(C.410–1066) The six and a half centuries between the end of Roman rule and the Norman Conquest are among the most important in English history. This long period is also one of the most challenging to understand – which is why it has traditionally been labelled the ‘Dark Ages’. Yet a kingdom of England emerged in these centuries, and with it a new ‘English’ identity and language. After Roman rule in Britain ended, some Roman forts continued to be occupied. This reconstruction shows a timber hall that was one of several built at Birdoswald Roman Fort on Hadrian’s Wall after Roman administration collapsed.
AFTER THE ROMANS
The 5th and 6th centuries are certainly wrapped in obscurity. Records are few, difficult to interpret, propagandist, or written long after the events they describe. What is certain is that the Romans didn’t suddenly leave Britain. After 350 years of Roman rule – as long a period as separates the present day from Charles II – all Britons were, in a sense, Romans. Tradition has it that in 410 the Emperor Honorius wrote to the British Romans instructing them to look to their own defence. While it seems likely that the letter was not sent to Britain after all, such advice would have reflected the realities of the time. Britain was no longer subject to an imperial power that could protect it. This Anglo-Saxon brooch was part of a burial hoard found in West Heslerton, North Yorkshire. Individuals were often buried with personal effects such as clothes, earthenware goods or jewellery; the high quality of this brooch suggests a wealthy owner.
NEW ARRIVALS At first, the chief enemies of an independent Britain were Irish raiders from the west and Picts from the north. Later, Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrived from across the North Sea. We don’t know exactly how they invaded or settled in England, but by AD 500 Germanic speakers seem to have settled deep into Britain.
The Britons successfully counter-attacked, however, at first under Ambrosius Aurelianus, ‘the last of the Romans’. It’s during this early period that the figure of Arthur – possibly completely legendary – emerges. A record made three centuries later credits him with 12 battles, from Scotland to the south coast. Only the last, in about 500, is confirmed in earlier sources – but it makes no mention of Arthur. This British victory halted the Saxon advance for half a century. In independent kingdoms across the north and west, the British also resisted the repeated onslaughts of the peoples who were later called ‘English’. But by the 650s, almost all the lowlands were under English control. An Anglo-Saxon jet gaming piece found at Whitby Abbey. Excavations at the abbey have unearthed many important Anglo-Saxon artefacts.
CONVERSION AND COALESCENCE
Religion also divided the Christian British from the invading pagan Angles and Saxons, but from 597 English rulers were converted by Roman or Irish missionaries. Within a century a flourishing English Church had made dramatic advances in art and architecture.
Once separate groups of disparate peoples from the east coalesced into larger independent kingdoms, whose power fluctuated in parallel with their success and failure in war. The 7th-century dominance of Northumbria in the north was succeeded by that of Mercia in the midlands, especially under King Offa (r.757–96), builder of Offa’s Dyke. It was the crisis of Viking invasion, however, that brought a single, unified English kingdom into existence. Warriors depicted on the 9th-century ‘Domesday stone’, a grave marker from Lindisfarne. It may commemorate the Viking raid of 793
THE THREAT FROM THE NORTH
Sporadic Viking raids began in the 790s, Lindisfarne Priory in Northumbria was an early victim. Then in 865 an invading ‘Great Army’ began plundering from kingdom to kingdom, extorting protection money. Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia all fell, leaving only Wessex to fight on.
King Alfred of Wessex (r.871–99) defeated the Viking army decisively at Edington (878). Its leader, Guthrum, accepted Christian baptism, and agreed a treaty which allowed the Vikings to control much of northern and eastern England – the Danelaw.
But from the 910s King Edward the Elder (r.899–924) and his sister Æthelflaed, the ‘Lady of the Mercians’, conquered the Danelaw south of the Humber. Edward’s son Æthelstan (r.924–39) advanced still further: in 937 he destroyed a coalition of Vikings and Scots, and became known as ‘Ruler of All Britain’. In the 980s, however, Viking raids resumed, motivated by the ease of extorting vast quantities of silver from English coffers. The raids developed into full-scale invasions which eventually overwhelmed the disastrous King Æthelred ‘Unraed’ (r.978–1016).
EMPIRE AND CONQUEST
The Danish leader Cnut (r.1016–35), later also King of Denmark and Norway, was popularly recognised as Æthelred’s successor and made England part of a Scandinavian empire. The old West Saxon (Wessex) dynasty was revived with the accession of Edward the Confessor in 1042. But when he died without heirs in 1066, Harold Godwinson seized the throne.
England was immediately threatened both by Cnut’s heir, Harald Hardrada of Norway, and Edward’s choice of successor, Duke William of Normandy. Hardrada invaded first and was beaten at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, on 25 September 1066. Harold marched his weakened army south to face William at the Battle of Hastings, the outcome of which would open up an entirely new chapter in the story of England. The People of the Period Throughout these pages we have used these terms for the different peoples of the period.
British, Romano-British and Britons – the inhabitants of Britain following the end of Roman rule in the early 5th century. Angles, Saxons and Jutes – the Germanic peoples who migrated from continental Europe and settled, initially in the south and east of the island, from the 5th century. Anglo-Saxons – the collective term for the Germanic settlers, first coined in the late 8th century. It came into general use in the 10th century. Vikings – the invaders from Scandinavia who between the 8th and 11th centuries raided much of western Europe, including the British Isles. Danes – the Vikings who mounted a full-scale invasion in the 860s and then settled across much of what is now northern and eastern England. English – refers both to the Anglo-Saxons (the first people to call themselves ‘English’ or ‘Angli’) and later to all settlers in England, including Danes, particularly after the emergence of a unified kingdom of England in the 10th century. An Introduction to Medieval England (1066– 1485) Duke William of Normandy’s resounding triumph over King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 marked the dawn of a new era. The overthrow of the Saxon kingdom of England was to transform the country the Normans conquered, from how it was organised and governed to its language and customs – and perhaps most visibly today, its architecture. In the depiction above, we see William I seated on his throne, depicted in the late 12th-century Battle Chronicle, written by the monks of Battle Abbey.
NORMAN RULE William and his knights, and the castles they built, transformed England and helped impose Norman rule. Norman clergy dominated the Church, and monasteries and churches were constructed in the new Romanesque or Norman style of architecture. William’s survey of England, Domesday Book (1086), recorded a land governed by feudal ties. Every level of society was under an obligation of service to the class above. Punitive forest laws protected the royal hunting preserves, and reinforced the new regime.
NORMANS AND ANGEVINS
However, baronial revolts plagued the Conqueror and his son, William Rufus (r.1087–1100). William’s youngest son, Henry I (r.1100–35), brought peace and administrative and legal reform. But the country descended into chaos and civil war when Henry’s nephew Stephen (r.1135–54) was crowned king, despite the rival claim of Henry’s daughter Matilda.
Order was restored by Matilda’s son, Henry II (r.1154–89), the first of the Angevin or Plantagenet kings. A monarch of boundless energy and ungovernable rages, he travelled constantly through his vast dominions, stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees. The many fortresses he raised included Dover Castle, which was rebuilt partly as a splendid stopover on the road to Canterbury and the shrine of his ‘turbulent’ priest, St Thomas Becket, murdered in his cathedral by Henry’s knights in 1170.
Richard I ‘the Lionheart’ (r.1189–99) was always abroad or on crusade. His younger brother John (r.1199–1216) was forced by his barons to sign Magna Carta (the ‘Great Charter’), which was intended to limit his powers, in 1215. But ultimately he ignored it. His incensed barons invited Prince Louis of France to invade in May 1216. John died in October 1216, with his nine-year-old son, Henry, assuming the throne in the midst of French invasion.
Louis conquered almost all of south-eastern England (though not Dover Castle), but retreated in 1217 after defeats in the Battle of Sandwich and in the streets of Lincoln. Heraldic floor tile in the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey depicting the three lions of England, Henry III’s coat of arms. The shield is flanked by centaurs and wyverns (beasts with dragons’ heads and serpents’ tails)
KINGS, BARONS AND FAVOURITES
The long reign of Henry III (r.1216–72) saw further baronial unrest, from the late 1250s headed by Simon de Montfort. But after de Montfort’s death at the Battle of Evesham (1265) and the long siege of Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire, rebellion was finally suppressed. This was a time when chivalric ‘heraldry’ blossomed, enhanced by the craze for legends of King Arthur.
Edward I (r.1272–1307), another great castle-builder, united his barons behind the conquest of Wales (1277–84) and his attempts on Scotland. His Scottish policy proved disastrous for his less warlike son Edward II (r.1307–27), though, whose defeat at Bannockburn (1314) was followed by Scots raids far south of the border.
The king’s devotion to his low-born ‘favourites’, Piers Gaveston and then the Despenser family, enraged his barons. So when Edward’s spurned wife, Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, invaded from France in 1326, they quickly gained support. Edward was forced to renounce the throne in favour of his 14-year-old son, and was almost certainly brutally murdered at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire.
Although Isabella and Mortimer initially governed, Edward III (r.1327–77) assumed control in his own right in 1330, ousting his mother and executing her lover. Edward was a great warrior king, winning victories in France at Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356) during the early years of what was later known as the Hundred Years War (1337–1453). His armies included archers using longbows, which became the dominant English weapon of the later Middle Ages.
CHURCH AND SOCIETY
Monasteries and churches flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. New religious foundations such as almshouses and hospitals cared for the poor and sick. Towns grew in size and autonomy, as the old divisions between Normans and the English began to break down. English began to replace Norman French as the dominant language. Commerce developed, helped by better coinage and the growth of the wool trade. But the growth of a money-based economy began to put the old feudal order under pressure. Aerial view of Wharram Percy in Northumberland. The village had a population of 200 in the 13th century, but witnessed a steep decline in the 14th century. Scottish raids were followed by the Black Death, which saw the population reduce from about 67 to 45
PLAGUE, REVOLT AND PIETY
Then, in 1348–9, the established order and the population were struck a devastating blow by the Black Death, which killed between a third and a half of England’s population. The most immediate of its many effects was an acute labour shortage. Survivors demanded higher wages and bond men refused to do unpaid ‘service’ for feudal masters. Attempts to fix wages and prices at pre-plague rates only increased resentment.
Edward III’s grandson and successor, Richard II (r.1377–99), inherited a bankrupt treasury and discontent over reverses in the conflicts with France. In 1381 simmering grievances erupted into the Peasants’ Revolt. The feudal system was not the only institution being challenged. For the first time in English history, the doctrines as well as the actions of the Church were being attacked, by John Wycliffe and the Lollards. Yet still religion remained all-pervasive in daily life, though the focus of piety changed from monasteries to parish churches. Many people sought salvation by paying to have prayers said for them in chantry chapels, and undertaking pilgrimages.
More dangerous was the increasingly fashionable expression of power and status through the recruiting of private armies of liveried retainers. These contributed to the breakdown of order as Henry VI (r.1422– 61 and 1470–71) proved incompetent to rule, and rival aristocratic factions contended to control both monarch and kingdom.
These feuds developed into a series of short campaigns (and often bloody battles) fought at intervals between 1455 and 1485, during which the Crown changed hands six times. Cannon were used in some sieges, but the longbow remained the dominant weapon.
The Yorkist Edward IV (r.1461–70 and 1471–83) eventually emerged victorious. But his brother Richard III (r.1483–5) alienated supporters by seizing the throne from his nephew Edward V (r.1483). Richard was defeated and killed at Bosworth (1485) by the Lancastrian heir, Henry Tudor.
