Heroes and historians

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a golden age for the 'chroniclers' – part historians, part story-tellers, part propagandists – who, with access to many ancient documents now lost, and drawing on spoken accounts passed on in the oral tradition, wrote a wide range of histories, biographies, genealogies and accounts of great deeds. Ignoring the scholarly example of Bede, they were often credulous and inventive. But their concept of history was as something to show the reader a moral, or to glorify the present state by linking it to past greatness – or the opposite: to show how things had sunk down. The medieval English looked backwards with a remarkably inclusive view. The Normans had no history; but there were the great Anglo-Saxon exemplars like Athelstan and Alfred the Great. And before the Anglo-Saxons? Geoffrey of Monmouth (c.1100-55), a churchman, based for a considerable part of his life in Oxford, has been described as 'the inventor of British history. He wrote the Historia Regum Britanniae, 'History of the Kings of Britain'; claiming to have taken information from a 'very ancient book written in the British [Welsh] language'. Geoffrey gave a major role to a figure who would otherwise scarcely rate a footnote in history, King Arthur, the great hero of Britain, with his wizard-counsellor Merlin. His book marks the start of a torrent of Arthurian literature, and gives European literature (and pre-Raphaelite English painting) one of its greatest themes. He also enlarged on the myth that Britain was founded by one Brutus, a Trojan hero, escaping from the sack of Troy. Thus the English could look back with satisfaction on a splendidly heroic past going right back to the Greek epics, even though the precise connections with these early phases and figures might be shrouded in mystery.

Despite some scepticism even at the time the first copies were circulated, it was not until the sixteenth century that the facts of Geoffrey's account were seriously questioned. Polydore Vergil, an Italian humanist commissioned by Henry VII to write a history of England, which was published in 1534, caused outrage by dismissing the Brutus legend. But even two hundred years later the historical existence of Brutus and Arthur still influenced wishful thinkers.

Part III

The Hundred Years War. Magna Carta and the decline of feudalism.

The beginning of Parliament. The development of towns.

Watt Tyler’s revolt. Chivalry and medieval culture. Wars of the Roses. Chaucer and William Caxton’s first printing press.)

The Renaissance period (The Tudors. The break with the church of Rome. The English Reformation. The Protestant-Catholic struggle. Elizabeth and Shakespeare’s age. Civil war and the Interregnum.

Oliver Cromwell and republicanism. The Restoration.

Constitutional monarchy. Union with Wales and the conquest of Ireland.).

King john and magna carta

Richard, beguiled by the glamour and prizes of Crusade, departed for Palestine, and on his return was intercepted in Austria and held to ransom by the emperor, Henry VI. Despite a rebellion by his brother, John, the ransom was paid and he returned, only to leave again for Normandy to campaign for his French possessions.

In 1213, John suddenly overturned his own policy, and that of Henry II, by agreeing that England should be a papal fief, its king owing his throne to the Pope. His aim was to obtain Innocent's support in a war against his old enemy Philip Augustus. But his war on France was a disastrous failure and the English barons rose against him, supported by the citizens of London. Magna Carta, their charter of grievance and reform, sixty-two clauses long, was sealed by an unwilling and unrepentant king on 17 June 1215. The barons' subsequent attempt to enforce it led to a split in their own ranks, and warfare followed between those who sided with the king and those who, standing four-square for the Charter, declared John deposed, and invited Louis, son John deposed, and invited Louis, son of Philip Augustus, to assume the throne of England.

King John

John's death in 1216, while on campaign in East Anglia, rescued the country from a civil war that was complicated by the invasion of Louis. His French troops and John's foreign mercenaries ravaged much of the south. In this critical juncture the country rallied round John's nine-year-old son, who became Henry III.