The timeline of Britain

Neolithic, Bronze & Iron Ages: 8300 BC – 42 AD

‘Britain’ itself did not exist until around 6500 BC, when the English Channel formed, thus separating Britain from the rest of Europe. The first settlers here were hunter-gatherers, who spent much of their lives travelling in search of food. Around 750 BC iron was introduced into Britain, which led the way for the production of sophisticated and durable tools and weapons.

Roman Britain: 43 – 1065 AD

In 43 AD the Roman army crossed the Channel and defeated quickly any resistance from local tribes. The Romans founded Londinium (London) and built military roads throughout the country. Within ten years, Roman rule had reached far into the territories of England and Wales. The Roman way of life continued in Britain until the 5th century, after which Britons were left more or less to fend for themselves.

Anglo-Normans & Middle Ages: 1066 –1347

In 1066 Duke William of Normandy invaded Britain and famously defeated King Harold of England, who, legend has it, was shot with an arrow through the eye during the Battle of Hastings. William of Normandy went on to rule England and Scotland, radically changing the class system and changing the official language to French. In 1216, Henry III was crowned king, but was unpopular throughout his rule.

Late Medieval: 1348 – 1484

The bubonic plague – or Black Death – reached England in 1348 and spread to Wales and Scotland quickly, killing up to a third of the population by the end of 1350. The plague persistently re-emerged in Britain until the 17th century, severely affecting the country's economic balance. In order to combat the devastating effects of the plague, the ruling classes attempted to restore economic stability through parliamentary legislation.

Tudors Stuarts: 1485 – 1713

In 1485, Henry Tudor invaded England and defeated Richard III to assume sovereignty. He went on to marry Elizabeth of York – daughter of Edward IV. In 1603 Elizabeth I – the Virgin Queen – died. With Elizabeth leaving no successor, James VI, King of Scots (son of Mary, Queen of Scots), succeeded as James I, King of England, effectively making him the first King of Great Britain.

Georgians: 1714 - 1836

After the death of Queen Anne, George I became king, whose reign saw the development of the function of prime minister. Although the term ‘prime minister’ was not used at the time, Sir Robert Walpole assumed the role typical of a prime minister thanks to his successes in developing economic growth for the country.

Victorians: 1837 - 1900

Victoria – the longest reigning British monarch – became Queen in 1837, aged just eighteen. During her reign, she introduced a number of constitutional changes and the spirit of these changes led to the publishing of the people's charter, which laid out six demands including universal manhood suffrage and annual parliamentary elections. The charter was continually rejected in parliament, but today five out of the six original demands are firm parts of the British constitution.

Early 20th Century: 1901 - 1944

The early twentieth century saw advances in science and technology that were unimaginable in previous eras. Among the ground-breaking achievements of this period were: the invention of the television by the EMI-Marconi Corporation; and subsequent founding of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC); the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming; and insights into the structure of the atom, which led to the development of nuclear weapons and energy.

Post World War II: 1945 - 2012

In 1945 the Labour Party won their first general election, going on to form the National Health Service, which many regard as Labour’s greatest achievement. Post-war rationing continued, but the era was marked by public enthusiasm and hope for the future. Since then, Britain has faced a number of economic crises, but survives today as one of the world’s leading trade and financial centres, with advanced public services and a thriving economy.

AN OUTLINE OF BRITAIN’S HISTORY

Pre-Roman Britain

Though the scribes that accompanied the Roman invaders of Britain gave us the first written history of the land that came to be known as England, its history had already been writ large in its ancient monuments and archeological findings. Present-day Britain is riddled with evidence of its long past, of the past that the Roman writers did not record, but which is etched in the landscape. Looking out on the green and cultivated land, where it is not disfigured by the inevitable cities and towns and villages of later civilizations one can see what seem to be anomalies on the hillsides -- strange bumps and mounds; remains of terraced or plowed fields; irregular slopes that bespeak ancient hill forts; strangely carved designs in the chalk; jagged teeth of upstanding megaliths; stone circles of immense breadth and height and ancient, mysterious wells and springs.

Man lived in what we now call the British Isles long before it broke away from the continent of Europe, long before the great seas covered the land bridge that is now known as the English Channel, that body of water that protected this island for so long, and that by its very nature, was to keep it out of the maelstrom that became medieval Europe. Thus England's peculiar character as an island nation came about through its very isolation. Early man came, settled, farmed and built. His remains tell us much about his lifestyle and his habits. Of course, the land was not then known as England, nor would it be until long after the Romans had departed.

So we know that a thriving culture existed around 8,000 years ago in the misty, westward islands the Romans were to call Britannia, though some have suggested the occupation was only seasonal, due to the still-cold climate of the glacial period which was slowly coming to an end. As the climate improved, there seems to have been an increase in the number of people moving into Britain from the Continent. They were attracted by its forests, its wild game, abundant rivers and fertile southern plains. An added attraction was its relative isolation, giving protection against the fierce nomadic tribesmen that kept appearing out of the east, forever searching for new hunting grounds and perhaps, people to subjugate and enslave.

The Neolithic Age

The new age of settlement took place around 4,500 BC, in what we now term the Neolithic Age.

Very early on, farming began to transform the landscape of Britain from virgin forest to ploughed fields. An excavated settlement at Windmill Hill, Wiltshire shows that its early inhabitants kept cattle, sheep, pigs, goats and dogs. They also cultivated various kinds of wheat and barley, grew flax, gathered fruits and made pottery. They buried their dead in long barrows -- huge elongated mounds of earth raised over a temporary wooden structure in which several bodies were laid. These long barrows are found all over Southern England, where fertile soil allied to a flat, or gently rolling landscape greatly aided settlement.

To clear the forests, it is obvious that stone-axes of a sophisticated design were produced in great numbers. Many of these axes were obtained by trading with other groups or by mining high-quality flint. Both activities seem to have been wide-spread, as stone-axes appear in many areas away from the source of their manufacture. At Grimes Graves, in Norfolk (in the eastern half of Britain), great quantities of flint were mined by miners working deep hollowed-out shafts and galleries in the chalk.

At the same time the Windmill people practiced their way of life and other farming people were introducing decorated pottery and different shaped tools to Britain. The cultures may have combined to produce the striking Megalithic monuments, the burial chambers and the henges. The tombs consisted of passage graves, in which a long narrow passage leads to a burial chamber in the very middle of the mound; and gallery graves, in which the passage is wider, divided by stone partitions making stall-like compartments. Some of these tombs were built of massive blocks of stone standing upright as walls, with other huge blocks laid across horizontally to make a roof. They were then covered with earthen mounds which have in many cases, completely eroded. One of the most impressive of these tombs is New Grange in Ireland. They are the oldest manmade stone structures known, older than the great Pyramids of Egypt.

Sometime in the early to middle Neolithic period, groups of people began to build camps or enclosures in valley bottoms or on hilltops. Perhaps these were originally built to pen cattle and later used for defense, settlement or simply meeting places for trading. Perhaps they were built for religious purposes. Soon, these enclosures began to evolve into more elaborate sites that may have been used for religious ceremonies, perhaps even for studying the night stars so that sowing, planting and harvesting could be done at the most propitious times of the year. Whatever their purpose, we call these sites, most of which are circular or semi-circular in pattern, henges. They include banks and ditches; the most impressive, at Avebury, in Wiltshire, had a ditch 21 metres in width, and 9 metres deep in places.

Many of the timber posts that defined these henges have long disappeared, but many sites still contain circles of pits, central stones, cairns or burials and clearly defined stone or timber entrances. It was not too long before stone circles began to dot the landscape, spanning the period between the late Neolithic and the early Bronze Ages (c 3370 - 2679 BC). Outside these circles were erected the monoliths, huge single standing stones that may have been aligned on the rising or setting sun at midsummer or midwinter. Some of these, such as the groups of circles known as the Calva group in present day Scotland, were also used for burials and burial ceremonies. Henges seem to have been used for multiple purposes, justifying the enormous expenditure of time and energy to construct them.

The arrival of the so-called "Beaker people" named after the shape of their most characteristic pottery vessel, brought the first metal-users to the British Isles. Perhaps they used their beakers to store beer, for they grew barley and knew how to brew beer from it. At the time of their arrival in Britain, they seem to have mingled with another group of Europeans we call the "Battle-axe people," who had domesticated the horse, used wheeled carts and smelted and worked copper. They also buried their dead in single graves, often under round barrows. They also may have introduced a language into Britain derived from Indo-European.

Prehistoric Earthworks and the "Wessex Culture"

The two groups seem to have blended together to produce the cult in Southern England that we call the 'Wessex Culture.' They were responsible for the enormous earthwork called Silbury Hill, the largest manmade mound in prehistoric Europe. Silbury is 39 metres high and was built as a series of circular platforms; their purpose still unknown. Nearby is the largest henge of all, Avebury, consisting of a vast circular ditch and bank, an outer ring of one hundred standing stones and two smaller inner rings of stones. Outside the monument was a mile-long avenue of standing stones.

Stonehenge, in the same general area as Silbury and Avebury, is perhaps the most famous, certainly the most visited and photographed of all the prehistoric monuments in Britain. We can only guess at the amount of labor involved in its construction, at the enormous complexity of the task which included transporting the inner blue-stones from the Preseli Hills in Wales and erecting of the great lintelled circle and horseshoe of large sarsen stones, shaped and dressed. The architectural sophistication of the monument bears witness to the tremendous technological advances being made at the time of the arrival of the Bronze Age.

Grave goods also attest to the sophistication of the Wessex culture: These include well-made stone battle axes, but also metal daggers with richly decorated hilts, precious ornaments of gold or amber, as well as gold cups, amulets, even a sceptre with a polished mace-head at one end. To make bronze, tin came from Cornwall; gold came from Wales, and products made from these metals were traded freely both within the British Isles and with peoples on the continent of Europe. Bronze was used to make cauldrons and bowls, shields and helmets, weapons of war, and farming tools. It was at this time that the Celtic peoples arrived in the islands we now call Britain.

The Celts

Before the arrival of the Celts in Britain, iron-working had begun in the Hittite Empire, of Asia Minor. Those who practiced the trade kept it a closely guarded secret, but shortly after 1200 BC, the Hittites were overthrown and knowledge of the miracle metal began to leak out. In Central Europe, a culture known as "Urnfield" developed and prospered. It quickly adapted the iron-working culture known as "Hallstatt," after a site in Austria.

One of the most significant elements in the new culture was the system of burial. Important people were buried along with their most precious possessions in timber built chambers under earthen barrows. The Hallstatt people were highly-skilled craftsmen, who used iron, bronze and gold, and produced fine burnished pottery. At some time they reached the British Isles and their culture began to infiltrate those foggy, wet, but mineral-rich islands off the Continent.

From their contact with Mediterraneans, the Hallstatt people had advanced their technology and culture developing into what is called "La Tene" after a site in Switzerland. The La Tene style, with its production of beautiful, handsomely-made and decorated articles, came into existence around the middle of the fifth century BC. It was produced by the Celts, the first people in the islands of Britain whose culture and language survive in many forms today.

The arrival of people into the British Isles from the Continent probably took place in small successive waves. The Greeks called these people Keltoi, the Romans Celtai. In present-day Yorkshire, "the Arras Culture" with its La Tene chariot burials attests to the presence of a wealthy and flourishing Celtic society in Northeast Britain. In the southwest, cross-Channel influence is seen. Here, a culture developed that was probably highly involved in the mining and trading of tin; it is characterized by a certain type of hill fort that is also found in Britanny.

The Celts in Britain used a language derived from a branch of Celtic known as either Brythonic, which gave rise to Welsh, Cornish and Breton; or Goidelic, giving rise to Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx. Along with their languages, the Celts brought their religion to Britain, particularly that of the Druids, the guardians of traditions and learning. The Druids glorified the pursuits of war, feasting and horsemanship. They controlled the calender and the planting of crops and presided over the religious festivals and rituals that honored local deities.

Many of Britain's Celts came from Gaul, driven from their homelands by the Roman armies and Germanic tribes. These were the Belgae, who arrived in great numbers and settled in the southeast around 75 BC. They brought with them a sophisticated plough that revolutionized agriculture in the rich, heavy soils of their new lands. Their society was well-organized in urban settlements, the capitals of the tribal chiefs. Their crafts were highly developed; bronze urns, bowls and torques illustrate their metalworking skills. They also introduced coinage to Britain and conducted a lively export trade with Rome and Gaul, including corn, livestock, metals and slaves.

Of the Celtic lands on the mainland of Britain, Wales and Scotland have received extensive coverage in the pages of Britannia. The largest non-Celtic area, at least linguistically, is now known as England, and it is here that the Roman influence is most strongly felt. It was here that the armies of Rome came to stay, to farm, to mine, to build roads, small cities, and to prosper, but mostly to govern.

The Roman Britain

The first Roman invasion of the lands we now call the British Isles took place in 55 B.C. under war leader Julius Caesar, who returned one year later, but these probings did not lead to any significant or permanent occupation. He had some interesting, if biased comments concerning the natives: "All the Britons," he wrote, "paint themselves with woad, which gives their skin a bluish color and makes them look very dreadful in battle." It was not until a hundred years later that permanent settlement of the grain-rich eastern territories began in earnest.

In the year 43.A.D.an expedition was ordered against Britain by the Emperor Claudius, who showed he meant business by sending his general, Aulus Plautius, and an army of 40,000 men. Only three months after Plautius's troops landed on Britain's shores, the Emperor Claudius felt it was safe enough to visit his new province. Establishing their bases in what is now Kent, through a series of battles involving greater discipline, a great element of luck, and general lack of co-ordination between the leaders of the various Celtic tribes, the Romans subdued much of Britain in the short space of forty years. They were to remain for nearly 400 years. The great number of prosperous villas that have been excavated in the southeast and southwest testify to the rapidity by which Britain became Romanized, for they functioned as centers of a settled, peaceful and urban life.

The highlands and moorlands of the northern and western regions, present-day Scotland and Wales, were not as easily settled, nor did the Romans particularly wish to settle in these agriculturally poorer, harsh landscapes. They remained the frontier -- areas where military garrisons were strategically placed to guard the extremities of the Empire. The stubborn resistance of tribes in Wales meant that two out of three Roman legions in Britain were stationed on its borders, at Chester and Caerwent.

Major defensive works further north attest to the fierceness of the Pictish and Celtic tribes, Hadrian's Wall in particular reminds us of the need for a peaceful and stable frontier. Built when Hadrian had abandoned his plan of world conquest, settling for a permanent frontier to "divide Rome from the barbarians," the seventy-two mile long wall connecting the Tyne to the Solway was built and rebuilt, garrisoned and re-garrisoned many times, strengthened by stone-built forts as one mile intervals.

For Imperial Rome, the island of Britain was a western breadbasket. Caesar had taken armies there to punish those who were aiding the Gauls on the Continent in their fight to stay free of Roman influence. Claudius invaded to give himself prestige, and his subjugation of eleven British tribes gave him a splendid triumph. Vespasian was a legion commander in Britain before he became Emperor, but it was Agricola who gave us most notice of the heroic struggle of the native Britons through his biographer Tacitus. From him, we get the unforgettable picture of the druids, "ranged in order, with their hands uplifted, invoking the gods and pouring forth horrible imprecations." Agricola also won the decisive victory of Mons Graupius in present-day Scotland in 84 A.D. over Calgacus "the swordsman," that carried Roman arms farther west and north than they had ever before ventured. They called their newly-conquered northern territory Caledonia.

When Rome had to withdraw one of its legions from Britain, the thirty-seven mile long Antonine Wall, connecting the Firths of Forth and Clyde, served temporarily as the northern frontier, beyond which lay Caledonia. The Caledonians, however were not easily contained; they were quick to master the arts of guerilla warfare against the scattered, home-sick Roman legionaries, including those under their ageing commander Severus. The Romans abandoned the Antonine Wall, withdrawing south of the better-built, more easily defended barrier of Hadrian, but by the end of the fourth century, the last remaining outposts in Caledonia were abandoned.

Further south, however, in what is now England, Roman life prospered. Essentially urban, it was able to integrate the native tribes into a town-based governmental system. Agricola succeeded greatly in his aims to accustom the Britons "to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. He consequently gave private encouragement and official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses." Many of these were built in former military garrisons that became the coloniae, the Roman chartered towns such as Colchester, Gloucester, Lincoln, and York (where Constantine was declared Emperor by his troops in 306 A.D.). Other towns, called municipia, included such foundations as St. Albans (Verulamium).

In the countryside, away from the towns, with their metalled, properly drained streets, their forums and other public buildings, bath houses, shops and amphitheatres, were the great villas, such as are found at Bignor, Chedworth and Lullingstone. Many of these seem to have been occupied by native Britons who had acquired land and who had adopted Roman culture and customs. Developing out of the native and relatively crude farmsteads, the villas gradually added features such as stone walls, multiple rooms, hypocausts (heating systems), mosaics and bath houses. The third and fourth centuries saw a golden age of villa building that further increased their numbers of rooms and added a central courtyard. The elaborate surviving mosaics found in some of these villas show a detailed construction and intensity of labor that only the rich could have afforded; their wealth came from the highly lucrative export of grain.

Roman society in Britain was highly classified. At the top were those people associated with the legions, the provincial administration, the government of towns and the wealthy traders and commercial classes who enjoyed legal privileges not generally accorded to the majority of the population.

One of the greatest achievements of the Roman Empire was its system of roads, in Britain no less than elsewhere. When the legions arrived in a country with virtually no roads at all, as Britain was in the first century A.D., their first task was to build a system to link not only their military headquarters but also their isolated forts. Vital for trade, the roads were also of paramount important in the speedy movement of troops, munitions and supplies from one strategic center to another. They also allowed the movement of agricultural products from farm to market. London was the chief administrative centre, and from it, roads spread out to all parts of the province. They included Ermine Street, to Lincoln; Watling Street, to Wroxeter and then to Chester, all the way in the northwest on the Welsh frontier; and the Fosse Way, from Exeter to Lincoln, the first frontier of the province of Britain.

The Romans built their roads carefully and they built them well. They followed proper surveying, they took account of contours in the land, avoided wherever possible the fen, bog and marsh so typical in much of the land, and stayed clear of the impenetrable forests. They also utilized bridges, an innovation that the Romans introduced to Britain in place of the hazardous fords at many river crossings. An advantage of good roads was that communications with all parts of the country could be effected. They carried the cursus publicus, or imperial post. A road book used by messengers that lists all the main routes in Britain, the principal towns and forts they pass through, and the distances between them has survived: the Antonine Itinerary.

The Roman armies did not have it all their own way in their battles with the native tribesmen, some of whom, in their inter-tribal squabbles, saw them as deliverers, not conquerors. Heroic and often prolonged resistance came from such leaders as Caratacus of the Ordovices, betrayed to the Romans by the Queen of the Brigantes. And there was Queen Boudicca (Boadicea) of the Iceni, whose revolt nearly succeeded in driving the Romans out of Britain. Her people, incensed by their brutal treatment at the hands of Roman officials, burned Colchester, London, and St. Albans, destroying many armies ranged against them. It took a determined effort and thousands of fresh troops sent from Italy to reinforce governor Suetonius Paulinus in A..D. 6l to defeat the British Queen, who took poison rather than submit.

Apart from the villas and fortified settlements, the great mass of the British people did not seem to have become Romanized. The influence of Roman thought survived in Britain only through the Church. Christianity had thoroughly replaced the old Celtic gods by the close of the 4th Century, but Romanization was not successful in other areas. For example, the Latin tongue did not replace Brittonic as the language of the general population. Today's visitors to Wales, however, cannot fail to notice some of the Latin words that were borrowed into the British language, such as pysg (fish), braich (arm), caer (fort), foss (ditch), pont (bridge), eglwys (church), llyfr (book), ysgrif (writing), ffenestr (window), pared (wall or partition), and ystafell (room).

The disintegration of Roman Britain began with the revolt of Magnus Maximus in A.D. 383. After living in Britain as military commander for twelve years, he had been hailed as Emperor by his troops. He began his campaigns to dethrone Gratian as Emperor in the West, taking a large part of the Roman garrison in Britain with him to the Continent, and though he succeeded Gratian, he himself was killed by the Emperor Thedosius in 388. Some Welsh historians, and modern political figures, see Magnus Maximus as the father of the Welsh nation, for he opened the way for independent political organizations to develop among the Welsh people by his acknowledgement of the role of the leaders of the Britons in 383 (before departing on his military mission to the Continent) The enigmatic figure has remained a hero to the Welsh as Macsen Wledig, celebrated in poetry and song.

The Roman legions began to withdraw from Britain at the end of the fourth century. Those who stayed behind were to become the Romanized Britons who organized local defences against the onslaught of the Saxon hordes. The famous letter of A.D.410 from the Emperor Honorius told the cities of Britain to look to their own defences from that time on. As part of the east coast defences, a command had been established under the Count of the Saxon Shore, and a fleet had been organized to control the Channel and the North Sea. All this showed a tremendous effort to hold the outlying province of Britain, but eventually, it was decided to abandon the whole project. In any case, the communication from Honorius was a little late: the Saxon influence had already begun in earnest.

The Dark Ages

From the time that the Romans more or less abandoned Britain, to the arrival of Augustine at Kent to convert the Saxons, the period has been known as the Dark Ages. Written evidence concerning the period is scanty, but we do know that the most significant events were the gradual division of Britain into a Brythonic west, a Teutonic east and a Gaelic north; the formation of the Welsh, English and Scottish nations; and the conversion of much of the west to Christianity.

By 4l0, Britain had become self-governing in three parts, the North (which already included people of mixed British and Angle stock); the West (including Britons, Irish, and Angles); and the South East (mainly Angles). With the departure of the Roman legions, the old enemies began their onslaughts upon the native Britons once more. The Picts and Scots to the north and west (the Scots coming in from Ireland had not yet made their homes in what was to become later known as Scotland), and the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes to the south and east.

The two centuries that followed the collapse of Roman Britain happen to be among the worst recorded times in British history, certainly the most obscure. It seems that the Anglo-Saxon domination of Britain took place in two distinct phases.

By 3l4, an organized Christian Church seems to have been established in most of Britain, for in that year British bishops were summoned to the Council of Arles. By the end of the fourth century, a diocesan structure had been set up, many districts having come under the pastoral care of a bishop.

It was during the time of the Saxon invasions, in that relatively unscathed western peninsular that later took the name Wales, that the first monasteries were established (the words Wales and Welsh were used by the Germanic invaders to refer to Romanized Britons). They spread rapidly to Ireland from where missionaries from Gaul returned to those parts of Britain that were not under the Roman Bishops' jurisdiction, mainly the Northwest. Columba was the most important of these missionaries, later becoming a popular saint in the history of the Christian Church, but even he built the nave of his first monastery facing west and not east. For his efforts at reforming the Church, he was excommunicated by Rome. His banishment from Ireland became Scotland's gain.

The island of Iona is just off the western coast of Argyll, in present-day Scotland. It is been called the Isle of Dreams or Isle of Druids. It was here that Columba (Columcille '"Dove of the Church" ) with his small band of Irish monks landed in 563 A.D. to spread the faith, and it was here that the missionary saint inaugurated Aidan as king of the new territory of Dalriata (previously settled by men from Columba's own Ulster). Iona was quickly to become the ecclesiastical head of the Celtic Church in the whole of Britain as well as a major political center. After the monastic settlement at Iona gave sanctuary to the exiled Oswald early in the seventh century, the king invited the monks to come to his restored kingdom of Northumbria. It was thus that Aidan, with his twelve disciples, came to Lindisfarne, destined with Iona to become one of the great cultural centers of the early Christian world.

In 574, Columba is believed to have returned to Ireland to plead the cause of the bards, about to be expelled as trouble-makers. According to legend, he sensibly argued that their expulsion would deprive the country of an irreplaceable wealth of folklore and antiquity. He also refused to chop down the ancient, sacred oak trees that symbolized the old druidic religion. Although the bards were allowed to remain, they were forced to give up their special privileges as priests of the old religion ( Some modern writers, such as Robert Graves have seen the old traditions underlying much Celtic literature throughout the long. long years since the 6th century).

In this period, the 5th and 6th Centuries, numerous Celtic saints were adopted by the rapidly expanding Church. At the Synod of Whitby in 664, however, the Celtic Church, with its own ideas about the consecration of its Bishops, tonsure of its monks, dates for the celebration of Easter and other differences with Rome, was more or less forced by majority opinion of the British bishops to accept the rule of St.Peter, introduced by Augustine, rather than of St.Columba. From this date on, we can no longer speak of a Celtic Church as distinct from that of Rome. By the end of the seventh century we can also begin to speak of an Anglo-Saxon political entity in the island of Britain, and the formation and growth of various English kingdoms.

The Anglo Saxon Period

To answer the question how did the small number of invaders come to master the larger part of Britain? John Davies gives us part of the answer: the regions seized by the newcomers were mainly those that had been most thoroughly Romanized, regions where traditions of political and military self-help were at their weakest. Those who chafed at the administration of Rome could only have welcomed the arrival of the English in such areas as Kent and Sussex, in the southeast.

Another compelling reason cited by Davies is the emergence in Britain of the great plague of the sixth century from Egypt that was particularly devastating to the Britons who had been in close contact with peoples of the Mediterranean. Be that as it may, the emergence of England as a nation did not begin as a result of a quick, decisive victory over the native Britons, but a result of hundreds of years of settlement and growth, more settlement and growth, sometimes peaceful, sometimes not. If it is pointed out that the native Celts were constantly warring among themselves, it should also be noted that so were the tribes we now collectively term the English, for different kingdoms developed in England that constantly sought domination through conquest.

So we see the rise and fall of successive English kingdoms during the seventh and eighth centuries: Kent, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. Before looking at political developments, however, it is important to notice the religious conversion of the people we commonly call Anglo-Saxons. It began in the late sixth century and created an institution that not only transcended political boundaries, but created a new concept of unity among the various tribal regions that overrode individual loyalties.

In 597, St. Augustine was sent to convert the pagan English by Pope Gregory, who was anxious to spread the Gospel, and enhance papal prestige by reclaiming former territories of Rome. Augustine received a favorable reception in the kingdom of Ethelbert. Augustine's success in converting a large number of people led to his consecration as bishop by the end of the year.

Pope Gregory had drawn up a detailed plan for the administration of the Church in England. There were to be two archbishops, London and York (each to have 12 bishops). As the city of London was not under the control of Ethelbert, however, a new See was chosen at Canterbury, in Kent. It was there that Augustine, promoted to archbishop, laid down the beginnings of the ecclesiastical organization of the Church in Britain. It was Gregory's guiding hand, however, that influenced all Augustine's decisions; both Pope and Bishop seemed to know little of the Celtic Church, and made no accommodations with it.

The establishment of the Church at York was not possible until 625; the immense task of converting and then organizing the converted was mostly beyond the limited powers of Augustine, well-trained in monastic rule, but little trained in law and administration.

In Northumbria, that northern outpost of the Catholic Church, a tradition of scholarship began that was to have a profound influence on the literature of Western Europe. It constituted a remarkable outbreak with equally remarkable consequences.

In the meantime, events were rapidly changing the political face of Anglo-Saxon England. There were separate kingdoms in England, settled by Angles, Saxons and Jutes whose areas, bit by bit, extended into the Celtic regions: Northumbria in the north; Mercia westwards to the River Severn and Wessex into Devon and Cornwall. In the southeast, the kingdoms of Sussex and Kent had achieved early prominence.

The first Anglo-Saxon kingdom in Britain was an Anglo-Celtic kingdom, peopled by Anglo-Celts. The dynasty founded there by Hengist (Hengist arrived in Kelt with a small fleet of ships in around 446 AD TO AID THE Britons in the defence of their lands invited by British chief Vortigern to fight the northern barbarians in return for pay and supplies, but more importantly, for land) lasted for three centuries. However, with the death of joint kings Aethelbert and Eadberht, it was time for other kingdoms to rise to prominence. Only thirty years after the arrival of Hengist to Britain, another chieftain named Aelle came to settle. The leader of the South Saxons; Aella ruled the kingdom that became Sussex. Other kingdoms were those of the East Saxons (Essex); the Middle Saxons (Middlesex), and the West Saxons, (Wessex) destined to become the most powerful of all and one that eventually brought together all the diverse people of England (named for the Angles) into one single nation.

Rulers such as Edwin, Oswald and Oswy made Northumbria politically stable as well as Christian. Edwin, the first Christian king of Northumbria, was defeated by Cadwallon, the only British King to overthrow a Saxon dynasty, who had allied himself to Penda of Mercia, the Middle Kingdom. Oswald restored the Saxon monarchy in 633, and during his reign, missionaries under Aidan completed the conversion of Northumbria.

It was during the reign of Oswy (645-70) that Northumbria began to show signs of order. The growth of institutions guaranteed permanency, so that the continuation of royal government did not depend upon the outcome of a single battle or the death of a king. He also defeated pagan king Penda and brought Mercia under his control, opening up the whole middle kingdom to Celtic missionaries. Then, in 663 under his chairmanship, the great Synod of Whitby took place, at which the Roman Church was accepted as the official branch of the faith in England. It was Oswy's forceful backing that secured the decision for Rome.

Northumbria's dominance began to wane at the beginning of the eighth century. It was hastened by the defeat and death of Ecgfrid in 685. The kingdom had been threatened by the growing power of Mercia, whose king Penda had led the fiercest resistance to the imposition of Christianity. After Penda's defeat, his successor Wulfhere turned south to concentrate his efforts on fighting against Wessex where strong rulers prevented any Mercian domination. However, the situation began to change in the early eighth century with the accession of two strong rulers, Aethelbold and Offa.

Aethelbold (726-57) called himself "King of Britain." Whatever his claims to sovereignty, however, it was his successor Offa (757-96) who could call himself "king of all the English," for though Wessex was growing powerful within itself, Offa seems to have been the senior partner and overlord of Southern Britain.

Both Aethelbold and Offa insisted on being called by their royal titles; they were very much aware of the concept of unity within the kingdom of Mercia. Offa was the first English ruler to draw a definite frontier with Wales. The creation of a metropolitan archbishopric at Lichfield attested to his influence with Rome. Under his reign an effective administration was created (and a good quality distinctive coinage). The little kingdom of Mercia found itself a member of the community of European states. Though Offa's descendants tried to maintain the splendors (and the delusions) of his reign, Mercia's domination ended at the battle of Ellendun in 825 when Egbert of Wessex defeated Beornwulf.

It was time for Wessex to recover the greatness that had begun in the sixth century under Ceawlin. Wessex borders had expanded greatly and Ceawlin was recognized as supreme ruler in Southern England. A series of insignificant kings followed Ceawlin, all subject to Mercian dominance. The second period of dominance began under kings Cadwalla and Ine. Cadwalla (685-88) was noted for his successful wars against Kent and his conquest of Sussex. Wessex also expanded westward into the Celtic strongholds of Devon and Cornwall. Both Cadwalla and Ine abdicated to go on religious pilgrimages, but their work was well done and they left behind a strong state able to withstand the might of Mercia.

A new phase began in 802 with the accession of Egbert and the establishment of his authority throughout Wessex. The dominance of Mercia was finally broken, the other kingdoms defeated in battle or voluntary submitted to his overlordship, and Egbert was recognized as Bretwalda, Lord of Britain, the first to give reality to the dream of a single government from the borders of Scotland to the English Channel. An ominous entry in the "West Saxon Annals" however, tells us that in the year 834 "The heathen men harried Sheppey." During the centuries of inter-tribal warfare, the Saxons had not thought of defending their coasts. The Norsemen, attracted by the wealth of the religious settlements, often placed near the sea, were free to embark upon their voyages of plunder.

The first recorded visit of the Vikings in the West Saxon Annals had stated that a small raiding party slew those who came to meet them at Dorchester in 789. It was the North, however, at such places as Lindisfarne, the holiest city in England, lavishly endowed with treasures at its monastery and religious settlement that constituted the main target. Before dealing with the onslaught of the Norsemen, however, it is time to mention the accomplishments of the people collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, especially in the rule of law.

It was not long after the conversion of the Saxon peoples to Christianity that written laws began to be enacted in England to provide appropriate penalties for offenses against the Church (and therefore against God).

By the early part of the 10th century, the government had begun to regard the kin as legally responsible for the good behavior of its members, though respect for the kin did not mean that the ties of kindred dominated English law.

From the laws of Ine (688-95), the strongest king in Southern England during his long reign, it is clear that he was a statesman with ideas beyond the grasp of his predecessors. His code is a lengthy document, covering a wide range of human relationships, entering much more fully than any other early code into the details of the agrarian system on which society rested. They were also marked by the definite purpose of advancing Christianity.

By the year 878 there was every possibility that before the end of the year Wessex would have been divided among the Danish army. That this turn of events did not come to pass was due to Alfred. Leaving aside the political events of the period, we can praise his laws as the first selective code of Anglo-Saxon England, though the fundamentals remained unchanged, those who didn't please him, were amended or discarded. They remain comments on the law, mere statements of established custom.

In 896, Alfred occupied London, giving the first indication that the lands which had lately passed under Danish control might be reclaimed. It made him the obvious leader of all those who, in any part of the country, wished for a reversal of the disasters, and it was immediately followed by a general recognition of his lordship. In the words of the Chronicle, "all the English people submitted to Alfred except those who were under the power of the Danes." The occasion marked the achievement of a new stage in the advancement of the English people towards political unity, the acceptance of Alfred's overlordship expressed a feeling that he stood for interests common to the whole English race. Earlier rulers had to rely on the armed forces at their disposal for any such claims.

The Code of Alfred has significance in English history which is entirely independent of its subject matter, for he gives himself the title of King of the West Saxons, naming previous kings such as Ine, Offa and Aethelberth whose work had influenced his own. The implication is that his code was intended to cover not only the kingdom of Wessex, but also Kent and Mercia. It thus becomes important evidence of the new political unity forced upon the English people by the struggle against the Danes. In addition, it appeared at the end of a century during which no English king had issued any laws. Following Alfred's example, English kings, unlike their counterparts on the Continent, retained their right to exercise legislative powers.

Though much of Alfred's collection of laws came from earlier codes, there were some that were not derived from any known source and may thus be considered original. The laws include provisions protecting the weaker members of society against oppression, limiting the ancient custom of the blood-feud and emphasizing the duty of a man to his lord.

It is now time to turn back to the Danish (Viking or Norsemen) invasion of England, and the part Alfred was to play in his country's defense and eventual survival. The West Saxon Annals (utilized as part of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" that Alfred began around 890), tell us that the Vikings (also known as Norsemen or Danes) came as hostile raiders to the shores of Britain. Their invasions were thus different from those of the earlier Saxons who had originally come to defend the British people and then to settle. Though they did settle eventually in their newly conquered lands, the Vikings were more intent on looting and pillaging; their armies marched inland destroying and burning until half of England had been taken, and it seemed as if there was no one strong enough to stop them. However, just as an earlier British leader, perhaps the one known in legend as Arthur had stopped the Saxon advance into the Western regions at Mount Badon in 496, so a later leader stopped the advance of the Norsemen at Edington in 878. The leader was Alfred of Wessex. The strength of his Wessex Kingdom made it the ideal center for the resistance of Alfred to the Danish plans of conquest.

Before Alfred, the Danes had been relatively unopposed. They came in a huge fleet to London in 851 to destroy the army of Mercia and capture Canterbury, only to receive their first check at the hands of Aethelstan of Wessex. But this time, instead of sailing home with their booty, the Danish seamen and soldiers stayed the winter on the Isle of Thanet on the Thames where the men of Hengist had come ashore centuries earlier. Like their Saxon predecessors, the Danes showed that they had come to stay.

It was not too long before the Danes had become firmly entrenched seemingly everywhere they chose in England (many of the invaders came from Norway and Sweden as well as Denmark). They had begun their deprivations with the devastation of Lindisfarne in 793, and the next hundred years saw army after army crossing the North Sea, first to find treasure, and then to take over good, productive farm lands upon which to raise their families. Outside Wessex, their ships were able to penetrate far inland; they sailed with impunity up the Dee, Humber, Ribble, Tyne, Medway and Thames, and founded their communities wherever the rivers met the sea.

In the West, Aethelwulf succeeded Egbert continuing his father's role as protector of the English people. He was succeeded by Aethelred, who continued to hold his lands against the ever-increasing host of the Danes, now firmly in control of Northumbria, including York. In 867, the Danes also made incursions into Mercia and had conquered all of East Anglia. Of all the English kingdoms, Wessex now stood almost alone. Armies under Aethelred and the young Alfred fought the Danes to a standstill, neither side claiming complete victory, but the borders of Wessex remained secure.

The turning point took place in 878. The decisive event that took place at Edington (Ethandune), when Alfred "fought with the whole force of the Danes and put them to flight, and rode after them to their fortifications and besieged them a fortnight. Then the Danes gave him hostages as security, and swore great oaths that they would leave his kingdom; and they promised him that their king should receive baptism. And they carried out their promises..." Wessex had been saved.

Alfred's successes were partly due to his building up the West Saxon navy into a fleet that could not only meet the Danes on equal terms, but defeat them in battle. Alfred also fortified the key English towns.

East Anglia and Southern Mercia remained in Danish hands. In 896, however, Alfred occupied London, giving the first indication that the lands which had lately passed under Danish control might be reclaimed. His success made him the obvious leader of all those who, in any part of the country, wished for a reversal of the disasters, and it was immediately followed by a general recognition of his lordship. Furthermore, the city of London, on the southeastern edge of Mercia, became a national symbol of English defiance. Its capture made Alfred truly the first king of England.

Alfred's greatness lay not so much in his defeat of the Danes but in his other major accomplishments that are generally listed as four: his uniform code of laws for the good order of the kingdom; his restoration of the monastic life of the Church, which had been severely disrupted by the arrival of the Norsemen; his enthusiastic patronage of the arts and learning; and the respect that he gained on the Continent of Europe for himself and his kingdom.

Had Alfred been defeated, all of England would have passed under the rule of the Danish kings; the future identity of the English people as a separate island nation would have been very much in question. As it was, however, the occupation of London by the King of Wessex marked a new stage in the advancement of the English people towards political unity, the acceptance of his overlordship expressed a feeling that he stood for interests common to the whole English race.

The treaty with King Guthrum that followed Alfred's capture of London delineated a frontier between England and Danes, a frontier that even today is reflected in a North-South divide. Much of the task of winning back these lands passed to Alfred's son Edward the Elder, who became King of Wessex in 899. Before the end of his reign, every Danish colony south of the River Humber had become annexed to Wessex.

The Chronicle reports that the Scottish King and people, all the people of Wales, all the people in Mercia and all those who dwelt in Northumbria submitted to him "whether English, or Danish, or Northmen, or others, the king of the Strathclyde Welsh, and all the Strathclyde Welsh." They all recognized Edward's authority and agreed to respect his territories and to attack his enemies.

During Edward's reign, there were advances made in the administration of law, some of these in the king's favor. For example, some of his measures strengthened royal authority; the Kings' Writ, dating back to the time of Ine, was enforced to punish attacks on the king's dignity and privilege. Wherever the king had enjoined or prohibited a certain course by express orders, failure to obey made the offender liable to pay the heavy fines proscribed. Use of the Writ was responsible for an unparalleled growth of the King's official responsibility for the enforcement of law and order.

Under Edward, the Crown was no longer seen as a remote providence, under which the moots (law courts) worked in independence, but as an institution which had come to intervene, to watch over the workings of the law, and to punish those who rebelled. Edward further ordered that the hundred courts were to meet every four weeks under a king's reeve for the administration of customary law.

Even during the long and protracted Danish Wars, and maybe because of them, trade in England prospered. The foundation of many new boroughs offered traders bases for their operations that were much more secure than the countryside. Towns allowed merchants the means to establish the validity of their transactions by the testimony of responsible persons of their own sort. On their part, rulers were anxious to keep trade restricted to a limited number of recognized centers. One of Edward's laws prohibited trade outside a port, and ordered that all transactions be attested to by the port reeve or by other trusty men.

The significance of the above is clear. By the end of Edward's reign, it is probable that every place of trade which was more than a purely local market was surrounded by at least rudimentary fortifications. The normal "port" of the king's time was also a borough, and the urgency with which Edward commanded traders to resort to it explained its military importance. A derelict "port" was a weak point in the national defenses and the era saw a rapid rise in boroughs that combined military and commercial factors.

Edward the Elder died in 924, to be succeeded by his son Aethelstan, recognized as King in Wessex and probably in Mercia independently of his election in Wessex. He took the important and strategic city of York from the Danes, and thus, under conditions which no one could have foreseen, a king supreme in southern England came to rule in York. He soon extended his influence further, and the western and northern kings of Britain and the Welsh princes came to regard him as their lord. Though Alfred and Edward the Elder had been forced to watch the continental scene from the outside, Aethelstan won prestige and influence in contemporary Europe that resulted from his position as heir to the one western kingdom which had emerged in greater strength from the Danish wars.

At the Battle of Brunanburgh in 937 Aethelstan won a great victory for his English army over a combined force of Danes, Scots and Irish. At his death, however, new threats faced the new King Edmund. Danish control of the five great boroughs of Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby and Stamford -- all in the Midlands -- created an effective barrier between Northumbria and Wessex. Edmund acted. Taking an army north, he retook the five boroughs for the English and drove out two Danish kings from Northumbria. In the truly Viking city of York, however, Eric Bloodaxe had set himself up as an independent king. Wessex remained the stronghold of the English during the next twenty years of increasing Viking attacks, but when King Edgar was slain by supporters of his brother Ethelred, disaster came to the whole country.

Once again, the Danish fleets and armies seemed unstoppable. They were found in northeastern England, northwestern England, Wales, Devon and Cornwall. Ethelred could only achieve peace by buying off the Danes, a move that backfired for it only led to more raids, more slaughter and more Danish settlement. Following the example of Alfred, Ethelred then managed to get the Danish leader Anlaf baptized at Andover, but only at the enormous cost of the complete depletion of the treasury of England. Anlaf could only laugh at his good fortune. Ethelred's weakness in dealing with the Danish leaders have earned him the title of "the unready," (rede-less) the one who lacked good counsel.

In a sea battle in 1000 AD, Anlaf, now known as Olaf, King of Norway, was defeated by the Danish King Sweyn who continued his rivals raids on England, and who in turn, was offered huge sums by Ethelred. But the Danes refused to stop their raids. Giving command of a great army to his son Cnut, Sweyn marched on and conquered Winchester and Oxford and forced Ethelred to flee to France, only returning to England upon the death of Sweyn in the year 1003. More fighting continued under Edmund, who succeeded his father Ethelred by appointment of the citizens of London, anxious to be led by one who was called Edmund Ironside on account of his great strength. Edmund won many important victories, but the strength of the Danes forced him to make peace with Cnut, and at Alney, it was agreed that Edmund should be King of Wessex and Cnut of Mercia. Upon Edmund's death, that same year, Cnut became king of all England. Formally taking the reins of power in 1017, he married Ethelred's widow that same year.

Meanwhile, there had been important developments in the administration of English law that would have profound effects upon the future legal system. Changing social conditions led to Aethelstan issuing many new laws. He had to deal in legislation with lords who "maintained" their men in defiance of right and justice. Under Edgar, who became King in Wessex in 954, a semblance of order was restored, and England was made secure at least temporarily. It is recorded that eight kings in Britain came to him on a single day to acknowledge his supremacy. He was the first English King to recognize in legislation that the Danish east of England was no longer a conquered province, but an integral part of the English realm.

The strength of the Crown, with the king becoming arbiter of the law continued during the reign of Cnut, the first Viking leader to be admitted into the civilized fraternity of Christian Kings, and one who was determined to rule as the chosen king of the English people as well as King of Denmark, Norway, and part of Sweden. It is generally agreed that he turned the part of conquering Viking ruler into one of the best kings ever enjoyed by the English people. Ruler of a united land, he kept the peace, enforced the laws, became a generous patron of the Church and raised the prestige of England to unprecedented levels on the Continent of Europe. Upon his death, he had become part of the national heritage of England, his favorite realm.

Cnut and his successors became heirs to the English laws and traditions of Wessex. At a great assembly in Oxford in 1018, he agreed to follow the laws of Edgar; his Danish compatriots were to adopt the laws of their English neighbors, be content as subjects of a Danish king in an English country. Cnut ruled England as it had long been ruled: he consulted his bishops and his subjects. He even traveled to Rome in 1027 to attend the coronation of the new Holy Roman Emperor but also to consult with the Pope on behalf of all his people, Englishmen and Danes. He made atonement for the atrocities of the past wrought by Danish invaders by visiting the site of the battle with Edmund Ironside at Ashingdon and dedicating a church to the fallen. His eighteen-year rule was indeed a golden one for England, even though it was part of a Scandinavian empire. Cnut died in 1035 and was buried in the traditional resting place of the Saxon Kings, at Winchester.

Chaos and confusion were quick to return to England after Cnut's death, and the ground was prepared for the coming of the Normans, a new set of invaders no less ruthless than those who had come before. Cnut had precipitated problems by leaving his youngest, bastard son Harold, unprovided for. He had intended to give Denmark and England to Hardacnut and Norway to Swein. In 1035, Hardacnut could not come to England from Denmark without leaving Magnus of Norway a free hand in Scandinavia.

A meeting of the Witan (King's council) met to decide the successor to Cnut. One faction, including the men of London chose Harold Harefoot, but others, led by the powerful Godwin of Wessex chose Hardacnut, whose mother, Emma was to reside at Winchester holding Wessex in her son's name. Emma was a sister to the Duke of Normandy; before marrying Cnut, she had been the wife of Ethelred. When Ethelred's younger son Alfred came to Winchester, Godwin's fears of losing his control of Wessex had him captured and blinded. The unfortunate Alfred lived out his life as a monk at Ely, unable to claim the throne of Wessex.

Hardacnut arrived in England in 1040 on the death of Harold; he brought a large army with him. He was welcomed in Wessex, where Godwin rained supreme as his representative. Prince Edward, Alfred's older brother, sought protection at Winchester, and when Harthacnut died suddenly, after reigning for only one year, Edward, son of Ethelred, was acclaimed as king. Thus English kings came to rule in England once again. The uniting of the houses of Wessex and Mercia through marriage had produced an English ruler after a quarter of a century of Danish rule. The two peoples had blended to become a single nation.

Although the two hundred years of Danish invasions and settlement had an enormous effect on Britain, bringing over from the continent as many people as had the Anglo-Saxon invasions, the effects on the language and customs of the English were not as catastrophic as the earlier invasions had been on the native British. The Anglo-Saxons were a Germanic race; their homelands had been in northern Europe, many of them coming, if not from Denmark itself, then from lands bordering that little country. They shared many common traditions and customs with the people of Scandinavia, and they spoke a related language.

There are over 1040 place names in England of Scandinavian origin, most occurring in the north and east, the area of settlement known as the Danelaw. The evidence shows extensive peaceable settlement by farmers who intermarried their English cousins, adopted many of their customs and entered into the everyday life of the community. Though the Danes and Norwegians who came to England preserved many of their own customs, they readily adapted to the ways of the English whose language they could understand without too much difficulty. There are more than 600 place names that end with the Scandinavian -by, (farm or town); some three hundred contain the Scandinavian word thorp (village), and the same number with thwaite (an isolated piece of land). Thousands of words of Scandinavian origin remain in the everyday speech of people in the north and east of England.

In administrative matters, too, there were great similarities between Saxon and Scandinavian. First, both were military societies. The two peoples shared the tradition of government by consultation and the reinforcement of loyalty by close collaboration between the leader and his followers. It has been pointed out that though the separate identity and language of at least part of the Britons lives on in Wales, the identity of the Scandinavians is totally lost among the English: the merging of the two peoples was total.

Under the Saxon kings, the man who held great power under the crown was the alderman, who assisted the king. The Danish leaders were the jarls, who became the English earls, mostly replacing the aldermen. In addition, the old Saxon system of taxation had been inefficient to say the least. The pressure of the Danish invasions, and the need to buy off the invaders in gold and silver meant that the kings' subjects now had to be taxed in terms of real money, rather than the material goods supplied formerly to the King's household. Under Ethelstan, and certainly under Cnut, we can observe the beginning of the civil service. Clerks and secretaries were employed by both rulers to strengthen and communicate authority and raise and collect taxes efficiently.

There was another very important feature of the Scandinavian settlement which cannot be overlooked. The Saxon people had not maintained contact with their original homelands; in England they had become an island race. The Scandinavians, however, kept their contacts with their kinsman on the continent. Under Cnut, England was part of a Scandinavian empire; its people began to extend their outlook and become less insular. The process was hastened by the coming of another host of Norsemen: the Norman Conquest was about to begin.

Norman England

Hardacnut was the last Danish king of England. Edward the Atheling, who succeeded him, was the legitimate heir of Alfred the Great. Known as Edward the Confessor, he was perhaps one of the most misunderstood monarchs in the history of England. Though he took adequate steps to provide for a smooth succession to the throne, events that followed his death have spoiled his reputation as a wise, effective ruler. The circumstances that eventually led to the arrival of William the Norman had been set in place long before 1066.

Ever since Edward's father had married Emma of Normandy in 1002, England had been wide open to Norman influences. Edward's cousin was the father of Duke William. The young Edward himself had been brought up in Normandy. A popular choice as king, he collaborated with the leading earls of the country to dispossess his mother Emma of her wealth at Winchester. A motive was provided by her support of the King of Norway's claim to the English throne, a threat renewed when Harold Hardrada, uncle of Magnus became king of Norway in 1048. But there were more pressing problems for Edward at home.

Godwin of Wessex was the most powerful man in England after the King, whom he supported in the raid on the treasures at Winchester, but who tried his utmost to run the country as family fiefdom. He plotted to have Edward marry his daughter Edith, a union to which the king consented to keep Godwin happy and allied in the face of continued Scandinavian threats. Edward was double Edith's age; the marriage did not produce an heir, for the saintly king had earlier taken a vow of chastity (a hunting accident had left him impotent in any case). Edward wanted his Norman relatives to gain the throne of England. The handing over of power to William became his obsession. But there were other claimants from the house of Earl Godwin that contested the king's wishes.

From 1046 to 1051, Edward was engaged in a power struggle with the Godwins. He was forced to take action. First, he exiled Swein, the ruthless treacherous eldest son. He next exiled Godwin and all his sons, two of whom joined their father and Swein in Bruges and two of whom went to join the Vikings in Dublin. Thus temporarily freed from Godwin influence Edward was left alone to appoint Norman bishops to many vacant English Sees. Then Godwin returned.

Civil War was averted only because the King restored Godwin and his sons to their earldoms. Edward was also humiliated by having to purge his Norman bishops. He then was forced to appoint Stigand, Godwin's nominee to Canterbury in place of Robert of Jumieges. Edward shied away from provoking an all-out war with his hated enemy Godwin. He was spared a decision by the death of Godwin on Easter Monday 1053 and the succession of Harold Godwinson as Earl of Wessex. The enmity between the Crown and the House of Godwin continued unabated, especially over the appointing of bishops and the leadership of the armies raised to fight Gruffudd of Wales who had been successful in winning back many border areas previously lost to the English. Harold himself raised an army to punish Gruffudd. But the main problem remained, that of succession. Matters were not helped by the suspicious death of Edward the Atheling, younger son of Edmund Ironside, who had been smuggled out of England as a babe to escape Cnut, and who had returned in 1057. Only the king and the late Athelings' two children remained of the ancient house of Cerdic of Wessex. By his defeat of Gruffudd in Wales, Harold then made himself the premier military leader in England. In 1064, he visited Normandy.

It is highly probable that Edward did send Harold to Normandy with the formal promise that the kingdom would pass to William upon Edward's death. Harold would thus act as regent until the Norman leader could arrive to claim his throne. However, before the death of Edward, who had done everything in his power to hold the ambitions of the Godwins in check and to ensure the peaceful transition of power to William, he could not have foreseen the wave of nationalist feeling which greeted Harold's bid for the crown.

The saintly king had completely overlooked English resentment at the ever-growing Norman influences in their island nation. On January 6, 1066, the funeral of Edward and the coronation of Harold, henceforth held in contempt by the Normans as an untrustworthy bond-breaker, took place at the newly consecrated Abbey at Westminster.

William of Normandy must have been furious. His people called themselves Franks or Frenchmen. They had come to France centuries before as Viking invaders when their brothers were busy ravaging the coast of England. In many ways, their new homeland was similar to the English Dane-Law, an area also settled by invaders from the North. It had been recognized in 911 at a treaty between Charles, the Simple and Rollo, the Norwegian. Rollo had then converted to Christianity and ruled his territory as a Duke, a subordinate of the French king. In 1002 Emma, sister of Richard Duke of Normandy and a descendant of Rollo, became the second wife of English King Ethelred.

The Norman invasion of England was unlike that involving massive immigration of people seeking new lands in which to settle and farm as marked by the Anglo-Saxon and Danish invasions. This new phenomenon was practically an overnight affair. William's victories were swift, sudden and self-contained. No new wave of people came to occupy the land, only a small, ruling aristocracy.

It is tempting to surmise the path England would have taken had William's invading force been beaten off. King Harold had taken concrete steps to enforce his rule throughout the country. Harold immediately began to abolish unjust laws and make good ones, to patronize churches and monasteries, pay reverence to religious men, to show himself as pious and humble, to treat wrong doers with great severity, to imprison all thieves and to labour for the protection of his people. In order to do all this, however, he first had to reconcile the houses of Godwin of Wessex and Leofric of Mercia.

After dealing with the perfidy of his exiled brother Tostig, who had raised an army to plunder England's coast line Harold then had to deal with far more serious threats. Harold Hardrada, King of Norway, was raising a massive invasion fleet and William of Normandy, was also busy raising his own army of invasion. Hardrada, wishing to surpass even Cnut as the great ruler of a Scandinavian Empire, had failed to conquer Denmark; he mistakenly thought England would be an easier target. He crossed the North Sea to make his landing near York. King Harold then showed his military prowess by marching his army northwards and completely destroying the over-confident forces of Hardrada and Tostig at Stamford Bridge.

There was no rest for the victors. Three days later, William of Normandy, with his huge host of fighting men, landed unopposed in the south, at Pevensey. Harold had to march southwards with his tired, weakened army and did not wait for reinforcements before he awaited the charge of William's mounted knights at Hastings. The resulting Norman triumph depicted resulted in Harold's death from an arrow, his bodyguard cut down and Duke William triumphant.

The only standing army in England had been defeated in an-all day battle in which the outcome was in doubt until the undisciplined English had broken ranks to pursue the Normans' feigning retreat. The story is too well-known to be repeated here, but when William took his army to London, where young Edgar the Atheling had been proclaimed king in Harold's place, English indecision in gathering together a formidable opposition forced the supporters of Edgar to negotiate for peace. They had no choice. William was duly crowned King of England at Westminster on Christmas Day, 1066.

Had Harold of Wessex won at Hastings, and it was touch and go all day, then the future course of England would have been certainly different. We can only guess at further isolation from the Continent and the making of a truly island nation at this very early date. We do know that William of Normandy won and changed the face of the nation forever. Not only was the land now governed by a foreign king and subjected to a foreign aristocracy, for the next four hundred years it wasted its resources and manpower on futile attempts to keep its French interests alive while, at the same time, becoming part of (and contributing to) the spectacular flowering of European culture.

The Conquest meant a new dynasty for England and a new aristocracy. It brought feudalism and it introduced changes in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, with the attendant change in the relations of Church and State. In the early part of the 11th century there had been a tremendous monastic revival in the Dukedom of Normandy. This came about as a result of close cooperation between King and Church in what was basically a feudal society, and one which was transferred to England in 1066 lock, stock and barrel.

William's victory also linked England with France and not Scandinavia from now on. Within six months of his coronation, William felt secure enough to visit Normandy. The sporadic outbreaks at rebellion against his rule had one important repercussion, however: it meant that threats to his security prevented him from undertaking any attempt to cooperate with the native aristocracy in the administration of England.

A rising at York in which the Danes also took part was easily crushed and the land harried unmercifully in revenge. Duke William showed that he meant business; he ruled with ruthless severity. On his absences in Normandy, he left strong, able barons to deal with any rebellions, including powerful church leaders. Through attrition, in the futile attempts at resistance, the old Anglo-Saxon aristocracy was severely depleted. The years 1066-1075 were a period of trial and experiment, with serious attempts at cooperation between Saxon and Norman, but these attempts were entirely given up in favor of a thoroughly Norman administration.

By the time of William's death in 1087, English society had been profoundly changed. For one thing, the great Saxon earldoms were split: Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and other ancient kingdoms were abolished forever. The great estates of England were given to Norman and Breton landowners, carefully prevented from building up their estates by having them separated by the holdings of others. In addition, William's insistence that the prime duty of any man holding land from the king was to produce on demand a set quota of mounted knights produced a new ruling class in England, one entirely different from that which had been in place for so long.

This was not the Saxon way of doing things: it constituted a total revolution. The simple rents of ale and barley or work upon the lord's manor were now supplemented by military service of a new kind: one that had been practiced only by and thus familiar to a Norman. In such a system, those at the bottom suffered most, losing all their rights as free men and coming to be regarded as mere property, assets belonging to the manor. In all intents and purposes, they were no more than slaves. In addition, further restrictions and hardship came from William's New Forest laws and his vast extension of new royal forests in which all hunting rights belonged to the king. The peasantry was thus deprived of a valuable food source in times of bad harvests. The most emphatic proof that the old freedoms were gone was the remarkable survey of England known as the "Domesday Book."

Begun in 1080, the unique "Domesday Book" (the book of unalterable judgments), was an attempt to provide the king with every penny to which he was legally entitled. It worked only too well, reckoning the wealth of England "down to the last pig." To determine how the country was occupied and with what sort of people, William sent his men into every shire and had them find out how many hundred hides there were in the shire, what land and cattle the king should have in the country, and what dues he ought to have in twelve months from the shire.

William was also determined to find out how much land was owned by the archbishops, bishops, abbots and earls. The book names some 13,000 places, many for the first time. A veritable Who's Who of the century, the "Domesday Book" is a remarkable accomplishment indeed, packed with exhaustive detail on every holding in the entire country and its value.

William had presented his invasion to the Pope as a minor crusade in which the "corrupt" Saxon Church in England would be reformed. Lanfranc was chosen as the instrument of reform, an exceptional man whose work was profound As Archbishop of Canterbury, he infused new life into the Church made moribund under such as Stigand (deposed by William), giving it a tighter organization and discipline.

Lanfranc had been Abbot of Cannes; he was a distinguished scholar and an expert on civil law. He had been prominent in the negotiations leading to William's marriage with the daughter of the Duke of Flanders. A practical administrator, he and the Conqueror seemed to have a close sympathy in aims and ideals. They agreed on the nature of the reforms necessary for the Church in England, especially that the influence and intrusion of the Papacy should be resisted and that real power should lie with the metropolitan dioceses. Lanfranc was supported by the king. He held synods regularly, corrected many irregularities, and righted long-standing abuses. His most persistent problem was that of clerical marriage.

In Anglo-Saxon England, the marriage of priests had been recognised. Household functions had taken priority over Church ceremony; such marriages had been defensible from folk-law, if not canon law. Lanfranc as a lawyer familiar with current canon law and Church law as practiced on the Continent, introduced many new rules into England that were copied and followed throughout the land, but they did not include marriage of clerics. One important innovation of Lanfranc was the transfer of the seats of bishops to the new, growing towns and centers of trade. The growing dispute between the powers of the ecclesiastical courts and the secular courts remained a thorn in the Archbishop's side and soon came to a head in the reign of Henry II.

Apart from the cultural and political legacy of the Norman occupation, the effects on architecture and language were also immense. The Anglo-Saxons were not noted for castle-building nor for great cathedrals and churches. Not much remains of their building. But all over the landscape, we see physical reminders of the Norman presence, not only in the military strongholds, which meant a castle in just about every town, but also in the cathedrals, abbeys and monasteries that so effectively symbolize the triumph of the new order. On the borders of Wales and Scotland, in particular, we see that combination of church and castle, abbey and town that demonstrate only too well the genius of this hardy breed of seafarers, explorers, settlers, administrators, law givers and builders who were never more than a tiny majority. But what they built was meant to stay.

Changes in language also became permanent. The new nobility knew no English and probably did little to learn it (in contrast to the situation on the borders of Wales where many Norman lords freely fraternized and married local inhabitants and learned the Welsh language). Though English continued to be spoken by the great majority, it was the language of the common people, not those in power, a situation that wasn't to change until the 14th century.

There was still the matter of how to deal with the Celtic kingdoms of Britain, those beyond the borders, those that were not occupied by the Saxons and where the language and customs remained more or less untouched: Scotland and Wales. William seemed to regard Scotland as an area best left alone. Though he claimed, as king of England, some degree of influence over Scotland and took control of Cumbria in 1092, he did not bother to venture further north. Wales was a different matter.

Various Welsh princes were still vying for power. The last ruler who could truly call himself King of Wales, Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, was killed in 1063. The country was then rent by a series of inter-family squabbles and William seized his opportunity to establish a firm western frontier by giving away lands along the border to some of his most loyal supporters. These so-called border barons or Marcher Lords were left free to add to their territories as they wished. Their castles and fortified manors in all the important border towns attest to their power and influence. The lordships of Chester, Shrewsbury, Hereford and Glamorgan kept a tight grip on any aspirations of Welsh princes to re-assert control of their nation. Yet such was the power of the Welsh longing to be independent and so cleverly had they mastered the art of guerilla warfare from their mountain strongholds, that by the time of the death of William's son, Rufus (King from 1087-1100) that Welsh control had been re-asserted over most of Wales.

Continued Welsh efforts to drive out the Normans from their border territories were of great concern to England's rulers. In 1095, William II started sending royal armies into Wales and the practice was continued by Henry I. The great expense of such adventures meant that an easier way to keep Wales in check was to preserve the territories of the Marcher lordships, which remained in existence for over four hundred years.

In the meantime, in England, Norman Rule not only affected political and social institutions, but the English language itself. A huge body of French words were ultimately to become part of the English vocabulary, many of these continuing side by side with their English equivalent, such as "sacred" and "holy", "legal" and "lawful," "stench" and "aroma," etc. Many French words replaced English ones. English became vastly enriched, more cosmopolitan, sharing its Teutonic and Romance traditions. Norman influence on literature was equally profound, for the developments in French literature, the leading literature of Europe, could now circulate in the English court as it did in France.

In retrospect, William's rule can be seen as harsh, but in some ways just. The king was determined to stay in firm control, and he certainly brought a new degree of political unity to England. Those huge, forbidding Norman castles which even today, in ruin, dominate the skyline of so many towns and cities had the effect of maintaining law and order. Even a Saxon scribe wrote that "a man might walk through the land unmolested," and compared to the lawlessness and abuses which were apparent in the reign of his successor William II, the Conqueror's reign was almost a golden age. Trouble came immediately upon his death.

William II, Rufus (1087-1100)

Despite the cohesion and order brought to England by the Duke of Normandy, the new administrative system outlived him by less than fifty years. Though William respected the elective nature of the English monarch, perfunctorily recognised at his own coronation, on his deathbed in Normandy he handed over the crown to William Rufus, his favorite son, and sent him to England to Archbishop Lanfranc. He reluctantly granted the Duchy of Normandy to Robert, his eldest, and bequeathed a modest sum to Henry Beauclerk, his youngest. There were bound to be problems.

The dominions ruled by William II, Rufus, were closely knit together by the family. The King of England and the Duke of Normandy had rival claims upon the allegiance of every great land-holder from the Scottish borders to Anjou. And these great land-holders, the Barons and Earls made it their business to provoke and protract quarrels of every kind between their rulers. It was a rotten state of affairs that could only be settled through the English acquisition of Normandy. In addition, Norman lands were surrounded by enemies eager to re-conquer lost territories. One of these foes was the Church of Rome itself, rapidly increasing in power and prestige at the expense of the feudal monarchies. Both William Rufus and his successor Henry I had to deal with problems that eventually lay beyond their capabilities to solve.

The leading Barons acquiesced in the coronation of William Rufus by Lanfranc in September of 1087, taking their lead from the archbishop but also demonstrating the immense power that was accruing to the Church in England. The new king was an illiterate, avaricious, impetuous man, not the sort of ruler the country needed at this or at any other time. It seems that the only profession he honored was that of war; his court became a Mecca for those practiced in its arts; his retainers lived lavishly off the land and took what they wished from whom they wished. To entertain his retinue, the king had a huge banqueting hall built in Westminster.

An early rebellion was inevitable. Taking place in 1088, it was led by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, an old foe of Lanfranc, who wished to install Robert of Normandy on the throne of England. To meet the threat, Rufus called upon his English subjects. He promised them better laws than they had ever had before; the remission of all novel dues and taxes, the repeal of many aspects of the hated forest laws. He had no intention of fulfilling his promises, but with them he was able to raise an army of the people and defeat the scattered rebel forces. With the tide running against him, Duke Robert quickly lost interest in the affair. Odo's army, penned up at Rochester, petitioned for a truce and the bishop himself was forced to depart for Europe. Lanfranc's death then removed the only person strong enough to protest against Rufus for failing to live up to his promises. The king could now appoint any advisor of his own choosing and accordingly, Ranulf Flambard found himself treasurer of England.

Despite the faults of William II, England was governed well compared to Normandy, where a constant state of anarchy prevailed and where Duke Robert was unable to control his barons who waged private wars, built castles without license and acted as petty, independent sovereigns. Rufus seized the opportunity to invade the province with a large force in 1090 to take vengeance on Robert's part in the rebellion two years earlier. He was aided by Philip of France, bribed to drop his support of Robert.

A land grab by Malcolm of Scotland in 1092 then forced Rufus back to England where he established a stronghold at Carlisle, on the Scottish border. During the following year, the Scottish king was killed at Malcolm's Cross by Earl Mowbray. Subsequent events in Scotland, in which Donaldbane allied with the Norwegians under Magnus, then created a new threat to William. Affairs in Normandy, however, took his full attention for the next three years.

In Normandy, Duke Robert decided to honor Pope Urban's call for a Crusade to win back the Holy Land from the Seljuk Turks to allow free access to pilgrims. To raise the necessary funds, he mortgaged his Duchy to William for 10,000 marks, a sum that could only be raised with difficulty in an England already drained by every method of extortion that could be devised by Flambard. The Church was particularly hit hard.

Yet the absence of Robert of Normandy on his adventures in the Middle East meant good fortune for the King of England. He was able to depose Donaldbane in Scotland in favor of his vassal Edgar, subdue the rebellious Welsh princes mainly through his sale of the Earldom of Shrewsbury to one of his Norman Barons and begin his campaign to add France to his kingdoms. In August, 1100, however, on a hunting expedition in the New Forest, William was killed. The throne of England now passed to his brother Henry.

Henry I (1100-1135)

Of the three sons of the Conqueror, Henry was the most able. A competent administrator at home, he succeeded in the conquest of Normandy. His supporters quickly elected Henry King of England and he was crowned by the Bishop of London in the absence of the exiled Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury. Henry ensured the support of his English subjects by issuing a solemn charter promising to redress grievances, especially those involving the selling of vacant benefices to the highest bidder.

That Henry I of England, much in the manner of William Rufus, failed to keep "the law of Edward" as promised, did not seem to matter as much as did his success in keeping the peace. He had the hated Flambard thrown into prison. He brought back Anselm to Canterbury, and thus helped heal the breach between the Church and the Crown, though the big problem of lay investiture remained, as well as Anselm's refusal to honor the appointments made by Henry during his exile. The archbishop did mollify the situation by officiating at the popular marriage of Henry to Edith, a descendant of Edward the Confessor and a most suitable choice as Queen of England. Anselm wisely chose to ignore the fact that Edith had taken holy orders as a nun, preferring to believe that she had only done this to protect herself from importunate suitors rather than to fulfill a desire to enter a convent.

Many of the leading Barons of Normandy who held lands in England came to Henry's court to pay homage, though many of them preferred Robert as their lord and schemed to replace Henry with their choice. King Henry could count on the support of his English subjects; his leading barons would wait to see which side could benefit them most. Robert duly landed at Portsmouth in 1101 to begin his march on London.

Losing his nerve, the Duke decided to treaty instead of fight, accepting a pension of 3,000 marks and a promise of help to recover his rebellious dependency of Maine. The terms of the Treaty of Alton, needless to say, were never honored by Henry, who immediately began to punish those barons who had sided with Robert. It took all of England's resources to deal with the ensuing rebellion of the powerful house of Montgomery, aided by the Welsh princes. Henry promised South Wales to Lorwerth ap Bleddyn, forcing the Montgomerys to negotiate for peace. Henry was uncompromising, however, and stripped Robert, Arnulf and Roger of all their holdings in England. The king was now supreme in his rule, free from any serious rival. He could now turn his attention to withholding royal authority from the encroachments of the Church in Rome, growing ever more ambitious under a series of able popes.

For the king, the customs of the realm of England took precedence over the claims of the Church. In this, he was aided by Gerard the Archbishop of York, who argued that the Mother of Churches was Jerusalem, not Rome, and that the Papacy was an institution of merely human ordinance. Predating Wycliffe, Gerard argued that the Scriptures alone could give religious instruction; there was no need to have the will of God expounded by a Pope. Kings were ordained by God to rule the Church no less than the State.

The struggle between Anselm and Henry was abetted by the new Pope Paschal; all three were obdurate, with the English archbishop even moving to France unable to satisfy his king. In the meantime, Henry appropriated Church revenues and enacted measures that led the bishops to beg for Anselm's return. Continued trouble with Normandy, however, put the Church-Crown struggle temporarily on hold.

Normandy had become a Mecca for just about all of those opposed Henry of England, who now resolved to dispossess his brother. He started by bribing the Count of Flanders and the King of France to transfer their allegiance. The conquest of Normandy began in the spring of 1105, climaxing in the one-hour battle at Tinchebrai when Robert surrendered. Normandy now belonged to Henry, King of England. Thus the English soldiers, who had formed a large part of Henry's army, could now say that the Battle of Hastings was avenged. Robert was held captive in Cardiff Castle in Wales to spend the remainder of his life a closely-guarded prisoner.

Henry could now introduce into the anarchy that had been Normandy some of the order and economy that he had established in England. His one great mistake was to entrust the infant son of Robert, William the Clito, to the charge of one who would later raise a rebellion against him, and for twenty years, the policies of Henry and his Norman possessions were determined by those who continued to plot against him.

Back in England, the Church-Crown struggle continued; fear of excommunication led the King to finally agree to a compromise with Anselm. Henry renounced the right of investing prelates, but would continue to receive their homage for their temporal possessions and duties. The treaty, nonetheless, did nothing to settle the question of the English Church's longed-for independence from the Crown. But it left Henry at the pinnacle of his power. The death of Anselm meant that the King could appoint a successor more favorable to his own views.

Flambard, restored to Durham, remained too unpopular to cause any trouble for the king. In addition, Henry kept in check the powers and ambitions of the great Barons by judiciously exercising his feudal rights. He prohibited the custom of private war, forbade the building of castles or fortified dwellings without his license and insisted that every under-tenant regard the King as his chief lord. Above all, he insisted on the rule of law.

When Henry first acceded to the throne, there had been different laws for different folks according to where they resided, for example, West Saxons were treated differently from Mercians. But the King's Court refused to recognize these differences. The rule was that the law of the King's Court must stand above all other law and was the same for all. The king's justices travelled into the shires to see that his mandate was carried out. Before Henry died, the most distinctive of the old provincial differences had disappeared.

From all the varying tribes that dwelled in England, with their mutually incomprehensible dialects and varying legal customs and traditions, a new nation was being forged out of the common respect for the King's writ, out of their submission to and increasing attachment to the same principles of law and their trust in the monarchy to protect them against oppression. Henry, the "Lion of Justice" thus propelled his English possessions towards a sense of national unity totally lacking in other lands. However, trouble returned upon the king's death in 1135.

Return to Anarchy: Stephen (1135-1154)

The order of Henry l's reign soon disintegrated under his successor Stephen of Blois. Events had started in 1128 when Geoffrey the Fair married the Empress Matilda, daughter and designated heiress of Henry, King of England and Duke of Normandy. When Henry died and his nephew and favorite Stephen seized the throne and the dukedom, the houses of Anjou and Blois began their long struggle for control of both. Briefly, in this struggle, Matilda concentrated on England and Count Geoffrey on Normandy, where he became Duke in 1144. Events reluctantly forced Stephen to acknowledge Geoffrey in his Dukedom as well as Matilda's son Henry as heir to his English throne.

Stephen’s adherence to the code of chivalry led him to give safe conduct to Matilda, entirely at his mercy, to her brother's castle at Bristol, a grievous error. Matilda, as wife of Geoffrey, had a secure base in Anjou and later in Normandy and Stephen was made to pay dearly for his act of benevolence (or stupidity).

In 1126, Stephen, one of the wealthiest of the Anglo-Norman landholders, had taken an oath to accept the succession of Matilda, an oath he quickly forgot when he seized the treasury at Winchester and had himself crowned King. Acceptance of his Dukedom quickly followed from the Norman barons and early in 1136, Stephen's position seemed secure. Even Matilda's half brother, Earl Robert of Gloucester paid him homage at his Easter Court. Then it all unraveled for this good knight who was also, in the words of chronicler Walter Map, a fool. His courtesy and chivalry were not matched by efficacy in governing, and his political blunders were legion. Prominent features of his reign, accordingly, were civil wars and local disturbances.

The war of succession began when Matilda's uncle, David, King of Scotland invaded England on her behalf in 1135. It was under the rule of David, the ninth son of Malcom III that Norman influence began to percolate through much of southern Scotland. David was also Prince of Cumbria, and through marriage Earl of Northampton and Huntingdon. Brother-in-law to the King of England, he was raised and educated in England by Normans who "polished his manners from the rust of Scottish barbarity." In Scotland, he distributed large estates to his Anglo-Norman cronies who also took over important positions in the Church. Into the Lowlands he introduced a feudal system of land ownership, founded on a new, French-speaking Anglo-Norman aristocracy that remained aloof from the majority of the Gaelic-speaking Celtic population.

It is to David that Scotland's future as an independent kingdom can be traced. When conflict arose between the new (and weak) English King Stephen and the Empress Matilda, David took the opportunity to reassert old territorial claims to the border lands, including Cumbria. At the Treaty of Durham in 1136, he retained Carlisle (which he had earlier seized). His invasion of England took him into Yorkshire. However, fierce resistance, to what has been called his needless, gleeful violence led to his defeat at Northallerton in the "Battle of the Standard." Yet, due mainly to Stephen's troubles, the Scottish king was able to gain practically all of Northumbria at a second treaty of Durham in 1139. At David's death in 1153, the kingdom of Scotland had been extended to include the Modern English counties of Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland, territories that were in future to be held by the kings of Scotland.

In the meantime, Matilda landed at Arundel in 1139 with a large army. Stephen was captured at the battle of Lincoln in 1141, when his Barons deserted him, only to be exchanged for Robert of Gloucester after Matilda had incurred the enmity of the citizens of London, and the Queen had raised an army to defend the city. Despite Matilda's being proclaimed "Domina Anglorum" at Winchester, the civil wars continued intermittently, with Matilda and her supporters firmly entrenched in the West country, normally on the defensive, often desperately close to being defeated, but Stephen ultimately was unable to dislodge them.

The wars of succession in England, caused by Stephen's failure to recognize Matilda as rightful monarch, were not happy times. Both armies relied heavily on foreign mercenaries, anxious to set up their own private fiefdoms in England and on occasion, managing to do so. In contrast to the peace of Henry's reign, the English countryside now suffered the sad consequences of an unremitting struggle with lawless armies on the rampage and barons paying off old scores. Matilda, finally despairing at her failure to dislodge Stephen, left for Normandy, never to return.

A more successful campaign was then carried out by Matilda's son Henry, beginning in 1153. When his eldest son Eustace died the same year, Stephen agreed to a compromise. He was to continue as king so long as he lived and to receive Henry's homage. In turn, Henry was to be recognized as rightful heir. In the meantime, complete anarchy prevailed in which the functions of central government quickly broke down. Fragmentation and decentralization were the order of the day. The situation called out desperately for a strong able ruler. Henry II came along just in time.

Henry II (1154-1189)

Henry had become Duke of Normandy in 1150 and Count of Anjou after his father's death in 1151. When he married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, he ruled her duchy as well, thus becoming more powerful than his lord, King Louis of France. Eleanor had been divorced from Louis VII after her spell of adultery with her Uncle Raymond of Antioch, notwithstanding the efforts of the Pope to keep the marriage whole. She was several years older than Henry, but she was determined on the union and made all the initial overtures. The turbulent marriage of the able, headstrong, ambitious Henry to an older woman, equally ambitious and proud, was famous for its political results.

King Louis, fearful of his loss of influence in France, made war on the couple, joined by Henry's younger brother Geoffrey who claimed the inheritance of Anjou. Their feeble opposition, however, was easily overcome and Henry acquired a vast swathe of territory in France from Normandy through Anjou to Aquitaine. The stage was set for the greatest period in Plantagenet history.

In England, Stephen was unable to garner the support he needed from his Barons, fearful that a victory for either side would be followed by a massive confiscation of lands. He had quarreled with his Archbishop of Canterbury in 1147, and the Church had consequently refused to recognize his son Eustace as his heir. After Eustace's premature death in 1154, when Stephen was forced to meet Henry at Wallingford, the great Barons decided to shift any allegiance away from the King of England to the one he was more or less forced to acknowledge as his successor. Henry was duly crowned with general English acclaim. The problems of succession did not go away, however, for the union of Henry and Eleanor produced four sons, all thirsty for power and not averse to any means whatsoever to get it, even if it meant allying with Louis VII and Philip ll of France against their father.

In the meantime, however, Henry ll was making his mark as one of the most powerful rulers in Europe. His boundless energy was the wonder of his chroniclers; his court had to rush like mad to keep up with his constant travels and hunting expeditions. But he was also a scholar and Churchman, founding and endowing many religious houses, though he was castigated for keeping many bishoprics vacant to enjoy their revenues for himself. To posterity, he left a legacy of shrewd decisions in the effective legal, administrative and financial developments of his thirty-five year reign.

Leaving a greater impress upon the institutions of England than any other king, perhaps Henry's greatest accomplishment was to take the English system of law, much of it rooted in Anglo-Saxon custom, a cumbersome, complex and slow accumulation of procedures, and turn it into an efficient legal system closely presided over by the royal court and the king's justices. Making much use of the itinerant justices to bring criminals to trial, Henry replaced feudal law by a body of royal or common law. A major innovation was the replacement of the older system of a sworn oath or an ordeal to establish truth by the jury of 12 sworn men.

Upon his succession, Henry immediately took steps to reduce the power of the barons, who had built up their estates and consolidated their positions during the anarchy under Stephen. He refused to recognize any land grants made by his predecessor and ruled as if Stephen had not even existed. Any attempts at opposition were suppressed so that by 1158, four years into his reign, he ruled supreme in England.

Henry then turned his attention to the Church, shrewdly relying on his close ally Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury to carry out his religious policies. England began to prosper under its able administrators closely watched and guided by their king. Particularly noticeable were the growth of boroughs, the new towns that were to transform the landscape of the nation during the century and that were ultimately to play such a strong part in its political and economic life.

The growth of towns, the new trading centers, was greatly aided by the stimulation of the First Crusade that revived the commerce of Europe by increased contact with the Mediterranean and especially through the growth of Venice. Improvements in agriculture included the introduction of the wheeled plough and the horse collar, both of which were to have enormous influence on farming methods and transportation. For one thing, the horse collar made it possible to efficiently transport the heavy blocks of stone for the building of the great cathedrals. The drift into towns meant a weakening of serfdom and the Lord's hold upon his demesne; serfs left the land to become traders, peddlers and artisans.

Great changes in Europe also had their effects on the English political system. Motivated by hatred and fear of the Moslems, and stimulated by the Crusades, the Italian city-states grew in influence and prosperity. Sicily had been conquered by the Normans by 1090, opening up the Western Mediterranean to trade. This in turn stimulated the growth of the towns, which soon led to demands for more say in their own government and the inevitable clash with the Church, ever anxious to protect its own areas of interest and those of the merchant classes and rapidly forming guilds. The continuing clash between Church and King was another matter altogether.

There seem to have been three main factors in the quarrel between Archbishop Becket and King Henry: their differing personalities, political implications and the intolerance of the age. As chancellor for eight years from 1154, Becket was a firm friend of the king with whom he had been a boyhood companion. He was energetic, methodical and trustworthy, supporting his king in relations with the Church. There was hardly any indication that the relationship of Church and State would be completely changed upon Becket's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury upon Theodore's death in 1161, a position in which he now displayed the same enthusiasm and energy as before, but now sworn to uphold ecclesiastical prestige against any royal encroachments. Resigning the chancellorship, he began in earnest to work solely in the interests of the Church, opposing the king even on insignificant, trivial matters, but especially over Henry's proposal that people in holy orders found guilty of criminal offences should be handed over to the secular authorities for punishment.

The king was determined to turn unwritten custom into written, thus making Becket liable for punishment, but Henry's insistence that it was illegal for Churchmen to appeal to Rome gave the quarrel a much wider significance. After Henry had presented his proposals at Clarendon in January 1164, Becket refused to submit and his angry confrontation with the king was only defused with his escape to exile in France to wage a war of words. He found very little support from the English bishops who owed their appointments to royal favor and who were heavily involved on the Crown's behalf in legal and administrative matters. They were not willing to give up their powers by supporting the Archbishop, whose intransigence made him, in their eyes, a fool. After six years in exile, however, a compromise was reached and Becket returned to England.

Showing not a sign of his willingness to honor the compromise, Becket immediately excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the other bishops who had assisted at the coronation of Henry's oldest son. When the news reached Henry in Normandy, his anger was uncontrollable and the four knights who sped to Canterbury to murder Becket in his own cathedral thought that this was an act desired by the King. Instead, the whole of Europe was outraged.

The dead archbishop was immensely more powerful than the live one, and more than Henry's abject penance made the murdered Becket the most influential martyr in the history of the English Church. The triangle of Pope, King and Archbishop was broken. Canon law was introduced fully into England, and an important phase in the struggle between Church and State had been won. Henry was forced to give way all along the line; as a way out, he busied himself in Ireland, sending his son John as "Lord of Ireland" to conduct a campaign that was a complete fiasco.

Taking advantage of their father's weakness, his sons now broke out in open rebellion, aided by the Queen, though their lack of cooperation and trust in each other led to Henry eventually being able to defeat them one at a time. For her part, Eleanor was imprisoned for the remainder of the king's life. During her husband's many absences, she had acted as regent of England. Her particular ally against Henry was Richard, heir to the duchy of Aquitaine. During the last three years of Henry's life, his imprisoned queen once more began to plot against him, and upon his death in 1189, she assumed far greater powers than she had enjoyed as his queen.

Under pressure from resistance in Britanny and Aquitaine, and possible rebellion from his sons, aided by their ambitious, scheming mother, Henry had worked out a scheme for the future division of his kingdoms. Henry was to inherit England, Normandy and Anjou; Richard was to gain Poitou and Britanny was to go to Geoffrey. John was to get nothing, but later was promised Chinon, Loudon and Mirebeau as part of a proposed marriage settlement. This decision was strongly contested by Prince Henry and was a leading factor in the warfare that ensued between the King and his sons. It was in Normandy that Henry fell ill; he died after being forced to accept humiliating terms from Philip of France and his son Richard, who succeeded him as King of England in 1189.

Richard l (1189-1199): The Warrior King

Showing but some of his father's administrative capacity, Richard l, the Lionheart, preferred to demonstrate his talents in battle. His ferocious pursuit of the arts of war squandered his vast wealth and devastated the economy of his dominions. On a Crusade to the Holy Land in 1191-2, he was captured while returning to England and ransomed in prison in Germany. But upon his release, he went back to fighting, this time against Philip ll of France. In a minor skirmish in Aquitaine, he was killed. That almost sums up his reign, but not quite.

Philip had been a co-Crusader with Richard, but his friendship turned to hostility when the Lionheart rejected his betrothed, Philip's sister Alice, in favor of Princess Berengaria of Navarre. Unfortunately, this match, consummated for purely political reasons, did not produce an heir and left the way open for the numerous conspiracies hatched by Richard's brother John, Count of Mortain (who had been miserly treated in the dispositions of their father, Henry II). All in all, the reign of one called by a contemporary as the "most remarkable ruler of his times," was anything but remarkable, unless the exploits of this violent and selfish man deserve mention. One of these involves the conquest of Cyprus after Berengaria's ship had sheltered near Limassol and had been threatened by the island's ruler. Richard, in fact, married his plain, but prudent bride, in that Cypriot port.

King Richard spent all of six months in England. To raise the funds for his adventures overseas, however, he appointed able administrators who carried out his plans to sell just about everything he owned: offices, lordships, earldoms, sheriffdoms, castles, towns, and lands. Even his Chancellor William Longchamps, Bishop of Ely, had to pay an enormous sum for his chancellorship. William also taxed the people heavily in the service of his master, making himself extremely unpopular and being removed by a rebellion of the Barons in 1191.

The most able of Richard's ministers, and certainly the most important, was Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, Justiciar and Chancellor. He helped keep the country more or less stable during the absence of the adventurer king despite being grievously threatened by the townspeople's protests against taxes and the nobles' protests against Richard's plans to establish a standing army. The system that had been developed by Henry ll enabled the country to function quite well, despite the occasional troubles caused by Richard's scheming and ambitious brother John. Though Richard outlawed or excommunicated John's supporters when he returned from overseas, he forgave his brother and promised him the succession.

One favorable legacy that Richard left behind was his patronage of the troubadours, the composers of lyric poetry that were bringing a civilized tone to savage times and whose influence charted the future course that literature in Europe was to take. A sad note is that Richard's preparations for the Third Crusade against the Moslems provoked popular hostility in England towards its Jewish inhabitants (who had been formerly encouraged to come from Normandy). A massacre of the Jewish inhabitants of York took place in March, 1190, and Richard's successor, John placed heavy fines which led to many Jews fleeing back to the continent, a process that continued into the reign of Edward l, when they were expelled from England.

Richard was fortunate to have loyal, experienced men to represent him in England, Normandy, Anjou, Poitou and Gascony, as well as in the duchy of Aquitaine. The successes enjoyed in the Third Crusade against the forces of Saladin, a most formidable foe, were mainly due to the English king's abilities as politician and military leader. But his dominions were constantly threatened by enemies, who included Philip II of France, Raymond of Toulouse and his brother John.

It is a pity that Richard got himself captured in Germany, for he had made ample arrangements for the government of his domains. His ransom was massive; it included his recognition of Henry VI of Germany, son of Frederick Barbarossa, as feudal overlord of England. Nonetheless, thanks to such as Longchamps in England, he was able to raise sufficient funds to recover all that Philip had gained in Normandy and to keep his lands intact. He died in the siege of a minor castle in a foolish attempt at inspecting his troops. John lost very little time in losing everything that his brother had fought so hard to protect.

Disaster under King John (1199-1216)

There are quite a number of ironies connected with the reign of John, for during his reign all the vast Plantagenet possessions in France except Gascony were lost. From now on, the House of Anjou was separated from its links with its homeland, and the Crown of England eventually could concern itself solely with running its own affairs free from Continental intrigue. But that was later. In the meantime, John's mishandling of his responsibilities at home led to increased baronial resistance and to the great concessions of the Magna Carta, hailed as one of the greatest developments in human rights in history and the precursor of the United States Bill of Rights. It was also in John's reign that the first income tax was levied in England; to try to recover his lost lands in France, John introduced his tax of one thirteenth on income from rents and moveable property, to be collected by the sheriffs.

To be fair to the unfortunate John, his English kingdom had been drained of its wealth for Richard's wars in France and the Crusade as well as the exorbitant ransom. His own resources were insufficient to overcome the problems he thus inherited. He also lacked the military abilities of his brother. It has been said that John could win a battle in a sudden display of energy, but then fritter away any advantage gained in a spell of indolence. It is more than one historian who wrote of John as having the mental abilities of a great king, but the inclinations of a petty tyrant.

John alienated his vassals in Aquitaine by divorcing his first wife, Isabella of Gloucester (who had failed to give him a son and heir), and taking as his second wife the teenage daughter of the Count of Angouleme, a political move that brought him no gain. The young woman was already betrothed to Hugh de Lusignan of Poitou, and John was summoned to appear before Philip ll his nominal overlord in France. After all his lands in France were forfeited for his refusal to appear, John seized the initiative, marching to Poitier, and seizing young Arthur (and releasing Eleanor of Aquitaine, held captive). He then threw everything away by releasing the most dangerous of his prisoners, who continued the revolt against him and worse, he had Arthur of Britanny killed.

When Arthur was murdered, it was the end for John's hopes in France. The act alienated just about everybody, and Philip now pressed home his advantage. The King of England's ineptitude and lack of support, despite winning some victories in some provinces, eventually caused him to flee across the Channel, never to return. It was the greatest reverse suffered by the English Crown since the Battle of Hastings in 1066. When John reached England, the only French lands left to him, apart from Gascony, was the Channel Islands (these nine island have remained under the British Crown ever since and were the only part of the United Kingdom occupied by Nazi forces in World War II).

Philip had not been the only one to be upset by John's repudiation of Isabella. The English barons were also indignant. They had begun to lose confidence in their feudal lord. After Richard's death, they had little faith in a victory over the King of France and became weary of fighting John's wars, deserting him in droves. When John began to direct his attention to matters in England, he was unable to gain their confidence. William the Lion of Scotland seized the opportunity to reassert his country's claim to Northumberland and Cumberland, though his age and lack of allies prevented him from achieving his aims. John's greatest problems, apart from the mistrust of his barons, lay not with Scotland, but with the Church of Rome, now under a strong and determined Pope, Innocent III.

Innocent, Pope from 1198 to 1216 was the first to style himself "Vicar of Christ." He proved to be a formidable adversary to the English King. Their major dispute came over the appointment of the new Archbishop of Canterbury at the death of Hubert Walter in 1205. John refused to accept Stephen Langton, an Englishman active in the papal court at Rome. He was punished by the Interdict of 1208, and for the next five years, English priests were forbidden from administering the sacraments, even from burying the dead. Most of the bishops left the country.

York had been without an archbishop since 1207 when John's half brother Geoffrey had fled to the continent after a quarrel over church taxes. In 1209, Innocent excommunicated John, who was eventually forced to submit by accepting Langton as his primary Church leader. Not only that, but he had to place England under the direct overlordship of the papacy, and it was this humiliation that completely destroyed his political credibility. In the meantime, however, John had successfully dealt with the problem of Ireland.

The King had already been in Ireland, sent by his father to try to complete Henry's plans to bring the feuding Irish chiefs and independent Norman lords to order. He had failed miserably, and the behavior of his undisciplined troops quickly led to his ignominious withdrawal from that troubled land. The campaign of 1210 was more successful. Many Anglo-Norman lords had consolidated major landholdings and were in defiance of royal authority. John's efforts to bring them to heel proved to be one of the few successes of his seventeen-year reign. He allied himself with the Irish chiefs, and with their help was able to dispossess the powerful Walter and Hugh de Lacy. He placed the royal Justiciar in charge of Ireland and had castles built at Carrickfergus and Dublin to strengthen English control over the country.

It was time for the king of England to turn back to France. In 1212, John's plans to re-conquer his former French possessions led to the revolt of his barons. His request for money and arms was the flash point. When the northern barons refused to help, John took an army to punish the rebels. Only Langton's intervention effected a reconciliation. The expedition to Poitou then proceeded, but ended in total failure with the defeat by Philip at Bouvines. His continued disregard of feudal law and customs, allied to the disgrace of the defeat in France and loss of lands, were now seized on by the majority of English barons who presented their grievances at Runnymede, on June 15, 1215.

The Magna Carta, the "Great Charter" was something of a compromise, a treaty of peace between John and his rebellious barons, whose chief grievance was that of punishment without trial. Archbishop Langton drew up the grievances into a form of statements that constitute a complex document of 63 clauses. Though John's signature meant that baronial grievances were to be remedied, in later years, the charter became almost a manifesto of royal powers. In fact, for the next 450 years, even though John reluctantly signed the charter, all subsequent rulers of England fundamentally disagreed with its principles. They preferred to see themselves as the source of all laws and thus above the law.

For posterity, however, the two most important clauses were 39, which states that no one should be imprisoned without trial and 40, which states that no one could buy or deny justice. Also of particular interest is the provision that taxes henceforth could not be levied except with the agreement of leading churchmen and barons at a meeting to which 40 days notice was to be given. In addition, restrictions were placed on the powers of the king's local officials to prevent them from abusing their financial, administrative and judicial powers. Weights and measures were regulated, the safety of merchants ensured and the privileges of the citizens of London were confirmed. The most lasting effect of the somewhat vague conditions of the Magna Carta was the upholding of individual rights against arbitrary government.

Baronial rebellion in England was not crushed by the provisions signed at Runnymede. John spent the rest of his reign marching back and forth trying to stamp out opposition that was led by Prince Louis of France, son of Philip ll, but achieving little. One persistent legend is that he lost all his baggage train, including the Crown jewels in the marshy area known as the Wash in the county of Norfolk. The angry and frustrated king died in October 1216. His burial at Worcester, however, showed that the centre of Plantagenet rule was now firmly established in England, and not France (both Henry II and Richard I had been buried in Anjou).

Henry III (1216-1272)

And so it was that John's young heir, Henry lll, came to the throne, to rule for 56 years, most of which were also spent in futile battles with the leading barons of England and his failure to recapture the lost Plantagenet lands in France. Henry also tried to take advantage of the Pope's offer of the kingdom of Sicily by making his youngest son Edmund king of that far-off island. To raise the funds to pay the ever increasing demands of the Bishop of Rome, Henry asked for taxes in a repeat of his revenue-raising efforts that had failed to bring military success in France and a crisis soon erupted. He had to agree to a meeting of "parliament" in which the opposition was led by his brother-in-law Simon de Montfort.

Henry had already alienated his leading barons by marrying Eleanor of Provence, who brought many of her relatives to England to create an anti-foreigner element into the realm's political intrigues and helped solidify baronial resentment and suspicion of the incompetent, but pious king. The Barons showed their power by drawing up the Provisions of Oxford. Henry capitulated; he was forced to acquiesce to the setting up of a Council of Fifteen, with himself as a "first among equals." When the king later tried to reassert his authority, the barons once again rebelled. Under de Montfort, they captured Henry, and set up de Montfort as temporary ruler.

Henry's son Edward, showing much more resolve and military skills than his father, then raised an army, and at the decisive battle of Evesham in 1265, defeated de Montfort to restore Henry, who enjoyed his last few years in peace. He was especially gratified at the completion of Westminster Abbey and the reburial of the remains of Edward the Confessor there.

During Henry III's long reign, great progress was made in the direction of the English Church, not the least of which was the completion of the great cathedrals at Durham, Wells, Ely and Lincoln and the erection of the magnificent edifice at Salisbury with its spire lasting for many centuries as the tallest man-made structure in England. Most notable among many learned clerics of the period was Robert Grosstested, Bishop of Lincoln, who become Oxford University's first chancellor, setting that institution on the road to its eventual greatness and its enormous influence upon the nation's future leaders.

Henry's reign also saw the movement away from the monastic ideal to that of the Church working among the people. The Franciscans and Dominicans were particularly prominent in charitable work in the rapidly growing towns and villages of England. In the country, an important innovation was the introduction of windmills from Holland, which greatly aided in the draining of marshes and the milling of grain.

Though Henry lll in many ways was a weak and vacillating king, his reign produced a great milestone in the history of England, for the opposition of de Montfort and the Barons, though ultimately defeated, had produced a parliament in which commoners sat for the first time, and it was this, much more than the Magna Carta of John, that was to prove of immense significance in the future of democracy in England, and of "government by the people and for the people."

Edward I (1272-1307)

Seen by many historians as the ideal medieval king, Edward l enjoyed warfare and statecraft equally, and was determined to succeed in both. Henry's eldest son, he had conducted the ailing king's affairs in England during the last years of his father's life. Known as Edward Longshanks, he was a man whose immense strength and steely resolve had been ably shown on the crusade he undertook to the Holy Land in 1270. The death of Henry forced his return from Sicily, though it took him two years to return.

When he finally did arrive to claim his throne, King Edward immediately set about restoring order in England and wiping out corruption among the barons and royal officials. His great inquiry to recover royal rights and to re-establish law and justice became the largest official undertaking since the "Domesday Book" of two hundred years earlier. The proceedings took place under the Statute of Gloucester on 1278 and the Statute of Quo Warranto of 1290. The Statute of Mortmain of 1279 had decreed that no more land might be given into the hands to the church without royal license. All these efforts and the great statutes of Westminster of 1275 and 1285 were so successful in reforming and codifying English law that Edward was given the title of the "English Justinian." Of equal importance in the future development of the English civilization was Edward's fostering of the concept of representation in a people's parliament. Knights of the shire and burgesses of the boroughs were called to attend many of the king's parliaments. In 1295, his gathering contained all the elements later associated with the word "parliament," the writs issued to the sheriffs to call the knights and burgesses made it clear that they were to act according to common counsel of their respective local communities.

Ever anxious to raise funds for his never-ending wars, the king also established a long-lasting alliance between the Crown and the merchant classes, giving them protection in return for a grant of export duties on wool and other agricultural products. The wily king even granted foreign merchants freedom of trade in England in return for additional customs revenues. He desperately needed this income to fight his Welsh and Scottish wars.

The Conquest of Wales

Visitors to the Wales of today are sometimes astonished to see the extent of Edward's castle-building campaign. Huge forbidding castles, such as Caernarfon, Conwy, Harlech and Beaumaris are listed as World Heritage Sites along with others such as Flint and Rhuddlan. They show the extent to which Edward was determined to crush any Welsh aspirations of independence and to bring the country firmly under royal control.

The stubborn Welsh were a thorn in the side of Edward whose ambition was to rule the whole of Britain. They were a proud people, considering themselves the true Britons. Geoffrey of Monmouth (1090-1155) had claimed that they had come to the island of Britain from Troy under their leader Brutus. He also praised their history, written in the British tongue (Welsh). Another Norman-Welsh author, Giraldus Cambrensis (1146-1243) had this to say about his fellow countrymen:

The English fight for power: the Welsh for liberty; the one to procure, gain, the other to avoid loss. The English hirelings for money; the Welsh patriots for their country.

When the English nation forged some kind of national identity under Alfred of Wessex, the Welsh put aside their constant infighting to create something of a nation themselves under a succession of strong leaders beginning with Rhodri Mawr (Rhodri the Great) who ruled the greater part of Wales by the time of his death in 877. Rhodri's work of unification was then continued by his grandson, Hywel Dda (Howell the Good 904-50), whose codification of Welsh law has been described as among the most splendid creations of the culture of the Welsh.

Hywel was a lawgiver, not a military leader. In order to keep the peace throughout his kingdoms, he had to accept the position of sub-regulus to Athelstan of Wessex. In 1039, however, Gruffudd ap Llywelyn became king of Gwynedd and extended his authority throughout Wales, setting a precedent that was to continue throughout the Norman invasion of Britain. Under Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, Wales was forged into a single political unit. In 1204, Llywelyn married King John's daughter Joan and was recognised by Henry III as pre-eminent in his territories. At his death, however, in 1240, fighting between his sons Dafydd and Gruffudd just about destroyed all their father had accomplished, and in 1254, Henry's son Edward was given control of all the Crown lands in Wales that had been ceded at the Treaty of Woodstock in 1247.

The situation was restored by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, recognised as Prince of Wales by Henry in 1267 and ruler of a kingdom set to conduct its own affairs free from English influence. The tide of affairs then undertook a complete reversal with the accession of Edward I to the throne of England in 1272.

Edward's armies were defeated when they first crossed Offas's Dyke into Wales. The English king's determination to crush his opposition, his enormous expenditure on troops and supplies and resistance to Llywelyn from minor Welsh princes who were jealous of his rule, soon meant that the small Welsh forces were forced into their mountain strongholds. At the Treaty of Aberconwy of 1287, Llywelyn was forced to concede much of his territories east of the River Conwy. Edward then began his castle-building campaign, beginning with Flint right on the English border and extending to Builth in mid-Wales.

Llywelyn was not yet finished. When his brother Dafydd rose in rebellion against the harsh repression of his people's laws and customs, Llywelyn took up the cause. According to one chronicler, the Welsh "preferred to be slain in war for their liberty than to suffer themselves to be unrighteously trampled upon by foreigners." Sadly, however, despite initial successes, Llywelyn was slain at Cilmeri, near Builth, when he was separated from his loyal troops, and Edward's troubles with the Welsh were at an end. Their "impetuous rashness" was now severely punished by the English king, intent on ridding himself of these stubborn people once and for all.

At the Statute of Rhuddlan, 1284, Wales was divided up into English counties; the English court pattern set firmly in place, and for all intents and purposes, Wales ceased to exist as a political unit. The situation seemed permanent when Edward followed up his castle building program by his completion of Caernarfon, Conwy and Harlech. In 1300, Edward made his son (born at Caernarfon castle, in that mighty fortress overlooking the Menai Straits in Gwynedd) "Prince of Wales." The powerful king could now turn his attention to those other troublemakers, the Scots.

The Scots' Road to Independence

At roughly the same time that the people of Wales were separated from the invading Saxons by the artificial boundary of Offa's Dyke, MacAlpin had been creating a kingdom of Scotland. His successes in part were due to the threat coming from the raids of the Vikings, many of whom became settlers. The seizure of control over all Norway in 872 by Harald Fairhair caused many of the previously independent Jarls to look for new lands to establish themselves. One result of the coming of the Norsemen and Danes with their command of the sea, was that Scotland became surrounded and isolated. The old link with Ireland was broken and the country was now cut off from southern England and the Continent, thus the kingdom of Alba established by MacAlpin was thrown in upon itself and united against a common foe.

In 1018, under MacAlpin's descendant Malcolm II, the Angles were finally defeated in this northerly part of Britain and Lothian came under Scottish rule. The same year saw the death of the British (Celtic) King of Strathclyde who left no heir; his throne going to Malcolm's grandson Duncan. In 1034, Duncan became King of a much-expanded Scotland that included Pict-land, Scotland, Lothian, Cumbria and Strathclyde. It excluded large tracts in the North, the Shetlands, Orkneys and the Western Isles, held by the Scandinavians. There was still no established boundary between Scotland and England.

It was under the rule of David l, the ninth son of Malcom III, that Norman influence began to percolate through much of southern Scotland. David, King of Scotland, was also Prince of Cumbria, and through marriage, Earl of Northampton and Huntingdon. Brother-in-law to the King of England, he was raised and educated in England by Normans who "polished his manners from the rust of Scottish barbarity." In Scotland, he distributed large estates to his Anglo-Norman cronies who also took over important positions in the Church. In the Scottish Lowlands he introduced a feudal system of land ownership, founded on a new, French-speaking Anglo-Norman aristocracy that remained aloof from the majority of the Gaelic-speaking Celtic population.

At David's death in 1153, the kingdom of Scotland had been extended to include the Modern English counties of Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland, territories that were in future to be held by the kings of Scotland. Alas, the accession of Henry II to the English throne in 1154 had changed everything.

David had been succeeded by his grandson, Malcolm IV an eleven-year old boy He was no match for the powerful new King of England. At the Treaty of Chester, 1157 Henry's strength, "the authority of his might," forced Malcolm to give up the northern counties solely in return for the confirmation of his rights as Earl of Huntingdon. The Scottish border was considerably shifted northwards. And there it remained until the rash adventures of William, Malcolms' brother and successor, got him captured at Alnwich, imprisoned at Falaise in Normandy, and forced to acknowledge Henry's feudal superiority over himself and his Scottish kingdom. In addition, to add insult to injury, the strategic castles of edinburgh, Stirling, Roxburgh, Jedburgh and Berwick were to be held by England with English garrisons at Scottish expense.

Henry II's successor was Richard I, whose main concern was the Third Crusade. Desperately needing money to finance his overseas adventures, Richard freed William from all "compacts" extorted by Henry and restored the castles of Berwick and Roxburgh for a sum of 10,00 marks of silver. Thus the humiliation of the Falaise agreement was cancelled. Richard showed little interest in running his English kingdom, less interested in Scotland and departed for the crusade in 1189. Once again, Scotland was a free and independent country.

A new struggle for control of Scotland had begun at the death of Alexander III in 1286, leaving as heir his grandchild Margaret, the infant daughter of the King of Norway. English King Edward, with his eye on the complete subjugation of his northern neighbors, suggested that Margaret should marry his son, a desire consummated at a treaty signed and sealed at Birgham. Under the terms, Scotland was to remain a separate and independent kingdom, though Edward wished to keep English garrisons in a number of Scottish castles. On her way to Scotland, somewhere in the Orkney, the young Norwegian princess died, unable to enjoy the consignment of sweetmeats and raisins sent by the English King. The succession was now open to many claimants, the strongest of whom were John Balliol and Robert Bruce.

John Balliol was supported by King Edward, who believed him to be the weaker and more compliant of the two Scottish claimants. At a meeting of 104 auditors, with Edward as judge, the decision went in favor of Balliol, who was duly declared the rightful king in November, 1292. The English king's plans for a peaceful relationship with his northern neighbor now took a different turn. In exchange for his support, he demanded feudal superiority over Scotland, including homage from Balliol, judicial authority over the Scottish king in any disputes brought against him by his own subjects and defrayment of costs for the defence of England as well as active support in the war against France.

Even Balliol rebelled at these outrageous demands. Showing a hitherto unshown courage, in front of the English king he declared that he was the King of Scotland and should answer only to his own people and refused to supply military service to Edward. Overestimating his strength, he then concluded a treaty with France prior to planning an invasion of England.

Edward was ready. He went north to receive homage from a great number of Scottish nobles as their feudal lord, among them none other than Robert Bruce, who owned estates in England. Balliol immediately punished this treachery by seizing Bruce's lands in Scotland and giving them to his own brother-in-law, John Comyn. Yet within a few months, the Scottish king was to disappear from the scene. His army was defeated by Edward at Dunbar in April 1296. Soon after at Brechin, on 10 July, he surrendered his Scottish throne to the English king, who took into his possession the stone of Scone, "the coronation stone" of the Scottish kings. At a parliament which he summoned at Berwick, the English king received homage and the oath of fealty from over two thousand Scots. He seemed secure in Scotland.

Flushed with this success, Edward had gone too far. The rising tide of nationalist fervor in the face of the arrival of the English armies north of the border created the need for new Scottish leaders. With the killing of an English sheriff following a brawl with English soldiers in the marketplace at Lanark, a young Scottish knight, William Wallace found himself at the head of a fast-spreading movement of national resistance. At Stirling Bridge, a Scottish force led by Wallace, won an astonishing victory when it completely annihilated a large, lavishly-equipped English army under the command of Surrey, Edward l viceroy.

We can imagine the shock to the over-confident Edward and the extent to which he sought his revenge. At Falkirk, his re-organized army crushed the over-confident Scottish followers of Wallace, who was now finished as an effective leader and forced into hiding. Following the battle, a campaign began to ruthlessly suppress all attempts at reasserting Scottish independence. It was time for Robert Bruce to free himself from his fealty to Edward and lead the fight for Scotland.

At a meeting between the two surviving claimants for the Scottish throne in Greyfriar's Kirk at Dumfries, Robert Bruce murdered John Comyn, thus earning the enmity of the many powerful supporters of the Comyn family, but also excommunication from the Church. His answer was to strike out boldly, raising the Royal Standard at Scone and, on March 27, 1306, declaring himself King of Scots. Edward's reply was predictable; he sent a large army north, defeated Bruce at the battle of Methven, executed many of his supporters and forced the Scottish king to become a hunted outlaw.

The indefatigable Scottish leader bided his time. After a year of demoralization and widespread English terror let loose in Scotland, during which two of his brothers were killed, Bruce came out of hiding. Aided mightily by his Chief Lieutenant, Sir James Douglas, "the Black Douglas," he won his first victory on Palm Sunday, 1307. From all over Scotland, the clans answered the call and Bruce's forces gathered in strength to fight the English invaders, winning many encounters against cavalry with his spearmen.

The aging Edward, the so-called "hammer of the Scots," marched north at the head of a large army to punish the Scots' impudence; but the now weak and sick king was ineffectual as a military leader. He could only wish that after his death his bones would be carried at the head of his army until Scotland had been crushed. It was left to his son Edward to try to carry out his father's dying wish. He was no man for the task.

Edward ll was crowned King of England in 1307. Faced by too many problems at home and completely lacking the ruthfulness and resourcefulness of his father, the young king had no wish to get embroiled in the affairs of Scotland. Bruce was left alone to consolidate his gains and to punish those who opposed him. In 1311 he drove out the English garrisons in all their Scottish strongholds except Stirling and invaded northern England. King Edward finally, begrudgingly, bestirred himself from his dalliances at Court to respond and took a large army north.

On Mid-Summer's Day, the 24th of June, 1314 occurred one of the most momentous battles in British history. The armies of Robert Bruce, heavily outnumbered by their English rivals, but employing tactics that prevented the English army from effectively employing its strength, won a decisive victory at Bannockburn. Scotland was wrenched from English control, its armies free to invade and harass northern England. Such was Bruce's military successes that he was able to invade Ireland, where his brother Edward had been crowned King by the exuberant Irish. A second expedition carried out by Edward II north of the border was driven back and the English king was forced to seek for peace.

The Declaration of Arboath of 1320 stated that since ancient times the Scots had been free to choose their own kings, a freedom that was a gift from God. If Robert Bruce were to prove weak enough to acknowledge Edward as overlord, then he would be dismissed in favor of someone else. Though English kings still continued to call themselves rulers of Scotland, just as they called themselves rulers of France for centuries after being booted out of the continent, Scotland remained fully independent until 1603 (when James Stuart succeeded Elizabeth I).

Misrule in England under Edward II (1307-27)

Edward II's miserable failure in Scotland was matched by equal ignominy at home. Quite simply, as one chronicler put it: "He did not realize his father's ambition." One problem was the resurgence of baronial opposition. It didn't help much that the king was overly fond of his male companions, especially enjoying a passionate relationship with the French Piers Gaveston, whom he made Earl of Cornwall. The disaster at Bannockburn added to the king's ever-plummeting reputation for incompetence and opposition gathered under the Earl of Lancaster.

Meanwhile, Edward's wife Isabella and their young son had gone to the French court to start their own revolt against the profligate, homosexual king. She took as her lover the powerful Mortimer, and in 1326 their combined forces landed in England to begin active resistance to Edward. The unfortunate king, without any support, was forced to surrender his crown in favor of his young son. His gruesome death in prison need not be recounted here, but it received dramatic attention at the hands of the gifted Marlowe (1564-1593).

England Revives Under Edward III (1327-77)

The murdered king's successor, Edward III began his reign at the age of fourteen. He ruled for fifty years, years marked by the king's restoration of royal prestige, the beginnings of what is known as "The Hundred Years War" with France, the growth of parliamentary privilege in England and the devastating results of the plague known as the Black Death.

The Hundred Years War began when Edward took up arms against his overlord, Philip IV. It began over the duchy of Gascony, the only fragment left to the Angevin kings of England (apart from the Channel Islands) of their French possessions. Gascony was held by the king, however, as a vassal of his powerful overlord, the King of France. It was an extremely valuable asset, for its chief port Bordeaux shipped huge quantities of wine that provided a much needed source of income for the English Crown in customs revenues. It was to avoid confiscation of the duchy by the French king that Edward decided to invade. Edward also re-enforced his claim to the French crown by assuming the title of King of France, a move that would also help to provide sanction for his French supporters (the title was only given up by the British monarchy in 1802).

Briefly, Edward's policy of launching lightning raids deep into France was initially successful, and his tactic of using men-at-arms and longbowmen produced the outstanding victories at Crecy in 1346 and at Poitiers in 1356. At Crecy, Edward's son, the Prince of Wales, known as The Black Prince," for the color of his armor, gained his motto "Ich Dien" (I serve), used as part of the insignia of the present Prince of Wales.

Edward was also successful in capturing Calais in 1347 which was to remain in English hands for over two hundred years. In 1360, the English king made a peace settlement by which he received southwest France in full sovereignty. Charles V of France had other ideas, however, and brought his full military might to repudiate the settlement. By 1375, following a costly war of attrition, Edward had lost most of his gains.

Edward had no control over the outbreak of the Black Death that devastated most of Europe by bringing bubonic plague, carried by the black rat and transmitted to humans by fleas and the pneumonia that inevitably followed. It arrived in England in 1348, quickly spreading inland from its port of entry and within one year had affected all of Britain. Perhaps as many as one half of the country's population died before the scourge suddenly came to an end in 1350. It left behind a greatly depleted population, made laborers scarce and thus drove up wages, creating a situation in which many workers could offer their services to the highest bidder. A floating population of traveling workers came into being.

The third major phenomenon, the growth of Parliament, came about as a result of Edward's constant need for finances to support his continental adventures. The assembly of nobles and administrators who offered advice to the king had begun to insist that they had a right to be summoned. A crisis occurred in 1341-43 over Edward's finances. Parliament took action to curtail many royal perquisites; many statutes were passed to increase the powers of the nobles, but the Commons, also depended upon for revenue, also increased its influence at the expense of the king. The earlier conflict of 1321 between Edward II and his barons had led to the Statute of York one year later that clearly limited the king's powers. It had been the combined assembly of prelates, knights and burgesses, in fact, that had shown their own increasing power by demanding the abdication of Edward in 1326.

The Magna Carta had been primarily a concern of the barons to protect their interests against the king. Since then, however, the so-called gentry, the middle class landholders in the various counties were also taking part in the political debate. From 1299 on, they had been summoned by the king and parliament to authorize taxes to pay for the military. When Edward I also imposed heavy taxes on the clergy and offered special favors to the merchants, both these classes then expected some recognition in return. It was apparent that a new political society had been brewing ever so gradually but ever so strongly in England; its kings had to come to terms with it, as Edward II learned of his peril and ultimate death. The beginning of rule by consensus was firmly established by the time of Edward III's death.

Another important phenomenon taking place in England in the 14th century must not be overlooked. In 1362, Parliament passed an act to make English the official language of pleadings in the law courts, rather than French. Resistance from the lawyers prevented its full implementation, but the English language continued to be used in parliamentary rolls and statutes and ultimately replaced French to become the official language of the country. Because Latin was a spoken language among clerics and men of learning, an enormous number of borrowings came into English at this time from Latin. This, too, was the age of Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, John Barbour, Sir John Mandevill, and John Wycliffe, all of whom wrote in the English language. By the end of the 14th century, the vast variety of Middle English dialects notwithstanding, a standard form of written English had come into being.

The last ten years of the glorious reign of Edward lll, highly praised by his contemporaries as a period without parallel in the history of England for its "beneficent, merciful and august rule," was marred by constitutional crises. That the king himself was in his dotage hardly helped matters. Edward the heir to the throne was painfully ill and dying. The gradual disintegration of royal authority brought about by diplomatic and military failures produced the serious confrontation of the so-called Good Parliament of 1376.

There were many grievances to be dealt with by the Good Parliament and a committee was set up of leading prelates and nobles to deal with them. A speaker was appointed to act as the Commons' chairman and representative, and the first use of the judicial procedure known as impeachment took place. The principal grievance was that Edward's councillors and servants "were not loyal or profitable to him or the kingdom." The resulting dismissal of some of the king's advisors and financiers meant that it was the commons, not the barons, who had now taken the initiative in ousting royal favorites.

The Good Parliament had also seen one of the most serious attacks on the Crown during the whole later Middle Ages. Though King Edward, through his powerful Councillor John of Gaunt, sought some measure of revenge by nullifying almost everything the parliament had sought to put in place, in summing up his long reign, we can praise his remarkable ability to accommodate the interests of so many of his subjects. No wonder a cult of Edward lll as a wise and benevolent king quickly grew in England. It was a cult that made it very difficult for his successors.

A King is Deposed: Richard II (1377-99)

One sorrowful day in August, 1399, King Richard stood on the ramparts of Flint Castle, in its lonely position on the Dee estuary in Northeast Wales, watching the soldiers of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, advance from the direction of Chester. Flint townspeople still relate that the king's ever-present companion, his greyhound Math, betrayed his master that day by running to greet the triumphant Henry. Richard had already been betrayed by the Earls of Northumberland and Arundel who had persuaded him to leave the safety of Conwy Castle to journey to Flint. Math's ghost is now said to howl nightly in the ruins of the ancient castle.

Poor Richard! He certainly had delusions of grandeur, but many of his attempts to establish a realm of royal absolutism were to come to fruition only in the reign of his successor. His own reign saw the unleashing of forces completely beyond his control. Great economic and political developments were changing the face of Europe forever. The king's own lack of judgement only precipitated his eventual abdication, enforced after a rule of 22 years of great social unrest and baronial discontent. His reign also coincided with the period of the French Wars, that ate away at his treasury and caused constitutional crises at home.

Richard had become king at the age of ten. England, still held shackled by great war debts, was governed by a powerful council of nobles, supervised by the Richard's uncle, John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster by virtue of his first marriage, to Blanche of Lancaster. The Duke's second marriage was to Constanza of Castile, a union that forced a great deal of his attention to acquiring the throne of that Spanish kingdom.

Four years after Richard acceded to the throne, he was faced with the mass popular uprising known as the Peasants' Revolt. To raise funds for the French war, a poll tax was adopted by the government the unfair distribution of which caused massive resistance (much like the one initiated by the government of Margaret Thatcher many hundreds of years later). An outbreak of rioting followed attempts to collect the tax from the poorer classes.

The rebels marched on and occupied London. Richard and his advisors hastily promised charters of emancipation and redress of grievances to the rebel leaders, promises, it turned out, that they had no intention of keeping. The young king pacified the angry mob when their leader Wat Tylor was killed; he then showed he meant business by having their leaders executed. Perhaps scared for the safety of his Crown, he then squandered the support of his lords in Parliament by going too far. His despotic measures, in an attempt to reassert royal prerogative, alienated the barons, who sided with Duke Henry of Lancaster.

Richard's major problem was that he had high ideas of his own dignity and of the power of the divine right of kings. This not only brought him into conflict with his barons, leading to his ultimate deposition, but also with the powerful English Church, whose leaders could always appeal to Rome against any royal encroachment on their privileges. Richard devoted all his energies to the establishing of a despotism that was out of place in the England of his time. Neither the time nor the place was right for the establishment of an absolute monarchy.

The nobles had grown too powerful and Richard's insistence that he was the sole source of English law, not bound by custom, did not sit too highly with those who thought otherwise. The kings' tampering with the will of Parliament, nullifying measures passed by both Lords and Commons, coupled with his attempts to create a written constitution that would serve the rights of the crown for ever, and his assertion that it was high treason to try to repeal his statutes, his appeals to the Pope to obtain confirmation of his measures all combined to force the barons to acquiesce in his deposition. The last straw was Richard's attempt to make Parliament the instrument of destruction of its own liberties (a political move carried out with much greater success by Henry VIII many generations later).

It did not help Richard, who introduced the handkerchief to England, that his nobles had regarded with loathing his patronage of the arts, his extravagant tastes, his choice of favorites and his effeminate ways. In 1386, the king had given the title of Marquis of Dublin to Robert de Vere, a greedy, arrogant man. A group of nobles known as the Lords Appellant, including the Dukes of Lancaster and Norfolk demanded trial for Richard's friends, including de Vere. When de Vere raised an army, he was defeated, and the "Merciless Parliament of 1388 tried an executed many of Richard's followers. Richard was outraged, but in 1389, coming of age, began his majority by dispensing with a council altogether.

Richard regarded his coronation as giving him the right to keep royalty from being dishonored by any concessions to anyone, from the Pope himself, through the leading barons, down to the poorest of is subjects. His will directed that he be given a royal funeral. It seems that his ideas, originally formed into a system of defence against the papacy (growing increasingly powerful in the affairs of Europe) were formulated into a doctrine of absolute monarchy. He was repudiated by his nation.

When he found a pretence to banish both Bolingbroke and Mowbray (Dukes of Lancaster and Norfolk), Richard believed he had a free hand to begin his aim of ruling by absolute fiat. He raised a private army, imposed additional taxes, lavished gifts upon his favorites and spent huge sums of money on extravagant court feasts. He also incurred the enmity of the citizens of London, without whose support no king of England could now successfully govern.

The great revolution of 1399 was an assertion of the rights of Englishmen to constitutional government, thus it bears an uncanny resemblance to the great revolt of the American Colonies some centuries later. The principal grievances were the same. The articles of deposition setting forth the charges against the king were just as uncompromising as his own absolute doctrine. Richard had greatly overreached his powers by appropriating the lands of the Duchy of Lancaster after the death of John of Gaunt in 1399. This was the ultimate blunder that led directly to its downfall. If the great house of Lancaster could lose its property to the king, then no man's land was safe in England. The future Henry IV was thus acting as the champion of property rights when he met Richard at Flint Castle.

By elevating Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, son of John of Gaunt and grandson of Edward lll to the throne, the nobles passed over Richard's nearest heir. They thus asserted the right of Parliament to elect the fittest person from within the royal family. For a short time at least, constitutionalism triumphed in England. Unfortunately for the future of the kingdom, the passing over of the elder branch of the royal house in favor of the House of Lancaster meant the eventual reasserting of the claims of the House of York and the consequent Wars of the Roses with their attendant anarchy.

England Triumphant: Henry IV (1399-1413)

Henry of Bolingbroke was renowned as a fighting man. He had travelled extensively in Europe and the Mediterranean before overthrowing the unpopular Richard (who died a mysterious death, probably due to starvation while in prison). One problem with Henry's usurpation of the throne was the setting of a dangerous precedent: a rightful king, properly anointed and recognized by the Church, had been deposed (a theme that provided Shakespeare with so much material in his "Richard II"). It was thus up to Henry to consolidate the powers of the monarchy, and it was to his advantage to utilize Parliament to bolster his position and counter the ever-present threats to his throne and challenges to his position as chief lawgiver. Through this alliance, as troubled as it was by constant wrangling over the king's expenses, he was able to overcome most of the troubles that were a legacy from Richard.

Of the serious threats he had to deal with, Henry was most troubled by the revolt of the Welsh under Owain Glyndwr. Social unrest and racial tension underlay much of the resentment of the Welsh people, ever mindful that they were the true Britons, descendants of Brutus and rightful heirs to the kingdom. Uncertainty as to the future of Wales and the repressive measures of successive English kings following Edward IÍs conquest of their nation found expression in the general uprising under Owain, at first successful in reclaiming much Welsh territory and capturing English strongholds on and within the borders.

A tripartite alliance among Owain, the Earl of Northumberland and Henry Mortimer looked as if it would succeed in dismembering England, ridding its people of its usurper monarch. Military aid was promised from the king of France. Glyndwr (Owen Glendower) had himself crowned Prince of Wales and called a parliament at Machynlleth. Then it all unraveled for the conspirators. Henry Percy of Northumberland (Hotspur) was killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury, Louis of Orleans was assassinated and the promise of French aid was not fulfilled. Owain's other ally, the King of Scotland was taken prisoner by the armies of England, commanded by the ever resourceful, ever able military strength of young Prince Henry, later Henry V.

Owain's fight for Welsh independence was betrayed by fellow Welshman David Gam, fighting for the English, and his cause was lost. Wales had to wait almost 600 years for its next people's assembly. King Henry then quickly dealt with other rebellions, including one led by Archbishop of York, Richard Scrope, who was executed for his audacity. Thus Henry succeeded in keeping his shaky throne intact. He died after a long illness in 1413, leaving the throne to the charismatic warrior, King Henry V.

Henry V (1413-22)

The reign of Lancastrian hero Henry V was not a long one. It could have been a glorious one, certainly if we think of him solely as a warrior-king, fearless in leading his troops into battle and winning his military victories against seemingly-impossible odds. His conquest of Normandy and his acquisition of the throne of France made him a legend in his own time. Who can find fault with his dream of ultimately uniting all of Christian Europe against the infidel?

Henry's brief reign, however, did not get off to a good start at home. Two rebellions had to be dealt with: one led by Sir John Oldcastle, of a prominent Welsh border family, who was disgruntled by his excommunication and imprisonment for heresy; the other led by Richard, Earl of Cambridge, husband of Anne Mortimer, sister of Edmund Mortimer the nearest legitimate claimant to the throne by descent from Edward lll, and younger brother of the Duke of York. The first one owed a great deal to the earlier attempts of English monarchs to make their country more independent of Rome; the second to the continuing claims of the heirs of Richard ll to the Crown of England.

The Catholic Church had been steadily increasing its demands upon the English treasury, but it had been meeting with increasing resistance. During the reign of Edward lll, reformer John Wycliffe, had declared that the Bible, and not the Church, was the true guide to faith. The English king could welcome this novel idea as long as it didn't lead to attacks on his own prerogative. After all, it needed a representative of Rome at Canterbury to sanction the accession to power of the English monarch.

There was also the matter of the Papal Schism, with rival popes in Rome and Avignon. This was hardly a situation that created confidence in the Holy Catholic Church. Wycliffe went so far as having the Bible translated into English, making it accessible to all who could read, and not just the classically educated clergy. His ideas were then preached with great zeal by the Lollards, all of who condemned many practices of the established Church. Their demands were premature, for religious dissent also constituted a grave threat to the stability of the realm, and King Henry IV, with the able assistance of ultra-conservative Archbishop Arundel had undertaken stern measures to combat their ideas, including burning Lollards at the stake.

Oldcastle, a boyhood friend of Henry V, after escaping from the Tower of London, was accused of organizing a Lollard rebellion. After years in hiding, he was eventually betrayed, captured and executed and his followers dispersed. The rebellion of Richard, Earl of Cambridge, against the Royal House of Lancaster, also suffered the same fate. Both plots were foiled by the decisive action of the king's supporters and Henry, supported by an effective, disciplined royal council, was thus free to embark on his French adventures.

Contemporary events in France greatly favored the implementation of Henry's claims in that country, especially the incompetence of Charles V's son and heir Charles VI, who also suffered from bouts of insanity. Bitter rivalries tore asunder the French Court, one headed by the king's younger brother, Louis of Orleans and the other by the king's uncle, Philip of Burgundy. The latter had designs on complete control of the government of France, a cause aided by the assassination of Orleans in 1407. The resulting outbreak of civil war paralyzed France for a generation. In the meantime, the King of England took immediate advantage and took his army across the Channel.

Forgetting anything or everything they had learned at Crecy in the previous century, the French army attacked the motley crew that made up the English forces at Agincourt using the same tactics that failed them in the earlier slaughter. The result was an even bigger disaster for the over-confident French with appalling losses among their heavily armed, mounted knights completely unable to maneuver in the marshy lands and cut down by the skill of Henry's mercenary archers, many recruited in Wales.

Following Agincourt, the way was open for Henry to take possession of Normandy. The Dauphin fled Paris, leaving Queen Isabella (during one of her husband fits of insanity) to come to term with the victorious English king. The powerful Duke of Burgundy, whose support had been crucial for Henry, was fatally stabbed by a former supporter of the murdered Orleans while arranging the negotiations, but the English king had no serious rivals in France to thwart his ambition.

By the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, it was declared that on the death of Charles VI his throne should be given to "his only true son," Henry V of England, now married to the Princess Catherine. We can only surmise what the political future of both France and England might have been had Henry not died during one of his French campaigns in 1422, leaving the Duke of Gloucester as regent in England and the Duke of Bedford as regent in France. The heir to the English throne was less than one year old. Queen Catherine, remaining in England, took as her next husband Owen Tudor of Wales, with consequences we shall deal with later.

Henry VI (1422-71)

In a reign lasting almost fifty years, Henry VI lost two kingdoms, his only son and on many occasions, his reason. Perhaps we can blame bad luck for the king's misfortunes, certainly his bad judgement, but Henry was never a ruler in his own person. He had come to the throne as an infant, the country being governed by a regency dominated first by his uncles of the House of Lancaster and later by the Beauforts. In addition to being dominated by the Duke of Suffolk, he was also controlled by his wife Margaret of Anjou. During bouts of mental illness, England was ruled by Richard, Duke of York as protector. In marked contrast to the good order of his father, the complete fiasco of the reign of Henry Vl ultimately led to that sad period in English history known as "The Wars of the Roses."

In France, despite a few desultory successes after the death of Henry V, things went from bad to worse for the English occupiers. Under the inspired leadership of a peasant girl from Domremy, known as Joan of Arc, French resistance was revitalized, Orleans relieved and the Dauphin crowned at Reims as Charles VII. Joan was eventually captured by the ever-treacherous Burgundians and sentenced to death for heresy by a Church court, becoming a national martyr after she had nobly perished in the bonfire at Rouen in 1431.

The fires that burned Joan also ignited the latent forces of French nationalism. After 1435 and the death of the Duke of Bedford, the English armies found themselves virtually leaderless in the face of increasing French strength. During the long years of attrition that followed, they were gradually forced to give up all they had gained under Henry V except the single port of Calais. Agincourt might as well not have happened.

In England, at the same time, despite the avowed saintliness of the king, the monarchy was rapidly losing its prestige. Though he was interested in education, and both Eton College and Kings College, Cambridge were founded during his reign, Henry's employment of ambitious, self-serving courtiers and advisors only hastened the onset of civil war. In particular, the constant feuds of the kings' relatives, descended from Edward lll, created a situation bordering on anarchy. Richard of York, heir to the son of Richard II, the boy whose rights had been passed over by parliament in 1399, led the anti-Lancastrian party. The Wars of the Roses began in 1453, when the birth of a son to King Henry precluded the possibility of a peaceful succession.

Richard of York, whose family had adopted its emblem a white rose as a Yorkist badge, raised the standard of revolt to begin the thirty-year period of civil war that wracked the whole nation. Never really involving more than armed clashes between small bands of noblemen with their private retainers, the bloody conflict nevertheless managed to exterminate most of the English aristocracy as its fortunes swung back and forth between the two sides.

King Henry and Margaret had adopted the red rose as the symbol of the House of Lancaster. They managed to force Richard of York into exile, but when Henry was later captured at the Battle of Northampton, Richard returned to claim the throne for himself. A compromise was then effected that would allow him to reign after Henry's death, but York was killed at Wakefield when Margaret led an army against him in 1460. His son Edward was then supported in his claims by the formidable Earl of Warwick (Warwick the kingmaker). Henry had been recaptured by his "manly queen, used to rule..." but he was driven into exile one year later when Warwick had the Yorkist prince crowned as Edward lV.

There were now two kings ruling England, and thus a battle was necessary to try to settle the matter. It duly took place in 1461 at Towton, the bloodiest engagement of the whole war and a disaster for the House of Lancaster. Henry and Margaret had to flee to Scotland. When his wife left to drum up support in France, Henry stayed behind as fugitive, only to be imprisoned once more. Warwick then switched his allegiance to Margaret and their joint invasion forced King Edward to flee to the Continent. They released the poor, bewildered Henry from the Tower of London to be recognized as king again.

No wonder Henry had fits of insanity. His joy at being restored to the throne was short-lived, for Edward was not finished. He returned to England in 1471, with aid from Charles the Bold of Burgundy and at Barnet in 1471, he defeated and killed Warwick. At the battle of Tewkesbury, he then defeated Queen Margaret and killed her husband's son Edward. Henry found himself back in prison at the Tower where he was executed. Later chroniclers praised his good qualities and Henry VII even sought his canonization, but the former Henry had completely failed as a ruler. His reign had not only seen civil war, but also had to deal with the serious revolt of the middle classes led by Jack Cade, seeking to redress government abuses and the lack of input into the arbitrary decisions of the king and council. Though the rebellion failed, it showed only too clearly that arbitrary decisions by those in power could be strongly protested by those without.

Edward lV (1461-83)

Edward began his reign in 1461 and ruled for eight years before Henry's brief return. His reign is marked by two distinct periods, the first in which he was chiefly engaged in suppressing the opposition to his throne, and the second in which he enjoyed a period of relative peace and security. Both periods were marked also by his extreme licentiousness; it is said that his sexual excesses were the cause of his death (it may have been typhoid), but he was praised highly for his military skills and his charming personality. When Edward married Elizabeth Woodville, a commoner of great beauty, but regarded as an unfit bride for a king, even Warwick turned against him. We can understand Warwick's switch to Margaret and to Edward's young brother, the Duke of Clarence, when we learn that he had hoped the king would marry one of his own daughters.

Clarence continued his activities against his brother during the second phase of Edward's reign; his involvement in a plot to depose the king got him banished to the Tower where he mysteriously died (drowned in his bath). Edward had meanwhile set up a council with extensive judicial and military powers to deal with Wales and to govern the Marches. His brother, the Duke of Gloucester headed a council in the north. He levied few subsidies, invested his own considerable fortune in improving trade; freed himself from involvement in France by accepting a pension from the French King; and all in all, remained a popular monarch. He left two sons, Edward and Richard, in the protection of Richard of Gloucester, with the results that have forever blackened their guardian's name in English history.

Richard III (1483-85)

Richard of Gloucester had grown rich and powerful during the reign of his brother Edward IV, who had rewarded his loyalty with many northern estates bordering the city of York. Edward had allowed Richard to govern that part of the country, where he was known as "Lord of the North." The new king was a minor and England was divided over whether Richard should govern as Protector or merely as chief member of a Council. There were also fears that he may use his influence to avenge the death of his brother Clarence at the hands of the Queen's supporters. And Richard was supported by the powerful Duke of Buckingham, who had married into the Woodville family against his will.

Richard's competence and military ability was a threat to the throne and the legitimate heir Edward V. After a series of skirmishes with the forces of the widowed queen, anxious to restore her influence in the north, Richard had the young prince of Wales placed in the Tower. He was never seen again though his uncle kept up the pretence that Edward would be safely guarded until his upcoming coronation. The queen herself took sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, but Richard had her brother and father killed.

Edward's coronation was set for June, 1483. Richard planned his coup. First he divided the ruling Council, convincing his own followers of the need to have Lord Hastings executed for treason. (It had been Hastings who had informed him of the late King's death and the ambitions of the Queen's party). He then had his other young nephew Richard join Edward in the Tower. One day after that set for Edward's coronation, Richard was able to pressure the assembled Lords and Commons in Parliament to petition him to assume the kingship. After his immediate acceptance, he then rode to Westminster and was duly crowned as Richard III. His rivals had been defeated and the prospects for a long, stable reign looked promising. Then it all unraveled for the treacherous King.

It is one thing to kill a rival in battle but it is another matter to have your brother's children put to death. By being suspected of this evil deed, Richard condemned himself. Though the new king busied himself granting amnesty and largesse to all and sundry, he could never cleanse himself of the suspicion surrounding the murder of the young princes. He had his own son Edward invested as Prince of Wales, and thus heir to his throne, but revulsion soon set in to destroy what, for all intents and purposes, could have been a well-managed, competent royal administration.

It didn't help Richard much that even before he took the throne he had denounced the Queen "and her blood adherents," impugned the legitimacy of his own brother and his young nephews and stigmatized Henry Tudor's royal blood as bastard. The rebellion against him started with the defection of the Duke of Buckingham whose open support of the Lancastrian claimant overseas, Henry Tudor, transformed a situation which had previously favored Richard.

The king was defeated and killed at Bosworth Field in 1485, a battle that was as momentous for the future of England as had been Hastings in 1066. The battle ended the Wars of the Roses, and for all intents and purposes, the victory of Henry Tudor and his accession to the throne conveniently marks the end of the medieval and the beginning of England's modern period.