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Файл:Modern Britain New Realities and Challenges 2000-2020. Textbook
.pdf
Text II
The Norman Conquest and the profound political, social and
cultural changes in the Kingdom of England (1066-1154)
The history of the Kingdom of England from the Norman
Conquest of 1066 to the unification of the Kingdoms of England and
Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain is conventionally described
in periods named after successive ruling dynasties, that is, Norman
(1066–1154), Plantagenet (1154–1485), Tudor (1485–1603) and Stuart
(1603–1707). However, the changing dynasties were just the
background against which profound changes were taking place,
transforming the very nature of the English monarchy from absolute to
constitutional and laying the foundations of the largest empire in
history, “the empire on which the sun never sets”. It was during this
period that important changes to the constitutional law were made,
starting with the signing in 1215 of the Magna Carta, the formation of
the first parliament in 1264 under Henry III, and the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, which turned England into the “cradle of
democracy”.
The fortunes of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of England ruled by the
Wessex dynasty changed dramatically in 1066 with the death of
Edward the Confessor, who died childless. The new king, Harold II’s
right to the throne was challenged by a number of pretenders, the most
notable of whom was the Duke of Normandy, William. Normandy, the
most northern-western part of France, received its name from the
Scandinavian settlers (Northmen), whose right to the territory was
confirmed by treaty in the 10
France and the first ruler of Normandy, Rollo. As an ethic group,
Normans emerged as the result of contact between Norse Viking
settlers and indigenous Francs and Gallo-Romans. William invaded
England with a large fleet in September 1066 and defeated and killed
Harold at the battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066. Following his
victory, it took William some ten years consolidating his power by way
th
century between King Charles III of
11
of ruthless suppression of resistance to his rule. During this time,
William had to construct numerous motte-and-bailey castles to
provide defence against frequent revolts. Motte-and-bailey castle
design was characterized by a raised area of ground, called a motte, and
a walled courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and
palisade. A key part of the design was a fortified tower called the
‘keep’ used as a refuge of last resort. With the Norman invasion of
England, motte-and-bailey castles spread from Normandy to England,
Wales and Scotland, where they became a familiar landscape feature.
The Norman conquest of England brought about profound political,
administrative, social and cultural changes in England and throughout
the British Isles. The most radical change was the replacement of the
English elite with Norman aristocracy. William divided the country into
about 180 fiefs, which he granted to his Norman followers in a system
of land tenure and military service. Under this system, all the land in
England belonged to the king, and the landowners held their properties
directly from the king in return for their services. The Norman invasion
also led to a total replacement of English people from high
governmental and ecclesiastical office.
The Norman Conquest affected the English language as it launched
a process of cardinal changes in its vocabulary. By the time of the
Norman invasion, the period of Old English was drawing to a close,
and Middle English (1150-1500), while continuing to develop from a
syntactical into analytical form, suddenly experienced the impact of
Norman French on its lexicon and idiomaticity. The impact on English
by Old Norse was the result of interaction of two closely related
languages, which led to the loss of inflections, creating a means of
communication comprehensible for both Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.
The relations between Old Norman French and Old English, however,
were relations between the language of elite and the common language
of the masses. English was practically not used as a written language:
almost all written texts of the period are in French or Latin.
12
The domination of Norman French led to its gradual transformation
into Anglo-French, and the evolution of English into a new form,
mutually comprehensible both to English and Norman French speakers
through unprecedented replacement (up to 75 percent) of its vocabulary
of English words with borrowings from other languages, mostly from
French, Latin and Greek.
adapted from Ben Johnson,
“Kings and Queens of England & Britain”
BACKGROUND NOTES
Norman Conquest: the invasion and colonization of England from 1066
by knights from France, led by William the Conqueror, Duke of
Normandy.
Magna Carta: a charter of liberties agreed by King John in 1215,
establishing the concept of ‘free men’ and restricting the power of the
monarch.
Glorious Revolution: the deposition in 1688 of the Catholic King James
II by his Protestant daughter, who became Mary II, and her husband
William of Orange, so-called because it was achieved bloodlessly.
Pretender (to the throne): one who claims to be a legitimate heir to the
throne, generally through ancestry.
Motte-and-bailey castle: formidable castles built on raised ground
(motte) surrounded by a walled courtyard (bailey), introduced in
England by the Normans following their invasion and conquest.
Fief: the central component of feudalism, whereby property was
granted by a landlord or authority in exchange for allegiance and/or
service.
Old English: based on Anglo-Saxon, the earliest form of English
practiced from the fifth to eleventh centuries.
13
Middle English: the language practiced for 300 years from the midtwelfth to mid-fifteenth centuries with changes in Old English grammar
and pronunciation and the introduction of words from French and Latin.
Norman French: the language of the northern French which became
adopted in England as Anglo-Norman after 1066, where it became
dominant for the next 200 years.
QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
Comprehension Questions:
1. Name the ruling dynasties of the Kingdom of England from the
Norman Conquest to the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in
1707.
2. What battle led to the defeat of the last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold
II and the coronation of the Duke of Normandy, William?
3. Who were Normans as an ethnic group, and from where did they
come to Northern France?
4. What was the most radical change caused by the Norman
Conquest of England?
5. How did the Norman Conquest affect the English language?
Text III
Laying down the foundations of democracy in the Kingdom
of England under the Plantagenet kings (1154-1485)
The House of Normandy, which ruled the Kingdom of England after
the Battle of Hastings, lasted until the House of Plantagenet came to
power in 1154. The change to the line of Plantagenet kings came as a
result of a dispute between the heirs to the English throne after the
death of Henry I in 1135, whose daughter, Matilda, was married to
Geoffrey Plantagenet, the Duke of Normandy. The Royal Council
considered Matilda unfit to rule, and offered the throne to Stephen, a
grandson of William I. A civil war, known in history as ‘the Anarchy’,
14
ensued when Matilda invaded England in 1139, which ended in
compromise of the Treaty of Westminster: Matilda’s son, Henry
Plantagenet, would succeed to the throne when Stephen died. The rule
of the House of Plantagenet began in 1154 with Henry II and lasted
until 1485 with the end of the Wars of the Roses, when King Richard
III died in battle.
Under the Plantagenets, England went through a series of catastrophic
events, and was involved in lasting military conflicts, both on the
continent and in the country itself. In the period of 1315-1317, during the
rule of Edward II, Northern Europe, including the British Isles, was
struck by the Great Famine caused by crop failures and devastating
murrains. The deadliest pandemic in human history in Europe, the Black
Death, from 1347 to 1351, under the reign of Edward III, killed more
than a half of the kingdom’s population. The two great military conflicts
during the reign of Plantagenets were the Hundred Years’ War of 13371453 and the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487). The Hundred Years’ War
was waged between the House of Plantagenet under Edward III and the
French House of Valois over the right to rule the kingdom.
Eventually, the English lost almost all their land possessions in
France, but were in no position to restart hostilities due to lack of
resources and political instability at home. The Wars of the Roses for
the possession of the English throne were fought between the two cadet
branches of the Plantagenets – the House of Lancaster and the House
of York, whose heraldic symbols were the red and white roses
correspondingly. The Plantagenet line came to an end with the death of
Richard III of the House of York at the Battle of Bosworth Field in
Leicestershire in 1485. By that time, the male lines of both branches of
the Plantagenets had been wiped out. With Henry Tudor, crowned as
Henry VII, the House of Tudor united the two warring Houses by
marrying Elizabeth of York. As a symbol of reunification the Tudor’s
heraldic symbol represented both the red and white roses.
The large-scale crises that shook the Kingdom of England to its
foundation during the rule of Plantagenets also included challenges to
15
the very institute of absolute monarchy. The resolution of those crises
resulted in laying down the foundations of democracy. The first grave
crisis in the political history of the Plantagenets that put in question the
divine right of kings to rule without the consent of the governed, were
a series of events in 1215 which led to the outbreak of the First Barons’
War. King John (1199-1216), as his predecessors, ruled with ‘force and
will’, often without taking council of the leading members of the realm,
considering himself to be above the law. It led to a confrontation
between the king and the army of the rebel barons, as the result of
which King John agreed to sign the first royal charter of rights, the
Magna Carta Libertatum. The Magna Carta was agreed to by King
John and the barons on June 15, 1215 at Runnymede, near Windsor,
and it promised the protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment,
access to swift justice and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown.
The implementation of the Magna Carta caused some difficulties,
which led to the First Barons’ War. Despite the fact that the Magna
Carta failed initially, it became part of English political life and was
renewed by each new monarch in time. Even though the original
Magna Carta extended some individual rights to the elite rather than to
ordinary people, it remained a powerful, iconic document which even
now is regarded as an important symbol of liberty – the “foundation of
the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the
despot” (Lord Denning).
The second political crisis during the Plantagenets reign that led to
the formation of the first Parliament as a form of a legislative assembly
of elected representatives, took place under Henry III in the course of
the Second Barons’ War. The term ‘parliament’ appeared in England
yet in 1230s to describe gatherings of the royal court for agreeing on
the raising of the royal taxes. The notion of parliament as a
counterweight to the executive power, however, can be traced to the
th
English parliament held from January 20
, 1265 until mid-March of the
same year. The first parliament is known as Simon de Montfort’s
Parliament after the baron’s rebel leader, who, following his victory
16
over Henry III at the Battle of Lewes, summoned representatives from
not only the barons and the knights of the shires, but also burgesses
from the major towns. The idea of inviting both knights and burgesses
th
to parliaments continued, until, by the 14
century, it had become the
norm as the House of Commons. At present, Montfort’s 1265
parliament is regarded as a landmark in the development of parliament
as an institution during the medieval period.
adapted from Ben Johnson,
“Kings and Queens of England & Britain”
BACKGROUND NOTES
Wars of the Roses: a series of bloody battles for the throne of England
between the Houses of York (white rose) and Lancaster (red rose)
between 1455 and 1485, eventually ended with the crowning of Henry
VII and the establishment of the Tudor dynasty.
Cadet branch: in history and heraldry, the branch of a family descended
not from the eldest son or heir but the youngest, in use in England
since 1634.
Heraldic symbol: a coat of arms for a family or dynasty containing
symbols that embody the holder’s strengths and virtues.
Divine Right of Kings: the doctrine of monarchical absolutism which
insisted that kings derived their authority from God and were therefore
not subject to human laws.
Magna Carta: a charter of liberties agreed by King John in 1215,
establishing the concept of ‘free men’ and restricting the power of the
monarch.
Lord Denning (Alfred Thompson Denning, Baron Denning): the British
judge (years of life: 23 January 1899 – 5 March 1999) since 1944. In
1962 he became Master of the Rolls in the Court of Appeal, a position
he held for 20 years until his retirement. In the words of Margaret
17
Thatcher, he was “probably the greatest English judge in modern
times”.
Burgesses: inhabitants or freemen of a town or borough with citizenship
rights
QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
Comprehension Questions:
1. What events brought about the end of the House of Normandy
and the ascension to the throne of the House of Plantagenet in 1154?
2. Describe the series of catastrophic events under the
Plantagenets.
3. Which cadet branch of the Plantagenets won in the Wars of the
Roses, and why did the end of the war lead to the change of dynasties?
4. What events led to the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215?
5. How was the first Parliament as a form of a legislative assembly
of elected representatives established under the Plantagenets?
Text IV
The English Reformation and the origins
of the British empire under the Tudors (1485–1603)
The reign of the Tudor dynasty coincided with the cultural and
artistic movement, Renaissance, which originated in Italy in the late
th
century. The dominant art forms of the English Renaissance were
14
literature and music, unlike the Italian Renaissance, where visual arts
were more prominent. The chief figure of the English Renaissance in
literature, William Shakespeare, the author of some 39 plays and 154
sonnets, has eventually won recognition as the world’s greatest
dramatist and poet.
But the most important development under the Tudors was the
English Reformation of the 16
broke from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.
th
century, when the Church of England
18
Unlike the Protestant Reformation in western and central Europe, the
process of the English Reformation was initially caused not by a
theological dispute, but began rather as a political affair. The English
Church renounced papal authority when in 1527 the Roman Pope
refused Henry VIII’s request to annul his marriage to Catherine of
Aragon. Henry needed a son as a male heir to avoid the risk of civil war
over disputed succession, as his marriage to Catherine had not produced
surviving male heirs, and there was no established precedent for a
woman on the throne. The Pope’s refusal to annul his marriage led to
an open confrontation and to Henry’s declaring himself in the Act of
Supremacy of 1534 “the only Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of
England”. A break with the Roman Pope eventually led to theological
differ ences: the liturgy was now performed in English, and in 1549, the
Book of Common Prayer by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of
Canterbury, was published. The process of reforming the Church of
England launched by Henry VIII continued after his death and under
the succeeding dynasties, sometimes taking on violent forms. The last
Tudor monarch, Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), made a number of
religious and political arrangements, known as the Elizabethan
Religious Settlement, that were important to the development of
Anglicanism as a distinct Christian tradition. The Elizabethan
Settlement did not put an end to religious disputes, but it served as
guidelines for the English Church in presenting itself both as Catholic
and reformed.
The Tudor reign (1485-1603) was also the period when the
foundations of British Empire were laid, starting with overseas
exploration and following with the founding of the first permanent
settlements. Overseas exploration began with the voyage of John
Cabot in 1497 to the coast of North America. In fact, Henry VII
commissioned Cabot to lead an expedition in order to discover a route
to Asia via the North Atlantic, and Cabot, like Christopher Columbus,
mistakenly believed he had reached Asia when he made landfall on the
coast of Newfoundland.
19
During the reign of Elizabeth I, attempts at overseas exploration and
founding first settlements intensified. Humphrey Gilbert received a
patent in 1578 to explore the North American coast with the aim of
eventually founding a colony there. In 1583, he reached the island of
Newfoundland and claimed its harbor for England. His exploration was
continued by Walter Raleigh, who founded the Roanoke Colony, the
first permanent English settlement in North America. There were two
attempts to found the colony: the first attempt of 1585 failed due to lack
of supplies. The second attempt to found the first colony in America
went down in history as the ‘lost colony’ due to the unexplained
disappearance of its population.
While the first attempts to establish overseas colonies in the
Americas proved to be unsuccessful, England’s first overseas colony
under the Tudors was founded in Ireland. The process of confiscating
lands in Ireland and granting them to colonists from England began
under Henry VIII, and continued afterwards. The policy of settling
Ireland with Protestant planters from England and Scotland during the
Tudor conquest of Ireland was intended to develop Ireland as a peaceful
and reliable possession, without risk of rebellion or foreign invasion.
adapted from Ben Johnson, “Kings and Queens of England &
Britain”
BACKGROUND NOTES
Renaissance: the period in European history in the 15
century marking the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern age,
marked by the decline of feudalism, the rise of commerce and the
revival of Classical scholarship.
English Reformation: the process in the 16
VIII to break away from the Catholic Church, with the dissolution of the
monasteries, abolition of the Mass and the establishment of the
monarch as head of the Protestant Church of England.
th
century begun by Henry
th
and 16th
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