Deep Are the Roots A Concise History of Britain (стр. 2 из 8)
Chart I
They were called Norsemen or Danes, or the Vikings. The Vikings were brilliant sailors, they had the fastest boats in Europe, that were moving powered by sail. They crossed the Atlantic, and founded a colony in North America 500 years before Columbus. They had repeatedly raided the Eastern Coast of England, and by the middle of the ninth century almost all English Kingdoms were defeated by the Danes. In 870 only Wessex was left to resist the barbaric Danes. At that time the West Saxons got a new young King, his name was Alfred, later he was called Alfred the Great. And no other king has earned this title. Alfred forced the Danes to come to terms – to accept Christianity and live within the frontiers of the Danelaw – a large part of Eastern England, while he was master of the South and West of England.
King Alfred was quick to learn from his enemies: he created an efficient army and built a fleet of warships on a Danish pattern, which were known to have defeated Viking invaders at sea more than once. They were forced to go South and settle in Northern France, where their settlement became known as Normandy, the province of the Northmen. The England of King Alfred the Great received a new Code of laws which raised the standards of English society. New churches were built, foreign scholars were brought, schools were founded, King Alfred himself translated a number of books from Latin, including Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica and began the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, a year-by year history of England.
Alfred the Great saved England from the Danish conquest, but in the 10th– 11th centuries the Danes managed to expand their possesion in Great Britain and from 1013 to 1042 the Danish royal power triumphed in England. King al power triumphed in England. King Canut's empire included Norway, Denmark and England. In 1042 the house of Wessex was restored to power in England, when Edward the Confessor was elected king by the Witan. He was half-Norman, had spent his exile in Normandy, and Wiffiam the Duke of Normandy was his cousin and a close friend.
Edward the Confessor was a religious monarch and devoted his attention to the construction of churches and most of all to the building of Westminster Abbey.
Edward the Confessor died in 1066 without an obvious heir. And the Witan elected Harold, a Saxon nobleman from the family of the Godwine, the king of England. Harold's right to the English throne was challenged by William the Duke of Normandy who claimed the English Kingdom as his rightfull inherit ance which had been alledgedly promised to him by the late King Edward the Confessor.
1066 was a crucial year for the SaxonKing, and for the history of the English.
Harold had to fight against two enemies at the same time. In the South William of Normandy was preparing to land in England, in the North, in Yorkshire, the Danes renewed their attacks against England.
Harold succeded in defeating the Danes and rushed his armies back to the South to meet William who had landed near Hastings. His men were tired, though they had done so well in the battle against the Danish vikings. William's army was better armed, better organized and he had cavalry.
Had Harold waited and given his army a rest, the outcome of thebattlemight have been different.
But after a hard and long struggle Harold and his brothers were killed in the battle of Hastings and the flower of Saxon nobility lay dead together with them on the battle field.
The Bayeux Tapestry (231 feet long 19 inches wide) tells a complete story of the Norman Conquest of Saxon England in over seventy scenes. In one of the scenes the Latin writing says "Harold the King is dead", and under the inscription stands a man with an arrow in his eye believed to be King Harold.
William captured London and was crowned King of England in Westmister Abbey on Christmas Day, 1066.
The Norman period in English history had begun.
Some historians argue concerning possible ways of English history, had the Anglo-Saxons defeated William. But History doesn't rely on the Conditional Mood.
All the invasions, raids and conquests were contributing new and new waves of peoples to be integrated into a newly appearing nation of the English, to understand which we must know its historical roots, studying historical facts.
Questions:
1. What is traditionally said about the geographical position of Britain? What do you think of it?
2. What material monuments of Pre-Celtic population culture still exist on the British territory?
3. Which of the Celtic tribes gave their name to their new home-country?
4. What functions were performed by Celtic Priests? What were they called?
5. Which Roman expeditions were successful in subjugating Britain and when? Was it a peacefuldevelopment?
6. What are the well-recognized contributions of Roman civilisation to British culture?
7. Did King Arthur and his Knights of the Round table exist and when if they did?
8. What Germanic tribes invaded Britain from the Continent and what states emerged as a result of that invasion?
9. What was the historical role of the Vikings on the British Isles?
10. Which of the Anglo-Saxon kings rightly deserved the title of Great? What were his great accomplishments?
11. In what way was Edward the Confessor responsible for William's claim to the English crown?
12. What: is the name of the battle which is a historic turning point for England?
early middle ages
AMATURING FEUDALISM. THE DOMESDAY BOOK. THE PLANTAGENET KINGS. CONFLICTS WITH THE CHURCH AND BARONS. RICHARD I, JOHN LACKLAND. MAGNA CARTA LIBERTATA.
later middle ages
BSIMON DE MONFORT. THE GROWTH OF PARLIAMENT. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. THE BLACK DEATH. THE PEASANTS' REVOLT.
Key words, terms and concepts
1. Feudalism, feudal hierarchy
2. A language gap
3. Domesday book
4. Tenants-in-chief (barons), vassals
5. Freemen, freeholders, cottagers, villeins, serfs
6. To raise money (shield money)
7. To impose taxes, fiscal policy
8. Thomas Becket – the martyr
9. Richard (Coeur-de-Lion), the Lion-Heart
10. John Lackland. Magna Carta – the Great Charter of Liberty (1215)
11. Simon de Montfort. The Parliament
12. The Plague – the black death
13. Poll Tax
14. Wycliffe
15. John Ball, Wat Tyier (1381)
The Norman Conquest did have immediate social, political and cultural implications. The new tough foreign aristocracy captured power and lands. By 1100 (12th c.) there were 500 Norman castles in the English countryside. There was a blow against the Church as well; Saxon bishops were either deposed or replaced by Normans. During the 11th and 12th centuries an apparatus of Government of exceptional effectiveness was established.
England was also drawn into close links with the other side of the Channel. But there was a language gap between the local (Anglo-Saxon) population and the new landowners, of both the Church and the Norman Aristocracy.
Latin was a language of monasteries, Norman French was now the language of law and authority. Inflected English, spoken differently in the various regions remained the language of the people.
The brightest evidence of the situation in the country was the Domesday Book (1086), a survey of England's land and people; according to it Norman society still rested on "lordship, secular and spiritual, and the King, wise or foolish, was the lord of lords, with only Lord in Heaven and the Saints above him.”
Historians have introduced into their interpretation of Norman and other European lordship the term "feudalism", first employed during the 12th century. The term was used in both narrow and broad sense. Narrowly it was related to military (knightly) service as a condition of tenure of land. Broadly it was related to the tenure of land itself, obligation and dependence, as expressed in the term "vassalage". The first relationship focuses on warfare in an age of violence, the second on the use as well as the tenure of land in an age when land was the key to society.
All land in the country belonged to the Crown. The king was the greatest landowner in the country and he parcelled out (gave away) the land to the great landowners who were his tenants-in-chief (barons). The barons held their land as a gift, in return for specified services to the Crown. When barons parceled out their land, they also required knightly services from their tenants. During the reign of William 1170 barons had in their service about 4000 knights who were distinguishable as a social group.
The two social groups were opposed to "the poor men": lords themselves cultivated only a third or two fifths of the arable land in use. The rest was cultivated by various kinds of "peasants" (a controversial term not in use at that time): villeins (41%), cottagers (32%), free holders (14%) the group holding (20% of the land) and serfs (10%) – the group with no land at all. At the time of the Domesday Book, the basic distinction was, however, that all men are either free (free holders) or serfs.
In the 13th century King John (Lackland) (1199-1216) replaced military service of his tenants-in-chief by payments, known as "shield money".
In rural England lords lived in manors which were in their own estates. The peasants, free holders and others lived in villages and hamlets.
The Domesday Book was designed for fiscal purposes to increase and protect the King's revenue.
The full implications of the social, political and cultural changes following the Norman Conquest took time to work themselves out.
They were: a political unification of the country and the centralization of government - a strong royal government, feudal interdependence; the supreme power of the King over all his vassals; the establishment of the feudal hierarchy, a further development of the relationship between the King and the barons, sometimes stormy, sometimes cohesive, an emergence of English common law (from precedent to precedent), the making of Parliament.
The latter two were the most obvious phenomena if we investigate (consider) the historical events chronologically and examine the sequence of monarchs.
William I The Conqueror (1066-1087) (the Norman Dynasty) died as a result of falling from his horse in a battle in France, was succeeded by his two sons, one after the other:
William II (1087-1100) was cruel but a brave soldier, little loved and little missed when he died.
Henry I (1100-1135) was scholarly and well educated. His daughter was married to the German Emperor Henry V, and later upon his death to Geophrey ofAnjou; the son of Geophrey ofAnjou (Angevin) became the first Plantagenet*.
* Planta genista – Latin for "broom".
Henry II (1154-1189) was friendly with Thomas Becket, a humble clerk, who was appointed the archbishop of Canterbury. Henry misjudged this man who considered his first loyalty to be the Church and not the King.
The conflict ended in the murder of Thomas Becket in his own cathedral by the King's servants. Becket was canonized (St. Thomas); his shrine became a place of pilgrimage for the whole of Europe, for the cures effected there, until it was destroyed by Henry VIII in 1538. So the King of the House of Plantagenet was the first to have a conflict with the Church and he physically destroyed the opposition.
His wife Eleanor took a lively interest in politics. Somewhat too lively at times, for she abetted (helped and supported) her song when they rebelledagainst their father, she was, as a result, imprisoned.
Henry II's reign was one of constitutional progress and territorial expansion.
Richard I the Lion-Heart (1189-1199).
King Richard may have had the heart of a lion but England saw all too little of him. He was called a romantic sportsman and spent most of his life in Crusades in the Holy Land.
He used England's money to finance his crusades and other adventures, but he was not very lucky – returning from his successful mission, he was captured, and was kept imprisoned in Austria, awaiting the payment of a huge ransom.
He returned to England to stop his younger brother John from usurping the throne, soon after, he rushed to fight King Philip of France who had supported John. Philip was defeated but Richard was killed in a siege of a castle.
His wife who never set foot in England, left no children. So, John (Lackland) (1199-1216), the youngest son of King Henry II, continued the dynasty's rule.
King John Lackland was the most unpopular king: he lost most of his French possessions; he broke his father's heart with his misbehavior, he rebelled against his brother, quarrelled with the Pope, etc. The list of his stupidities and misdemeanours was endless but he did one good thing (or was forced to do it). In 1215 the barons made him seal the Magna Carta, which, though it limited the prerogative of the Crown and extended the powers of the Barons, has since become the foundation stone of an Englishman's liberty.
The pressure on the pocket is more quickly felt than the pressure on the mind - that is why John Lackland was forced by his barons to seal the Magna Carta Libertata (the Great Charter of 1215). Pressed by the demands of war, he had imposed taxes that irritated many of his most powerful subjects. The Magna Carta is a document that dealt with privileges claimed by Norman barons. It was to become part of the English constitutional inheritance, because the baronial claims for liberties were in time translated into the universal language of freedom and justice. It was the beginning of limiting the prerogatives of the Crown.
During the struggle for the Great Charter (Magna Carta) the legions of barons openly opposed the King – disobeyed him, did not pay taxes, raised an army of knights, enjoyed support of townsmen (London supported them), the King was forced to seal the Charter.