Cultura Si Civilizatie Britanica

BRITISH CULTURE AND CIVILISATION
LECTURE NOTES – LECTURE 1
The peculiar geographical position of the British isles has influenced their climate, people and
history in more than one direction.
• Climate: temperate, influenced by the warm Atlantic Current (Gulf Stream), with mild
winters and warm summers;
• People: developing culturally in their own way, taking/ rejecting Continental
influences; restrained, reserved, with a conservative mentality marked by a preference
for traditional habits and structures.
• History: The sea
– provided potential security from foreign invasions from the continent, but also
favoured invasion (especially until the Middle Ages);
– turned the English into a sea-faring nation, able to roam the oceans of the world
and to build up a great maritime empire; and favoured trade development and
the circulation of ideas.
I. Invasions and Patterns of Settlement in the British Isles (1)
I.1. Ancient Britain

The first human ancestors arrived in Britain from continental Europe about 800,000 years ago.
At that time, Britain was not a separate island but part of the European landmass. Yet, the
alternation of glacial periods, when polar ice advanced across the landscape, with periods of
warmer climate when the ice retreated caused the region to be inhabited intermittently by groups
of primitive hunters.
Around 15,000 BC, the climate warmed and the ice sheets began to melt causing sea
levels to rise. That marked the beginning of the reshaping of the north-western Europe
coastlines to something like the modern appearance by the creation of the North Sea.
Soon afterwards, about 14,000 BC, the colonisation of Britain by ‘modern’ humans
(Homo sapiens) started as hunters and gatherers gradually settled in different parts of Britain
and Ireland.
After 8,500 BC, the warmer climate led to the growth of forests all over Britain. Thanks
to higher sea levels, Ireland and Britain became separate islands, divided by the Irish Sea. The
plains that formed the land bridge between Britain and Europe were submerged by rising water
(especially after 7,000 BC) and their flooding culminated in Britain’s transforming into an
island definitely separated from mainland Europe in about 6,100 BC (during the Mesolithic
period).
I.1.1. The New Stone (Neolithic) Age (around 4,000 BC)

Settlers probably coming from the Iberian Peninsula (the ‘Iberians’) or even from the North
African coast settled in the western parts of Britain and Ireland, from Cornwall all the way to
the far north. Characteristics:
 small, dark, long-headed people (probably the ancestors of the dark-haired inhabitants of
Wales and Cornwall);
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 They kept animals (cattle, pigs, and sheep), grew early forms of wheat and barley, and knew
how to make pottery.
As society became more settled, Neolithic people began large-scale constructions, which
required enormous effort in moving huge quantities of earth and clearing extensive woodlands.
Among the earliest of the monuments constructed, around 3,800 BC, are large earthwork
enclosures (often called “causewayed camps”) used as sites for festivals or religious
ceremonies.
Neolithic people erected the first stone monuments for the dead at around the same time.
At first, these were simple settings of stone, but later more complex portal dolmens, or single-
chamber megalithic tombs, were built using several stones to form a passage.
New types of monuments begin to appear after 3,000 BC, including circles of wooden
posts and large enclosures, such as the first stage of Stonehenge, built around 2,950 BC.
Circular megalithic enclosures (the prominence and endurance of which have caused present-
day archaeologists to name the Neolithic people that erected them “megalithic men”) bordered
by ditched banks (the classic henge monuments) were also built in many parts of Britain as far
north as the Orkney Islands and as far south as Cornwall. The exact purpose of these large
monuments is still unclear, but they may have had an astrological significance, with stones
being lined up in the direction of the sun at key moments, such as the summer and winter
solstices. Although gold sun disks of the type common in central Europe have not been found in
Britain, the consistently circular shape of the great stone monuments of the later third
millennium BC indicates an interest in the sun, with the circular shape possibly symbolizing
the sun’s course through the sky. Undeniably, the henges were centres of religious, political
and economic power as the resources required to build such large enclosures were prodigious,
which implies that there were chieftains, or some other local form of powerful central authority,
to command and coordinate the local population in the planning and erection of such
extravagant monuments. In time, older monuments, such as Avebury and Stonehenge, would
be embellished by the people of the Bronze Age culture; Stonehenge, for instance, was
completely remodelled with the erection of massive trilithons (two upright stones with one laid
across on top).
I.1.2. The Bronze Age (after 2,400 BC)

New groups of people came from Europe (France and the Low Countries) and settled in south-
east Britain. Characteristics:
 round-headed, strongly built, taller than Neolithic Britons;
 speaking an Indo-European language;
 skilled in working metal (bronze) and in making pottery (the Beaker-style pottery was
possibly imported from Iberia). Many bronze weapons have been recovered from sites that
were once wells or rivers, which suggests that these were offerings to water gods and spirits.
 introducing the first individual graves to replace the former communal burial mounds
(‘barrows’). In Beaker burials, the corpse was usually laid to rest in a crouched, foetal
position within a stone coffin that contained pottery beakers (hence, the name given to this
civilisation, i.e., the ‘Beaker’ people) and other grave goods.
I.1.3. The Iron Age (around 700 BC)

From about the sixth century BC over the next seven hundred years, the Celts* swept into the
British isles, coming from central Europe or further east, in three successive waves, kindred
indeed but mutually hostile and each with a dialect of its own:
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 The Goidelic/ Gaelic Celts settled in Ireland whence they spread to Scotland and the Isle
of Man. Their linguistic heritage is represented by: Gaelic (the national language in Ireland),
Erse (in the Highlands and the Islands of Scotland) and the now extinguished Manx (only
in the Isle of Man).
 two centuries later, the Brythonic Celts/ Britons settled in England and Wales. Their
linguistic heritage is represented by: Welsh (in Wales) and Cornish (spoken in Cornwall up
to the end of the eighteenth century, to be revived nowadays).
 About 100 BC, the Belgic tribes settled in the south-east of Britain.
*“Celtic”: The term was first used by Greek writers, such as Herodotus, in the sixth century
BC to describe the barbarian groups living on the fringes of the Greek world. Certainly, people
of the cultures later termed by archaeologists as La Tène and Hallstatt — who were Celtic
speakers — spread from a central European homeland into France, the middle Danube, and
Asia Minor. They even threatened to capture Rome in 390 BC. Yet, “Celt” was not a term that
the people of Britain used to describe themselves; nor did the Romans who encountered them
in the first century BC refer to them as Celts. The traditional theory that large-scale migration
or invasion from Europe brought a Celtic hillfort society into Britain has been modified in
favour of the view that it was a process of assimilation, rather than conquest, which led the
elites of Iron Age Britain to adopt many of the same political and cultural practices that were
found in mainland Europe.
Characteristics:
 The Celts were tall, fair or red-haired men; wearing shirts and breeches, and stripped or
checked cloaks fastened by a pin (possibly the origin for the Scottish tartan and dress); of
an impressive cleanliness and neatness.
 skills: Although the techniques of iron-working had reached Britain by about 1000 BC, it
was only around 800 BC that the metal really came to be more widely used. The greater
availability of iron ore compared to the tin required for making bronze, aided this spread,
and iron axe-heads, spears, and tools become more common in archaeological finds dating
from around 700 BC onward. In particular, the regular use of iron for tool-making allowed
for the introduction of more advanced ploughing methods to farm heavier soils. The Celts
built hillforts which remained economic centres for local groups long after the Romans
came to Britain (e.g. the tradition of organising annual fairs). The appearance of iron
weapons and the number of hillforts have been taken by archaeologists to mean that Iron
Age Britain was dominated by the warrior elite, who engaged in frequent minor warfare
and raiding. They also traded across tribal borders and trade was probably important for
political and social contact between the tribes inside and beyond Britain.
 social organisation: The Iron Age witnessed a gradual political consolidation. The huge
resources necessary to build and maintain the more complex structures of hillforts erected
especially after 400 BC indicate that, in this phase of the Iron Age, kings and chieftains
exercised great power, although the presence of a large number of hillforts points to the
territories that they ruled over being quite small. (Not everyone lived in hillforts, though,
and other smaller enclosures and open settlements have been found in their vicinity.) By
around 200 BC, the population of Britain had probably reached around 2 million, with the
landscape studded with larger settlements, including hillforts that might contain a
population of 200 or more. The warrior elites dominated the countryside from their hillfort
strongholds. They also maintained strong links with their European counterparts, which
ultimately proved to be their undoing.
 religion: polytheistic. Their priests, the Druids could not read or write, but they memorised
all the religious teachings, the tribal laws, history, medicine, and other knowledge necessary
in the Celtic society. Religious rituals (which sometimes included human sacrifice) were
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not performed in temples but in sacred (oak) groves, on certain hills, by rivers or by river
sources. (Roman sources claim that the Romans were horrified by certain Druidic practices.
In Gaul, Caesar had recorded the Druidic wicker giants packed with men and set alight. The
Roman historian Tacitus accused the Welsh Druids of “staining their altars with the blood
of prisoners and consulting their gods by using human entrails”.)
 gender roles: Women, especially from the upper strata, had more independence and they
were respected for their courage and strength in battle. (Roman writers leave an impression
of a measure of equality between the sexes among the richer Celts.) Actually, when the
Romans invaded Britain, two of the largest tribes were ruled by women who fought from
their chariots. The most powerful Celt to stand up to the Romans was a woman,
Boadicea/Boudicca (61 AD).
Cultural heritage:
 The very name ‘Britain’ comes from ‘Pretani’, the name which the Greeks called the
Celtic inhabitants of Britain, mispronounced by the Romans into ‘Britannia’.
 Celtic survivings in English: names of rivers and places (e.g. Avon, Thames; York,
Kent, London); first syllables in Winchester, Manchester, Gloucester, Exeter; words
(e.g. brat, cradle, down, mattock, etc.)
 In literature: legends and sagas imbued with a sense of mystery, a dramatic conception
of man’s existence at grip with fate, sung by bards at the accompaniment of the harp:
– The Cycle of Ulster (the oldest literary attempts of the Irish epic recording the
deeds of king Conchobar and the brave hero Cuchulainn);
– The Cycle of Munster (focused on the heroic figures of Finn and his son Ossian,
a gifted bard).
In the late eighteenth century, the interest in the old Celtic literary tradition was
revived by the Pre-Romantic movement. James Macpherson’s alleged translations
from the legendary Irish bard Ossian brought about the emergence of a new literary
fashion in almost the whole Europe, known as Ossianism.
With the rise of nationalistic feelings in present-day Britain, Britishness – originally a general
term denoting national identity for the inhabitants of England, Scotland and Wales – has come
to evoke the Celtic origin of Scotland and Wales as opposed to Englishness, evocative of
England’s Anglo-Saxon roots and her ruling position.
I.1.4. Ancient Britain: the Romans
In 55 and 54 BC Julius Caesar mounted two expeditions against Britain. The reasons behind
his decision of embarking on a military campaign across the English Channel were multiple.
For one thing, it seems that the Celts of Britain had supported, in 56 BC, some of the Celts in
Gaul (the Veneti of Armorica, in modern Brittany) in their revolt against the Romans (sending
them food and allowing them to hide in Britain). In addition, under the Celts, Britain became
an important food producer because of the mild climate and the advanced ploughing
technology, and the Romans needed British food for their own army fighting the Gauls. Last
but not least, to enter Britain, an island that lay impossibly far off, beyond “the bounds of
ocean”, would have brought Julius Caesar immense prestige. However, political difficulties
delayed his invasion plans for a year. Finally, in 55 BC, Caesar prepared to cross the Channel
with a small expeditionary force (made up, basically, of two legions). Caesar’s principal
opponent seems to have been Cassivellaunus, probably king of the Catuvellauni which
dominated much of southern England.
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Though Caesar received envoys from a number of other British tribes who were eager
to show their submission and thus avoid having their lands invaded, and he took diplomatic
steps to rally pro-Roman opinions, his first attempt to invade Britain failed. The cliffs and
beaches around Dover were occupied by British defenders and the Roman ships were forced to
sail further to Kent where the legionaries disembarked in relatively deep waters under a constant
hail of missiles. A few days later, a severe storm scattered the ships that had been bringing more
than 500 cavalry as reinforcements for Caesar’s two legions, and also badly damaged many of
the landing craft. Deprived of cavalry support, Caesar was vulnerable, and after the Seventh
Legion was severely mauled in an ambush, he chose to declare the expedition a success and
returned to Gaul accompanied by a number of British hostages.
A second incursion of the Romans into Britain took place in 54 BC when Caesar brought
across the Channel five legions—amounting to more than 30,000 men—and some 2,000
cavalry. 800 Roman ships landed near Deal, this time unopposed, apparently because the
Britons were so intimidated by the size of the force that they chose not to resist it. Yet, the
Roman fleet was battered again by a serious storm and the 10 days delay in building a rampart
extensive enough to allow the remnants of their naval force to be beached gave the Britons led
by Cassivellaunus the time to prepare a more effective defence. Nonetheless, the victories of
the Romans, supported by their Trinovantes ‘allies’, and the capturing of Cassivellaunus’s chief
stronghold determined the latter to initiate negotiations for peace. As he had already decided
not to stay in Britain during the coming winter, fearing that a revolt might break out in Gaul
during his absence, Caesar accepted British hostages and fixed a tribute to be paid by
Cassivellaunus before returning across the Channel. The Trinovantes became a client-kingdom
of Rome, while Cassivellaunus was forbidden to interfere in their territory.
Caesar’s successor Augustus, the first Roman emperor, made plans to invade Britain at
least twice, but suspected revolts in the Empire caused him to call off both expeditions.
It was nearly 100 years after Caesar’s first invasion that Britain became a Roman
province as Britain was finally invaded on the orders of Emperor Claudius in 43 AD. Thereafter,
it remained under Roman control for almost four centuries until 409 AD when Rome withdrew
its last legions from Britain, being itself under fierce siege by the Germanic tribes (Rome was
sacked by the Goths in 410 AD).
The immediate pretext for the Roman invasion of Britain was the appeal by the exiled
king of the Atrebates to Emperor Claudius to help restore him. Thus, Claudius sent four Roman
legions—more than 20,000 men—to England in late April 43 AD. Though the British Celts,
under the leaders of the Catuvellauni, opposed the advance of the Claudian invasion force, they
were defeated. Claudius himself arrived in Britain to direct the capture of the capital of
Camulodunum (Colchester), before he returned to Rome, basking in the glory of his new
conquest.
The next years saw the expansion of the Roman-controlled area, not without resistance
on the part of the Celts in the south and south-west. However, the most serious revolt against
the Roman conquerors, which almost drove them out from Britain, happened in 60 AD and was
led by Boudicca, the queen of the Iceni (in modern East Anglia). When Prasutagus, the king of
the Iceni, died in 60 AD without a male heir, the Romans disregarded the terms of this former
Roman collaborator’s will (according to which Prasutagus named Emperor Nero his co-heir in
hope that at least part of the kingdom would remain under the rule of his widow, queen
Boudicca). While two of the best Roman legions in Britain, led by the governor Suetonius
Paulinus, campaigned in north Wales and the Isle of Anglesey to ‘hunt’ the Druids, other
Roman troops were sent to the Iceni to take control of the kingdom. Boudicca was publicly
flogged and her underage daughters were raped by Roman soldiers. These outrages fuelled the
rage of the British Celts who already resented the oppressive regime of the Roman conquerors.
So, when the Iceni revolted, other Celtic tribes, the Trinovantes included, joined them. The first
target of Boudicca’s army was Camulodonum (Colchester), the seat of the Imperial Cult in
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Roman Britain and a colony for ex-legionaries since 49 AD. By the time Suetonius Paulinus
returned from Wales, Camulodunum had been razed to the ground, and a detachment of the
Ninth Legion cut to pieces. Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St. Albans) were burnt to
the ground by Boudicca’s marauding army. According to Roman writers, in all, over 70,000
inhabitants died at the hands of the Iceni, who had no desire to take prisoners and to win ransom.
Finally, Paulinus’s legions faced the Iceni somewhere in the Midlands. The Roman victory was
total; some 80,000 Britons were said to have died, a figure that matches the tally of Roman
civilians who perished during Boudicca’s campaign of destruction. According to the Roman
historian Tacitus, the Icenian queen died by poisoning, to avoid being taken as a slave to Rome.
In the years that followed the Roman campaigns in East Anglia, meant for reprisal but also for
the pacification of the area, moderate administrators realized that British loyalty could not be
won back by repression but by encouraging the tribes to participate more in the Roman way of
life.
By the mid-70s, the Brigantian kingdom and the rest of Wales had been annexed, and
in the late 70s and the early 80s plans were made to project Roman power far into the north, in
Scotland (Caledonia, as the Romans called it). In the aftermath of several victories over the
Caledonians, a number of Roman forts were established beyond the Forth-Clyde line. However,
within a few years almost all of the Roman conquests in the Scottish Highlands were
abandoned.
In 122, Emperor Hadrian visited England, the first reigning emperor to do so since
Claudius and, according to one historian, “set many things right.” Hadrian ordered the building
of a fixed barrier, Hadrian’s Wall, to keep out the raiders (Scots and Picts) from the north.
Though the Romans continued to occupy a number of outpost forts to the north of the line, the
wall effectively formed the northern border of the Roman province for some 40 years.
Hadrian’s successor Antoninus Pius ordered the evacuation of Hadrian’s Wall and the
building of a new defensive line about 160 km to the north. The Antonine Wall was constructed
between the Firth of Forth and the Clyde. A series of outpost forts north of the new wall were
also occupied, once more establishing a Roman military presence in central Scotland. Around
161, a new emperor, Marcus Aurelius, ordered the abandonment of his predecessor’s advance,
and by the mid 160s Hadrian’s Wall once more marked the northern boundary of the province.
During the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, Roman Britain enjoyed a peaceful and largely
prosperous period. The truly Romanised area stretched across the southern part of Britain, from
the River Humber to the River Severn. The Romans had extended their control in Wales but
did not develop their culture there. Therefore, the area of Roman occupation was divided into
two sharply contrasting regions: the Latinised south and east, and the barbarian north and west.
The most important Roman officials were the governor, who was responsible to the emperor
and held authority over the civil and military administration, and the procurator, who was in
charge of financial affairs. In 213, the province was split in two: Britannia Superior (covering
southern England and Wales) with its capital at London; and Britannia Inferior (northern
England, including Hadrian’s Wall), whose governor resided at York. Some time before 312,
both provinces were further subdivided into two, leaving Roman Britain with four and, later,
five provinces. The result was that each governor, although he had his own staff and
bureaucracy, wielded less power and so was unlikely either to mount an effective challenge
against the emperor, or to implement policies which might be beneficial to Britannia as a whole.
The presence of the Roman army played a key role in the Romanization of Britain. It
shaped the local economy as the legions needed grain and other supplies. In addition, the
Britons joining the army would have gained citizenship (after 25 years of military service), and
would have had to learn Latin, the language of command, which, because it was also used by
the civilian administration, became firmly established in Britain.
Rarely at the centre of Roman political life (at least until the late 3rd century), Britannia
avoided the instability of other parts of the Roman Empire. The period of peace allowed towns
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to prosper as centres of Roman administration and civilization. Due mention must be made, in
this respect, of: coloniae like Colchester, Lincoln, Gloucester or York, established for legionary
veterans who had full rights of citizenship (Colchester was a seat of the Imperial Cult, meant to
focus the loyalty of the province, where a temple of the deified Claudius was erected); and
municipia like London or St. Albans, where only town councillors and their families received
Roman citizenship, but that also played an important part in the Romanization of the province
(London was the business centre of the province, a supply port and the centre of the system of
the stone-paved Roman roads).
Roman houses provided with glass windows, central heating and running water, as well
as Roman buildings such as baths, basilicas, and amphitheatres, show the spread of Roman
culture within Britain. Towns also served as regional markets and the base for small-scale
industries and craft production (with the introduction of figurative styles particularly in
sculpture, wall-painting and mosaic, but also in the minor arts and crafts like jewellery, pottery,
furniture, household goods). The Romans built a network of roads linking the towns and
villages, which facilitated the transportation of bulky trade goods and which continued to be
used long after the Romans left, later becoming the main roads of modern Britain. Although
Britain became integrated into the larger economy of the Roman Empire, it did not provide the
gold and silver that had been hoped for. Apart from tin, lead, and iron, the mining of which
provided some income, Britain’s main exports were leather and textiles. In return, Britain
imported luxury goods, such as glass vessels, fine pottery, and garum, the fish sauce much loved
by Roman cooks.
However, the vast majority of people did not live in towns. At the top of the social scale,
lavish villas (large farms belonging to the richer Britons who had become more Roman than
Celt in their manners), which were often surrounded by farming settlements, colonized the
countryside, particularly from the 2nd century AD. Most people, though, continued to live in
traditional roundhouses or rectangular aisled houses in the countryside. Here, the penetration
of Roman ideas was much weaker, and there is evidence of the persistence of traditional beliefs.
Priests of the Imperial Cult could be found in towns, but in the countryside Celtic deities were
still worshipped.
It is not clear whether Latin fully replaced the native Celtic languages of Britain during
the Roman occupation. Most likely, reading and writing (the Latin alphabet) were introduced
and then widely practiced by Latin-speaking town-dwellers and rich landowners, while the
Celtic peasantry remained illiterate. However, with the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, Latin
completely disappeared both in its spoken and written forms. Consequently, it is difficult to say
how many Latin words penetrated the English vocabulary through Celtic. Examples of
authentic borrowings from Latin to Celtic include: caester, chester (“castrum” in Chester,
Doncaster, Gloucester, etc.); coln (“colonia” in Lincoln, Colchester); port (“portus” in
Porchester, Davenport, Portsmouth); wick/ wich (“vicus” in Wickham); pool (“padulis” in
Liverpool); street (“strata”), wall (“vallum”), wine (“vinum”).
Last but not least, the Roman rule in Britain is connected with the introduction of
Christianity in Britain. Christianity became the religion of the State in 313 under Emperor
Constantine the Great, whose mother, Helen, was a Celtic princess from Britain. It was Saint
Patrick that first brought Christianity to Ireland (he became the island’s patron saint), after the
withdrawal of the Roman legions. Saint Patrick came from a rich family in northern Britain.
His own account relates that his father was a town councillor and his grandfather a priest, and
that, aged 16, he was seized by Irish pirates and taken to Ireland. After six years, he escaped
back to Britain, but resolved to return to Ireland to bring Christianity to the people there.
Unfortunately, Patrick does not provide any clear indications of the dates of his mission. His
return to Ireland has traditionally been assigned to 432, but it may well have been any time
between 400 and 450. The early years of the mission were precarious and Patrick was forced to
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make payments to local kings to secure protection. By the time of his death, traditionally given
as 492, Christianity had a sufficiently secure base in Ireland to ensure its survival.
References
Dargie, Richard (2007) A History of Britain, London: Arcturus Publishing Limited.
Gavriliu, Eugenia (2001) British History and Civilization. A Student-Friendly Approach through Guided Practice,
Galaţi: Fundatia Culturală “Dunărea de Jos”.
Grant, R.G., Kay, Ann, Kerrigan, Michael and Parker, Phillip (2011) History of Britain and Ireland. The Definitive
Visual Guide, London, New York, Melbourne, Munich and Delhi: Dorling Kindersley.
McDowall, David (1995) An Illustrated History of Britain, London: Longman.
Morgan, Kenneth (ed.) (1993) The Oxford History of Britain, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

I. Invasions and Patterns of Settlement in the British Isles (2):

The Middle Ages
I.2.1. The Anglo-Saxons

In the early 5th century AD Britain suffered from the general weakness of the Roman Empire
in the west. The withdrawal of the legions left it vulnerable to barbarian raids. Finally, in 410
AD, Roman rule over Britain came to an end and native British rulers were left to face invaders
alone. The period just after the collapse of the Roman province was a confused time, with the
arrival of Germanic invaders and the emergence of old tribal identities.
Writing in the 8th century his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the monk
Bede dated the arrival of the Saxon invaders in England to 449. The British King Vortigern is
said to have invited their leaders Hengist and Horsa to bring a troop of mercenaries to protect
his kingdom against other barbarian marauders. A Gallic chronicle dates a Saxon victory to 440
and it is probable that somewhere around this time the nucleus of the groups who would form
the later Anglo-Saxon kingdoms began to settle in England.
The invaders, whom Bede divided into Angles, Saxons and Jutes, are believed to have
come from north-western Germany and southern Denmark. It is not clear why they began to
migrate, but the lack of a central authority in Britain after the collapse of the Roman province
must have made the island a tempting target. The Anglo-Saxon migrations lasted from about
441, when they secured a permanent stronghold at the mouth of the Thames, to about 600, when
they virtually controlled the present-day England (‘land of the Angles’). The Angles settled in
the east and in the north Midlands; the Jutes settled in Kent and along the south coast; and the
Saxons settled from the Thames Estuary westwards, between the Angles and the Jutes.
The British Celts were killed, famished, enslaved and pushed into the corners of the
island in Wales (‘the land of the foreigners’), Cornwall and southern Scotland. Others sailed to
Ireland or to Brittany on the French coast. The Celtic resistance to the invaders was
immortalised in legends dominated by the figure of King Arthur as a hero of many victories
against the Anglo-Saxons. The idea that King Arthur was a defender of the Britons against
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Saxon invaders owes much to Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain)
written around 1138 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Given that the Britons do seem to have
stemmed the Saxon advance in the early 6th century, the figure of Arthur may be based on a
real leader or leaders of around that time. Historians have advanced as possible sources of
inspiration for the later Arthurian tales the following historical figures: Ambrosius Aurelianus,
a war leader of the Romanised Celts who won an important battle against the Anglo-Saxons in
the 5th century; Arthnou, a 6th century warlord who may have built the original fortress of
Tintagel; and Artuir of the Scotti who has been linked to the old Roman fort of Camelon near
Falkirk. Yet, no convincing evidence to support any of these hypotheses has been found so far.
The Germanic invaders belonged to a Nordic culture which involved the worship of war
gods, which praised the warrior’s courage, strength, intelligence, and, above all, loyalty to the
leader, whereas cowardice, desertion and lack of honour were publicly condemned. Their
religion was one of dread that taught them not to be afraid of death and to aspire to the ideal of
heroic sacrifice on the battlefield. Coldness and pessimism were defining features of the Anglo-
Saxon religion according to which Wyrd (Fate) was stronger than the gods themselves. Their
principal gods were those of later Norse mythology, Tiw, Woden, and Thor. They are
remembered in the day-names Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, as well as in a few
toponyms (Tuesley (Surrey), Wednesbury (Staffs.), Thursley (Surrey), etc.) which presumably
indicate cult centres.
The Anglo-Saxon myths and legends were collected in the Edda and handed down from
generation to generation. The body of epic poetry celebrated heroes like Sigurd and Beowulf,
whereas the elegies spoke of the ups and downs of life, foregrounding, in lyrical terms, the
values and beliefs of the Anglo-Saxon society.
The Anglo-Saxons shared with the Scandinavians the art of decorating weapons,
jewellery, and objects of daily use with patterns of great beauty and richness, as well as customs
of war and agriculture. Particularly relevant in this respect is the archaeological site of Sutton
Hoo. The Sutton Hoo ship burial, discovered in 1939, is probably the last resting place of King
Redwald of East Anglia (599–c.624). One of only two full ship burials found in England, its
fabulous treasures show the wealth of the East Anglian royal dynasty.
Gradually, the Anglo-Saxons’ tribal war-bands coalesced into a series of kingdoms,
collectively termed the Heptarchy: about the 6th century, the Angles formed the kingdoms of
Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia; the Saxons’ kingdoms were Sussex, Essex and Wessex;
and the Jutes created the kingdom of Kent. As a result of the conflicts between the Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms, about the 8th century, Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex grew larger and more
powerful. In the 9th century, only the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, under the rule of King
Alfred the Great, managed to survive the Viking invasion.
The smallest administrative unit of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was the shire and the
endurance in time of this form of administrative organisation has made it one of the world’s
oldest still functioning government units. In each Anglo-Saxon shire, one shire reeve/ sheriff
was appointed as the king’s local administrator, in charge of raising taxes and recruiting
soldiers.
By the time the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain in force in the second half of the 5th
century, the towns of Roman Britannia were already ghosts of their former selves. The
newcomers did not have an urban culture, they were not city dwellers and preferred to settle
mainly in the countryside. (Many important Roman towns had become uninhabited and, when
the Anglo-Saxons did begin to develop a more urban way of life, it was often on new sites.)
The Anglo-Saxon community was organised around the lord’s manor where the villagers paid
taxes, justice was administered and men joined the army (the fyrd). It was the beginning of the
manorial system which reached its full development under the Normans.
The Anglo-Saxon technology changed the shape of English agriculture. They cleared
dense forests and drained wet lands. Their heavier ploughs allowed them to better plough
9
heavier soils in long straight lines across the field. Their system of land ownership and
organisation put the land of the community to better use. They divided the land into two-three
large fields, which were further sub-divided into long thin strips (‘hides’) owned by each family
and cultivated in the same way as the ones of the neighbours. One field was used for spring
crops, a second one for autumn crops, and a third one was left to rest for a year and used,
together with the other fields after crop harvesting, as common land for animals to feed on.
Thus, the Anglo-Saxons set the basis of English agriculture until the eighteenth century.
On top of the Anglo-Saxon hierarchical system, there was the king (‘cyning’). Anglo-
Saxon kingship had its roots in north European Germanic customs. The king was a source of
patronage and wealth, who gave feasts in his hall attended by a retinue of warriors, ‘the ring-
giver’ in times of peace (arm-rings or neck-rings = gold pieces/ jewellery given as a reward to
the warriors for their courage and values). In times of war, he was a war-leader, the ‘shield’ and
protector of his people. The king was elected and assisted during his rule by the Witan, a council
made of senior warriors and churchmen. Without the Witan’s support, the king’s authority was
in danger.
The rest of the social pyramid of the Anglo-Saxon society consisted of:
- the noblemen – ‘eorlas’ (earls) or thanes, who enjoyed material privileges in exchange for
their loyalty and military support to the king;
- the ‘ceorlas’ (modern English ‘churls’, but without its derogatory sense), i.e., free men
entitled to their share of the common land;
- the ‘laet’, i.e., landless men who cultivated the soil for their lord (serfs); and
- the slaves, i.e., war prisoners, convicts in a law-suit or people sold by their families in times
of famine to save them from starvation. Slaves were working machines that could be bought
or sold, even killed by their masters.
The Anglo-Saxons had their own system of punishing manslaughter by paying a sum of money
(‘wergilt’ = war money) to the relatives of the murdered man. (The slaves were an exception in
this respect; the master paid no wergild.) In brief, the Anglo-Saxon system represented a
transition from the tribal to the feudal organisation.
In the early days of the Anglo-Saxon rule in Britain, the Anglo-Saxons continued to
worship their war gods, while the Celts in Wales, Scotland and Ireland were Christian.
However, in 597, into the heathen society of Anglo-Saxon kings, warriors and farmers, there
came an alien influence: the Christian Church. The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons was
initiated by Pope Gregory the Great, who, according to tradition, had seen Anglo-Saxon youths
in Rome and pronounced them “not Angles but angels”. Pope Gregory knew that King Ethelbert
of Kent had a Christian queen; thus it was to Kent that he sent the first mission, headed by a
Roman monk named Augustine. Ethelbert, hesitant at first, soon converted, and Augustine
founded a monastery at Canterbury. In 601 Augustine was enthroned as the first Archbishop of
Canterbury. He continued to convert especially ruling families in Kent, East Anglia, Essex,
Sussex and Wessex. The Roman Christian Church was obviously interested in figures of
authority and speedily gained a foothold in the English courts. On the other hand, though, in
Northumbria, Christianity was introduced by Irish monks 40 years later. The ordinary people
in Britain were converted by Celtic Church bishops from Wales, Ireland and Scotland, who
travelled from village to village to spread Christianity. In 663, the Synod of Whitby decided in
favour of the Roman Church. The Celtic Church retreated as Rome extended its authority over
all Christians, even in the Celtic parts of the island. This was a turning point: the Church through
all the English kingdoms could now become a united and uniting force under one primate.
Christianity brought about the return of learning, reading and writing in Latin, enriching
the Anglo-Saxon language with Latin vocabulary. The monasteries became seats of learning
and teaching of Latin, Greek, music, astronomy, medicine, miniature art and history (e.g.
Venerable Bede, The Ecclesiastic History of the English People).
10
I.2.2. The Vikings
Scandinavia was home to a rich and complex culture in the 6th and 7th centuries. The political,
technological and economic changes which then took place here may have triggered the Viking
raids. Long-distance trade had been facilitated by the development of new types of ships (built
with overlapping planks) and sails to supplement rowing power. However, trade could rapidly
turn into opportunistic raiding, especially when periods of instability or political centralization
constrained opportunities for young warriors at home. For these reasons, the first small-scale
Viking raids on the coast of England, France, and Scotland began at the end of the 8th century.
Within 50 years, larger armies overcame the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and started dividing the
land between them.
After 789, Viking raids in the north became more serious, and incomparably more
distressing, as they involved the successive plundering of Lindisfarne (793), Jarrow (794), and
lona (795). England had been safe from foreign attacks for two centuries; the reaction to the
sudden desecration of three of its most famous holy places is easily imagined. These were,
however, isolated incidents, and it was a generation before the Viking nuisance became a major
threat. But a big raid on Kent in 835 opened three decades in which attacks came almost yearly,
and which ended with the arrival of a full-scale invading army.
As a matter of fact, the raids along the east, north and west coasts of Britain and Ireland
(London was raided in 842) were part of the dramatic expansion of the Norwegians and the
Danes as a European phenomenon (in the 9th and the 10th centuries, the Vikings attacked various
other parts of the world, going as far as Piraeus and Constantinople). The word Viking, ‘pirate’,
was coined by the victims and refers to both Norwegian and Danish invaders. The Scandinavian
prose Sagas record with extraordinary realism their life of war and plunder. The Vikings were
so feared that “God spare us from the wrath of the Northmen” seems to have become a regular
prayer in England in the 9th century.
The Vikings were highly mobile. They could pull their shallow-bottomed warships onto
beaches without the need for a proper harbour, and even sail them up rivers to raid far inland.
They were also able to travel quickly on land by horseback.
In the 860s, within just a few years, the once-great kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia
and Northumbria ceased to exist and the areas where the Vikings established settlements in
England became known as the Danelaw. In 870, from among the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms,
only Wessex (incorporating Wessex, little of Kent and half of Mercia) survived. King Alfred
the Great (871-900) built walled settlements (burghs) to keep the Danes out. In 878, he defeated
the Danes and forced their leader Guthrum to sign the treaty of Wedmore, whereby the Vikings
underwent baptism and agreed to retire into the Danelaw. Thus, England was divided into
Wessex and the ‘Danelaw’ (the east and north of England). (For further details on the reign of
Alfred the Great, see section II.1. – The Anglo-Saxon Kings).
About the middle of the 10th century the kings of Wessex, successors of Alfred the Great,
had finally, or so they thought, rid England of the threat of Viking conquest, and had emerged
as undisputed rulers of all England. Yet, the Vikings continued to cause strain in England, which
culminated with the coming to power, in early 11th century, of King Canute/ Knut/ Cnut. He
was elected king of England in 1016, of Denmark in 1018, of Norway in 1028 and he also ruled
over certain parts of Sweden. He was on the way to found a Northern Empire with Scandinavia
for one pillar and England for the other, reinforcing the cultural bonds between these cultural
spaces. When he died in 1035, his incapable Danish successors dissipated the confederation
and England returned to Anglo-Saxon monarchs.
The last Viking invasion took place during the rule of the last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold
Godwinson. In 1066, Harold had to march north into Yorkshire to fight the Vikings led by
Harald Hardrada, King of Norway. The Vikings were defeated at Stanford Bridge.
11
I.2.3. The Norman Conquest
In 1066, King Edward the Confessor (1042-66) died without a direct heir and without naming
a definite successor to the throne. That is believed to have contributed to the Norman Conquest.
Harold Godwinson, who controlled the key earldoms of England and had proven his experience
in war and government, was chosen by the Witan as the new king. Yet, he succeeded to the
throne under the suspicion of having usurped the rights of Edward’s ‘rightful’ heir, William,
Duke of Normandy. The latter made claims to the English throne for several reasons: he was
Edward the Confessor’s cousin; Edward the Confessor owed his throne to the assistance
William had given him to return to England in 1042, and in 1051 Edward the Confessor is said
to have made William his heir; last but not least, William claimed that Harold Godwinson had
paid him homage while in Normandy in 1064 and had promised then that he would not take the
throne for himself.
Consequently, in September 1066, William of Normandy gathered an army to invade
England and to enforce his claim on the English throne. When William landed at Pevensey on
September 28, 1066, Harold was away in the north fighting the Norwegians whom he defeated
at Stanford Bridge. When he heard of the Norman invasion, Harold marched to the south to
oppose the new invaders. The Anglo-Saxons and the Normans clashed at Hastings on October
14, 1066. Better armed, better organised and mounted on horses, the Normans defeated the
already tired and depleted Anglo-Saxon army. Harold died on the battlefield with his eye
pierced by an arrow. The story of the Norman triumph is represented on the famous Tapestry
of Bayeux, commissioned after the Battle of Hastings to glorify the events leading up to and
including the Norman invasion and conquest of England. William the Conqueror marched to
London and he was crowned King of England in Edward’s church of Westminster Abbey on
Christmas Day, 1066. (For further details on the reigns of William I and of his successors to the
English throne, see section II.2. – The Norman Kings)
The defeat of the Anglo-Saxon army and Harold’s death removed the main obstacle on
William’s path to the English crown; that does not mean that the Anglo-Saxon nobility
submitted at once. Hence, the early years of William Iʼs reign were marked by atrocious
punitive campaigns that would put down any resistance to Norman rule of the Saxon earls in
the north of England, remembered for centuries as the ‘harrying of the North’.
In brief, the Norman invasion overthrew six centuries of Anglo-Saxon rule in England.
Once he had overcome the early rebellions of the Anglo-Saxons, William the Conqueror
radically reshaped England, replacing its old ruling class with an Anglo-Norman aristocracy
and bringing the feudal system of landholding prevalent in Normandy to England.
The social pyramid of the Norman feudal system included:
• the King, who divided the land to the nobles. William I gave half of England to the Norman
nobles, a quarter to the Church and kept a fifth for himself. The nobles were given pieces
of land in different parts of the country so that no noble could easily or quickly gather his
fighting men to rebel.
• the nobles, who received from the king the feu, i.e., land held in return for duty or service
to the lord. They were vassals who owed the king obedience, help in time of war and part
of the produce of their land. The greater nobles gave parts of their lands to lesser nobles,
knights, and other ‘freemen’ (yeomen). The ‘homage’ ritual was meant to symbolically
suggest the submissiveness characteristic of the vassal’s status: the vassal kneeled before
the lord, his hands placed between those of his lord. (Nowadays this ritual is part of the
coronation ceremony of British kings and queens.)
• the ‘freemen’ (yeomen): Some paid for the land by doing military service, while others paid
rent.
12
• the peasants bound to the land (serfs), who were not free to leave the estate and were often
little better than slaves.
The newly established feudal system mirrored the one that was already established in
Normandy and it was based on two basic principles: ‘Every man has a lord’ and ‘Every lord
has land’. Its successful implementation by William I’s administration is best illustrated by the
issuing in 1087, shortly before William’s death, of a great survey of landholding in his English
domains, which formed the basis of the Domesday Book. This inventory of both all the
possessions of the country and the social distribution of the population resulted from an enquiry
conducted, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, with speed and thoroughness by royal
commissioners who collected oral answers from sheriffs in each shire, from barons, and even
from reeves and peasants in villages about: who held the land now and who had held it earlier;
how many ploughs there were on the manorial demesne (estate land); and how many men there
were. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle laments that “so very narrowly did he have it investigated
that there was no… one ox nor one cow nor one pig which was there left out.” The data collected
was compiled for each of the seven large survey districts and these were then sent to Winchester,
where they were summarized and consolidated into the form seen in the final Great Domesday
book.
As for the fate of the defeated, due mention must be made of the fact that William I
adopted a conscious policy of replacing the remaining Anglo-Saxon magnates with Frenchmen.
Thus English lords were deprived of their lands in favour of the French barons. All high offices
both in the church and state were exclusively filled by French-speaking foreigners. The English
found themselves excluded from all road leading to honour or preferment. In 1088, only 5,000
thanes were recorded to survive as the local gentry.
In time, though, the military invasion was followed by a peaceful ‘invasion’ of
Normandy’s industrial and trading classes which culminated in what some historians call a ‘13th
century Renaissance’ in England. It brought about developments in:
a) architecture: the building of England’s twenty-seven greatest cathedrals (Norwich,
Gloucester, Oxford, Peterborough, Winchester, St. Albans, Durham, etc.) favouring the English
Romanesque or Norman style (characterised by bold massive construction, semicircular arches,
flat buttresses, ponderous cylindrical pillars and geometrical patterns) and/or the Gothic style
(characterised by pointed arches, clustered columns, pointed ribbed vaults, flying buttresses,
tall and pointed towers and spires, and stained glass);
b) crafts in wood, stone, glass, tapestry and painting (miniatures);
c) education, by the creation of the first universities as great seats of learning: Oxford in 1249;
Cambridge in 1284 (e.g.s of university scholars: John Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Roger
Bacon)
d) chronicle writing: The Anglo-Norman Chronicles (written in Latin, but lacking the
impartiality of their Anglo-Saxon predecessors); Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora (English
and Continental events from 1255) and Chronica Minora (home events between 1200-1250);
Walter Map’s Of Courtiers’ Trifles (violent attacks at the corruption and abuses of the clergy)
e) Middle English: Latin (the language of the church and scholarship) – French (the language
of public life, aristocratic society, law-courts and royal administration, literature, art and
cooking) – English (the language of the people at large, of the illiterate lower classes).
II. British Monarchy. Developments in British Political Life (1)
II. 1. The Anglo-Saxon Kings. Political Institutions in Anglo-Saxon England
13
An important part in the decision-making process in Anglo-Saxon England was played by the
Witenagemot/ Witan (627-1066), i.e., a “meeting of wise men” or, in more specific terms, an
assembly of the elite, both ecclesiastical (archbishops, bishops, abbots) and secular (earls and
thanes, members of the royal family, ladies not excepted). Its membership, functions and power
varied considerably and were largely dependent upon the king.
Main functions:
◦ to advise the king on all matters on which he chose to ask its opinion (organisation
and administration of the kingdom; taxation, jurisprudence, internal and external
security);
◦ to attest his grants of land to laymen and churches (charters);
◦ to issue new law codes;
◦ to choose the king from the extended royal family, or, should the king become
unpopular, to depose him.
The Witan was, in many ways, different from the future Parliament. It only assembled when
summoned by the king and it was more an advisory council that could be considered the origin
of the Privy Council later advising kings and queens on the affairs of state.
As providing an exhaustive list of Anglo-Saxon kings is far beyond the scope of this
lecture, in what follows stress will be laid on some of these kings whose policies turned out to
have, sooner or later, a significant impact on the nation-making process.
A good case in point is that of King Alfred the Great (871-900). Having spent most of
his life under the shadow of the Viking threat, King Alfred initially had a hard time trying to
protect his kingdom from overwhelming force of the Norse invaders (even if that meant to pay
off the enemy for five years). In 878, though, he managed to turn what seemed to be the end of
Anglo-Saxon rule in Wessex into a great victory that prevented the incorporation of the last
surviving Anglo-Saxon kingdom into the Danelaw. It was from this time that the famous legend
of Alfred, the only English king to be remembered as “the Great”, came into existence. Alfred
began a guerrilla resistance and succeeded in gathering about 4,000 supporters to attack the
Danish led by Guthrum. Defeated, Guthrum was forced to sign, at Wedmore, a peace treaty and
to accept Christian baptism, together with most of his leading followers. Under the peace
settlement, Alfred retained Wessex and took western Mercia, while Guthrum held the eastern
portion of Mercia and East Anglia.
In the aftermath of the 878 victory over the Danes, further steps were made by King
Alfred to regain control of Anglo-Saxon territories that had been conquered by the Vikings and
to enhance the power of Wessex to resist subsequent potential Viking invasions. After getting
the royal council, the Witan, to swear that his sons would inherit the throne after him, so
ensuring the line of succession, one of Alfred’s first acts following the peace settlement with
the Vikings was the building of a sea fleet. Although the armies of Wessex had, on occasion,
been able to beat the Vikings on land, they had never been able to challenge them at sea. The
naval victory of 882, in which the Wessex fleet captured two Viking ships, was a sign the
Scandinavians would not in future be able to raid the English coastline unmolested.
In the early 880s, Alfred also boosted the land defences of his realm by ordering the
construction of a series of new fortified towns or burghs (“boroughs” in modern English). These
provided a network of strongpoints which would hinder any subsequent Viking invasion and
whose inhabitants were obliged to provide a certain amount of military service. Alfred also
reorganized the army, so that the fyrd, the peasant levy, did not have to serve all at once, but
was divided into two, so that one half could remain on their farms while the other half were
fighting. In 886, King Alfred captured London, thus bringing all the English not under the
Danish rule to accept him as a king, and in 892-896, he resisted serious attacks by a large Danish
force from the Continent.
14
Yet, it was not only because he saved the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex and
enhanced its power that King Alfred was called ‘the Great’. He also proved to be an excellent
administrator of his kingdom transforming the burghs/ boroughs (walled settlements), initially
built for defence, into prosperous market towns. He organised his finances and the service due
from his thanes, took steps to ensure the protection of the weak and dependent from oppression
by ignorant or corrupt judges, limited the practice of the blood feud and imposed heavy
penalties for breach of oath or pledge.
In addition, from the 880s, the King sponsored a revival of learning in Wessex,
attracting to his court leading scholars of his time. As he believed that only through learning
men could acquire wisdom and live in accordance with God’s will, he encouraged the
foundation of the first public schools in the monasteries and established a school at court to
educate the children of the nobility, setting aside a portion of the royal income to fund this
(although his aim of bringing literacy to all free-born men was not achieved). Alfred himself,
who only learnt to read when he was 12 and Latin even later, translated a series of books into
the West Saxon dialect, including the Pastoral Care of Pope Gregory I, St. Augustine of
Hippo’s works and the Consolations of Philosophy by the late Roman philosopher Boethius.
He also commissioned the translation into English of books of theology, history and geography,
chief among which Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. These works were
intended to provide firm moral examples for their readers.
Last but not least, King Alfred initiated the keeping of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (c.
890), the first year-by-year historical records ever composed in English.
By the time of his death in 899, King Alfred had restored the cultural life of Wessex,
reformed its administration and, against all odds, seen off the Viking threat. By ensuring
Wessex’s survival, the only one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to weather the storm, he had
also ensured that, when England was united, it was the kings of Wessex that would become its
rulers.
After the kingdom of Wessex secured its independence from the Viking threat, over the
first half of the 10th century a series of able Anglo-Saxon kings progressively conquered the
areas of Viking England, until their lands bordered with Scotland. However, in the last decades
of the 10th century, the Wessex kings proved incapable of stopping a new wave of Viking
raiders. By 1016, these raids had turned into an invasion and the Danish kings seized the throne,
ruling over England for a quarter of a century. (See King Canute in section I.2.2. – The Vikings)
In 1042, the Danish rule in England came to an end with the accession of Edward the
Confessor (1042-1066). This new Anglo-Saxon king had actually spent most of his life in
Normandy and lived among Norman monks during the Danish rule in England. So, he was more
of a Norman than an Englishman and more interested in the Church than in kingship. Under his
rule his secretaries and chaplains at court were Normans and he raised several Normans to be
Bishops while he made a Norman Primate of England, i.e. Archbishop of Canterbury.
Consequently, his reign was marred by growing tensions, which threatened to undermine the
stability of the realm, between the pro-Norman court and the Anglo-Saxon earls, who were the
native powerbrokers. It is true that certain advances were made in the administration
highlighting an increasingly powerful and wealthy monarchy. (E.g. The pattern of the English
village, with its manor house and church, dates from Edward’s time. Also, King Edward began
the building of Westminster Abbey in London.) However, the fact that the king did not name a
successor until his death led to a major political crisis in 1066, opposing claimants to the throne
and paving the way for the Norman conquest1.
1
Written about the time of the Norman Conquest (about 1100) and attributed to Goscelin of St. Bertin,
a manuscript entitled Vita Eduardi (The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster: attributed to a
monk of Saint-Bertin), translated into English by Frank Barlow, provides an important and intriguing
source for the history of Anglo-Saxon England in the years just before 1066.
15
Thus, though chosen by the Witan in 1066 as the new king, Harold II Godwinson, the
descendant of the most powerful family of Wessex, was challenged by the one who claimed to
be Edward the Confessor’s real heir, i.e., William, Duke of Normandy. Attacked in 1066 by
both the Vikings and the Normans, he managed to defeat the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada
at Stanford Bridge, but he was defeated by the Normans at Hastings. He died on the battlefield
with his eye pierced by an arrow2. (for further details about the battle of Hastings, see section
I.2.3. – The Norman Conquest)
References
Wilkinson, Philip (2006) The British Monarchy for Dummies, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

II. 2. The Norman Kings

After defeating Harold II Godwinson at Hastings, William I of Normandy and England
(1066-1087) (also referred to as William the Conqueror) was crowned at Westminster Abbey
on Christmas Day 1066. He controlled two large areas: Normandy, which had been given by
his father, and England, which he had won in war. Both were personal possessions. To William,
the important difference between Normandy and England was that, as Duke of Normandy, he
had to recognise the king of France as his lord, whereas in England he was king with no lord
above him.
William I mainly spent the first years of his reign putting down the resistance of the
Anglo-Saxons to his authority. Roughly speaking, after 1071, his hold on England was fairly
secure (although a residual Anglo-Saxon resistance continued in the East Anglian fens until
1072). The Welsh and the Scots gave him little trouble. Scandinavian rulers continued to look
upon England with acquisitive eyes but the ever-present threat of another Viking invasion never
quite materialized. Therefore, as he was never again seriously threatened, from 1071 to the end
of his reign most of William’s attention was taken up by war and diplomacy on the Continent.
Normandy was his homeland and far more vulnerable to sudden attack than was his island
kingdom. Several of William’s neighbours were alarmed by his new power and took every
2
Among the most notable fictional representations of Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon kings, reference
could be made to: the play Harold by Alfred Tennyson (1876); the novel The Last of the Saxon Kings
by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1848); the short story “The Tree of Justice” included in Rudyard Kipling’s
Rewards and Fairies (1910), etc.
16
opportunity to diminish it. So William spent most of the rest of his reign in Normandy, where
he faced wars in Maine (1073), with Brittany (1076) against the Counts of Anjou (1077–78 and
1081), and against Philip I of France (in 1087).
Also, in the later part of his reign, William decided to divide his territories between his
eldest son Robert Curthose, who was to receive Normandy, and Richard his second son, who
was to get England. Impatient and provoked by Philip I of France, Robert rebelled in 1078 and
1083, but was on both occasions reconciled to his father. The link between Normandy and
England, however, was weakened.
After William I’s death, the management of Normandy and England became a family
business, marked by fights for power among William I’s descendants. (For further details on
society and culture in Norman England, see section I.2.3. – The Norman Conquest)
Richard died in 1081 and a third son, William Rufus, inherited the English throne as
William II (1087-1100). He initially faced a coalition of barons, prominent among them Bishop
Odo of Bayeux (William I’s half-brother), who wanted to see England and Normandy united
under Robert’s rule. The revolt was put down and Odo captured in 1088. William II invaded
Normandy in 1091, forcing his brother’s submission.
When William II died suddenly in 1100, he was unmarried and childless. His brother,
Henry, was nearby when he died. He seized the opportunity to take power, riding to Winchester
to claim the treasury and on to London for the Crown. His older brother, Robert, would later
attempt to depose Henry.
Henry I (1100-1135), the fourth son of William the Conqueror, was the first Norman
king born in England. However, his elder brother Robert Curthose reigned as Duke of
Normandy and most of Henry’s barons held lands on both sides of the English Channel, so the
destinies of the two territories remained firmly intertwined. At Henry’s accession he issued a
solemn charter promising to restore the laws of his father William I and those of Edward the
Confessor. Furthermore, his wife Edith was a descendant of Anglo-Saxon kings and so their
marriage symbolically united the English and Norman peoples of the realm. Normandy and
England were reunited under Henry’s rule only after he defeated his eldest brother Robert
Curthose and became Duke of Normandy in 1106.
Henry I spent the rest of his life fighting to keep Normandy from other French nobles
who tried to take it. In particular, his later years were marred by sadness. In 1120, on his return
to England from a victorious campaign against King Louis VI of France at the end of which he
had gained the acknowledgment of his title as Duke of Normandy, Henry I’s only legitimate
son, William, drowned. That made Stephen of Blois, Henry’s nephew, from Boulogne, to hope
that he might succeed to the throne. Then in 1125, Henry’s daughter Matilda, who had married
the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V in 1110, was widowed and returned to England. Henry
doted on Matilda and at Christmas 1126 the Royal Council was made to swear allegiance to her
as heir to the throne. Henry’s reign was prosperous and peaceful for the next decade, with his
administrative reforms bearing fruit in increased revenues and a smoother operation of justice.
However, his decision to leave his crown to Matilda ended in catastrophe. For at Henry I’s
death in 1135, Stephen of Blois refused to accept Matilda as queen.
The peace and tranquillity of England under Henry I was rapidly replaced by a bitter
civil war lasting 19 years. Stephen of Blois seized the treasury with the help of his brother
Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, and he and leading barons renounced their oath to
Matilda. In 1138, her half-brother, Robert of Gloucester, defected from Stephen’s side and, in
1139, she landed at Arundel in an attempt to unseat Stephen from the throne. Matilda defeated
and captured Stephen at Lincoln in 1141. However, Stephen was freed in exchange for Robert
of Gloucester, who was also a captive. During the civil war, Matilda’s second husband,
Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, took towns in Normandy, leading to his acceptance as
Duke of Normandy in 1144. After years of damaging warfare, Matilda finally left England in
1148. The terrible civil war came to an end when Matilda and Stephen agreed that Stephen
17
could keep England’s throne but only if Matilda’s son, Henry, could succeed him. Henry I’s
legacy of bringing order and prosperity to England, and in uniting the country once more with
Normandy lay in ruins.
As far as the most representative political institution of Norman England is concerned,
it must be mentioned that, from 1066 to 1215, Norman kings were supposed to rule with the
support of the Curia Regis (“king’s court”/“royal council”), a council of tenants-in-chief (those
who held lands directly from the King, known as manors) and ecclesiastics that advised the
king of England on legislative matters. Actually, the tenants-in-chief often struggled with their
spiritual counterparts and with the king for power.
II.3.1. The Plantagenets (The Angevins)

The first of the Plantagenets, Henry II (1154-1189) ruled over far more land than the previous
kings, being one of the most powerful rulers in Europe at that time. On the one hand, as the son
of Mathilda, daughter of Henry I, and of Geoffrey Plantagenet, heir to the Count of Anjou and
Duke of Normandy, Henry II inherited the throne of England and the titles of Duke of
Normandy and Count of Anjou. On the other hand, his marriage to Eleanor, heiress of the duchy
of Aquitaine (and the former wife of Louis VII of France) in 1152, made him the most powerful
man in France, lord of a domain that historians came to call the Angevin Empire, stretching
from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees.
Although he spent only one third of his 35-year reign in England, Henry II’s impact
there was profound and long-lasting. The civil wars under Stephen of Blois had left England
prey to the ambitions of the warring barons. Henry II restored the power of the centralized state,
removing former supporters of Stephen from key power positions, demolishing castles that had
been built illegally during the civil war, and transforming other castles into garrisons for royal
troops. To further strengthen his position and to restore royal authority, Henry also replaced
two-thirds of the county sheriffs with men loyal to him and strengthened the system of justice.
Justice became faster, more effective, and the power of the barons was diluted, as their tenants
discovered that an appeal to the Crown might offer rapid relief with a lessened danger of
baronial retribution.
Henry’s key ally in implementing these reforms was supposed to be his chancellor,
Thomas Becket, whom he appointed in 1162 Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry II hoped that
his former chancellor would protect the interests of the Crown against excessive ecclesiastical
interference. However, Becket proved to be inexperienced in Church matters, inflexible and
stubborn. Far from supporting him, Becket opposed Henry repeatedly, particularly over the
rights of jurisdiction over clerics who had committed criminal acts. Their disagreement over
this issue determined the bishop to leave England in 1164, but six years later, it seemed to have
been resolved and Becket returned in 1170. However, the King’s coronation of his son Prince
Henry earlier that year without the customary presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury (which
offended both ecclesiastical practice and Becket’s pride) and Becket’s procurement of the
excommunication of many of those bishops who had attended the ceremony caused the conflict
between Henry II and Becket to break out again. While in Normandy, hearing the case of the
excommunicated bishops, Henry II was beside himself with rage, inveighing against his
treacherous former friend. Hearing him, four knights slipped away, eager to win favor with the
King. The four reached Canterbury on December 29 and found Becket. After a brief
confrontation, Becket’s entourage persuaded him to go to the cathedral as he might be safer
there. The knights, though, took up arms and followed him into the church. With most of his
followers having fled, Becket resisted attempts to drag him from the cathedral and in the
confusion he was struck on the head. Bleeding, profusely, he was finished off in a rain of blows.
Henry denied all responsibility for the murder and in May 1172 was publicly pardoned by the
Pope. Becket was canonized as a saint in March 1173, less than 18 months after his death, and
18
his shrine in Canterbury attracted thousands of pilgrims (see Geoffrey Chaucer’s The
Canterbury Tales)3.
Henry II’s later years were marred by worsening relations with his wife and sons 4. By
the 1170s, he had planned to partition his realms between the three eldest sons, with Henry
receiving Anjou, Normandy, and England; Richard inheriting Aquitaine; and Brittany (which
Henry II had acquired in 1166) going to Geoffrey. His sons were impatient for their inheritances
and Prince Henry rebelled in 1173 with the support of his mother Eleanor and of many English
barons disgruntled at the King’s financial exactions. It was a particularly dangerous moment.
Prince Henry made common cause with Louis VII of France, who persuaded his English ally
to grant a variety of French nobles large tracts of land in France, and with William the Lion in
Scotland. As his allies were defeated by Henry II , the young king made terms with his father
in September 1174, and was granted two castles in Normandy. He rebelled again in 1182. Prince
Henry died in 1183 and Geoffrey in 1186. This should have ended the family dispute, but Henry
II had developed a preference for John, and Richard suspected he was being pushed aside. He
rose up in open revolt against his father. Sick and defeated, Henry died at Chinon castle on July
6, 1189.
When Richard I (1189-99) came to the English throne in 1189, he had spent much of
his life in his mother’s homeland of Aquitaine, in far southwestern France. As Eleanor of
Aquitaine’s favourite son, he had a special relationship with his mother: not only did she bring
Richard up to be independent like her, but, after she was arrested by her husband, Henry II, for
rebelling against him, she entrusted her homeland, Aquitaine, to Richard to govern and he ruled
over the duchy from 1174 until Henry’s death in 1189.
Though fictional representations (e.g. the medieval legends about Robin Hood; Walter
Scott’s novels Ivanhoe (1819) and The Talisman (1825), etc.) present Richard I as one of
England’s most popular kings, a chivalry romance knight errant figure turned into a full blooded
Englishman, the truth is that Richard I actually spent very little time in England after coming
to the throne. Known as “Coeur de Lion”/“Lionheart” due to his skill as a warrior, Richard
spent only three months in England in 1189, just long enough to claim the throne after his
father’s death and raise money for the English army participating in the Third Crusade under
his leadership.
In the East, Richard the Lionheart showed himself worthy of his famous nickname. He
won an important victory over the Muslim leader Saladin, captured the city of Acre for the
Christians, and showed himself to be both a brave fighter and an intelligent military tactician.
He stopped short of trying to take the city of Jerusalem, the goal of many Crusaders. Instead,
Richard negotiated a deal with Saladin that allowed Christian pilgrims to visit the city safely.
In 1192, Richard began his return journey to England, he was seized by Duke Leopold
of Austria with whom he had quarrelled in Jerusalem and he was held prisoner until a large
ransom was paid in 1194.
Another brief sojourn in England followed to restore the damage done by his brother
John, who had seized power in Richard’s absence, but he then spent the last five years of his
life in France trying to protect his domains there and died during a minor siege against a
rebellious baron.
3
Relevant examples of fictional representations of the conflict between Henry II and Thomas Becket
and of the circumstances that led to the latter’s murder are the plays: Becket (1893) by Alfred Tennyson;
Murder in the Cathedral (1935) by T. S. Eliot; Becket, ou l’Honneur de Dieu (1959) by Jean Anouilh.
4
Henry II’s difficult relationship with his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine and his sons is wonderfully
represented in the play The Lion in Winter (1966) by James Goldman.
19
Royal authority had been strengthened since its restoration after the chaos of the civil
wars in Stephen’s reign. By the reign of King John (1199-1216)5, revenues were increasing,
but disasters in France undermined royal prestige once more. In 1200, King John became
involved in a war with France, so he misused the machinery of state he had inherited in order
to extort money from his subjects to defend his French possessions against the rising power of
the Capet kings. Despite that, in 1204, King John lost Normandy to Philip Augustus of France.
Within a year, Anjou and other French possessions that were part of the Angevin Empire were
lost as well. John’s hopes of recouping this disastrous situation were definitely ruined by the
defeat of his allies at Bouvines in 1214. The King’s failures in France tarnished his prestige and
brought him the nickname ‘Lackland’.
King John also quarrelled with the Pope over who should be Archbishop of Canterbury
(1207), which caused him to become unpopular with the Church too. In November 1209, the
Pope excommunicated John, absolving all his subjects—including the barons—of their oath of
allegiance to him.
The increasing level of financial exactions needed to pay for the unpopular French war
crystallized opposition to John around a group of northern barons. A meeting between John and
his tenants-in-chief in November 1213 did little to resolve the situation and, by the time John
returned to England in October 1214, three months after Bouvines, the demands for a scutage
(a tax paid in place of military service) of three marks for each knight’s fief (land) had further
inflamed matters. So, the barons came together and produced a charter of liberties, which had—
they said—been granted to the English by Henry I. The baronial revolt that followed resulted
in the signing, on June 15, 2015, at Runnymede (outside London) of Magna Carta (The Great
Charter). The main purpose of the charter was to restrict the king’s power and to protect others,
especially the barons and the church, from misuses of royal power. It was a long document with
63 clauses covering many different aspects of royal responsibility. Key provisions included:
 No free man would be punished or imprisoned without prior judgement and all free men
should have the right to judgement by their peers. (“No freeman shall be seized or
imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way brought to ruin; we will not go
against any man nor send against him; save by legal judgement of his peers or by the
law of the land.”)
 Justice would not be denied, delayed, or sold.
 Certain taxes should be levied only with the common consent of the country.
 The freedom of the church was to be upheld.
 A committee of 25 barons should monitor the king’s actions and bring him to book if
he broke any of the provisions of the charter.
Magna Carta obviously contained many clauses designed to protect specific rights of the barons,
but it also was addressed to all free men and their heirs, ‘for ever’, and so it took on the character
of a great declaration of human liberty. Hence, Magna Carta has come to be regarded as a
symbol of political freedom and a symptom of the collapse of English feudalism. Actually,
those clauses that seemed to enhance the rights of free men were strictly subsidiary to the main
purpose of the Magna Carta, namely that of defending the barons’ rights, particularly with
regard to inheritance, and restricting the royal right to tax them. Unfortunately, Magna Carta
failed to restore peace in England and civil war opposing the king to the barons broke out again
in September 1215. It was still going on when King John died in October 1216. Nonetheless,
for all its strengths and/or weaknesses, Magna Carta must be remembered as marking the
5
Literary representations of King John’s reign appear in several plays (e.g. John Bale’s King Johan
(1538); William Shakespeare’s King John (1591-98, published in the First Folio 1623); Anthony
Munday’s The Downfall and the Death of Robert Earl of Huntington (1598); Robert Davenport’s King
John and Matilda (c. 1628-29); James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter (1966)) and novels (e.g. Walter
Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819)).
20
transition from the age of traditional rights to the age of written legislation and being the first
of a series of concessions by which English monarchs ceded parts of their power in the face of
baronial challenges to their authority. (The terms of the Magna Carta would be reaffirmed under
Henry III, King John’s successor, in 1216 and 1217.)
References
Wilkinson, Philip (2006) The British Monarchy for Dummies, Chichester: John Wiley

II.3.2. The Plantagenets

When he came to the throne, King John’s son, Henry III (1216-1272) was only nine
years old and, throughout his minority, the country was governed by a regency council which
acted quickly to restore royal authority, as the barons had seized much royal land and the King’s
revenues had collapsed. Yet, after Henry III was declared of age in 1223, and especially after
his marriage to Eleanor of Provence in 1236, he came to depend on foreign advisors. That, next
to the failure of his campaigns in France (1230 and 1242) and his excessive expenses in
supporting the Pope in Sicily, brought him in conflict with the barons led by Simon of Montfort
(a former protégé of Henry’s). Simon of Montfort was the first to realise that the position of the
government could be strengthened by calling representatives of all the communities and talking
to them. Thus, he summoned in 1264 the first Parliament (from Lat. Parliamentum =
parley/discussion/talking shop), a council of nobles which replaced the Curia Regis of William
I and Henry II. King Henry III’s attempt to use foreign arbiters (the King Louis IX of France)
in his dispute with the barons caused a new civil war to break out. At Lewes on May 14, 1264,
de Montfort’s forces crushed the royal army, and Henry III and Prince Edward were imprisoned.
De Montfort then tried to enlarge his base of support. He had already summoned four knights
from each shire to his Parliament of 1264, widening representation from the previously
dominant baronial class. In 1265, he summoned burgesses from the towns as well, so that the
London Parliament resembled for the first time the later House of Commons. Prince Edward,
however, escaped from captivity in May 1265 and three months later, at Evesham, he trapped
de Montfort with a small force. The baronial leader was killed and the rebellious barons melted
away or were hunted down. Although their challenge to the King was temporarily at an end,
Parliament, whose power it had established, became permanent.
Despite the fact that he defeated Simon of Montfort, King Edward I (1272-1307)
decided to continue the experiment of summoning the Parliament. In Edward I’s time,
Parliament consisted of one assembly presided over by the king from his throne or by the king’s
Lord Chancellor from the woolsack. The chief officers of the state, the barons and the high
clergy were also present there ex-officio. Humbly in the background there were the
21
representative knights and burghers of each shire, unlikely to speak unless spoken to. This was
the high Court of Parliament which has survived in the modern House of Lords.
Edward I’s reign is particularly marked by his campaigns in Wales and Scotland.
Between 1282 and 1284, he managed to break the opposition of the Welsh and to bring them
under control. Edward I moved quickly to organise his new dominion, issuing the Statute of
Wales in March 1284, by which he extended the English shire system into Wales and
established a number of officials to administer the principality. In 1301, Edward I’s son, the
future Edward II, was made Prince of Wales, a title that is used by members of the British royal
family to this day. The conquest of Wales in 1282, and the deposition of most of the native
princes opened the way for direct English rule over Wales, which lasted until the union of the
two countries in 1536.
Edward I also interfered in Scotland as an arbitrator among the pretenders of the Scottish
crown only to proclaim himself king of Scotland in 1296. His taking over the Scottish crown
faced a popular resistance movement, led at first by William Wallace. He defeated the English
at Stirling Bridge in 1297, yet he overreached himself and he was defeated by the English at
Falkirk in July 1298. (Upon his return from a diplomatic mission to France, Wallace was
betrayed and handed over to the English who executed him.) When Edward I’s army attacked
Scotland again in 1303, a new anti-English leader emerged, Robert Bruce, who proclaimed
himself King of Scotland in 1306. Edward I was defeated by Bruce and died on his way for a
second campaign to Scotland to fight him.
Innocent minded, lazy, incapable, Edward II (1307-1327) estranged himself from his
queen, Isabella of France, and from his barons, surrounding himself by favourites like Piers
Gaveston (eventually captured and beheaded). Edward’s conflict with the barons over his
excessively favouring Gaveston allowed Robert Bruce to gain ground in Scotland. Some of the
barons who had withheld their support from the crown when he was carrying on with his
favourite returned to the king’s side. And Edward needed this support as he was about to face
a formidable enemy. In 1314, Edward tried to pick up the pieces of his father’s war with the
Scots. By spring 1314, only Stirling Castle remained in English hands, and it was to save this
last redoubt of English power in Scotland that Edward II finally stirred himself to a
counterstrike. This ended in disaster, with the English army being defeated at Bannockburn on
June 24, 1314. The blow to Edward’s prestige in Scotland was huge, although the war would
drag on for another 14 years before Scottish independence was finally recognized by England.
By 1318, Edward had two new favourites, Hugh Despenser and his son. Some of the
other barons (chief among which the king’s cousin Thomas, Earl of Lancaster) started a
campaign against the Despensers. Soon revolts broke out all over the kingdom. Yet, the civil
war ended with the defeat of the rebels and the Despensers’ getting more titles and lands from
the king. An important part in putting an end to the Despensers’ oppressive regime was played
by Queen Isabella. She had gone to France to help negotiate peace terms between Edward and
her brother, the French king Charles IV, in a dispute over who should hold power over part of
Aquitaine. While she was in France, Isabella, who probably felt that Edward’s being so close
to his favourites put her marriage in danger, found an ally in Roger Mortimer, a nobleman and
opponent of the Despensers who had left England after the defeat of Lancaster and his rebels a
couple of years earlier. Mortimer and Isabella plotted to end the tyranny of the Despensers once
and for all, even if it meant deposing Edward, too. In September 1326, they landed on the coast
of Essex before making swiftly for London. Edward took refuge at the Despensers’ lands in
Wales. Mortimer and Isabella declared the young prince Edward Keeper of the Realm, a sort
of honorary ruler without actually taking the title of king; in reality, the power was in Isabella
and Mortimer’s hands. Soon, the Despensers were executed for treason, and the king himself
was imprisoned and forced to abdicate. Young prince Edward was declared king. It was the
first time that an anointed king of England was dethroned since Ethelred in 1013.
22
In September 1327, a few months after his son had been put on the throne, Edward II
died at Berkeley Castle (allegedly murdered by the Queen’s lover, Mortimer; later on, the
Parliament decided that Mortimer should be sentenced to death by hanging and the Queen
should be deprived of all power and confined for life). (See also Christopher Marlowe’s play
The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, c. 1592)
Edward III (1327-1377) restored the authority of the king and showed interest in
parliamentary issues. During his reign, in 1332, the House of Commons, which originated in
the unofficial meetings of the knights and burghers meant to appoint a representative who
should speak for the Commons in full Parliament, was officially acknowledged, the consent of
its members being necessary for making all acts of State, depositions and elections of kings.
In other parts of Europe, similar “parliaments” kept all the gentry separate from the
commoners. England was special. The division of Parliament into the House of Lords and the
House of Commons is a vital fact for the further history of England. The forms of English
parliamentary life abolished the distinction of feudalism when in the House of Commons the
smaller gentry was brought in contact with the burghers and humbler rural free-holders. Thus
the intermarriage of classes and the constant intercommunication of the upper and middling
ranks of society were already more advanced in England than elsewhere. During the 150 years
following Edward I’s death the agreement of the Commons became necessary for the making
of all statutes, and all special taxation additional to regular taxes.
However, only those commoners with an income of forty shillings or more a year could
qualify to be members of Parliament at that time. This meant that the poor had no way of being
heard except by rebellion. The poor had no voice of their own in Parliament until the middle of
the nineteenth century.
In 1328 the death of Charles IV of France to whom Edward III was related gave Edward
the opportunity to make claims to the French throne. The French nobles turned to Philippe of
Valois, a nephew of Philippe IV, and anointed him king as Philippe VI. The latter repeatedly
provoked Edward III and forced him into a humiliating act of homage for his lands in Aquitaine.
That sparked off a long series of military conflicts between England and France known as the
Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453). Edward invaded France through Flanders in 1337. After
Edward’s fleet established, by the victory in the battle of Sluys, the English domination over
the English Channel, the king scored two great victories at Crécy (1346) (although the English
were outnumbered) and Poitiers (1356) (where the French king himself was taken prisoner by
Edward’s son known as Edward the Black Prince). At the treaty of Brétigny (1360), the whole
south-western France was assigned to England. Although he had to give up his claim to be king
of France, Edward made huge territorial gains as a result of 20 years of fighting. The English
army he had assembled had proven their skill. England was a force to be reckoned with on the
battlefield, and this recognition undoubtedly meant a lot to Edward. With the Black Prince’s
powerful presence on the field of battle and the all-important Treaty of Brétigny, it seemed as
if England had won the war. Almost a decade of uneasy peace between England and France
followed and the Black Prince was made ruler of Aquitaine. (A disease the Black Prince appears
to have contracted in Spain in 1367 left him increasingly unwell. He returned to England and
died in 1376, a year before his father.)
It is also worth mentioning that Edward III’s passionate interest in the cult of chivalry
(i.e., the etiquette and traditions surrounding the role of the knight) that was closely linked to
warfare determined him to found in 1348, in order to celebrate the great English victory at the
Battle of Créçy, a new order of knights who were inspired by the ideals of Arthur’s round table,
known as the Order of the Garter. It seems that to be chosen as one of the Knights of the Garter
was one of the greatest honours the king could bestow. According to an old and enduring story,
the Order of the Garter got its name in a peculiar way. One night at a party at Windsor Castle,
the king noticed that a garter belonging to the Countess of Salisbury had fallen to the floor.
When the courtiers started to snigger at this courtly piece of underwear, the king picked it up
23
and tied it around his own leg (or in some versions of the story, his arm). Then he ticked the
giggling courtiers off: ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense,’ said Edward (Shame on him who thinks evil
of it), demonstrating the courteous, chivalric values he prized so much. The king’s one-liner
became the motto of the new Order of the Garter. It was –and still is – a highly exclusive order.
Edward would admit only 24 people, plus himself and the Black Prince, and the members were
all high-ranking men chosen specifically by the king.
Unfortunately, in the late years of Edward III’s reign, the ravages caused by the Black
Death6 (the plague – 1348-9, 1361-2, 1369), the criticism elicited by his attempts at raising
higher taxes, as well as the rather moderate success in France (after the Treaty of Bruges in
1375, only Calais and a costal strip near Bordeaux were England’s) caused his popularity to
decline.
Richard II (1377-1399), son of the Black Prince and grandson of Edward III, came to
the throne in 1377 at the tender age of ten. His reign started with uncertainty as England was
ruled for the next three years by a series of regency councils, which lacked the firm will to
divert the country from its ruinously expensive war with France, especially against the
background of the serious economic and social consequences of the Black Death. In 1381, the
growing resentment of the peasantry, fuelled by religious reformers, like John Wycliffe, known
as the Lollards (who spoke against the inequities of church and state and claimed that all people,
not only the clergy, should have access to the Bible, so the Bible should be translated into
English), as well as by the imposition of a heavy poll tax to be paid by every male over the age
of 15, culminated with the Peasants’ Uprising (1381) led by Wat Tyler.
For a week in June 1381, England seemed on the edge of a revolutionary change, as the
rebels marched on Canterbury and then London, threatening to unseat the government. They
directed their attacks at the King’s ministers and sought to extract concessions from Richard
himself. On June 13, with the rebels at Greenwich, the King, then aged 14, came in person to
meet them. Tyler demanded the surrender of John of Gaunt, the King’s uncle (the third eldest
surviving son of Edward III, Duke of Lancaster and one of England’s leading landowners, who
was associated with the failing government of his father in the 1370s, lack of battlefield success
in France and lack of popularity of the regency councils of Richard II’s early reign), and of
other notable members of the government. The king refused and tried to trap the rebels but
failed; the rebels started fires in Southwark, killed the archbishop of Canterbury, and started a
blaze in John of Gaunt’s London palace.
On June 14, the rebels, who had trapped the king and his ministers in the Tower of
London, issued a manifesto demanding the punishment of traitors to the Crown, the abolition
of serfdom, the establishment of a mandatory rent of 4 pence per acre, and the legalization of
negotiations between masters and servants on contracts. On the same day, Richard met once
more with the rebels and issued a charter proclaiming the end of serfdom. Many of the rebel
bands, with one of their key demands satisfied, started to break up and return home. The men
of Kent were more stubborn and refused to disperse, breaking into the Tower and murdering
some of the ministers. Richard met again with the remaining rebels on June 15. According to
some sources, Tyler was insolent in the royal presence and some kind of confused fight broke
out with Richard’s retainers in which Tyler was fatally wounded. Despite the dangerous
situation that he was facing, Richard kept his head and persuaded the rebels to move on to
6
The Black Death or the “Great Pestilence” struck Britain in the spring of 1348 and killed between a
third and a half of Britain’s population within a year. Inspiring helpless terror as it passed through the
land, the epidemic contributed to profound and long-lasting social changes in the British Isles. The 1348
harvest had been planted for a population double the size of that left the next year. Food prices fell and
the price labourers could charge for their work rose as a labour shortage hit landowners. Although the
Great Pestilence had for the moment passed, the imbalances created meant that landowners would be
forced either to adopt more oppressive measures to secure labour or pay more for it.
24
Clerkenwell. Jack Straw, who seems to have replaced Wat Tyler as leader, failed to keep the
remaining rebels together. Straw was executed the same day and the Great Rebellion collapsed.
Though Richard had diffused the wrath of the peasants by promising to pardon them for the
revolt and agreeing to abolish villeinage, he went back on his promises, executing some of the
more prominent rebels and using violence to put down rebellions in other parts of the country:
the rebels had been tricked by the teenager king.
The Parliament that met in 1386 marked the second major crisis of Richard II’s reign
(after the Peasants’ Revolt). This time it was Richard’s own actions that were to blame. The
assembly condemned Richard’s advisers, in particular Robert de Vere, whom the King had just
appointed Duke of Ireland, and demanded the dismissal of the Chancellor, Michael de la Pole.
Although Richard protested, he was forced to back down, and de la Pole was removed and
imprisoned. Richard’s opponents established a Commission of Government, including the
Duke of Gloucester, the Earl of Arundel, and the Bishop of Ely, to take over the government.
In November 1387, these “Lords Appellant”, as they became known, published an “appeal”
against five of Richard’s supporters, including de la Pole and de Vere, accusing them of treason.
De Vere tried to raise an army but was defeated at Radcot Bridge in 1387. The army of the
Appellants marched on London and it seemed for a while as though Richard might be deposed.
The resulting Merciless Parliament was dominated by the Lords Appellant and most of
Richard’s leading loyalists were sentenced to death.
A lack of success in France and the English defeat against the Scots at Otterburn in
August dented the prestige of the Lords Appellant, enabling Richard to construct an alliance
opposed to them. The Cambridge Parliament of September 1388 was more sympathetic to the
King and by May 1389 he felt strong enough to march into council, declare that he had attained
his majority, and dismiss the Lords Appellant.
From 1389 to 1392, discussion raged between Charles VI of France and Richard II of
England over whether the King of England should render homage to the French King and,
though no agreement was reached, an exchange of lands was agreed, by which the English
acquired lands bordering Aquitaine in exchange for Poitou, Limousin, and Pointheu. The
French also demanded Calais, but the English royal council refused to give up the site of the
lucrative Wool Staple and it seemed as though war might break out after all. Only the
intervention of Richard II, who requested the hand in marriage of Isabella, the daughter of
Charles VI, averted conflict in 1396. A truce was agreed, which should have meant peace
between the two countries until 1420.
At home, though Richard managed to retain control, his high-handed actions, such as
the removal of the Mayor of London in 1392 when the city refused to loan him money, and the
imposition of a £10,000 fine on its citizens, gradually lost him friends. In 1394, Richard’s
expedition to Ireland revitalized the English position there.
In 1397, Richard decided to act against his remaining enemies. He manipulated
Parliament into declaring the supporters of the 1387 rebellion as treasonous and levied fines on
them. In February 1399, John of Gaunt died, and Richard, rather than permitting Gaunt’s exiled
son Henry Bolingbroke to succeed to the title and lands, seized them for the Crown.
Bolingbroke made contact with his supporters in England, and the departure of Richard for a
new expedition in Ireland, in May, gave him just the opportunity he had been waiting for. In
early July he landed at Ravenspur at the mouth of the river Humber. As the rebels advanced,
Richard’s officials scrambled to mobilize men and strengthen defences in the south. By mid-
July, Bolingbroke reached the Midlands, his support growing all the time. At the end of May,
the regent, the Duke of York (who was also Bolingbroke’s uncle) defected to the rebel cause.
Richard hurried back from Ireland and tried to assemble a new army in south Wales, but it soon
melted away and, faced with an enormous rebel army, he surrendered to Bolingbroke at Flint
Castle on August 19.
25
Richard was transported to London as a prisoner and a parliamentary commission was
set up to decide what to do next. Although it ruled that Richard had broken his own coronation
oath and had lost the right to rule, it did not hand the throne to Bolingbroke by right of descent.
Instead, Richard was induced to abdicate on September 30, 1399 and Parliament passed the
Articles of Deposition, which indicted Richard on a series of misdemeanours, accepted his
abdication, and acknowledged Bolingbroke as king. King Henry IV addressed Parliament in
English, not Norman French, to inaugurate the start of the new, Lancastrian dynasty. Risings in
support of Richard led to his murder in Pontefract Castle. (See William Shakespeare’s Richard
II, 1595-96, published in a quarto edition in 1597 and in the First Folio in 1623)
II.4. The Lancastrians and the Yorkists

Henry IV (1399-1413) spent most of his reign establishing his royal authority. He knew
that his succession to the throne had taken place under circumstances that raised questions as
to his legitimacy as a ruler and that there were other potential claimants. To defend his position,
the king stressed that he was a blood relation of Henry III, thereby tracing his line back to the
early Plantagenets and, through, them, to the Normans. He argued that royal rule in England
was breaking down under Richard II and that something had to be done about that. Last but not
least, he claimed that God was on his side and had sent him to save the kingdom and restore
order in it. That did not prevent rebellions against Henry IV from breaking out in the years to
come. In 1400, for instance, the king had to face two uprisings and a new outbreak of the plague.
After defeating a group of Richard II’s supporters, the king had to fight for the next nine years
to restore English control over Wales.
The effects of the Black Death, which struck as hard in Wales as in England, bringing
with it wholesale changes in land tenure system and a move to a monetary economy, led to
deprivation in the countryside and a distinct rise in Welsh resentment at English rule. There
was no focus for resistance, however, until the emergence in 1400 of Owain Glyndwr, a
descendant of old Welsh royal houses, but also a member of the Anglicized aristocracy. In 1400,
as a result of a land dispute with a supporter of Henry IV, realizing that there was little prospect
of resolution from an unfriendly Crown, Glyndwr called a meeting on September 16 and was
proclaimed Prince of Wales. The rebellion rapidly spread and Glyndwr captured in 1402 two
important English prisoners, Lord Grey and Edmund Mortimer, the latter being the uncle of the
Earl of March, who had a stronger claim to the throne than Henry IV, and who the king declined
to ransom. Mortimer became Glyndwr’s son-in-law. The Welsh rebel leader extended his
network of friends by allying himself with Sir Henry Percy, known as Hotspur, son of the Earl
of Northumberland, originally one of Henry IV’s allies.
In 1403, having upheld the Earl of March’s claim to the throne, Sir Henry Percy was
defeated by King Henry IV and died at Shrewsbury. (See also William Shakespeare’s Henry
IV, Parts 1 and 2, 1596-98)
For Glyndwr and his allies, that was a real setback, yet the following year he defeated
the English reducing them to a handful of strongholds. In 1405, Glyndwr signed a Triple
Indenture with the Earl of Northumberland and Mortimer, by which England and Wales were
divided into three. Glyndwr was to receive Wales and a portion of west England. However,
events were moving against the Welsh. In 1408, the Earl of Northumberland, back from
Scotland where he had fled after being defeated by Henry IV in 1405, started another rebellion
against the king only to be defeated again and die in the battle. By 1410, Glyndwr was reduced
to fighting a guerrilla campaign in the hills and in 1412 he is mentioned in the sources for the
last time. Glyndwr’s exact fate is unknown, but when his surviving son Maredudd accepted a
pardon in 1421 under Henry V, all hopes for a revival of the revolt and Welsh political freedom
were finished. (After Glyndwr’s defeat, Wales subsided into an uneasy calm. The rise of the
Tudor family, starting with Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, a key supporter of the House of
26
Lancaster, would lead to the accession of a Welsh noble to the English throne, when Henry VII
became king in 1485.)
Throughout this long series of rebellions and wars with the Welsh, King Henry IV
managed to maintain control over his kingdom partly because he was well backed up by
powerful allies in the nobility and partly because, unlike Richard II, he was a good politician
who knew how to negotiate with Parliament in order to obtain money for his expensive military
campaigns.
In 1406, after nearly seven years of dynamic rule, Henry IV got sick and the Royal
Council took over the government of the country. That caused tension at the court because of
the conflict between the king’s main advisor, Thomas Arundel, and Prince Henry, then in his
twenties, who was eager to participate more actively in the affairs of the realm and who had the
support of the powerful Beauforts (especially that of Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester and
Henry IV’s chancellor). Between 1409 and 1411, the Council was run by Prince Henry. To re-
establish the balance of power, Henry IV encouraged his younger son Thomas, Duke of
Clarence to get more involved in political life at court. Thus the last years of King Henry IV’s
reign witnessed the clash between two English factions over English policy in France. On the
one hand, Thomas, Duke of Clarence, and Arundel were in favour of an alliance with the French
king, who would be likely to let England keep its interests in the South of France on condition
that the English sacrificed their claims to lands in Normandy. On the other hand, Prince Henry
would not give up English claims in northern France, so he wanted to join up with the Duke of
Burgundy, sworn enemy of the French king, and recover England’s old lands in Normandy –
which would mean fighting the French.
Thus, shortly after Henry IV’s death and the coming to the throne of Prince Henry as
Henry V (1413-1422) in April 1413, the French were taken aback by the scale of the new king’s
ambitions: he demanded nothing less than to be recognized as the heir to the French throne.
Negotiations broke down in February 1415, and Henry V prepared for war, getting financial
support from the House of Commons (which voted in favour of a large grant in taxation) and
the bishops (by means of important loans). Knights and archers were recruited from across the
land.
Despite a last-minute French peace offer, Henry was set on war. On August 11, he sailed
from Southampton with 10,000 men and landed at Harfleur but took until September 22 to force
the town to surrender.
Meanwhile, the French had been gathering their forces. Three divisions under the
Constable of France, the Marshal of France, and the King himself converged on Henry V’s
army. The English had lost 2,000 men at the siege of Harfleur and Henry could only muster a
mere 7,000 men, less than one-quarter the size of the French army approaching him.
The English struck out toward the Somme in a desperate attempt to evade their pursuers
and to cross the river. However, they found the crossing blocked by the Marshal of France and
6,000 men, and were forced far to the south. Henry desperately tried to avoid a pitched battle
and find a way through to Calais, but then, three days later, he discovered his way barred by the
entire French army. Henry made the best of his position, drawing his troops in such a way that
the French could only advance along a narrow front hemmed in by the castle woods of
Agincourt.
On the morning of October 25, the English archers7 erected a makeshift barrier of stakes
and then loosed a murderous volley into the French line. The French knights charged but, felled
by arrows, they crashed into each other and were run into from behind by their own men coming
forward to reinforce them. Their line collapsed into a writhing chivalric muddle. The English
men-at-arms fell on the French survivors, cutting those who resisted to pieces. The Constable
7
English archers were key to almost every major victory in the Hundred Years’ War, from Crécy to
Agincourt. Yet by the end of the war, at Formigny in 1450, they were outclassed by French gunners.
27
of France was killed, and the Duke of Orléans and the Marshal of France captured. A late French
rally only had the effect of causing Henry V to order the killing of all French prisoners, save
the great lords. French losses were catastrophic. For Henry V, who had been brought up to
assume the role of the warrior-king, the battle of Agincourt was a great challenge which he
successfully overcame, hence he came to be perceived then and centuries later as the ideal king.
(See William Shakespeare’s Henry V, 1599-1600)
Throughout 1415, the English and the Burgundians defeated the French royalist
resistance. Between 1417 and 1419, major French towns, like Caen, Rouen and even Paris,
were conquered by the English. France was leaderless, with the Constable dead and the King
insane. Charles VI’s eldest son died in 1416; the new Dauphin Charles was 15 years old. In
1420, the French faced the inevitable and Charles VI signed the Treaty of Troyes, by which:
Henry V was given the hand in marriage of Catherine, the daughter of Charles VI, king of
France; he was recognised as Regent of France, in effect ruling on behalf of his father-in-law;
and on the death of Charles VI, Henry V would become king. Unfortunately, Henry V’s success
was short lived and he died of dysentery at the age of 34, in 1422.
An ill-fated king, Henry VI (1422-61, 1470-1) ascended to the throne of England and
France when less than one year old, upon his father’s and grandfather’s deaths within months
of each other. Until he came of age, regency was assumed by his uncles Cardinal Beaufort and
the Duke of Gloucester (who opposed each other) in England, and by another uncle, the Duke
of Bedford, in France. Though genuinely interested in cultural patronage and education, he
would become a weak, ineffectual king, despised by his queen and his lords, an unsuitable king
in a violent society that would witness, on the one hand, the loss of English control over
territories in France, and, on the other, the beginning of civil wars at home.
To be more specific, the regent, John, Duke of Bedford, campaigned ably in the years
following Henry VI’s ascension to the throne, but the English Parliament was increasingly
unwilling to grant large subsidies for the war. The Duke of Burgundy opened negotiations with
the Dauphin about switching sides, and in 1427, the Duke of Brittany defected to the Dauphin’s
side. It was against this background that the English, under the Earl of Salisbury, moved south
in 1428, and reached Orléans in October. The Earl was struck by a cannonball on October 24
and died of gangrene a week later. Furthermore, Joan of Arc arrived in the French camp in
March 1429, convinced she had a divine mission to set the Dauphin on the French throne. Joan’s
religious charisma and reckless impetuousness worked and the French army were inspired to
chase the English from Orléans by May 8, 1429.
Charles was crowned King of France at Rheims on July 18, 1429, and the French armies,
now seemingly unstoppable, swept northward taking a string of cities. Even Joan’s death in
14318 did not stop the French revival. In 1435, after the Duke of Bedford’s death, the
Burgundians switched sides, and by 1436, Paris had fallen to them. Charles reorganized his
armies, which helped him to gradually reduce the English territories in Aquitaine. His
commanders’ effective use of field artillery was not matched by the English and, despite a two-
year truce that was signed at Tours in 1446, Henry VI’s armies were driven from Normandy in
1449. It looked very much as if the war would end with the English in precisely the same
position they had been in 1381. From 1450 to 1453, the English were swept from their territories
in Aquitaine, leaving only Calais in their hands.
In 1450, the French invaded Aquitaine. At the Battle of Formigny on April 15, French
cannon fire cut through the English defences and destroyed the last English field army in France.
English fortunes looked as though they might revive when a new English army under John Talbot
landed in October 1452. However, at Castillon on July 17, 1453, this force was torn to pieces by
the combination of French cannons and the discipline of the companies d’ordonnance. Bordeaux
8
Imprisoned by the Burgundians and then turned over to the English, Joan of Arc was tried for heresy and
sentenced to be burnt at the stake in 1431.
28
surrendered in October and the Hundred Years’ War came to an end. Calais resisted as a solitary
outpost until its loss to the French in 1558, during the reign of Queen Mary I Tudor. To all intents
and purposes, however, the English territorial involvement in France, which had begun in 1066,
was over.
In addition, King Henry VI’s simple-mindedness and periods of mental illness allowed
for instability at home, as the nobles began to ask questions about who should be ruling the
country. Civil war (“The Wars of the Roses” 1455-1485) broke out between Henry VI’s
supporters – the Lancastrians – and those of the Duke of York, Richard Plantagenet (son of the
Earl of March, who had lost the competition for the throne when Richard II was deposed in
1399)9.
Henry VI suffered a mental breakdown in 1453. Richard, Duke of York, was appointed
Lord Protector of England until the King regained his wits. As the Yorkist champion, Richard
was bitterly opposed by the Lancastrian faction at court and particularly by the queen, Margaret
of Anjou. Once the King’s health returned, Richard was dismissed. Supported by much of the
nobility and in particular by the influential Earl of Warwick, he raised an army and defeated the
Lancastrians at the First Battle of St. Albans in 1455, the first battle of the Wars of the Roses.
The Lancastrian leader, the Duke of Somerset, was killed, so Richard resumed his old position
as de facto ruler of the nation, although he did not press his own claim to the throne. That
brought about precarious peace which lasted four years until 1459, when both sides took up
arms again. This time Richard, who claimed the throne in 1460, and his ally Warwick were
outmaneuvered and declared traitors, forcing them both to take refuge abroad. But their exile
did not last for long. The following year (1461), Warwick returned to England to lead Yorkist
forces to victory at the Battle of Northampton. Henry VI was captured, but Queen Margaret
managed to escape to Scotland. Richard once more resumed his former position as Lord
Protector.
Richard of York’s triumph was, however, brief. Queen Margaret rallied the Lancastrian
forces in the north of England, defeating and killing Richard at the Battle of Wakefield. The
Queen won another victory at the Second Battle of St. Albans, freeing the captive King Henry
VI in the process. London, though, remained loyal to the Yorkists, and Richard’s son was
crowned there as Edward IV (1461-1470, 1471-1483), the first Yorkist king. Edward IV and
Warwick marched north, gathering a vast army as they went. They met an even larger
Lancastrian force at Towton in Yorkshire on March 29, 1461. Edward IV won the ensuing
battle, the bloodiest ever to occur on British soil. Queen Margaret and Henry VI fled to
Scotland, but their remaining hopes were dashed at the Battle of Hexham in 1464. Henry VI
was again captured, and imprisoned in the Tower of London the following year.
With the 23-year-old Edward IV secure on the throne and his Lancastrian rivals defeated
or in exile, the future looked bright for a long and peaceful reign. Any such hopes were dashed,
though, when it was revealed that the King had married Lady Elizabeth Woodville in secret.
His main supporter Warwick (also known as ‘the kingmaker’), who had been negotiating a
match for Edward IV with a French princess, was infuriated. He became even more so when
Elizabeth set about obtaining influential positions in the King’s administration for her own
family members. The rift between the two men grew until 1469, when Warwick deserted the
Yorkist cause and joined with his old enemy Queen Margaret of Anjou, who had been raising
a fresh Lancastrian army in France. When she crossed to England, the isolated Edward IV fled
to Flanders. Henry VI, aged 48, was reinstated on the throne.
9
The phrase “Wars of the Roses” that refers to the civil wars which ravaged England between 1455 and 1485 was
first put forth by Walter Scott in his novel Anne of Geierstein (1829) and it alludes to the heraldic badges of the
two warring houses: the symbol of the House of Lancaster is the red rose, while that of the House of York is the
white rose. It seems that Walter Scott was actually inspired, in coining this phrase, by a scene in William
Shakespeare’s chronicle play Henry VI, Part 1 in which the supporters of the two noble houses symbolically show
their allegiance by plucking red and white roses.
29
It was then Edward IV’s turn to plot abroad. In 1471, with an army supplied by his
brother-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy, he confronted his former ally Warwick at Barnet.
Edward was victorious and Warwick was killed. Edward then defeated Queen Margaret’s
troops at Tewkesbury. Captured for a third time, King Henry VI was taken to the Tower of
London, where he was murdered. (See William Shakespeare’s Henry VI. Parts 1 (1589-92), 2
(1590-92) and 3 (1590-93)) Henry VI’s son and heir, Edward Prince of Wales, had also been
killed during the battle, leaving Edward IV almost unchallenged on the throne. The only
remaining Lancastrian with credible aspirations to rule was Henry Tudor, a distant cousin of
the King who was living in exile in Brittany.
After Henry VI’s death and Edward IV’s regaining the throne, Edward IV proved
himself an able ruler, and the country enjoyed a period of relative peace and prosperity, yet the
civil strife did not entirely stop. In 1478, Edward IV had to imprison in the Tower his brother
George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, who was executed (allegedly by drowning in a barrel
of Malmsey wine).
In 1483, aged 41, King Edward IV died suddenly, leaving his 12-year-old son Edward
V as his heir and his brother Richard of Gloucester as Lord Protector until the boy king reached
adulthood. (See William Shakespeare’s Richard III, 1592-94 and Thomas Heywood’s King
Edward IV, Parts 1 and 2, 1600)
Though previously loyal to his brother Edward IV, Richard of Gloucester became
suspicious of the queen’s (Elizabeth Woodville) faction. He received young Edward in London
for coronation, but the ceremony never too place. It was announced that the boy’s father’s
marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been illegal, invalidating the youngster’s right to rule.
Richard had himself proclaimed king in Edward’s place, being crowned that July 1483, in
Westminster Abbey. Edward and his nine-year-old younger brother Richard, the “princes in the
tower”, were never seen again, seemingly having been killed on Richard’s instructions.
Richard III’s seizure of the throne (1483-1485) was badly received. He was an
unpopular king, disliked by both Lancastrians and Yorkists, so (the half-Welsh Lancastrian)
Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, took advantage of the situation to claim the throne as a direct
descendant of John of Gaunt, one of Edward III’s younger sons. In 1485 he landed with a small
force in Wales, where he soon attracted further support from many discontented lords, both
Lancastrians and Yorkists. His army came face to face with Richard III’s troops in 1485 at
Bosworth in Leicestershire, where Richard III was defeated and killed. The victor took the
throne as Henry VII, inaugurating the Tudor dynasty. (See William Shakespeare’s Richard III)
Five months later Henry VII married Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth, thereby uniting the
warring houses of Lancaster and York, and finally bringing the Wars of the Roses to an end.
References
Wilkinson, Philip (2006) The British Monarchy for Dummies, Chichester


30
II. 5. The Tudors
In the fifteenth century, a period of dynastic uncertainty, starting with the accession of Henry
IV of the House of Lancaster, spiraled into internecine conflict between the noble houses of
York and Lancaster with the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485). Yet, in 1485, after the Battle of
Bosworth, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond finally emerged victorious and founded, as Henry
VII (1485-1509), one of the greatest dynasties of English history. To reinforce his position on
the throne and to definitely mark the end of civil war, the newly-risen king, who strongly
believed in the political benefits of dynastic marriages, married, in 1486, Elizabeth of York, the
daughter of Edward IV. Even so, throughout many years, Henry VII had to fight hard to keep
his power in the face of a continuing Yorkist threat. (In 1487, Lambert Simnel claimed to be
the Earl of Warwick, rightful claimant to the Crown through the Plantagenet line. His revolt
was easily put down, and the King felt magnanimous enough to pardon his would-be-usurper.
In 1490, Perkin Warbeck claimed to be Prince Richard, the younger son of Edward IV of York
and one of the two “Princes in the Tower” and became a source of troubles for Henry VII for
the next seven years: recruited in a rebellious Ireland in 1491, attacked England itself in 1495,
and persuaded King James IV of Scotland to invade the following year. He was apprehended
when he landed in Cornwall in 1497, taken back to London, tried, and executed.)
Henry VII turned out to be a cautious and thrifty politician, trusting nobody, and
concerned, above all, about reinforcing the centralised national state. He strengthened his
position and undercut the aristocracy’s power by creating the Court of Star Chamber, a new
institution developed out of a judicial committee of the King’s Council which was powerful
enough to tackle those great lords who would intimidate any lesser court. He protected the
interests of the rising bourgeoisie and of the new nobility (instead of those of the ‘old’ noble
houses). (He drew on local gentry, rather than the great baronial families, for the Justices of the
Peace he appointed to administer the law across the nation on his behalf).
The encouragement of trade was a natural extension of Henry VII’s fiscal policy.
Customs dues were key. At least partly with this end in view, Henry VII encouraged trading
ties with France and Spain. The cash economy grew in importance as long-distance commerce
supplanted local exchange. Textiles, leather, wine, and other items all raised handsome
revenues for the Crown. But wool was overwhelmingly the most important product, accounting
for 90 percent of England’s export trade in the reign of Henry VII. The English wool was partly
exported to the manufacturers of Flanders and Renaissance Florence, partly manufactured in
England (especially in Yorkshire). It was mainly in order to develop this trade that Henry VII
created the merchant fleet and in order to protect it by sea that he started building a Royal Navy.
The ensuing economic development and political stability at home caused literacy to
extend among the people at large (especially since, in 1476, William Caxton had set his printing
press at Westminster): reading and writing ceased to be the monopoly of the clergy, and
prosperous towns founded grammar schools with the material support of the local authorities.
The formal unification of England and Wales also took place under Henry VII. Even so,
fears of the threat potentially posed by the “White Rose Party” (members of the York family)
lingered throughout his reign and that of his successor.
Henry VII’s foreign policy may be described as peaceful, but clearly oriented towards
bringing England within the mainstream of European affairs and seems to be essentially
underlain by the same belief in the efficiency of dynastic marriages. In 1489, by the Treaty of
Medina del Campo, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon and Henry VII’s eldest son
Arthur were to be betrothed. The two would get married in 1501, but their marital ‘bliss’ would
be abruptly interrupted by Arthur’s untimely death in 1502. As in 1496 England joined the Holy
League against France, the English king sought to maintain the ‘bond’ with Spain by having
Catherine of Aragon betrothed to Prince Henry, his second son and the future king of England.
31
In 1503, Pope Julius granted a papal dispensation to allow their marriage. Moreover, two years
before his death, in 1507, Henry VII signed a marriage treaty between his daughter Mary and
the Archduke Charles, son of Philip I of Spain.
Though initially resisting the idea of marrying his former sister-in-law, under the
pressure of his councillors, Henry VIII (1509-1547) began his reign by marrying, in 1509,
Catherine of Aragon. The only surviving child of the couple, Princess Mary, was born in 1515.
An ambitious young man, Henry VIII seemed, from the early days of his reign, more
interested in turning England into a key-player on the stage of European politics. That may
partly account for the fact that, despite his dislike of popery, monks, image or relic worship, he
wrote, in 1521, a book against Martin Luther for which he was named ‘Fidei Defensor’
(Defender of the Faith) by Pope Leo X and which placed him next to the kings of France and
Spain among the upholders of the old orthodoxy
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was Henry VIII’s first minister (Lord Chancellor), appointed
in 1515, and the fourteen years of that proud but efficient prelate’s ascendency (1515-1529)
saw the king in a comparatively restrained mood. A handsome young man, who liked hunting,
dancing, dallying, playing the lute and occasionally writing songs, who (seemingly) took
interest in the developments of arts and sciences (especially of theology and astronomy), Henry
VIII would turn, in his mature and old age, into a monster of selfishness, obsessed with
consolidating his royal prominence, even if that meant, more often than not, engaging in warfare
(that he considered the ‘sport of kings’). It is in the light of these changes in the king’s
personality that the ‘rise and fall’ of Cardinal Wolsey should be considered. The architect of
the first English success in European politics under Henry VIII – i.e., the meeting of the Field
of the Cloth of Gold10 held between Henry VIII and Francis I of France in 1520 – he was
expected to solve, to the king’s advantage, the ‘crisis’ of the years to come, motivated by both
personal and political reasons. Intending to get rid of an aging wife who could not give him the
male heir he wanted and to marry a younger woman (Anne Boleyn), Henry VIII summoned, in
1527, the ecclesiastical court established at Westminster to request an annulment of his
marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Wolsey was sent to obtain the annulment from the Pope, but
he failed and, the next year (1528), the Pope sent Cardinal Campeggio to hear Henry VIII’s
case. That brought Wolsey the accusation of high treason and he died (in 1530) while en route
to London to be executed, being replaced by Sir Thomas Morus as the Lord Chancellor of
England.
The papal resistance to fulfilling Henry’s wish was the perfect excuse for the English
king to finally break with the Roman Catholic Church, consistently interfering in English
affairs. So, in 1531, Henry VIII made the English Parliament the instrument of his Royal
Reformation: the Act of Supremacy was passed in 1534, acknowledging Henry VIII as the
Supreme Head of the Church in England. At a national level, the consequences of the
Reformation were immediate and far-reaching: the Anglican Church was established with the
king as its supreme head; monasteries were dissolved, the wealth of monastic houses was
directly confiscated by the Crown and church lands were seized, part of them being sold to
appease the nobility and gentry; people would have to take the Oath of Supremacy, or they
would be charged with treason and executed. In this context, Sir Thomas Morus resigned from
the position of Lord Chancellor (1532), and refused to commit spiritual ‘suicide’ just to please
the king, hence he was beheaded in 1535.
10
Henry’s love of display was shown in the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520). The splendid tents and pavilions he
took with him for his meeting outside Calais with Francis I of France announced England’s arrival as a major
power in Europe.
32
The king used Thomas Cranmer11, Archbishop of Canterbury, to have his marriage with
Catherine of Aragon declared invalid. Pope Clement VII excommunicated Henry VIII, but that
did not prevent him from secretly marrying Anne Boleyn in 1533. The newly-crowned Queen
of England gave birth on the same year to a baby girl, Princess Elizabeth. (See William
Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, 1613) In 1534, the Parliament passed the Act of Succession
according to which only children of the King’s marriage to Anne Boleyn were his lawful heirs.
Within a few years (i.e., in 1536), both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn died: the
former lived her last days in misery, grieving her being misjudged and banished from the court;
the latter failed to give the king the much-desired son and, in her desperate attempts to do so,
made mistakes that led to her being tried for adultery, incest and treason, and executed. Free
again, Henry married Jane Seymour: in 1536, the Parliament passed the Act of Succession
according to which only children of the King’s marriage to Jane Seymour would be his lawful
heirs. Jane Seymour died a few days after her son’s christening (1537), but her son Prince
Edward would become the successor to the throne.
Having more or less found peace in his personal life (though, up to the end of his reign,
the king had three more wives – Anne of Clèves, whom he divorced, Catherine Howard,
executed for adultery, and Catherine Parr, who outlived the King), the King resolved to focus
more on the foreign policy, embarking again on French and Scottish wars. In 1534 he made
peace with James V of Scotland. Several years later, in 1545, he defeated the French fleet:
unlike his father who was interested in the merchant fleet, Henry VIII encouraged the
development of an effective fleet of royal fighting ships better adapted to the ocean, which he
officially chartered in 1546. By the time he died (in 1547), England had already been united
with Wales (the union was legally accomplished by Parliament in 1536 and 1543), had
triumphed over Scotland and Ireland, and had definitely proven its growing power at the
international level.
As Edward VI (1547-1553) was only nine years old when he was crowned King at
Westminster (1547), the country was actually ruled by a Regency Council, led by the king’s
uncle Edward Seymour, First Duke of Somerset. That young Edward was raised as a bigoted
Protestant and his uncle was the leader of the Protestant faction in the Privy Council favoured
the evolution of the Church of England along clearly Protestant lines. In 1549, the Act of
Uniformity was passed by the House of Lords, making the Catholic Mass illegal and
introducing the Book of Common Prayer, which embodied Protestant doctrines. (A more
radical Book of Common Prayer was passed in the Second Act of Uniformity in 1552.) The
architect of these reforms was Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. In addition,
Somerset finalised the destruction that had begun under Henry VIII, ensuring that the native
art, sculpture, metalwork, and embroidery associated with Catholic ritual were
comprehensively wiped out.
The difference in religious beliefs made even brother – sister relationships difficult. In
1551, Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s elder (Catholic) daughter, met her (Protestant) brother Edward,
hoping for reconciliation. Unfortunately, that turned out impossible and, when his disease was
discovered to be terminal in 1553, shortly before his death, King Edward VI signed a statement
naming his cousin (and the great-granddaughter of Henry VII), Lady Jane Grey, as his successor
and excluding his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, from the line of succession.
Though appointed the successor to the throne by a dying Protestant king who hated his
sisters, Jane Grey ruled for only nine days in July 1553. Mary Tudor had gained on her side
part of the gentry, persuaded of her Tudor legitimism. Her loyal troops marched south and
entered London, Jane Grey was imprisoned in the Tower of London and Mary was proclaimed
11
Despite the break with Rome, Henry VIII regarded Protestantism (Lutheranism, in particular) with deep
suspicion. Leading clerics like Thomas Cranmer would have liked to go further in reforming the Church, but the
King reined them in.
33
Queen Mary I (1553-1558). Cheering crowds greeted Mary I’s coronation, showing that there
was still a Catholic population in England at the time. Parliament was summoned to legitimise
the marriage of her father Henry VIII and her mother Catherine of Aragon. The queen was also
quick to get rid of her rival to the throne: in November 1553, Lady Jane Grey was tried for
treason and, though the queen initially pardoned her, she was eventually executed together with
her husband (1554).
Soon the English were to learn the hard way the terrible extent of Mary I’s Catholicism.
The queen took all the steps she thought necessary in order to attain her goal, i.e., England’s
(re-)union with Rome. Thus, the queen released the Catholic Bishop Stephen Gardiner from the
Tower, where he had been imprisoned during Edward VI’s reign, and appointed him Lord
Chancellor of England. In 1554, she married Prince Philip of Spain and sent her sister Elizabeth
to the Tower under suspicion of complicity in Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion against her pro-
Catholic and pro-Spanish policy. (Elizabeth was then transferred to Woodstock.) Just like her
father, Mary I did not hesitate to use persecution to return the country to the Catholic faith and
that won her the nickname of ‘Bloody Mary’: Mary burned a minimum of 287 persons after
February 1555, and others died in prison. In particular, the former architects of Protestantism
in England, chief among which Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, fell victims to straightforward
political vengeance: Cranmer was degraded from his office and, when he renounced Rome, he
was burned at the stake.
That Mary’s decision of marrying a Spanish Catholic prince was a mistake was also
confirmed by the failure of the English involvement in a war against France: stirred by Philip
of Spain, Mary I declared war on Henry II of France in 1557. The result was shameful loss for
the English: in January 1558, the French captured Calais which had belonged to England for
more than 200 years. By November 1558, Mary I had come to accept that there was no successor
to carry on her work of restoring Catholicism as the dominant religion in England, and, after
years of burning heretics, she approved the succession of the Protestant Elizabeth. Mary I died
childless and unloved by her subjects.
The only surviving descendant of Henry VIII, the highly educated and intelligent
Princess Elizabeth had learnt the bitter lesson of disgrace, imprisonment and even the danger
of death in the years preceding her coming to the throne. She was 25 when she was crowned
Elizabeth I, Queen of England in 1558 (1558-1603). Her position on the throne was, however,
threatened by her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots and wife of Francis II of France, who also
assumed the title of Queen of England (1559). In 1560, the French troops in Scotland tried to
assert Queen Mary’s claim to the English throne. The Treaty of Edinburgh (July 6, 1560) put
an end to French interference in Scotland and acknowledged Elizabeth I’s right to the throne.
That was not, though, the end of Elizabeth I’s conflict with her Scottish cousin, but,
once the legitimacy of her rule was recognised beyond doubt, the English queen had to focus
on the religious feuds that had been tearing the nation apart. According to some historians, the
young queen’s coronation slogan was ‘concord’. In fact, she may originally have aimed to
revive Henry VIII’s religious legislation, to re-establish her royal supremacy and the break with
Rome, and to permit communion in both kinds (bread and wine) after the reformed fashion –
but nothing else. She left the matter into the hands of her chief councillor William Cecil, who
baited a trap for the Catholics; so, when the Act of Settlement was passed through the
Parliament in 1559 (completed in 1563 and 1571), it re-established royal supremacy and full
Protestant worship, turning the Anglican Church into a pillar of the Elizabethan state. It is true,
however, that the queen managed to wisely keep England free from the bloody religious wars
that were tearing France apart. (In 1561, a treaty was signed at Hampton Court pledging
Elizabeth’s support of the persecuted French Huguenots.) But the split between Protestants and
Catholics deepened and would lead, in the long run, to several attempts on the queen’s life.
A shrewd and cautious politician (like her grandfather Henry VII), Elizabeth I
mistrusted the old aristocracy, relied on new men like Sir William Cecil (ennobled as Lord
34
Burghley in 1571, who remained the queen’s chief advisor for most of her reign) and Sir Francis
Walsingham (the queen’s ‘spymaster’ and Principal Secretary of State from 1573) and she
fiercely defended her throne. Some of the most spectacular executions that she pretended to be
reluctant with but which she actually approved of were, in fact, the outcome of complex actions
motivated by political ambitions and/or religious differences. For example, in the aftermath of
the pro-Catholic, pro-papal and pro-Spanish intrigues that culminated in the Northern Rising
(1569), Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk was imprisoned in the Tower for attempting to marry
Mary, Queen of Scots, and was executed in 1572. More than a decade later, the discovery of
new Catholic plots aimed at the assassination of Elizabeth and the coronation of Mary (who
had meanwhile been her cousin’s prisoner) as the Queen of England led to the execution of
Anthony Babington (1586), and ultimately of Mary herself in February 1587. (Mary’s
execution turned her into “a martyr, the innocent romantic victim of tyrannical jealousy”.)
Last but not least, during the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, after the English failure in
Ireland (1598-99) brought disgrace upon one of the queen’s former favourites12, Robert
Devereux, the Earl of Essex, another plot threatened Elizabeth’s position on the throne in 1601.
Intelligent, well-educated, handsome, generous and courageous, Essex was, as Ophelia said of
Hamlet “the expectancy and rose of the fair state”. He soon won the heart if not the mind of the
aging queen, became a member of the Privy Council and gathered about him a group of brilliant
young aristocrats including the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron. Upon his
unsuccessful campaign in Ireland, exiled from the royal presence, Essex conceived a plot to
overthrow the queen and replace her with James VI of Scotland, Mary Stuart’s son. The plotters
arranged for a performance of Richard II by Shakespeare’s company on February 6, 1601,
hoping that the precedent of the deposing of a king would stir the citizens of London into
mutiny. On the following day, Essex and his friends stormed into London but the attempted
uprising proved a spectacular failure. He was convicted of treason and executed on February
25, 1601. Notable scholars have remarked the profound impact that Essex’s career had on the
psychological portrait in Shakespeare’s greatest creation, Hamlet.
Elizabeth I came to be known as the Virgin Queen, turning down a number of marriage
proposals, including that of Philip II of Spain. This seems to have stemmed more from political
considerations rather than from emotional recoil. It is likely that she avoided marriage as she
did not wish to give up her power to a consort, as would have been the tradition.
Elizabeth followed what had become established Tudor custom in promoting both
herself as monarch and the state of the monarchy itself. Both ideals were at the heart of the
Tudor state and she worked tirelessly to keep them alive in her subjects’ hearts and minds.
Royal progresses became a feature of her reign. Staying at the homes of her nobles (at their vast
expense), she would spend several weeks each summer touring the regions, having herself
carried through the streets of the major towns so that her subjects could see her. She also
conducted what we might nowadays call a cult of personality. The sheer number of splendid
portraits of Elizabeth is striking. Poets mythologized her as Astraea—“star maiden”, the name
given by the Greeks to the daughter of Zeus, the celestial virgin who stood for innocence, purity,
and justice. In the 1590s, she was elaborately allegorized in Edmund Spenser’s epic poem The
Faerie Queene. One of the titles he gave her was “Gloriana”.
Elizabeth’s solid judgement and impressive capacity in the choice of her ministers as
well as in the management of state finances was plainly proven when, with the help of Sir
William Cecil and Sir Thomas Gresham, she brought England from near bankruptcy in mid-
12
Elizabeth enjoyed having male favourites about her court. A succession of handsome young men occupied this
role. The first, Lord Robert Dudley, was later replaced in her affections by Walter Devereux, First Earl of Essex;
he became so bold that he eventually led an uprising against the Queen. Sir Walter Raleigh was another favourite.
Like his father Walter Devereux, Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex, abused his position as a favourite of
Elizabeth I and, when deprived of privileges, he led a coup d’état against Elizabeth’s government that ultimately
failed.
35
century to economic prosperity within the course of thirty years, till it rivalled the dominant
power, Spain.
In the 1570s Anglo-Spanish relations grew increasingly tense. In 1570, Elizabeth I was
excommunicated by Pope Pius V and loyal Catholics were urged to depose her. Also, religious
differences proved to be much at the heart of England’s foreign affairs as England supported
the Protestant French (in the aftermath of St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, in 1572) and
especially the Dutch Protestant rebels (fighting for independence against the Spanish rule).
Apart from these religious differences, the rivalry between England and Spain was equally
motivated by economic interests and special reference should be made in this respect to
Elizabeth’s support for the ‘privateers’ (merchant pirates)13 who sought new maritime routes to
distant territories (like America or India) but also attacked Spanish/French/Portuguese treasure-
laden ships. Examples of famous English privateers whose achievements in the 1570s not only
boosted the exploration of distant lands but also paved the way for the development of an
English colonial empire include:
 Martin Frobisher: Between 1576 and 1578, he made three voyages to the New World
seeking a passage in the North-West. He returned with a shipload of shiny, yellow
iron pyrites, learning the hard way that “all that glisters is not gold.”
 Walter Raleigh: Having accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert on his voyage to the
New World, he renewed, in 1584, Gilbert’s patent to explore and settle in North
America. He established the colony of Virginia (1587). He brought the potato plant
and popularised tobacco in England (besides being a remarkable Renaissance poet).
 Francis Drake: Considered by far the greatest of the privateers, he was the first
Englishman to make a voyage around the world between 1577 and 1580. During
this voyage, he proclaimed England’s sovereignty over the New Albion, i.e.,
California.
The same privateers, though, would be state-sponsored to inflict economic damage on the
Spanish enemy particularly in the 1570s14, which, among other things, triggered Spain’s refusal
to allow England to trade freely with Spanish American colonies.
In the early 1580s, Philip II of Spain prospered: he annexed Portugal (1580) and the
Azores (1582-3). He built a great fleet, an “Armada”, exceeding in size the combined fleets of
England and the Netherlands. Philip decided to conquer England before he would be able to
defeat the Dutch in the Netherlands. In 1584, the Dutch leader, William of Orange, was
assassinated. That created panic among English politicians who feared that Elizabeth I might
fall victim too. By 1585, Phillip II had become confident that he could seize all English ships
13
Surprisingly, given their reliance on overseas commerce, the countries of Britain played little part in the
exploration of the wider world (which Portugal and Spain had encouraged and financed since the fifteenth century).
Their maritime tradition meant it could only be a matter of time, however, and Henry VII sponsored the voyage
of John Cabot to Newfoundland in 1497. His son, Henry VIII, who is regarded as the Royal Navy’s founder,
expanded a fleet of five ships by building, buying, and capturing almost 100 ships in his reign. These vessels were
designed to protect existing seaborne trade. Soon, however, the possibilities were realized for promoting
aggressive policies abroad. It was not Henry’s official Royal Navy that would be the main motor of either
exploration or war. Both were advanced a great deal more by “privateering”, in which the monarch granted a
charter to a captain to carry out piratical actions against vessels of an enemy state. The privateer and his investors
kept the profits they made from any ships or cargoes they could capture, allowing a cash-strapped monarchy to
both devolve the costs of fighting a war and keep offensive actions at a diplomatic distance. Among the notable
privateers of Elizabeth I’s early reign, due mention must be made of John Hawkins. In 1561, he introduced tobacco
to England and hijacked Portuguese slave ships, trading the slaves in Brazil for ginger, pearls and sugar, thus
beginning England’s participation in the slave trade.
14
With a permit from Elizabeth I, Francis Drake sacked Nombre de Dios, Panama, in 1572; the following year,
venturing inland, he ambushed a Spanish mule train bringing 22 tons of gold from the mines of Peru. His
circumnavigation of the globe (1577–80) was as much about enrichment as exploration. And as well as numerous
Spanish treasure ships, Drake captured the great galleon, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción.
36
in Iberian ports. Elizabeth I responded by sending the Earl of Leicester to Holland with an army,
but Leicester was defeated.
The English privateers’ appetite to attack Spanish ships/colonies was still strong in the
late 1580s: in 1586 Drake (who had been knighted in 1581) and Frobisher sacked Spain’s great
Colombian cities of Santo Domingo and Cartagena de las Indias, and in 1587, Philip II of
Spain’s invasion fleet preparation was interrupted by Drake’s invasion of the Port of Cadiz
(which he partly destroyed)15.
In 1588, the re-built Spanish Armada (made of 130 ships, the largest that had ever gone
to sea, but less fast than the English ships) carrying mainly soldiers (few ships carried cannons
and medium guns) aimed at conquering England and controlling the English Channel, so that
subsequently Spanish troops could have easier access to the Netherlands. However, the Spanish
Armada was defeated by the English weather and by the English guns. Some Spanish ships
were sunk, but most were blown northwards by the wind, many being wrecked on the rocky
coasts of Scotland and Ireland. In August 1588 Protestant England celebrated with prayers and
public thanksgiving. The war with Spain continued until Elizabeth I’s death (1603), but Britain
did not become the scene of a foreign invasion.
As a matter of fact, the failure of the Spanish attempt to conquer England (as the Armada
was defeated by the English navy and the coast winds on July 26, 1588) contributed not only
to the rise of nationalistic feelings among the English, but also opened the world to English
colonisation. The process of development of trading companies in different corners of the world
(e.g. the Muscovy Company in 1555; the Levant Company in 1581) continued more vigorously
after the defeat of the Spanish Armada and in 1600, the East India Company was chartered in
London, challenging Dutch control of the spice trade. In brief, all the trade routes and distant
markets sketched out by the daring Elizabethan merchants paved the way for the great British
colonial empire of the centuries to come.
Having repeatedly declined to marry (though the negotiations between Elizabeth and
Henry, Duke of Anjou could have succeeded if it had not been for the opposition of the Privy
Council in 1579), Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, died childless in 1603, at the age of 69,
after a reign of 45 years. She was succeeded to the throne by James VI Stuart, son of the late
Mary Queen of Scots, who became James I, uniting England and Scotland.
The Tudors did not like governing through Parliament, but they did not dissolve it
because they needed money and the support of the merchants and landowners. Henry VII
seldom used the Parliament and only for law making. Henry VIII used it to raise money for his
military campaigns and for his struggle with Rome. His aims were:
 to make sure that the powerful members from the shires and towns, who had a great deal
of control over popular feeling, supported him,
 to frighten the priests and the bishops into obeying him,
 to frighten the Pope into giving in to his demands.
The paradox was that, while using Parliament to strengthen his policy and to make new laws
for the Reformation, Henry VIII actually increased Parliament’s authority. Parliament further
strengthened its position under Edward VI by ordering the New Prayer Book to be used in all
churches and forbidding the Catholic mass. Mary I could not persuade Parliament to accept
Philip of Spain as the king of England after her death.
Parliament only met when the monarch ordered it. For instance, during the first 44 years
of Tudor rule, Parliament met only 20 times. Then Parliament was summoned a little more often
by Henry VIII to make the laws for the Church Reformation. After Elizabeth I’s Reformation
Settlement in 1559, for the next 44 years, the Parliament met only 13 times.
15
The episode was memorialized by the gleeful English as the “Singeing of the King of Spain’s Beard.” It was an
expression that nicely caught both the boldness of Drake’s attack and the humiliation it caused Spain.
37
It must be mentioned, though, that, even under such circumstances, during the sixteenth
century, Parliament underwent slow but significant changes: power moved from the House of
Lords to the House of Commons, as the latter’s representatives became richer and more
influential than the Lords. (Hence, the idea of getting rid of the House of Lords emerged for the
first time.) The size of the House of Commons nearly doubled, because the Welsh boroughs
and counties were included next to the English ones. (That does not mean they represented the
people; the MPs simply supported royal policy.)
The main functions of the Parliament under the Tudors were: to agree to the taxes
needed; to make the laws which the Crown suggested; and to advise the Crown, but only when
asked to do so. Therefore, MPs were granted: freedom of speech; freedom from fear of arrest;
and freedom to meet and speak to the monarch.
To avoid giving Parliament too much power by asking it to vote for new taxes, the
Tudors tried (unwisely) to get money in other ways: for example, in 1600, Elizabeth I sold
“monopolies”, which gave a particular person/company total control over a trade.
Consequently, in 1601, Parliament complained about the bad effect on free trade of these
“monopolies”. Also, Elizabeth I and her chief adviser, Lord Burghley, sold official positions in
the government and, as they grew old, they both became more careless and slower at making
decisions. They allowed the tax system to become less efficient, and failed to keep information
on how much money people should be paying. England needed a tax reform, which could only
be carried out with the agreement of the Parliament. Or both Parliament and the JPs in charge
of collecting the taxes avoided the matter of tax. The Queen also avoided open discussion on
money with the Parliament, so the problem had to be solved by Elizabeth’s successors. In this
context, Parliament naturally began to think that it had a right to discuss money and law-
making. By the end of the sixteenth century, it was beginning to show new confidence, and in
the seventeenth century, when the gentry and the merchant classes were far more aware of their
own strength, it was obvious that Parliament would challenge the Crown. Eventually, this
resulted in war.
References
Gavriliu, Eugenia (2001) British History and Civilization. A Student-Friendly Approach through Guided
Practice, Galaţi: Fundatia Culturală “Dunărea de Jos”.
Grant, R.G., Kay, Ann, Kerrigan, Michael and Parker, Phillip (2011) History of Britain and Ireland. The
Definitive Visual Guide, London, New York, Melbourne, Munich and Delhi: Dorling
Kindersley.
Guy, John and Morrill, John (1992) The Oxford History of Britain. Vol. III. The Tudors and Stuarts,
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

II. 6. The Stuarts
38
Queen Elizabeth I’s nephew and the son of Mary, Queen of the Scots had been king of
Scotland (as James VI) for 36 years when he became King of England as James I (1603-25).
His coronation was momentous in bringing about a “Union of the Crowns”. His promise to
return regularly to his homeland was soon neglected. Even so, the system seemed to work.
James wanted more general union, with harmonized laws, trade tariffs, and taxation, although
neither the English nor the Scottish Parliaments were enthusiastic.
A theologian, an arts patron and an indefatigable scholar, James I was fascinated by the
challenges of scriptural translation, hence his commissioning the new translation of the Bible known
as the “Authorised King James’s version of the Bible”, and he encouraged the flourishing of the
theatre. Unfortunately, his denunciations of witches seem tragically misguided. Anti-witchcraft
legislation dated back to 1563 in Scotland, but it was with James’s encouragement that large-scale
persecution began in 1590. Hundreds of women (and some men) were killed after summary show-
trials.
As James’s mother had been Catholic, some English Catholics had high hopes for his
reign—while Protestants had corresponding fears. As King of England, he calmed the latter by
taking a hard line against Catholics. There was a degree of desperation in the Catholic response:
early attempts to depose James only strengthened his Protestant position. The conspiratorial
ferment intensified in its turn: hence the plan to blow up the House of Lords during the State
Opening of Parliament, on November 5, 1605. The leader of this Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes,
was arrested on November 4, 1605 in the midst of his preparations. (His effigy is still merrily
burnt by the English each November 4.) His co-conspirators were quickly caught. Two were
killed resisting capture and the remainder were interrogated, perhaps tortured, and finally tried
and condemned to death. In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, strict penalties were re-
imposed on Roman Catholics.
The English Parliament was potentially another enemy for James I. What James I saw
as its obstructionism was a spur to his writings on monarchy and his theory of the “divine right
of kings”, as well as to his attempts to rule without the Parliament as much as possible. To cover
the huge debt he ‘inherited’ from Elizabeth I, he had to ask the Parliament to raise a tax, which
the Parliament agreed with on condition James would discuss his home and foreign policy with
the Parliament. James insisted that he alone had the “divine right” to make these decisions. He
managed to rule successfully without the Parliament as long as England was at peace, i.e.
between 1611 and 1621. But when England got involved in the Thirty Years’ War in Europe
(1618-48), James could not afford the costs of an army and disagreed with the Parliament who
wished to go against the Catholics. Until his death in 1625, James continued to quarrel with the
Parliament over money and over its desire to play a part in his foreign policy.
James I also neglected the navy and deprived England of her naval power for 30 years.
Yet, England continued her international trade in wool, cotton and silk and the ships of the East
India Company were sailing as far as Persia and India.
In time, the King’s policies brought him in conflict not only with the Catholics but with
(Protestant) Puritans too. The latter denounced the extravagances and dissolute living at the
king’s court, and attacked the theatre on account of its being the favourite amusement of an
immoral aristocracy. Some Puritans fled across the Atlantic in 1620 to escape prosecution and
founded the Massachusetts Colony. (Known as ‘the Pilgrim Fathers’, they reached the coast of
Massachusetts on board of the Mayflower and they are still celebrated by the American people
on Thanksgiving Day.) The Puritans remaining in England became the focal point for resistance
against the Stuarts, known as the ‘Roundheads’ and the extremists. (See the Puritan MPs Oliver
Cromwell, John Milton, John Hampden and John Pym)
An art lover, like his father, Charles I (1625-1649) spent a lot inviting artists like Van
Dyck and Rubens to work in England and buying a great collection of paintings by Raphael and
Titian, thus increasing the crown’s debts.
39
As Prince Charles, he had travelled to Madrid to seek the marriage of the Infanta. When
this unravelled, he made his addresses to Spain’s rival Catholic power, France, and married
Princess Henrietta Maria, Louis XIII’s sister and a fervent Catholic.
On becoming king in 1625, Charles I showed his reluctance to reign alongside
Parliament. He would repeatedly quarrel with Parliament – especially with the House of
Commons - mainly over money. In 1629, at the slightest provocation, he dissolved the
Parliament and adopted a streamlined (and less accountable) executive. His style set him against
the Puritans. Strict, “pure” Protestants, they rejected the authority of any hierarchy of bishops.
They would be ruled spiritually by their individual consciences and by scripture, and saw
Charles’s Church as Catholic authoritarianism returned.
To approve taxes to raise new revenue, he recalled Parliament. Angry at being sidelined
for 11 years, it demanded reforms, so three weeks into the “Short Parliament” Charles dissolved
it. But, needing money, he swallowed his pride and recalled it again (the “Long Parliament”). It
passed the Triennial Act, meaning that Parliament had to be recalled every three years, and that
the King could not simply decide to do without it. In 1641, he had to agree to a law forbidding
him from dissolving Parliament. His Court of Star Chamber was outlawed too. The violent debate
over Charles’s financial devices and the reform of the Church along Puritan lines eventually led
to the king’s attempt to arrest the leaders of the Parliament after his being presented with ‘The
Great Remonstrance’ in 1641. Outraged, in January 1642, he went with his guards to Parliament
to arrest key MPs. He found them gone—warned of his arrival. But the King’s invasion of the
chamber trampled all over the tradition of royal respect for the rights of Parliament’s House of
Commons. Trust broke down completely: King and Parliament were at war (The Civil Wars 1642-
46; 1648-49).
Feeling his authority imploding, Charles I was forced to flee his own capital. He
travelled into the country to drum up support. Charles raised his standard at Nottingham on
August 22, 1642: 2,000 noble followers rallied to the royal flag. Called Cavaliers, from the
French chevalier, meaning “horseman” or “knight”, they expected to fight on horseback; far
fewer infantry— traditionally drawn from the lower classes—heeded the call. Expensively
mounted and dressed, the Cavaliers – royalists from the House of Lords and only a few of the
Commoners, supported by the Anglican clergy and the conservative and feudalistic North,
would be in stark contrast with the severely cropped Roundheads – the army of the Parliament,
supported by the navy, by most of the merchants and by the middle-classes in the south –
recruited by Lord Essex to oppose them.
After the Royalists’ initial success, the tide changed when Oliver Cromwell (1599-
1658) emerged as a leader of the Parliamentarian army. A significant voice in earlier political
controversies, but marginalized once the shooting started, Oliver Cromwell now came into his
own as a military commander. Having raised his own mounted militia in his native
Cambridgeshire, he proved an able commanding officer and had been appointed Lieutenant-
General of Horse by the time of the Battle of Marston Moor, in July 1644. His New Model
Army or ‘Ironsides’ (because of the iron breastplates that they wore) became the toughest and
most successful fighting force of the period and its superiority was proven by the victories at
Marston Moor (1644) and Naseby (1645). Parliament won by the sword the right to survive as
the supreme legislative body in England. Defeated, Charles was captured and imprisoned.
However, the House of Commons refused to grant religious toleration and to give the
soldiers of the New Model Army (the first regular force from which today’s British army
developed) the arrears of pay. The quarrel of Parliament and New Model Army encouraged
Charles and the Cavaliers to start a second Civil War (1646-1651) with the help of the
Presbyterian Scots.
In 1648, after Cromwell defeated the Royalists at Preston, Parliament obtained Charles
I from the Scots to whom he had surrendered. The Parliamentarian leaders had then to make a
difficult decision: either to restore Charles and allow him to rule, or to remove him and to create
40
a new political system. Despite the fact that two thirds of the MPs did not want to put the king
on trial, the remaining one third (53) (“the Rump Parliament”) took control of Parliament with
the help of the army, tried the king, found him guilty of making “war against his kingdom and
the Parliament” and had him beheaded at Whitehall on January 30, 1649. The Commonwealth
or Republic (1649-1660) was proclaimed, though it would turn out to be, in fact, a military
dictatorship in which the main power was exerted by Oliver Cromwell. (See such literary
representations as Andrew Marvell’s poem An Horatian Ode. Upon Cromwell’s Return from
Ireland (1650) and Alexandre Dumas’s novel Twenty Years After (1845))
Despite the literary awakening that it determined (e.g. Andrew Marvell wrote lyrics in
a witty, sometimes knotty “metaphysical” style while John Milton, a sometime aide of
Cromwell, was appointed the Secretary for Foreign Tongues of the Commonwealth), the
Commonwealth turned out to be far more severe than Charles’s regime. Cromwell and his
friends got rid of the monarchy, then of the House of Lords (which was dissolved). The first
years of the new ‘republican’ regime were marked by the savage campaigns of Cromwell’s
New Model Army meant to:
 put down the resistance of the Scots (who, shocked by the king’s execution, decided to
support his son Charles II) (1651);
 punish the Irish for the killing of the Protestants in 1641 and for the continued Royalist
rebellion (1649-52). (These punitive campaigns remained until nowadays a powerful
symbol of English cruelty to the Irish.)
The economic outlook during the Commonwealth was gloomy, with huge liabilities left
from the Civil War, and continuing conflicts in Scotland and Ireland. Beleaguered by hostile
Catholic powers, England embarked on a major program of shipbuilding from 1649. This was
backed up by the Navigation Act of 1651. Ironically, in 1652, this crudely protectionist measure
precipitated war—not with Catholic Spain or France, but with the Protestant Dutch.
Disagreements between the army and Parliament, on the one hand, and within the army
(e.g. the rebellion of the egalitarian Levellers), on the other, led to the dissolution of Parliament
and of the Council of State. From 1653, Cromwell began his 5 and a half years of personal rule
as “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.” He used the army
to govern the country, and to maintain law and order in the kingdom; furthermore, his tyrannical
suppression of all forms of celebration and entertainment made him even more unpopular:
sacred images and statues in the old cathedrals were destroyed; theaters, inns, and other haunts
of immorality were closed, and restrictions placed on Sunday games and “pagan” festivals;
Christmas was not abolished as such, although so many of the associated celebrations were
indeed outlawed that Christmas Day became a day like any other day.
After Cromwell’s death in 1658, when his inefficient son Richard failed to maintain
control over the army leaders, the Convention Parliament called back Charles II in 1660 (The
Restoration).
Though initially acclaimed as a Republic, Cromwell’s Commonwealth turned up to be a
military dictatorship. When Cromwell died in 1658, he bequeathed the Protectorate to his son
Richard. Cromwell had governed through fear, so, when his son failed to inspire it (hence his
nickname “Tumbledown Dick”), his authority quickly crumbled and he was deposed within two
years.
On April 4, 1660 Charles II, son of Charles I Stuart, made the Declaration of Breda in
which he offered an amnesty to his and his father’s old enemies (the “regicides” excepted)16, as
well as promised arrears of Army pay, confirmation of land purchases during the Interregnum
and ‘liberty of tender consciences’ in religious matters. Most importantly, Charles undertook to
16
13 of the “regicides”, i.e., the signatories of Charles I’s death-warrant, were executed by Charles II’s order.
Three more, including Cromwell, were already dead but were exhumed and “executed”, their half-decomposed
corpses hanged, drawn, and quartered.
41
be guided by Parliament if restored, implicitly waiving any claim to a divine right to rule. As a
result, the Convention Parliament invited Charles II back to take up his throne. The period of
the Interregnum came to an end and the Restoration of the monarchy was achieved in 1660.
After Charles II (1660-1685) was warmly received upon his return to London, the
Convention Parliament passed the Indemnity and Oblivion Act, delivering on Charles’s
promise of forgiveness, before its replacement by an elected (though overwhelmingly Royalist)
Cavalier Parliament. This rolled back resented Commonwealth reforms, reinstating maypoles,
mince pies, and other festive treats. Charles II wanted to restore popular celebrations. Notorious
for his numerous mistresses, Charles II encouraged the ‘restoration’ of extravagant frivolity at
the court. Puritan sobriety was banished—at least at court and in fashionable London, where
men and women vied to outdo one another in flamboyance and flair. The moral tone was free
and easy: the stereotypical Restoration rake was by no means mythical, and was represented
not only by the King but by other brilliant libertines, such as George Villiers and John Wilmot,
Earl of Rochester.
London’s theatres had been closed for 18 years under the preceding Puritan regime,
during which time any performances were held in secret, and discovery brought serious
penalties. They were reopened by Charles II in 1660 (although they were closed again for a
time after the plague of 1665). In further marked contrast to the recent Puritan past, new plays
appearing on the London stage were typically satirical, witty, and bawdy. Charles II had a love
of French fashions and culture, and the risqué French themes of Molière were a strong
influence. Dramatists who flourished included John Dryden, William Wycherley, and, very
slightly later, William Congreve. The stereotypical Restoration man-about-London became a
witty, dandyish, carousing, theatergoing womanizer. These were also the early days of women
appearing on the English stage (the first time had been in 1629, featuring French actresses).
There were even some female playwrights, including Mrs. Aphra Behn (England’s first known
professional woman writer), whose play The Rover (1677–81) was a hugely popular tale of
English cavaliers.
Also, Restoration London witnessed the emergence of a new ‘fashion’, that of
coffeehouses. The coffeehouses (where chocolate was another favourite drink) were a welcome
change from the traditional ale houses. They became popular places for gossip, business, and
socializing. Each coffeehouse attracted a certain kind of crowd, such as artists, writers, actors,
gamblers, lawyers, scientists, or politicians. (In the late decades of the seventeenth century,
coffeehouses also became hotbeds of new and radical thought, so much so that Charles II tried
to close the coffeehouses down in 1675 as an anti-insurrection measure, but a general outcry
stopped him.) (For a detailed and picturesque description of life in London during the
Restoration, see the famous diaries of Samuel Pepys, 1660-1669)
Most notably, Charles II also played a major role in the British scientific revolution,
backing two new crucial institutions. The Royal Society was founded in 1660 as a forum for
scientific ideas, true to the belief in the importance of openly exchanging knowledge. The first
of its kind in Britain, and still prestigious today, it is also the world’s oldest surviving scientific
body. It was given a royal charter in 1661. In 1675, Charles founded the Royal Greenwich
Observatory.
Meanwhile, however, Charles was quietly clawing back some of the religious freedoms
he had promised, introducing measures restricting the freedoms of nonconformist Protestants.
For instance, in 1662, the Act of Uniformity was passed restoring features of the Anglican
Church which the Puritans had abolished during the Civil Wars, requiring all clergy, college
fellows and schoolmasters to belong to the Anglican Church, and prescribing (in the Book of
Common Prayer) the form of public prayers, administration of sacraments, and other rites of
the Anglican Church.
Some of the most disastrous years of Charles II’s reign were 1664-1667 for several
reasons.
42
 In 1664-1665, London was ravaged by a new plague epidemic which killed about one fifth
of the city’s population.
 Charles II was eager to boost England’s overseas trade, but this brought England into
conflict with the Dutch—hence the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667). Caused by
English and Dutch commercial and colonial rivalry, it ended in 1667 in a humiliating defeat
of the English.
 In 1666, the Great Fire virtually destroyed the London of the Middle Ages and of
Shakespeare’s days. This great conflagration decimated 80 percent of the City of London.
After the disaster, the architect Christopher Wren, together with John Evelyn and Robert
Hooke, presented the King with ambitious rebuilding plans. New building patterns and
standards would be established helping to create modern London. The new city would rise
slowly with some wider streets, new sewers, (for the first time) sidewalks, and buildings
made of stone and marble, which replaced the medieval brick and timber. Wren’s St. Paul’s
Cathedral, built in classic Baroque style and completed in 1711, became one of the world’s
most-admired buildings. Along with his jointly designed monument to the fire, and a
number of satellite churches, he helped to shape the City’s new profile and create an iconic
skyline. (Examples of other architectural masterpieces by Christopher Wren include the
Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford and Pembroke College Chapel in Cambridge.)
 Also, 1666 was the year of the Covenanters’ uprising (a ‘Covenant’ was signed all over
Scotland for the defence of the Protestant religion and against the government of the Church
by bishops).
It was, however, Charles II’s ‘attraction’ to the Catholic Church that mostly caused
growing concern in Parliament. After Charles’s marriage to the Portuguese (and Catholic)
Catherine of Braganza, Parliament decided that the King went too far when he made his
Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, (allegedly) offering religious toleration to Nonconformists,
as they suspected that the King’s real aim was to ease the situation for Catholics. They would
have been more enraged still had they been aware of the secret treaty Charles had made with
Louis XIV at Dover in 1670, stating his long-term intention of embracing Catholicism and re-
establishing it as state religion. Charles II also committed himself to an alliance with France
against the Dutch Republic in return for lavish payments. Charles went to war without involving
Parliament, but the Third Anglo-Dutch War proved far more expensive than anticipated. Louis
XIV’s grants did not cover the costs; the Dutch refused to be defeated, and Charles had to recall
Parliament to introduce new taxes. They refused. It is against this background of tense relations
between the monarch and Parliament that the first political parties in Britain were created. The
Whigs were proponents of Parliament supremacy and toleration for the Protestant
nonconformists. They wanted to have a regular army and believed strongly in religious freedom
(in spite of their fear of a Catholic king). The Tories were the natural ‘inheritors’ of the Royalist
position, as they supported the authority of the Crown and of the Anglican Church. These two
parties, the Whigs and the Tories, became the basis of Britain’s two-party parliamentary system
of government.
Anxiety became hysteria when news broke of the King’s brother James’s conversion to
Catholicism. Charles’s officially stated disapproval scarcely mattered. Given his lack of
legitimate children, his crown would go to James. In 1679, 1680, and 1681, MPs brought in an
Exclusion Bill to cut James out of the succession, but Charles dissolved Parliament before it
could be passed.
Consequently, in 1685, after the death of Charles II, the crown was passed to his Roman
Catholic brother, James II (1685-88). Even before he became King James II, Charles II’s
brother had been a controversial figure, particularly owing to his conversion to Catholicism and
his marriage to the Catholic Mary of Modena. The object of Exclusion Bills and assassination
plots, he had no illusions as to his popularity. Yet he was unflappable in his arrogance or, as he
43
saw it, his consciousness of his divine right as king. It is no wonder then that the beginning of
his reign was troubled. In 1685, Charles II’s illegitimate son and James’s nephew, the Duke of
Monmouth, emerged as the champion of Protestantism and the leader of a rebellion against the
King, supported by the Earl of Shaftesbury. The defeat of the rebels (at Sedgemoor, in 1685)
was followed by James’s cruel revenge: he embarked upon a rapid Romanizing of the country,
claimed the royal prerogative to suspend the laws of the land, and, in general, pursued with ever
increasing violence and illegality the policy to prepare the forcible reconversion of England to
Roman Catholicism. James’s decision to raise a standing army, rather than recruiting soldiers
ad hoc, sent out the message that he was at war with his subjects. His Declaration of Indulgence
toward Catholics caused outrage in 1687 and the birth of a Catholic son, and legal successor,
provoked panic.
Under these circumstances, a group of Tories and Whigs started negotiations with
William of Orange, Stadtholder (the chief of state) of the Dutch Republic, eager for him to
depose James and reign as William III. His wife, Mary (James II’s daughter), had the better
claim, but William of Orange wanted to be more than Prince Consort.
William of Orange’s first invasion fleet was dispersed by winds in October 1688; he later
landed at Torbay, on November 5, 1688. James was unfazed until he found his officers defecting
in droves. He fled for France, but was captured. William turned a blind eye while they escaped,
so James could not become a focus for royalist unrest. A Convention Parliament in January 1689
issued a Declaration of Rights, asserting that James’s attempt to flee amounted to abdication and
branding his actions as king unconstitutional. William III (1689-1702) and Mary II (1689-94)
were (unusually) made joint co-rulers in his place. James’s overthrow was described as a
Glorious Revolution in 1689, and since then, its centrality to the modern British identity has
never been in doubt.
The Declaration of Rights was primarily a stick to beat James II with. As formalized in
December 1689 as the Bill of Rights, however, it became the blueprint for a constitutional
monarchy. This bloodless ‘Glorious Revolution’ decided the balance between Parliamentary
and royal power in favour of the former and, in accordance with the Declaration/ Bill of Rights
(1689), no monarch ever attempted to govern without Parliament or contrary to the votes of the
House of Commons. In addition, the Act of Settlement, passed in 1701, secured the Protestant
succession to the throne, and strengthened the guarantees for ensuring the parliamentary system
of government. According to it, if Mary had no children, the crown would pass to her sister
Anne; if she also died without children, the crown would go to a granddaughter of James I, who
had married the German elector of Hanover (Electress Sophia of Hanover) and her children.
Even today, if a son or daughter of a monarch becomes a Catholic, (s)he cannot inherit the
throne.
Under Queen Ann (1702-14)17, who succeeded to the throne after William III’s death,
the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13), with England as part of the Grand Alliance, ended
with the recognition by Louis XIV of France of Protestant succession in Great Britain and
turned John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, into a national hero. Further disagreement over
the succession to the throne between the English and the Scottish Parliaments allowed the exiled
Roman Catholic son of James II, James Edward Stuart, to land in Scotland in 1708, but he was
forced to withdraw to France. The scene was thus set for the later uprisings in Scotland led by
the Stuart Pretenders against the Hanoverian kings.
Finally, in 1707, Scotland and England were formally united under the name of Great
Britain and the flags of the two nations (St. Andrew’s Cross for Scotland and St. George’s Cross
for England) were combined to form the Union Jack. (St. Patrick’s Cross would be added in
1801 after Ireland would be united with Great Britain.)
Notable literary representations of Queen Anne include Alexander Pope’s Windsor Forest (1713) and Jonathan
17
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).

44
Yet, the new century heralded a new succession crisis and further fears of Britain falling
back into “popish” hands. Though no one felt the least anxiety about Queen Anne’s loyalties,
she was still a Stuart and the daughter of James II, a Catholic king. She was also going to die
without an heir, as her last surviving child, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, died in 1700,
aged only 11 years. That accounts for the fact that, as stipulated by the Act of Settlement (1701),
the last of the Stuarts should have been followed to the thrown by the reliably Protestant (and
German) Sophia, Electress of Hanover. Sophia died just a few weeks before Anne herself died,
so on August 1, 1714, Sophia’s son became King George I of Great Britain and
Ireland(1714-27).
References
Gavriliu, Eugenia (2001) British History and Civilization. A Student-Friendly Approach through Guided
Practice, Galaţi: Fundatia Culturală “Dunărea de Jos”.
Grant, R.G., Kay, Ann, Kerrigan, Michael and Parker, Phillip (2011) History of Britain and Ireland. The
Definitive Visual Guide, London, New York, Melbourne, Munich and Delhi: Dorling
Kindersley.
45

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BRITISH CULTURE AND CIVILISATION

LECTURE NOTES – LECTURE 1

I. Invasions and Patterns of Settlement in the British Isles (1)

I.1. Ancient Britain

I.1.1. The New Stone (Neolithic) Age (around 4,000 BC)

I.1.2. The Bronze Age (after 2,400 BC)

I.1.3. The Iron Age (around 700 BC)

I.1.4. Ancient Britain: the Romans

BRITISH CULTURE AND CIVILISATION

I. Invasions and Patterns of Settlement in the British Isles (2):

I.2.1. The Anglo-Saxons

II. British Monarchy. Developments in British Political Life (1)

II. 1. The Anglo-Saxon Kings. Political Institutions in Anglo-Saxon England

BRITISH CULTURE AND CIVILISATION

II. 2. The Norman Kings

II.3.1. The Plantagenets (The Angevins)

BRITISH CULTURE AND CIVILISATION

II.3.2. The Plantagenets

II.4. The Lancastrians and the Yorkists

BRITISH CULTURE AND CIVILISATION

II. British Monarchy. Developments in British Political Life (4)

BRITISH CULTURE AND CIVILISATION

II. British Monarchy. Developments in British Political Life (5)

II. 6. The Stuarts

Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).

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