AN OUTLINE OF MEDIEVAL BRITISH HISTORY
The formative centuries, 1066 – 1500s.
4.1.1 The Norman Conquest began the new era in the history of GB, the era of feudalism. On October 14, 1066 the decisive battle between the Anglo-Saxons and the invading Normans took place at Hastings. Though the Anglo-Saxon army fought bravely it was defeated and King Harold was killed. Thus, 1066 is the official date of the establishment of the Norman rule over England. December 25, 1066 is the date of William the Conqueror’s coronation. This conquest opens up the period of final establishment of feudalism in England. 20 years after the conquest in 1086 William ordered a record, or register of all land-holdings to be made. The Saxons called the register the Doomsday Book.
4.1.2 The Norman invaders brought their language with them too. They spoke a Norman dialect of French and it became the tongue of the court circles, administration, and the official language of the state. Latin was the language of the church, law and learning. The wealthy Anglo-Saxons copied their superiors and also learned to speak French. However, the common people, the peasantry and the inhabitants of towns, continued to speak Anglo-Saxon.
4.1.3 In the 12th century a new dynasty was established when Henry II (1154-89) became king of England. He came from France and he was called Henry Plantagenet. To his new English possessions he soon added some Scotch territory, established his lordship over Wales and made “conquests” in Ireland. He removed most of the old sheriffs and replaced them by appointees of his own who were better tax collectors. Henry II was succeeded by Richard the Lionhearted, who loved adventure and conflict and typified the chivalry of the time. On Richard’s death John, (who had the nickname of Lack Land) became the king (1199-1216).
4.1.4 John was unwise enough to make an attack on the church over the filling of the vacant seat of Archbishop of Canterbury at the time when Pope Innocent III was in power. He with the help of powerful barons made John on June 15, 1215 at a field called Runnymede by the river Thames sign the programme of demands expressed by the barons in a document known as Magna Carta or Great Charter. This document provided the church and the barons with their old rights and liberties. The document also established that the king may not collect any taxes (except the feudal taxes), save with the consent of his royal council, which slowly developed into a parliament. Fifty years later, in 1265, Simon de Monfortsummoned the first elected Parliament. Some time later, Parliament was separated into two Houses: one including the nobility and higher clergy, the other including the knights and burgesses, and no law could be made, nor any tax levied, without the consent of both Houses as well as of the Sovereign.
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Wars and conflicts.
4.2.1. Medieval times saw bitter clashes between England and Scotland. Scottish history knows many names of the patriots of the country, one of whom was William Wallace (c. 1270–1305). He led an army against the English forces of King Edward I, who had occupied Scotland, and defeated them in 1297. The following year Wallace was himself defeated, and was later captured and hanged. The film Braveheart (1995) was made about his life. The King of Scotland Robert the Bruce (1274–1329) joined William Wallace in trying to take power from the English in Scotland, but was defeated several times by the army of King Edward I. He finally defeated the English, and England recognized Scotland as an independent country.
4.2.2. There is a popular story about how Robert the Bruce, when he was hiding in a cave from the English, watched a spider repeatedly trying to attach its web to a rock until it finally succeeded. This made him determined to keep trying to defeat the English.
4.2.3. In 1348 an epidemic of the plague that was called the Black Death was brought to England from France. People died within 24 hours, soon one-third of England’s population had perished. Position of common people was very difficult that time as far as the country didn’t have enough laborers to work on the lords’ fields and their work was paid very little. In 1381 peasants revolted. Sixty thousand people from Essex and Kent marched to London led by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. They wanted to see the king. The king promised to fulfill their demands, but didn’t keep his promise. Wat Tyler was murdered and the rebellion was suppressed.
4.2.4. England lost practically all its lands in France during the Hundred Years' War, which ended in 1453. Yet there was no peace in the country. Long before the end of this war, a feudal struggle had broken out. During the Hundred Years' War some of the barons, who were professional soldiers, built castles with high walls and kept private armies of thousands of men. They thought more about their "family politics" than about national politics and were a real threat to the king's power. Realizing the danger which these big barons represented to the Crown, Edward III tried to marry his sons to their daughters. But that did not help to strengthen the position of the reigning House. The feudal struggle grew into an open war – the War of the Roses which ended with the battle of Bosworth in 1485. King Richard III of the House of York was killed in the battle, and, right in the field, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, was proclaimed King of England.
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Tudor England.
4.3.1. Henry Tudor was very important in establishing the new monarchy. He had the same ideas and opinions as the growing classes of merchants and gentry, and he based royal power on good relations with these classes. His son Henry VIII was quite unlike his father. As a young man Henry was known for his love of hunting, sport and music, but he did not rule well and the country was in a weak and uncertain state when he died. He was cruel and wasteful with money. He spent so much on maintaining a rich court and on wars, that his father's carefully saved money was soon gone. Hewanted to have an important influence on European politics.
4.3.2. Henry disliked power of the Church in England: it was an international organization, so he could not completely control it. The power of the Catholic Church in England could work against Henry's authority. Besides, Henry had another reason for opposing to the authority of the Church. Henry had married Catherine of Aragon. But by 1526 she had still not had a son who could be the heir to the throne after Henry's death. Henry asked the Pope to allow him to divorce Catherine. The Pope forbade Henry's divorce.
4.3.3. In 1531 the Church of England was established in the country, and this became law after Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy. Now Henry was free to divorce Catherine and marry his new love, Anne Boleyn. In fact, this marriage ended the life of Henry Tudor's great contemporary, Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) who was an English politician, author and scholar. He had become a friend of the King, who first employed him as a representative in foreign countries. Thomas More became a member of the Privy Council, and was made a knight. In 1529 he became Lord Chancellor. However, More refused to accept the Act of Supremacy. For this he was put in prison and then executed. Thomas More was also the author of Utopia, in which he described his ideas of a perfect society. It was very successful all over Europe.
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4.3.4. Henry's break with Rome was purely political. He simply wanted to control the Church and to keep its wealth in his own kingdom. He did not approve of the new ideas of Reformation Protestantism introduced by Martin Luther in Germany and John Calvin in Geneva. He still believed in the Catholic faith. But when he broke with Rome, he wanted to make the break legal. Between 1532 and 1536 Parliament passed several Acts, by which England officially became a Protestant country, even though the popular religion was still Catholic.
The age of Elizabeth.
4.4.1. What happened next is a sad and sordid tale of political intrigue and machination. When Henry died, his nine year old son inherited the throne. From 1553, under the reign of Henry's Roman Catholic daughter, Mary I, the Reformation legislation was repealed and England once again was turned into a Roman Catholic state. She married the King of Spain. Mary had 283 Protestants burnt at the stake for heresy, which is more than twice as many people executed for heresy in the previous 150 years. This resulted in the Queen becoming known as 'Bloody Mary'.
4.4.2. Mary died childless and her half-sister Elizabeth inherited the throne in 1558. Elizabeth I wanted to find a peaceful answer to the problems of the English Reformation. She wanted to bring together again parts of English society which were in disagreement. The struggle between Catholics and Protestants continued to endanger Elizabeth's position for the next thirty years. There was a special danger from those Catholic nobles in England who wished to remove Elizabeth and replace her with the queen of Scotland, who was a Catholic.
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Mary, the Scottish queen, usually called Queen of Scots, was the heir to the English throne because she was Elizabeth's closest living relative, as Elizabeth had no children. Mary quarreled with some of her nobles and had to escape to England, where Elizabeth kept her as a prisoner for almost twenty years. During that time Elizabeth discovered several secret Catholic plots aimed at making Mary queen of England. Finally Elizabeth agreed to Mary's execution in 1587.
4.4.3. Yet Elizabeth's reputation is incredibly high in her home country. Her reign – the Elizabethan era – is always associated with the English Renaissance, though the latter covers a period both before and after Elizabeth's reign. In fact, the Renaissance starts with book printing that was begun by William Caxton in 1476.
Anyway, it was during Elizabeth's reign that Shakespeare lived and worked, along with many other great Renaissance figures like Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser and Christopher Marlow. By the way, England abolished its astrologers and alchemists at that time, so it came closer to reaching modern science with the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the modern scientific method of data analysis.
4.4.4. When Elizabeth died, one of the great epochs of English history ended. Her 45-year rule decisively shaped the future of England as a stable monarchy governed through the cooperation of crown and local elites. The Protestant religion was firmly established as England’s faith, and though religious conflict was to be a serious problem for another century, it was within the context of the Elizabethan church settlement that the battles were fought. The defeat of the Spanish Armada was a cause for national celebration, and “Glorious ’88” was spoken of generations later when Elizabeth’s birthday was still celebrated as a national holiday. The defeat of Spain established the glory of the English navy and inspired merchants and explorers toward colonization of a wider world.
LECTURE 05
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