The medieval period in Britain (1066-1485).

In 1066, England was again facing invasion from the north and the south. In September, King Harold II marched north to defeat his half-brother, the king of Norway, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Just three weeks later, he himself was defeated and killed at Hastings by another invader of Viking origin, William Duke of Normandy (1027-1087), from northern France.

The Duke of Normandy, known as William the Conqueror, now became king of England establishing a new Anglo-Norman state. He gave lands to his Norman followers and imposed feudalism. England became a strong, centralised country under military rule. Sporadic resistance in the rest of the country was then crushed with the help of advanced military technology including moats and stone castles. Castles appeared all over England to enforce Norman rule. England has never been invaded since 1066. William was a harsh ruler: he destroyed many villages to make sure the English people did not rebel. The Normans’ power was absolute and the language of the new rulers, Norman-French, has had a lasting effect on English. After the Norman conquest Anglo-Saxon elements of English culture survived primarily among the lower classes, while French and Latin elements predominated in aristocratic circles. The animals tended by herders, for example, had Anglo-Saxon names (cow, lamb, pig) while the finished products served up on aristocratic tables had names derived from French (beef, mutton, pork).

William enforced the king’s right to levy taxes, to administer justice and to require military service of his subjects. He ordered a survey of the land and the people to be carried out. All the information was put into a book called The Doomsday Book. By means of it William’s government knew exactly where everyone lived and how much property they owned. Thus, for the first time in the history of England it was possible to collect the right taxes for the king.

Henry II (1154-1189) was the first unquestioned ruler of the English throne for a hundred years. His empire stretched from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees. He had a genius for government and put much effort to restore royal authority. He went down into history as an attractive figure who established the supremacy of common law under royal control.

Richard I became King of England after his father’s (Henry II’s) death. He was a military adventurer. He was a man of excellent manners, kind to his friends and cruel and merciless to his enemies. He was famous for his good education; he knew Latin and was fond of music and poetry. He was one of England’s most popular kings, although he spent hardly any time in England. He spent only two short spells in the country, one of three months and one of two months. He left for the Holy Land and fought Muslims with skill, courage and honour, making on the way conquests in Sicily, Cyprus and Palestine. Returning to Europe he was shipwrecked and was captured by the Duke of Austria, with whom he had quarreled in Jerusalem. England had to pay for his crusades and later a large ransom to Germany. He was killed defending his possessions in France in 1199. As he was childless he was succeeded by his brother John (1199-1216).

John was a very unpopular king, his people thought him to be notoriously cruel, suspicious, untrustworthy, violent, calculating, greedy and insensitive. In his reign John was faced with three main problems: with the increasing power of the English nobility, with the difficulty in defending English possessions in France and with the serious growth of the powers of the Church.

In 1215 the richest and most powerful sections of English society — the aristocracy, the Church and the merchants — formed a coalition against the king and forced the king to sign a new agreement known as Magna Carta, or the Great Charter — an important symbol of political freedom, the cornerstone of English liberties. King John agreed to consult a representative council of aristocracy. John signed the document with a smile but when he got home he was mad with fury, as the document seriously limited royal power, obliged even king himself to come under the law, extended immunity of the nobles and freemen, guaranteed security of their possessions, guaranteed justice and good government.

Henry III (1216-1272) caused dissatisfaction among nobles. Under the leadership of Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester, Henry’s brother-in-law, they elected a council, called “parliament”, a French word meaning a “discussion meeting”. The parliament represented each borough and county of England.

Edward I (1272-1307), the son and successor of King Henry III, might be regarded as a pattern of the medieval king. He is remembered for his talent for leadership, his fearlessness and energy, and his vision. He undertook successful military expeditions to Wales, Scotland and France, reformed royal government, defining royal and noble rights, created a “representative institution” (the House of Commons) and developed the common law. He conquered Wales and his new-born son was proclaimed Prince of Wales. Since then the eldest son of the English king or queen has always been given the title “The Prince of Wales”.

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, England and France were almost one country because many aristocrats owned land on both sides of the Channel while the king divided his time between both. However, following a number of wars England separated from France. The first half of the 14^th century the king of England was Edward III. He was a powerful king, and he wanted to become King of France as well, because some of the French provinces, such as Normandy had once belonged to England and others had been the property of Edward’s mother, a French princess. Edward III declared war on France in 1337. This war is now called the Hundred Years’ Warbecause it lasted over a hundred years. The war was marked by victories and defeats that brought about the loss or recovery of territories in France.

The Anglo-Normans had ambitions to conquer Scotland but despite numerous attempts they were unsuccessful. The Battle of Bannockburn (1314) marked the high point in Scottish resistance to English aggression.

The ruin of France and the famine that followed caused an epidemic of the plague. It was so infectious that there was no escape from it. People died within twenty-four hours. From France the epidemic was brought over to England. The English soldiers called it the Black Death. By the year 1348 one-third of England’s population had perished.

In 1415 the English defeated the French at the battle of Agincourt and won back Normandy, but the French led by the charismatic French patriot Joan of Arc, counterattacked. The Hundred Years’ War, in which England lost practically all its lands in France, ended in 1453, but was no peace in the country. Long before the end of this war, a feudal struggle had broken out between the descendants of Edward III. The interests of the House of Lancaster supported by the big barons collided with the interests of the lesser barons and merchants of the towns, who supported the House of York. The Lancasters had a red rose in their coat of arms and the Yorkists had a white rose. That’s why the war between them got the name of the War of the Roses.Thewar lasted for thirty years (1455-1485). It was a dark time for England, a time of anarchy. The War of the Roses 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. A year later, in 1486, he married Princess Elizabeth of York. This marriage was of great political importance. It meant the union of the red rose of the House of Lancaster with the white rose of the House of York.

Like France, English society adopted the feudal system and there was strict distinction between social classes. The most powerful individual in the country was the king. He owned most of the land, was the leader of the army and could demand that the people pay him taxes. He made the laws with the help of advisers, and lived in a castle with his closest followers, who made up the court. Barons and lords were members of the aristocracy who were given land by the king. They had almost absolute power in their territories. Knights, merchants and yeomen made up the middle classes. The knights were soldiers who fought for the lords and the king and were often rewarded with land. The merchants were Britain’s first businessmen and usually lived in towns. The yeomen were farmers who owned small pieces of land. The majority of the population were villeins or serfs, who were given a small piece of land to work by a lord, but they did not own it. In return they had to give most of what they produced to their lord and do any job he asked them to do. One tenth of the population were slaves. Unlike villeins or serfs they had no land work and were owned by the lord, who used them as he wished.

Apart from the king and the nobles, the greatest power in England in the Middle Ages was the Church. In the eleventh century the king controlled the Church and appointed all the bishops, but in the following centuries the Pope in Rome gradually increased his influence and took over the appointment of Church leaders. This led to conflict between Church and State. This conflict is best exemplified by the relationship between Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and King Henry II. The king and the Archbishop clashed over where people should be tried - ecclesiastical or civil courts. Thomas refused to give in and was murdered by Henry’s knights in Canterbury Cathedral (1170).

Although the vast majority of the population could neither read nor write, the Middle Ages saw the

beginning of an educational system in England, monasteries were the leading centres of culture, and the Church was the first institution to set up schools, beginning in the eleventh century. The first lay schools were opened by merchants in the towns some four centuries later. Oxford and Cambridge universities were established as early as the thirteenth century.

In modern terms, England in the Middle Ages was a developing country when compared to more economically advanced parts of Europe like Italy and Flanders. English merchants fostered trade, especially in wool and textiles, tended to live in towns. London, owing to its strategic position in the south of the country, became a busy trading centre.

Many of the Anglo-Saxon laws were still applied throughout the Middle Ages. For example, victims of crime were paid damages by offenders. The Normans, however, added their own laws and the new system became known as Common Law.Under Common Law, a new case was compared to similar cases in the past and the judge then decided what to do in the new case. This system is still in operation in Britain today.

Life was very hard. In the Middle Ages over ninety-five percent of the population lived in the country or in small villages. People lived off the produce of the land and, as the population increased, there was sometimes not enough food for everybody. The average diet was very poor and people rarely ate fruit or vegetables because fruit was thought to be dangerous to health and vegetables were used only to season meat and soups. The resulting lack of vitamins meant that disease was widespread.

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The Anglo-Saxon period.	\|	The century of the Tudors (1485-1625).

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