Timeline - Middle Ages

 

For many historians 1066 marks the beginning of the middle ages or the medieval period in Britain. It was in 1066 that William the Conqueror invaded England and defeated King Harold in the Battle of Hastings, an event immortalised in the famous Bayeux Tapestry. The subsequent Norman conquest of England established a French-speaking system of government and introduced a range of French vocabulary; some estimates suggest that a third of all English words are derived from the French language.

 

 

of the middle ages or the medieval era.

 

 

Early Middle Ages Crusades

The early middle ages were a time of great inequality; nobles lived in heavily fortified castles while peasants eked out a living on 'common' land; crusading knights rampaged through the Middle East trying to recover the Holy Land for Christians while in Britain Jews were alternately welcomed and then persecuted.
It was the vast expense entailed by the Crusades that gave rise to one of the most enduring legends of the British Isles: while Richard Lionheart was fighting to regain Jerusalem, his brother John staged a rebellion at home, forcing dissenters to become outlaws; the exorbitant taxes which he levied on the people to pay for the Crusades are included in later versions of the myth to explain why Robin Hood and his Merry Men pledge to 'rob from the rich to give to the poor'.
Ultimately King John was unable to suppress all of his opponents and the nobles of England banded together to produce an important document – the Magna Carta – limiting the power of the monarch. Though John refused to sign it, his successors did and by necessitating discussion and agreement between the King and his more influential subjects, the Magna Carta gave rise to both the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

High Middle Ages

 

War of the Roses

In the fifteenth century a civil war erupted as two families laid claims to the throne of England; the House of York bore the symbol of the white rose while the rival House of Lancaster adopted a red rose, hence the name 'war of the roses'. Many of the important players in this war feature in Shakespeare History plays though as these plays were written in the Tudor era and Henry Tudor was descended from the Lancastrian side, there is a marked tendency to glorify his forbears and villainise the Yorkists.

The impact of this war was far-reaching; though the fighting was localised the battles were bloody; the Battle of Towton near York which took place in 1461 left 28,000 dead, a figure which as a proportion of the population makes this the most catastrophic battle in British history, more deadly even than the Somme. The result of this can be felt down the centuries as the English nobles and peasants alike remained fearful of any hiccups in the line of succession which could give rise to another such destructive war. Thus when Henry Tudor, a Lancastrian, invaded England, defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and married Elizabeth Woodville, a Yorkist, uniting the two families under the new red and white Tudor rose, there was much relief at the promise of peace at last.

The Development of English

It is during the 14th century that English literature can be said to have begun with Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Though this poem is based on the Italian work Decameron, Chaucer's version is original in its satirical humour and subversive structure and, most importantly, for being written entirely in the English vernacular spoken by the uneducated masses. Until this time, the written word had been almost exclusively Latin, a language known only to a minority; thus the illiterate masses were dependent on educated monks and nobles to not only read texts but also translate them. This had important implications for religion as church leaders were adamant that the peasants should not be able to interpret the word of God for themselves and so refused to allow the Bible to be translated into English.

A second milestone in the development of English literature was the development of the printing press in 1440. Hitherto manuscripts were copied by hand, a time-consuming and laborious process conducted mainly by educated monks who could choose to alter, interpret or censor manuscripts as they saw fit. After William Caxton brought the printing press to England, he published a wealth of texts in the vernacular English, including the Canterbury Tales, and so facilitated the dissemination of English literature across a much wider spectrum of the population.

backward to the dark ages

forward to the Tudors

 

Crusades on film

The Legend of Robin Hood

Robin Hood on Film

TV Series on Robin Hood

Shakespeare's History Plays

 

TV Series on the War of the Roses

Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes in the Tower

Richard III on film