of the future queen Elizabeth I), Jane Seymour (the mother of Henry’s
successor, Edward VI), Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr.
Accession to the throne

Henry was the second son of Henry VII, first of the Tudor line, and Elizabeth, daughter
of Edward IV, first king of the short-lived line of York. When his elder brother, Arthur,
died in 1502, Henry became the heir to the throne; of all the Tudor monarchs, he alone
spent his childhood in calm expectation of the crown, which helped give an assurance of
majesty and righteousness to his willful, ebullient character. He excelled in book learning
as well as in the physical exercises of an aristocratic society, and, when in 1509 he
ascended the throne, great things were expected of him. Six feet tall, powerfully built, and
a tireless athlete, huntsman, and dancer, he promised England the joys of spring after
the long winter of Henry VII’s reign.
Henry and his ministers exploited the dislike inspired by his father’s energetic pursuit of

royal rights by sacrificing, without a thought, some of the unpopular institutions and
some of the men that had served his predecessor. Yet the unpopular means for governing
the realm soon reappeared because they were necessary. Soon after his accession, Henry
married Catherine of Aragon, Arthur’s widow, and the attendant lavish entertainments
ate into the modest royal reserves.
More serious was Henry’s determination to engage in military adventure. Europe was
being kept on the boil by rivalries between the French and Spanish kingdoms, mostly
over Italian claims; and, against the advice of his older councillors, Henry in 1512 joined
his father-in-law, Ferdinand II of Aragon, against France and ostensibly in support of
a threatened pope, to whom the devout king for a long time paid almost slavish respect.
Henry himself displayed no military talent, but a real victory was won by the earl of
Surrey at Flodden (1513) against a Scottish invasion. Despite the obvious pointlessness of
the fighting, the appearance of success was popular. Moreover, in Thomas Wolsey, who
organized his first campaign in France, Henry discovered his first outstanding minister.
By 1515 Wolsey was archbishop of York, lord chancellor of England, and a cardinal of
the church; more important, he was the king’s good friend, to whom was gladly left the
active conduct of affairs. Henry never altogether abandoned the positive tasks of kingship
and often interfered in business; though the world might think that England was ruled
by the cardinal, the king himself knew that he possessed perfect control any time he cared
to assert it, and Wolsey only rarely mistook the world’s opinion for the right one.

Nevertheless, the years from 1515 to 1527 were marked by Wolsey’s ascendancy, and
his initiatives set the scene. The cardinal had some occasional ambition for the papal
tiara, and this Henry supported; Wolsey at Rome would have been a powerful card in
English hands. In fact, there was never any chance of this happening, any more than
there was of Henry’s election to the imperial crown, briefly mooted in 1519 when the
emperor Maximilian I died, to be succeeded by his grandson Charles V. That event altered
the European situation. In Charles, the crowns of Spain, Burgundy (with the
Netherlands), and Austria were united in an overwhelming complex of power that
reduced all the dynasties of Europe, with the exception of France, to an inferior position.
From 1521, Henry became an outpost of Charles V’s imperial power, which at Pavia (1525),
for the moment, destroyed the rival power of France. Wolsey’s attempt to reverse alliances

at this unpropitious moment brought reprisals against the vital English cloth trade with
the Netherlands and lost the advantages that alliance with the victor of Pavia might
have had. It provoked a serious reaction in England, and Henry concluded that Wolsey’s
usefulness might be coming to an end.
Loss of popularity
While the greatness of England in Europe was being shown up as a sham, the regime
was also losing popularity at home. The fanciful expectations of the early days could not,
of course, endure; some measure of reality was bound to intrude. As it was, journalists
and writers continued to be full of hope for a king who, from 1517, commanded the services
of a new councillor, Sir Thomas More, one of the outstanding minds of the day. But More
soon discovered that Henry found it easy to keep his enjoyment of learned conversation
apart from the conduct of policy. Nothing for the moment could dent Wolsey’s strength, and
this had serious drawbacks for the king, who supported him. The country was showing
increasing signs of its discontent, and Wolsey’s efforts to remedy grievances only
exasperated men of influence without bringing satisfaction to the poor. Feelings came to the
boil in the years 1523 – 24. Although he disliked parliaments, Wolsey had to agree to the
calling of one in 1523, but the taxes voted were well below what was required. Next year,
the attempt to levy a special tax led to such fierce resistance that Henry rescinded it, he
and the cardinal both trying to take the credit for the remission of what they had been
jointly responsible for imposing. While he had Wolsey to take the blame, Henry could
afford such fiascos; the cardinal could not.
By 1527 a government policy that, though seemingly Wolsey’s, was really the king’s was
facing bankruptcy; ineffective abroad, unpopular at home, it made the regime look as
empty of positive purpose as in fact it was.
At this point, the king entered affairs unmistakably and spectacularly. Among his
failure so far had been his or Catherine’s inability to provide a male heir to the throne;
several stillbirths and early deaths had left only a girl, the princess Mary (born in
1516), to carry on the line, and no one relished the thought of a female succession with all
the dynastic and political uncertainties it would bring. Being the man he was, Henry
could not suppose the fault to be his. His rapidly growing aversion to Catherine was
augmented by his infatuation with one of the ladies of the court, Anne Boleyn, the sister of
one of his earlier mistresses. Henry was no profligate; indeed, he had a strong streak of
prudery, but he sought the occasional relief from marriage to a worthy but ailing wife to
which princes have generally been held entitled. In Anne he met his match; this 20-
year-old girl, brought up in a tough school of courtly intrigue, would be more than a
king’s mistress. It took Henry, who in any case needed to marry her if the expected issue
was to solve the succession problem, some six years to achieve their joint purpose.
Inadvertently, he provoked a revolution.
From 1527 Henry pursued what became known as “The King’s great matter”: his divorce

form Catherine. He convinced himself that his first marriage had been against the divine
law; that is, against the biblical injunction forbidding marriage with a brother’s widow.
The deaths of the children proved God’s judgement on the union. With his characteristic
readiness to convert his own desired into the law of God, Henry rapidly assured himself
that he was living in mortal sin with Catherine and had to find relief if he was again to
become acceptable to God. He appealed to Rome for a declaration of annulment. Popes had
usually obliged kings in such matters, but Henry had picked both his time and his case
badly. He was asking Pope Clement VII to help him discard the emperor’s aunt, but
Clement, the emperor’s prisoner in 1527-28, never thereafter dared resist Charles, whose
powerful feelings of familiar honour and public prestige barred any concession to Henry’s
wishes. Moreover, the pope’s reluctance was increased by the fact that he was being asked
to declare illegal and earlier exercise of papal power – which had licensed Henry’s
marriage to his brother’s widow – of a kind that brought a good deal of money to the
papal coffers.
Thus, Henry’s attempts to solve his dilemma in the accepted legal way were doomed from
the start. Wolsey, in a worse dilemma, since only success in the impossible could keep him
in power, obtained a trial of the case in England, but this was frustrated by his fellow
judge, Cardinal Campeggio, on orders from Rome (1529). Within weeks, Wolsey was ousted,
but his disappearance solved nothing, and the councillors who succeeded him could offer
little help to their king, who knew only what he wanted, not how to get it.

The chancellorship went to Thomas More, who had told Henry that he did not approve of
the divorce and who whished to devote himself to a fight against Lutheran heresy.
Confusion was the keynote of policy for some three years while the king dithered between
hope that Rome might yet be forced to let the formal trial of his first marriage take place
in England and stirrings of a more radical nature – to reject Rome outright. But, thought
he occasionally talked of doing just that, neither he nor anyone else knew how to convert
talk into action.
The Breach with Rome
Action called for a revolution, and the revolution required a man who could conceive and
execute it. That man was Thomas Cromwell, who, in April 1532, won control of the council
and thereafter remained in command for some eight years. The revolution consisted of the
decision that the English church should separate from Rome, becoming effectively a
spiritual department of state under the rule of the king as God’s deputy on earth. The
revolution that he had not intended gave the king his wish: in January 1533 he married

Anne Boleyn; in May a new archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, presided over the formality of
a trial that declared the first marriage annulled; in September the princess Elisabeth
was born. The pope retaliated with a sentence of excommunication; it troubled no one.
The supreme headship on earth over the Church of England, thought he had not sought it,
represented Henry’s major achievement. It had very wide-ranging consequences, but those
that immediately concerned the king were two. In the first place, the new title consolidated
his own concept of kingship, his conviction that (as he once said) he had no superior on
earth. It rounded off the majestic image of divinely instituted royal rule that it was
Henry’s constant ambition to present to an awed and obedient world. But, in the second
place, it created a real personal problem for the king: earlier, in his book Assertio septem
sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum (1521), he had attacked Luther and had
expressed a profound devotion to the papacy and had been rewarded with the title of
Defender of the Faith. Now he had turned against the pope; his act was equal to
encouraging the Protestant Reformation, a thing attractive to Cranmer and Cromwell
(and perhaps Anne Boleyn) but not to Henry, who despised Luther. The religion of the
newly independent church was for its head to settle: for the rest of his life, Henry, who
prided himself on his theological learnings, was to give much time and thought to the
nature of the true religion. With the exception of the papal primacy, he never gave up the
main tenets of the faith in which he had grown up, but he changed his mind on details
and arrived at an amalgam of his own in which transubstantiation and clerical

celibacy mingled with radical views about the worldly authority of the church and man’s
ability to seek salvation without the aid of priests.
Domestic reform
Cromwell’s decade, the 1530s, was the only period of the reign during which a coherent
body of policies was purposefully carried through. Cromwell’s work greatly enlarged
Henry’s power, especially by transferring to the crown the wealth of the monasteries,
dissolved in 1536 – 40, and new clerical taxes; but it also, more explicitly than ever,
subjected the king to the law and to the legislative supremacy of Parliament. Since Henry
knew how to work with parliaments, the immediate effect was to make him appear more
dominant than ever and to give to his reign a spurious air of autocracy – spurious because
in fact the rule of law remained to control the sovereign’s mere will. The appearance of
autocracy was misleading emphasized by the fact that all revolutions have their victims.
As heads rolled, the king’s earlier reputation as a champion of light and learning was
permanently buried under his enduring fame as a man of blood. Old friends such as

More, refusing to accept the new order, fell before the onslaught, as did some 50 other men
caught by the treason laws. Between 1538 and 1541 the families of Pole and Courtenay
were destroyed by the axe for treasons linked with efforts abroad to reverse the course of
events in England but mainly because they could claim royal blood and represented a
dynastic danger to the unprolific Tudor line.
The king now embarked on the series of matrimonial adventures that made him appear
both a monster and a laughingstock. He soon tired of Anne, who failed to produce a male
heir; in 1536 she was executed, with other members of the court, for alleged treasonable
adultery. Catherine of Aragon, rejected but unbowed, had died a little earlier. Henry
immediately married Jane Seymour, who bore him his son Edward but died in
childbirth (1537). The next three years were filled with attempts to replace her, and the
bride chosen was Anne, sister of the duke of Cleves, a pawn in Cromwell’s policy for a
northern Europe alliance against dangers from France and the Emperor. But Henry
hated the first sight of her and at once demanded his freedom, an end achieved by a
quick divorce.
Physical and mental decline

The Cleves fiasco destroyed Cromwell; it enabled his many enemies to turn the king
against him, and in July 1540 his head fell on the scaffold. Henry had by now become
truly dangerous: always secretive and suspicious, now he was beginning to show
paranoic tendencies. Convinced that he controlled everyone, he was in fact readily

manipulated by those who knew how to feed his suspicions and pander to his self-
righteousness. Full of everyone – the oldest king in Europe – and increasingly competent in
the routine of rule, he lacked the comprehensive vision and large spirit that would have
made him a great man. His temperamental deficiencies were aggravated by what he
regarded as his undeserved misfortunes and by ill health; he grew enormously fat. His
mind did not weaken, but he grew restless, peevish, and totally unpredictable; often
melancholy and depressed, he was usually out of sorts and always out of patience. In
1540 – 42 he briefly renewed his youth in marriage to the 20-year-old Catherine
Howard, whose folly in continuing her promiscuity, even as queen, brought her to the block.
The blow finished Henry. Thereafter, he was really a sad and bitter old man, and,
though he married once more, to find a measure of peace with the calm and obedient

Catherine Parr, his physical ruin was complete.
But he was still the king and, from Cromwell’s fall (which he regretted too late), the only
maker of policy. Policy in the hands of a sick, unhappy, violent man was not likely to be
either sensible or prosperous, and so it proved. Left to himself, Henry concentrated on
keeping the realm united, despite the growing strife between the religious factions, and on
keeping before the world his own image as the glorious monarch of the age. The first
resulted in frequent explosions against the ingratitude of his subjects and against his
councillors. The second brought him back to his first love – war and conquest, the sport of
kings.
In 1542 the emperor and the king of France resumed hostilities. After a pretense of
independence, Henry again joined the former; the Scots promptly joined the French. The
Scots were routed at Solway Moss (1542), and their king died soon after: this opened the
possibility of subjugating that country permanently by means of a marriage alliance
between the infant heirs to the two thrones. But the Scottish dream quickly collapsed as
Henry’s crude handling of that nation gave control to pro-French party, determined to
resist even an alliance with England; physical conquest was beyond the king’s means.
Henry personally managed both the war and the subsequent negotiations, and he
displayed amazing energy for so sick a man. But energy is not the same thing as
competence. The war proved ruinous. Money had to be raised by selling off the monastic
lands, which he had brought a good income; the desperate expedient of debasing the
coinage, though it brought temporary succour, led to a violent inflation that made things
worse. Yet, even after the emperor made peace with France (1544), Henry would not let go
until two years later.
As the year 1546 drew to a close, it was apparent to all observers that the king had not
long to live. Not that it was clear to the man most concerned; he continued as before,
lamenting religious dissension, attending to the business of government, continuing the
pretense of deathless majesty, destroying the powerful Howard family, whom he suspected
of plotting to control his successor. Conscious almost to the very end, he died on January
28, 1547. He left the realm feeling bereft and the government the more bewildered because,
to the last, he had refused to make full arrangements for the rule of a boy king.
Legacy
As king of England from 1509 to 1547, Henry VIII presided over the beginnings of the
English Reformation, which was unleashed by his own matrimonial involvements, even
though he never abandoned the fundamentals of the Roman Catholic faith. Though
exceptionally well served by a succession of brilliant ministers, Henry turned upon them
all; those he elevated, he invariably cast down again. He was attracted to humanist
learning and was something of an intellectual himself, but he was responsible for the
deaths of the outstanding English humanists of the day. Though six time married, he left
a minor heir and a dangerously complicated succession problem. Of his six wives, two

joined a large tally of eminent persons executed for alleged treason; yet otherwise his
regime observed the law of the land with painful particularity. Formidable in
appearance, in memory, and in mind, and fearsome of temper, he yet attracted genuine
devotion and knew how to charm people. Monstrously egotistical and surrounded by
adulation, he nevertheless kept a reasonable grasp on the possible; forever taking false
steps in politics, he emerged essentially unbeaten and superficially successful in nearly
everything he attempted to do.
Henry VIII has always seemed the very embodiment of true monarchy. Even his evil
deeds, never forgotten, have been somehow amalgamated into a memory of greatness. He
gave his nation what it wanted: a visible symbol of its nationhood. He also had done
something toward giving it a better government, a useful navy, a start on religious reform
and social improvement. But he was not a great man in any sense. Although a leader in
every fibre of his being, he little understood where he was leading his nation. But, if he
was neither statesman nor prophet, he also was neither the blood-stained monster of one
tradition nor the rowdy bon vivant of another. Though cold, self-centred, ungiving, forever
suspicious of the ways of the world, he could not descend to the second stereotype; despite a
ruthlessness fed by self-righteousness, he never took the pleasure in killing required of the
first. Simply, he never understood why the life of so well-meaning a man should have
been beset by so many unmerited troubles.
From 1558 to 1625

Elisabeth I
Mary Tudor (the daughter Henry VIII had with Catherine of Aragon) died in 1558 and
that left Elizabeth as the only legitimate heir to the English crown. At her accession she
represented a ray of hope for Protestants (her sister Mary had sternly persecuted them)
who saw in her a queen ready to move away from the Catholic line dictated by Philip II of
Spain (who had been married to Mary). She inaugurated, therefore, what we know as
the Elizabethan age, a golden age for many but which also counted with many shadows.
These are some of the basic points of her reign:
-War with Spain. The war was officially declared in 1584 and lasted until 1604
(Elizabeth died in 1603). The causes for the conflict were:
-Piracy. English piracy on Spanish possessions in America became a major
source of conflict, withy names like Francis Drake and John Hawkins
becoming prominent.
-War in the Low Countries: Spain faced a rebellion of a number of provinces

in the Low Countries which wanted freedom of worship and new fiscal rights.
England helped for years those rebellious areas by sending money and
weapons.
-War in Ireland. Spain tended to help rebellious Catholic clans in Ireland
against England, As a result of the Spanish failure in the land, England
would carry out the policy of plantations., which meant giving Irish land to
English and Scottish newcomers ‘planted’ in them. Two plantations are
important: Munster and Ulster.
-Execution of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. Mary Stuart was the natural
replacement of Elizabeth, who had no legitimate heirs. As a Catholic queen
that she was, many Catholics saw in her an alternative that would improve
their situation. This led to a number of conspiracies to kill Elizabeth
supported by Spain and the Papacy. Finally, Mary was executed in 1587.
She had been a prisoner in Elizabeth’s hands since 1568.
-The ‘Armada’. It was the great frontal attack carried out by Spain against
England in 1588, which resulted in heavy losses for the former country.
-English attack on Cádiz. A sudden and dangerous attack carried out by
England against Cádiz in 1596 which put the city in English hands for 15
days. Finally the English were expelled.

-The Great Cultural moment. The Elizabethan moment was culturally speaking
impressive. Names like William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, William Byrd
or John Dowland belong to the period. In terms of drama and music this is without
any doubt a golden moment in English history.
-Elizabethan London. London becomes a huge city by the end of the Elizabethan era.
It is bigger than the next ten towns and cities put together. It counts with no fewer
than 14 prisons, which speaks of the tremendous degree of poverty and criminality
in it. Places like Tyburn (where executions took place) will obtain a horrid fame.
Many of those executed there were Catholic priests.
-Succession. The question of the succession to the crown was always unclear.
Elizabeth never married. She had no children and that left the door open to anxiety
and tension. These were actually in part mitigated by the so-called ‘Cult of
Gloriana’, which will be seen and examined in the Pla. In the end the question
was settled with the accession James Stuart, the son of Mary Stuart and King of

Scotland (James VI of Scotland), who became James I of England.
Elizabeth I, bynames the Virgin Queen and Good Queen Bess, (born September 7,
1533, Greenwich, near London, England—died March 24, 1603, Richmond, Surrey),
queen of England (1558–1603) during a period, often called the Elizabethan Age, when
England asserted itself vigorously as a major European power in politics, commerce, and
the arts.
Although her small kingdom was threatened by grave internal divisions, Elizabeth’s
blend of shrewdness, courage, and majestic self-display inspired ardent expressions of
loyalty and helped unify the nation against foreign enemies. The adulation bestowed
upon her both in her lifetime and in the ensuing centuries was not altogether a
spontaneous effusion. It was the result of a carefully crafted, brilliantly executed
campaign in which the queen fashioned herself as the glittering symbol of the nation’s
destiny. This political symbolism, common to monarchies, had more substance than
usual, for the queen was by no means a mere figurehead. While she did not wield the
absolute power of which Renaissance rulers dreamed, she tenaciously upheld her
authority to make critical decisions and to set the central policies of both state and church.
The latter half of the 16th century in England is justly called the Elizabethan Age:
rarely has the collective life of a whole era been given so distinctively personal a stamp.
Accession

At the death of Mary on November 17, 1558, Elizabeth came to the throne amid bells,
bonfires, patriotic demonstrations, and other signs of public jubilation. Her entry into
London and the great coronation procession that followed were masterpieces of political
courtship. “If ever any person,” wrote one enthusiastic observer, “had either the gift or the
style to win the hearts of people, it was this Queen, and if ever she did express the same it
was at that present, in coupling mildness with majesty as she did, and in stately
stooping to the meanest sort.” Elizabeth’s smallest gestures were scrutinized for signs of
the policies and tone of the new regime: When an old man in the crowd turned his back on
the new queen and wept, Elizabeth exclaimed confidently that he did so out of gladness;
when a girl in an allegorical pageant presented her with a Bible in English
translation—banned under Mary’s reign—Elizabeth kissed the book, held it up reverently,

and then laid it on her breast; and when the abbot and monks of Westminster
Abbey came to greet her in broad daylight with candles in their hands, she briskly
dismissed them with the words “Away with those torches! we can see well enough.”
Spectators were thus assured that under Elizabeth England had returned, cautiously but
decisively, to the Reformation.
The first weeks of her reign were not entirely given over to symbolic gestures and public
ceremonial. The queen began at once to form her government and issue proclamations. She
reduced the size of the Privy Council, in part to purge some of its Catholic members and in
part to make it more efficient as an advisory body; she began a restructuring of the
enormous royal household; she carefully balanced the need for substantial
administrative and judicial continuity with the desire for change; and she assembled a
core of experienced and trustworthy advisers, including William Cecil, Nicholas Bacon,
Francis Walsingham, and Nicholas Throckmorton. Chief among these was Cecil
(afterward Lord Burghley), whom Elizabeth appointed her principal secretary of state on
the morning of her accession and who was to serve her (first in this capacity and after
1571 as lord treasurer) with remarkable sagacity and skill for 40 years.
The War with Spain during Elizabethan Era

The Spanish Armada sailed from Spain in July 1588. The Spanish Armada’s task
was to overthrow protestant England lead by Queen Elizabeth I. The Spanish Armada
proved to be an expensive disaster for the Spanish but for the English, it was a celebrated
victory making Sir Francis Drake even more of a hero than he already was. The defeat of
the Spanish Armada is one of the most famous events in English history.
What were Some of the Important Battles?
It was arguably Queen Elizabeth’s finest hour. For years she had been hailed as the
English Deborah, the saviour of the English people, and now it seemed that this is what
she had really become. She was now Bellona, the goddess of war, and in triumph she
had led her people to glory, defeating the greatest power in the 16th-century world.
Anglo-Spanish war Timeline

The war between England and Spain was fought from 1585 to 1604. Most of the battle
was fought at sea without a war being officially declared.
What was the War between England and Spain About?

Spain was the most powerful country in the world. Philip II ruled vast territories of land
and had unparalleled wealth from the New World. Although relations between Spain
and England had begun rather well, with Philip even proposing marriage to the English
Queen, over the 30 years since the Queen’s accession, relations had deteriorated.
There were many reasons for this. To begin with, England was a Protestant country,

and Spain was a Roman Catholic one. The Spanish made no secret of their hostility to
the English Queen, who they believed was illegitimate and had no right to the English
throne, and had been involved in plots to dethrone her. Elizabeth herself had encouraged
the activities of the English pirates, who plundered Philip’s ships as they made their way
from the New World, seizing their treasures.
What made England and Spain enemies?

England and pain became enemies mainly because of the religious difference between
them. England was a protestant country while Spain still followed Roman Catholicism.
Spain had also allied with France by then and was invading English colonies in the
New World.
The huge success of the Spanish armada in invading Great Britain in 1588 had also
filled them with confidence and led them to attack England.
Why did Spain try to invade England?

While Spain was still the most powerful country in the 16th century, ruling most parts of
the New World, England was fuelling the Dutch rebellion in Spain and was trying to
attack Spain’s fleet as they returned from the Caribbean.
Sir Francis Drake was in command of the whole operation. Secondly, England was a
Protestant country and when Queen Elizabeth I executed Mary, Queen of Scots who was a
catholic, Philip became very angry and invaded England.

Why did Spain hate England?
England was the only threat to Spanish monopoly in the colonies of the New World. The
English fleet under the command of Sir Francis Drake had made considerable harm to
the Spanish fleets. That was one of the reasons why Spain hated England.
Moreover, Spain did not approve of Protestantism and always thought that Queen
Elizabeth was the illegitimate child of Henry VIII and therefore had no right to the
throne. They wanted Elizabeth’s cousin Mary, Queen of Scots to ascend the throne.
Who won the Anglo-Spanish war?
Spain was defeated by England with the Spanish armada being damaged and
devastated. It fueled the national pride of England. England, actually, had known about
Spain’s preparation of invading their country from beforehand and therefore, was able to
prepare for the attack.
Even before the Spanish ships could set sail Sir Francis Drake launched a scathing
attack on them which was termed as the “singing of the king of Spain’s beard”. It

destroyed several hundred of Spain’s ships which even delayed Spain’s attack.
However, the hostility between the two countries lasted for sixteen years.
What was the relationship between England and Spain in late 1500?
The Anglo-Spanish war began in 1585 after English ships were seized at the Spanish
harbour. England and Spain, in late 1500, were, therefore, fighting the war.
Describe the Weapons and the ships involved in the Spanish/English war?
This had angered Philip immensely, especially as the stolen treasure was used to help
fund those people rebelling against his rule in the Netherlands. As early as 1585, Philip
had begun to prepare a great fleet that, under the Spanish commander Santa Cruz,
would invade England and finally the war happened.
Why did the Spanish armada fail?

The Spanish armada was an enormous fleet of several thousand warships launched to
attack England. Spain’s preparation of the armada and the attack could not be kept
secret and Queen Elizabeth soon came to know about their plan of invasion.
Under the leadership of Sir Francis Drake, a sudden attack was launched upon the
Spanish fleet which made substantial damage to their ships and supplies. It delayed
the Spanish attack even further. This delay gave England the opportunity to secure its
coasts and make preparations for the attack.

Thus, when the Spanish army arrived they met with severe blows from their enemy and
had to retrieve.
The Early Stuart period, 1606 – 1660
James I (1603-1625)
His age is known as the Jacobean Age, and he is the first monarch of a new dynasty,
The Stuart Dynasty. There are going to be 4 monarchs in the line:
James I: 1603-1625
Charles I: 1625-1649
Charles II: 1660-1685
James II: 1685-1688
As can be seen, there are years (1649-1660) without a king. These are years without a
monarchy and will be seen in due course.
With James I we have a number of important points:
-Plantations in Ireland are completed, especially the one in Ulster, leaving
Catholics in the are in an extremely difficult situation.

-Colonies in America. The establishment of the first English colonies in America
takes place during his age.
-Peace with Spain. It was settled in 1604.
James I, (born June 19, 1566, Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland—died March 27,
1625, Theobalds, Hertfordshire, England), king of Scotland (as James VI) from 1567 to
1625 and first Stuart king of England from 1603 to 1625, who styled himself “king of
Great Britain.” James was a strong advocate of royal absolutism, and his conflicts with
an increasingly self-assertive Parliament set the stage for the rebellion against his
successor, Charles I.
James was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry
Stewart, Lord Darnley. Eight months after James’s birth his father died when his house
was destroyed by an explosion. After her third marriage, to James Hepburn, earl of
Bothwell, Mary was defeated by rebel Scottish lords and abdicated the throne. James,
one year old, became king of Scotland on July 24, 1567. Mary left the kingdom on May
16, 1568, and never saw her son again. During his minority James was surrounded by
a small band of the great Scottish lords, from whom emerged the four successive regents,
the earls of Moray, Lennox, Mar, and Morton. There did not exist in Scotland the great
gulf between rulers and ruled that separated the Tudors and their subjects in England.
For nine generations the Stuarts had in fact been merely the ruling family among

many equals, and James all his life retained a feeling for those of the great Scottish
lords who gained his confidence.
The young king was kept fairly isolated but was given a good education until the age of
14. He studied Greek, French, and Latin and made good use of a library of classical and
religious writings that his tutors, George Buchanan and Peter Young, assembled for him.
James’s education aroused in him literary ambitions rarely found in princes but which
also tended to make him a pedant.
Before James was 12, he had taken the government nominally into his own hands when
the earl of Morton was driven from the regency in 1578. For several years more, however,
James remained the puppet of contending intriguers and faction leaders. After falling
under the influence of the duke of Lennox, a Roman Catholic who schemed to win back

Scotland for the imprisoned Queen Mary, James was kidnapped by William Ruthven,
1st earl of Gowrie, in 1582 and was forced to denounce Lennox. The following year James
escaped from his Protestant captors and began to pursue his own policies as king. His
chief purposes were to escape from subservience to Scottish factions and to establish his
claim to succeed the childless Elizabeth I upon the throne of England. Realizing that more
was to be gained by cultivating Elizabeth’s goodwill than by allying himself with her
enemies, James in 1585–86 concluded an alliance with England. Thenceforward, in his
own unsteady fashion, he remained true to this policy, and even Elizabeth’s execution of
his mother in 1587 drew from him only formal protests.
In 1589 James was married to Anne, the daughter of Frederick II of Denmark, who in
1594 gave birth to their first son, Prince Henry. James’s rule of Scotland was basically
successful. He was able to play off Protestant and Roman Catholic factions of Scottish
nobles against each other, and, through a group of commissioners known as the Octavians
(1596–97), he was able to rule Scotland almost as absolutely as Elizabeth ruled
England. The king was a convinced Presbyterian, but in 1584 he secured a series of acts
that made him the head of the Presbyterian church in Scotland, with the power to
appoint the church’s bishops.
When James at length succeeded to the English throne on the death of Elizabeth I (March
24, 1603), he was already, as he told the English Parliament, “an old and experienced
king” and one with a clearly defined theory of royal government. Unfortunately, neither
his experience nor his theory equipped him to solve the new problems facing him, and he
lacked the qualities of mind and character to supply the deficiency. James hardly
understood the rights or the temper of the English Parliament, and he thus came into
conflict with it. He had little contact with the English middle classes, and he suffered
from the narrowness of his horizons. His 22-year-long reign over England was to prove
almost as unfortunate for the Stuart dynasty as his years before 1603 had been
fortunate.
There was admittedly much that was sensible in his policies, and the opening years of
his reign as king of Great Britain were a time of material prosperity for both England
and Scotland. For one thing, he established peace by speedily ending England’s war
with Spain in 1604. But the true test of his statesmanship lay in his handling of
Parliament, which was claiming ever-wider rights to criticize and shape public policy.
Moreover, Parliament’s established monopoly of granting taxes made its assent necessary
for the improvement of the crown’s finances, which had been seriously undermined by the
expense of the long war with Spain. James, who had so successfully divided and
corrupted Scottish assemblies, never mastered the subtler art of managing an English
Parliament. He kept few privy councillors in the House of Commons and thus allowed
independent members there to seize the initiative. Moreover, his lavish creations of new
peers and, later in his reign, his subservience to various recently ennobled favourites
loosened his hold upon the House of Lords. His fondness for lecturing both houses of

Parliament about his royal prerogatives offended them and drew forth such counterclaims
as the Apology of the Commons (1604). To parliamentary statesmen used to Tudor
dignity, James’s shambling gait, restless garrulity, and dribbling mouth ill befitted
his exalted claims to power and privilege.
When Parliament refused to grant him a special fund to pay for his extravagances,
James placed new customs duties on merchants without Parliament’s consent, thereby
threatening its control of governmental finance. Moreover, by getting the law courts to
proclaim these actions as law (1608) after Parliament had refused to enact them, James
struck at the houses’ legislative supremacy. In four years of peace, James practically
doubled the debt left by Elizabeth, and it was hardly surprising that when his chief
minister, Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, tried in 1610–11 to exchange the king’s feudal
revenues for a fixed annual sum from Parliament, the negotiations over this so-
called Great Contract came to nothing. James dissolved Parliament in 1611.
The abortive Great Contract, and the death of Cecil in 1612, marked the turning point of
James’s reign; he was never to have another chief minister who was so experienced and so
powerful. During the ensuing 10 years the king summoned only the brief Addled
Parliament of 1614. Deprived of parliamentary grants, the crown was forced to adopt
unpopular expedients, such as the sale of monopolies, to raise funds. Moreover, during these
years the king succumbed to the influence of the incompetent Robert Carr, earl of Somerset.
Carr was succeeded as the king’s favourite by George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, who

showed more ability as chief minister but who was even more hated for
his arrogance and his monopoly of royal favour.
In his later years the king’s judgment faltered. He embarked on a foreign policy that
fused discontent into a formidable opposition. The king felt a sympathy, which his
countrymen found inexplicable, for the Spanish ambassador, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña,
count of Gondomar. When Sir Walter Raleigh, who had gone to Guiana in search of gold,
came into conflict with the Spaniards, who were then at peace with England, Gondomar
persuaded James to have Raleigh beheaded. With Gondomar’s encouragement, James
developed a plan to marry his second son and heir Charles to a Spanish princess, along
with a concurrent plan to join with Spain in mediating the Thirty Years’ War in
Germany. The plan, though plausible in the abstract, showed an astonishing disregard
for English public opinion, which solidly supported James’s son-in-law, Frederick, the
Protestant elector of the Palatinate, whose lands were then occupied by Spain. When
James called a third Parliament in 1621 to raise funds for his designs, that body was
bitterly critical of his attempts to ally England with Spain. James in a fury tore the

record of the offending Protestations from the House of Commons’ journal and dissolved the
Parliament.
The duke of Buckingham had begun in enmity with Prince Charles, who became the heir
when his brother Prince Henry died in 1612, but in the course of time the two formed an
alliance from which the king was quite excluded. James was now aging rapidly, and in
the last 18 months of his reign he, in effect, exercised no power; Charles and Buckingham
decided most issues. James died at his favourite country residence, Theobalds, in
Hertfordshire.
Besides the political problems that he bequeathed to his son Charles, James left a body of
writings which, though of mediocre quality as literature, entitle him to a unique place
among English kings since the time of Alfred. Chief among these writings are two
political treatises, The True Lawe of Free Monarchies (1598) and Basilikon Doron (1599),
in which he expounded his own views on the divine
From 1625 to 1688
This is indeed a problematic period dominated very much by the civil wars that took place
in the middle of the century, the abolition for a time of the monarchy and the restoration of
the same after some time.
The basic dates to take into account are these:
- 1625-1649. These are the years that correspond to the reign of Charles I (James I’s
son), which finishes with the execution of the king

- Civil Wars: there were several conflicts in succession which covered the years 1642-
1651
- Commonwealth. 1653-1658 It is the period dominated by the figure of Oliver
Cromwell, who would personally rule the land until 1658
- Restoration. It comes in the year 1660. A new king comes to power: Charles II,
(Charles I’s son). He will rule between 1660 and 1685.
- The last Stuart: James II. He was Charles II’s brother and ruled between 1685
and 1688, when he was finally expelled from the country in an episode that is
known as The Glorious Revolution
Charles I was in many ways a despotic king, very little inclined to rule taking
parliament’s views and control into account. This very ‘personal’ way of ruling led him to
take a number of decisions (imposition of a new Prayer Book, war with Scotland, the
closure of Parliament etc.) which culminated in total confrontation between Crown and
Parliament. It took the form of a civil war between two sides known as ‘Cavaliers’

(supporters of the king) and ‘Roundheads’ (supporters of Parliament). The Roundheads,
who counted with the support of London’s merchant class and a very efficient army (new
model army) won the war and put the king on trial. This last fact, though, brought a
division between those in favor of executing the king and abolishing the monarchy and
those inclined to keep the king in power under strict control. This division sparked a
second and shorter war which was won by the most radical group. The leader of this
faction was one Oliver Cromwell who would end up creating what was known as a
Commonwealth under his very personal rule, and with very strong Puritan principles
guiding social and religious life. His government, especially in areas like Ireland, which
he attacked with ferocity given the support that Irish Catholics had given to the crown
during the war, would be remembered as very cruel. When Cromwell died in 1658, the
continuity of his son Richard was seen as impossible and the monarchy was restored in
the figure of Charles II.
The Restoration was a period of excess in many ways, radically new, and very much
opposed in terms of life (at least aristocratic life) to what had been life under the rule of
Oliver Cromwell. Yet, there were ‘lights’ like the creation of the Royal Society or
architectural improvements in London after the Great Fire (1666). By far the greatest
problem was the succession since the king had no legitimate heirs. When he died, therefore,
the crown went to his brother James, a declared catholic and supporter of Irish Catholics
who, in turn, also supported him. Given this situation and the opposition of Parliament,
the latter decided to hand power to his daughter, Mary, married to William of Orange,

king of Holland. James II left the country, becoming an exile in France, and the country
found itself with joint monarchs, William and Mary.
Charles I
Charles I was born in Fife on 19 November 1600, the second son of James VI of Scotland
and Anne of Denmark. On the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 James became king of
England and Ireland. Charles's popular older brother Henry, whom he adored, died in
1612 leaving Charles as heir, and in 1625 he became king. Three months after his
accession he married Henrietta Maria of France. They had a happy marriage and left
five surviving children.
Charles's reign began with an unpopular friendship with George Villiers, Duke of

Buckingham, who used his influence against the wishes of other nobility. Buckingham
was assassinated in 1628. There was ongoing tension with parliament over money -
made worse by the costs of war abroad. In addition, Charles favoured a High Anglican
form of worship, and his wife was Catholic - both made many of his subjects suspicious,
particularly the Puritans. Charles dissolved parliament three times between 1625 and
1629. In 1629, he dismissed parliament and resolved to rule alone. This forced him to
raise revenue by non-parliamentary means which made him increasingly unpopular.
At the same time, there was a crackdown on Puritans and Catholics and many
emigrated to the American colonies.
Unrest in Scotland - because Charles attempted to force a new prayer book on the country
- put an end to his personal rule. He was forced to call parliament to obtain funds to fight
the Scots. In November 1641, tensions were raised even further with disagreements over
who should command an army to suppress an uprising in Ireland. Charles attempted to
have five members of parliament arrested and in August 1642, raised the royal
standard at Nottingham. Civil war began.
The Royalists were defeated in 1645-1646 by a combination of parliament's alliance with
the Scots and the formation of the New Model Army. In 1646, Charles surrendered to the
Scots, who handed him over to parliament. He escaped to the Isle of Wight in 1647 and
encouraged discontented Scots to invade. This 'Second Civil War' was over within a year
with another royalist defeat by Parliamentarian general Oliver Cromwell. Convinced
that there would never be peace while the king lived, a rump of radical MPs, including
Cromwell, put him on trial for treason. He was found guilty and executed on 30 January
1649 outside the Banqueting House on Whitehall, London.
English Civil Wars
English Civil Wars, also called Great Rebellion, (1642–51), fighting that took place in
the British Isles between supporters of the monarchy of Charles I (and his son and
successor, Charles II) and opposing groups in each of Charles’s kingdoms, including
Parliamentarians in England, Covenanters in Scotland, and Confederates in Ireland.
The English Civil Wars are traditionally considered to have begun in England
in August 1642, when Charles I raised an army against the wishes of Parliament,
ostensibly to deal with a rebellion in Ireland. But the period of conflict actually began
earlier in Scotland, with the Bishops’ Wars of 1639–40, and in Ireland, with the Ulster
rebellion of 1641. Throughout the 1640s, war between king and Parliament ravaged
England, but it also struck all of the kingdoms held by the house of Stuart—and, in
addition to war between the various British and Irish dominions, there was civil war
within each of the Stuart states. For this reason, the English Civil Wars might more
properly be called the British Civil Wars or the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The wars
finally ended in 1651 with the flight of Charles II to France and, with him, the hopes of
the British monarchy.

Oliver Cromwell
The summer of 1642 saw the outbreak of the first English Civil War between the Royalists,
the supporters of King Charles I who claimed that the King should have absolute power as
his divine right as king, and the Parliamentarians who favoured a constitutional
monarchy and later the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords completely.
Colloquially, Royalists were also called Cavaliers in reference to the Latin caballarius,
meaning horseman and in Henry IV, Part 2 Shakespeare used the word to describe a
haughty member of the gentry. Parliamentarians were referred to as ‘roundheads’
because many Puritan men wore their hair cropped in what would today be described as
a ‘bowl cut’ in contrast to the long ringlets favoured by their royalist counterparts as
dictated by courtly fashion of the day. Both names were used derisively by their
opponents.
From the very beginning Cromwell was a committed member of the parliamentary army.
He was swiftly promoted to second in command as lieutenant-general of the Eastern
Association army, parliament’s largest and most effective regional army, followed by a
further promotion to second in command of the newly formed main parliamentary army,
the New Model Army in 1645.
When Civil War once again flared up in 1648 Cromwell’s military successes meant that
his political influence had greatly increased. December 1648 saw a split between those
MPs who wished to continue to support the King and those such as Cromwell (known as

the ‘rump parliament’) who felt that the only way to bring a halt to the civil wars was
through Charles’ trial and execution. Indeed Cromwell was the third of 59 MPs to sign
Charles’ death warrant.
Following the King’s execution in 1649, The Commonwealth of England was introduced
and lead by a Council of State to replace the monarchy. Cromwell led the English
military campaigns to establish control of Ireland in 1649 and later Scotland in 1650.
This resulted in the end of the Civil War with a Parliamentary victory at the Battle of
Worcester on 3 September 1651 and the introduction of the Commonwealth of England,
Scotland and Ireland. Cromwell was appointment to Lord General, effectively commander
in chief, of the parliamentary armed forces in 1650.
In December 1653, Cromwell became Lord Protector, a role in which he remained until his
death five years later. Whilst he later rejected Parliament’s offer of the crown, preferring
to describe himself as a ‘constable or watchman’ of the Commonwealth, Cromwell’s role as
the first Lord Protector was akin to that of a monarch involving “the chief magistracy and
the administration of government”. However, the Instrument of Government constitution

decreed that he must receive a majority vote from the Council of State should he wish to call
or dissolve a parliament, thus establishing the precedent that an English monarch
cannot govern without Parliament’s consent, which is still upheld today.
On Friday 3rd 1658, he died. Following Cromwell’s death his son Richard succeeded him
to become Lord Protector. However, Richard lacked the political and military power of his
father and his forced resignation in May 1659 effectively ended the Protectorate. The lack
of a clear Commonwealth leadership lead to the restoration of Parliament and the
monarchy in 1660 under Charles II.
The reign of Charles II and the Restoration

Some commentators have called Charles’ reign the worst in English history. That’s too
harsh a judgment on a man who kept the royal show on the road when kings before and
after him so spectacularly derailed. He at least survived the stage traps of religion and
power struggles with Parliament. And he gave us a dazzling interlude whose fruits can
still be enjoyed today.
Both Charles’ grandfather James I (VI of Scotland) and father Charles I had displayed
overconfident contempt for Parliament. Charles I, of course, lost his head in 1649 following
the bitter civil war. Charles junior, born May 29, 1630, and just 12 years old when the
Roundhead-Cavalier skirmishes kicked off, took part in the fighting. He was in exile in
Holland when news came through that his father had been executed; he rushed sobbing to
his chamber.

In an age when most people still believed that kings ruled by Divine Right, this regicide
was shocking. Glimpse, though, the mettle of the new claimant to the throne: Charles set
about engineering his return, throwing in his lot with the Scots who crowned him king
in 1651. The price of the deal was that Charles swore to uphold the Scottish Covenant and
impose the Presbyterian faith on his other two kingdoms, England and Ireland. It was a
disingenuous deal that would never have worked, but Charles, devious and pragmatic,
was biding his time.
Meanwhile, in England, Oliver Cromwell and his Parliament had abolished the
monarchy. Charles marched south with an army and was soundly defeated at Worcester,
September 3, 1651—visit the city’s Commandery, the former Royalist HQ, for a stirring
account of the route. Drop into Boscobel House in Shropshire, too, where the Catholic Penderel
family concealed Charles during his flight. As Parliamentarian troops scoured the
countryside he famously hid up an oak tree before escaping into exile: All part of the
romantic aura that would surround his return.
While the Commonwealth government of the interregnum (1649-60) stamped its

Puritanical weight on England, Charles combined happy-go-lucky philandering in
Europe with continuing resolve to claim his crown. Towering well over 6 feet tall, with
dark curly hair, he cut a striking figure, and his familiarity—his “common touch”—
endeared him to all he met. By 1649 he had already sired James, future Duke of
Monmouth, by one of his mistresses: He would have at least 16 illegitimate children by
eight different lovers, unfortunately, none of them his Queen, Katherine of Braganza,
whom he married in 1662.
When Cromwell died in 1658 and his son Richard proved unequal to taking over,
England was ready to give royalty another try. Charles entered London on his 30th
birthday in May 1660 amid joyous scenes. What did people expect? Release from 11 years
of Puritan austerity, a return perhaps to partying, to sports and theatre that had been
proscribed. The Merry Monarch did not disappoint.
Charles’ passion for science translated into the patronage of the Royal Observatory at
Greenwich under the first astronomer-royal, John Flamsteed. He also set up the Royal
Society in London in 1660 with a view to “improving Natural Knowledge.” Isaac Newton
formulated his theories on gravity; Robert Boyle steered modern chemistry out of ancient
alchemy; Richard Lower performed the first blood transfusion between animals and
Edmund Halley correctly predicted the return of the comet that bears his name. It was the
birth of a scientific reformation.

After plague and then fire ravaged London 1665-6, Charles appointed Sir Christopher
Wren as “Surveyor-General and Principal Architect for rebuilding the whole city.” Can
you imagine the capital today without the magnificent St Paul’s Cathedral? Admire, too,
Chelsea Hospital and other highlights of the age, like Wren’s sublime Sheldonian Theatre,
Oxford.
However, the Restoration was not all rave reviews. Religious conflicts unleashed by the
Reformation, and the Tudor oscillations between Roman Catholic and Anglican rule, had
never been resolved. Relations between king and parliament also remained uneasy. By
the Declaration of Breda 1660, laying out the terms of restoration, Charles had pledged to
uphold the Anglican Church but allow religious tolerance. Yet many in Parliament were

distinctly intolerant, and that served only to push him back toward Catholic sympathies
nourished on the Continent. His mother, wife, favourite sister, and brother James were all
acknowledged Catholics; there were rumours that Charles had secretly converted, too.
Parliament feared—increasingly as the royal marriage failed to produce an heir—that a
Catholic might yet bag the throne. Matters came to a head when Charles was forced to
agree to a Test Act (1673) excluding all Roman Catholics from public office. Three times
between 1679 and 1681 he thwarted Parliament in attempts to pass an Exclusion Bill
that would debar his brother from the Crown: Charles’ habit of dissolving Parliaments
unsatisfactory to his wishes brought back unhappy memories of his father.
Religious tensions were further inflamed by the hoax Popish Plot (1678) that warned of
an imminent Catholic rebellion to put James on the throne, and the real Rye House Plot
(1683) to murder Charles and crown his illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth. Over 35
Catholics were executed on trumped-up charges during the first frenzy, and the notorious
Judge Jeffreys ruthlessly carried out Charles’ revenge on conspirators and other royal
enemies following the second.
Behind the scenes Charles had been striking covert deals with England’s old enemy,
France: In return for much-needed money that Parliament failed to provide him, he had
agreed to openly declare himself Catholic and, using force if required, impose his will on
his country—all at some unspecified future point. France helped finance Charles’ wars
with the Dutch in an ongoing battle for maritime and trade supremacy. Two treaties had
concluded the financial arrangement: A secret one and another that was shown to
Parliament’s Protestant ministers, the latter omitting all reference to Charles’ conversion.
Had the duplicity leaked out, civil war would have ensued. Ever the consummate actor, the
King successfully dissembled. But was the puppet master Stuart or French?
When things went wrong, Charles made scapegoats of his ministers. His mentor, the Earl
of Clarendon, took the blame for the unpopular Dutch war; the King also deceived and used
his five advisers known as the Cabal. It was Clarendon’s son, Laurence, First Lord of the
Treasury, who nicknamed Charles the Merry Monarch. He also quipped, “He never said a
foolish thing and never did a wise one.” The King delivered a double-edged riposte, “My
words are my own, and my actions are those of my ministers.”
There was, however, one admirable headline from Parliamentary entanglements: The
1679 Act of Habeas Corpus, protecting the individual’s freedom from unlawful
imprisonment—one of the country’s most significant pieces of legislation. It was rumoured
at the time that it only succeeded because lords in the Upper House amused themselves by
counting an exceedingly corpulent member as 10.
Charles II succumbed to a stroke, February 6, 1685, aged 54. He died in the Roman
Catholic faith. Although he had failed to beget a legitimate heir, he left a near-absolute,
solvent monarchy. England was enjoying peace while other European countries were at

war; her seamen were building an Empire; the arts and sciences were in robust health.
The criticisms remain that Charles was unprincipled, prepared to sell his country and
his religion to the French; he ducked and dived.
But consider the alternatives: His father Charles I’s haughty principles set him on a
collision course with Parliament. Charles II’s successor, Catholic James II, equally
arrogant, would be ousted in the Glorious Revolution. Stuart encores to regain the throne
would fail in two Jacobite Rebellions. Old Rowley alone kept extremist factions around
him at bay, and throughout his reign retained his popular, common touch. To this day the
image of the Merry Monarch plays well to the gallery. He was neither a good nor an
excessively bad king. The real question is—would the monarchy have survived had a
different Stuart been restored to the throne?


Wuolah Free TODOS LOS APUNTES DE CULTURA

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Wuolah Free TODOS LOS APUNTES DE CULTURA

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

TODOS-LOS-APUNTES-DE-CULTURA-.

Cultura de las Islas Británicas

2º Grado en Estudios Ingleses

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Reservados todos los derechos.

• There are over 6,000 isles in the British Isles.

Reservados todos los derechos.

The formation of the British Isles

The climate in the British Isles

28,000-10,000 BC: Upper Paleolithic

Reservados todos los derechos.

8,000-4,300 Bc: the Maglemosians

4,300-3,700 BC: Early Neolithic

3,700-3,200 BC: Middle Neolithic

Llévate 1 año de WUOLAH PRO con BBVA. ¿Cómo? ¡+Info aquí!

Reservados todos los derechos.

2400 BC: Expansion of Bronze Age culture

Llévate 1 año de WUOLAH PRO con BBVA. ¿Cómo? ¡+Info aquí!

• Arrival of Beaker People

Reservados todos los derechos.

1,000 BC: change.

Llévate 1 año de WUOLAH PRO con BBVA. ¿Cómo? ¡+Info aquí!

• (+/- 700 BC- 400 BC)

Reservados todos los derechos.

Celtic tribes in the British Isles

o The Cymric or Britannic

Religion and Culture

Reservados todos los derechos.

Llévate 1 año de WUOLAH PRO con BBVA. ¿Cómo? ¡+Info aquí!

The conquest begins

Reservados todos los derechos.

1) 43 – 122 AD - The road to conquest

• Britannia had an administrational center capital known as Londinium

Llévate 1 año de WUOLAH PRO con BBVA. ¿Cómo? ¡+Info aquí!

Reservados todos los derechos.

Llévate 1 año de WUOLAH PRO con BBVA. ¿Cómo? ¡+Info aquí!

Reservados todos los derechos.

3) 367 – 410 AD (approximately)

The Roman Empire splits up

Reservados todos los derechos.

Gildas the first British Historian

The Anglo Saxons settlement.

• There is no unity but tension.

Llévate 1 año de WUOLAH PRO con BBVA. ¿Cómo? ¡+Info aquí!

The social structure of the Seven Kingdoms

• Divided into eorla (earls, noblemen) and ceorla (churls, commoners)

Reservados todos los derechos.

The return of Christianity and Christian book culture

• From two directions

o Rome: The Church survived the end of the Roman Empire.

Llévate 1 año de WUOLAH PRO con BBVA. ¿Cómo? ¡+Info aquí!

The return of the heathen

• Rise of King Alfred of Wessex

• Victories over Vikings

Reservados todos los derechos.

Llévate 1 año de WUOLAH PRO con BBVA. ¿Cómo? ¡+Info aquí!

• Their place of origin is placed in the coast of Norway.

Reservados todos los derechos.

Not just pirates

The Viking ship

o In cultural terms, Alfred started the Anglo-Saxon chronicle

Reservados todos los derechos.