BRITISH HISTORY AND CIVILISATIONI. British Insularity

• Great Britain:– England (the South, the Midlands and the North): from the Channel to the Scottish

Border (the Cheviot Hills);– Scotland (united to England in 1707): the Highlands; the Lowlands and the Islands (the

Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Orkney Islands, the Shetland Islands);– Wales (united to England under the first Tudors, Henry VII and Henry VIII).

• Northern Ireland (Ulster);• the Isle of Man and Anglesey (in the Irish Sea);• the Isle of Wight, Jersey and Guernsey (‘the Channel Islands’); the Scilly Islands (SE of

Cornwall). Consequences of British Insularity

• Britain’s peculiar geographical position has influenced its climate, its people and its history in more than one direction.

– Climate: temperate, influenced by the warm Atlantic Current (Gulf Stream), with mild winters and warm summers;

– People: restrained, reserved, with a conservative mentality marked by a preference for traditional habits and structures (e.g. talking about the weather; carrying an umbrella and a jacket on a warm day because it might rain or turn cold; the five o’clock tea; etc.);

– History: The sea has turned the English into a sea-faring nation, able to roam the oceans of the world and to build up a great maritime empire. The sea provided potential security from foreign invasions from the continent, but also imminent danger from enemies from the north (and not only).

II. Invasions and Patterns of Settlement in the British Isles • Ancient Britain:

– Stone Age: the Megalithic Men;– Bronze Age: the Beaker people;– Iron Age: the Celts;– The Romans.

• Middle Ages:– The Anglo-Saxons;– The Vikings;– The Normans.

• Battles for Britain:– The Renaissance: the Spanish Armada;– The Second World War: the German Luftwaffe.

Ancient Britain: the Megalithic Men• Stone Age (about 3,000 BC):

– The first settlers probably coming from the Iberian Peninsula (the ‘Iberians’) or even from the North African coast:

• small, dark, long-headed people (probably the ancestors of the dark-haired inhabitants of Wales and Cornwall);

• They kept animals, grew corn and knew how to make pottery.– This first wave of ‘invaders’ settled in the western parts of Britain and Ireland, from

Cornwall all the way to the far north.– Remains that reveal the huge organisation of labour in prehistoric Britain:

• the “henges”: centres of religious, political and economic power made of great circles of earth banks and ditches inside which there were wooden buildings and stone circles; e.g. Stonehenge in Salisbury Plain: made of monumental circles of massive vertical stones topped with immense horizontal slabs (‘megaliths’ → the name of these prehistoric people, i.e., ‘Megalithic Men’); other (earth or stone) henges were built in many parts of Britain as far north as the Orkney Islands and as far south as Cornwall.

Ancient Britain: the Beaker People• Bronze Age (after 2,400 BC):

– New groups of people came from Europe (France and the Low Countries) and settled in south-east Britain.

– Characteristics:• round-headed, strongly built, taller than Neolithic Britons;• speaking an Indo-European language;• skilled in working metal (bronze) and in making pottery; bringing a new cereal

from Europe, i.e. barley; • introducing the first individual graves to replace the former communal burial

mounds (‘barrows’); their graves were furnished with pottery beakers (the ‘Beaker’ people).

Ancient Britain: the Celts• Iron Age (around 700 BC):

– From the sixth century BC over the next seven hundred years, the Celts swept into the British isles, coming from central Europe or further east, in three successive waves, kindred indeed but mutually hostile and each with a dialect of its own:

• The Goidelic/ Gaelic Celts settled in Ireland whence they spread to Scotland and the Isle of Man. Their linguistic heritage is represented by: Gaelic (the national language in Ireland), Erse (in the Highlands and the Islands of Scotland) and the now extinguished Manx (only in the Isle of Man).

• two centuries later, the Brythonic Celts/ Britons settled in England and Wales. Their linguistic heritage is represented by: Welsh (in Wales) and Cornish (spoken in Cornwall up to the end of the eighteenth century, to be revived nowadays).

• About 100 BC, the Belgic tribes settled in the south-east of Britain.• General characteristics:

– tall, fair or red-haired men; wearing shirts and breeches, and stripped or checked cloaks fastened by a pin (possibly the origin for the Scottish tartan and dress); of an impressive cleanliness and neatness.

– skills: They knew how to work with iron, hence they could make better weapons and introduce more advanced ploughing methods to farm heavier soils. They built hill-forts which remained economic centres for local groups long after the Romans came to Britain (e.g. the tradition of organising annual fairs). They traded across tribal borders and trade was probably important for political and social contact between the tribes inside and beyond Britain.

– religion: polytheistic. Their priests, the Druids could not read or write, but they memorised all the religious teachings, the tribal laws, history, medicine, and other knowledge necessary in the Celtic society. Religious rituals (which sometimes included human sacrifice) were not performed in temples but in sacred (oak) groves, on certain hills, by rivers or by river sources.

– gender roles: Women, especially from the upper strata, had more independence and they were respected for their courage and strength in battle. (Roman writers leave an impression of a measure of equality between the sexes among the richer Celts.) Actually, when the Romans invaded Britain two of the largest tribes were ruled by women who fought from their chariots. The most powerful Celt to stand up to the Romans was a woman, Boadicea (61 AD).

• Cultural heritage:– The very name ‘Britain’ comes from ‘Pretani’, the name which the Greeks called the

Celtic inhabitants of Britain, mispronounced by the Romans into ‘Britannia’. – Celtic survivings in English: names of rivers and places (e.g. Avon, Thames; York,

Kent, London); first syllables in Winchester, Manchester, Gloucester, Exeter; words (e.g. brat, cradle, down, mattock, etc.)

– In literature: legends and sagas imbued with a sense of mystery, a dramatic conception of man’s existence at grip with fate, sung by bards at the accompaniment of the harp:

• The Cycle of Ulster (the oldest literary attempts of the Irish epic recording the deeds of king Conchobar and the brave hero Cuchulainn);

• The Cycle of Munster (focused on the heroic figures of Finn and his son Ossian, a gifted bard).

In the late eighteenth century, the interest in the old Celtic literary tradition was revived by the Pre-Romantic movement. James Macpherson’s alleged translations from the legendary Irish bard Ossian brought about the emergence of a new literary fashion in almost the whole Europe, known as Ossianism.

• With the rise of nationalistic feelings in present-day Britain, Britishness – originally a general term denoting national identity for the inhabitants of England, Scotland and Wales – has come to evoke the Celtic origin of Scotland and Wales as opposed to Englishness, evocative of England’s Anglo-Saxon roots and her ruling position.

Invasions and Patterns of Settlement in the British Isles (II)

Ancient Britain: the Romans• The Roman invasion:

– reasons: 1. the Celts of Britain supported the Celts in Gaul against the Romans (sending them food and allowing them to hide in Britain). 2. Under the Celts, Britain became an important food producer because of the mild climate and the advanced ploughing technology. The Romans needed British food for their own army fighting the Gauls.

– the Roman invasion:• 55-54 BC: Julius Caesar raided Britain to stop the support the British Celts

offered to the Celts in Gaul. • 43 AD: Britain was conquered by Emperor Claudius’s legions. Actually, the

Romanised area stretched across the southern part of Britain, from the River Humber to the River Severn. The Romans also extended their control in Wales (the towns of York, Chester, etc.) but did not develop their culture there. Therefore, the area of Roman occupation was divided into two sharply contrasting regions: the Latinised south and east, and the barbarian north and west.

The Romans could not conquer “Caledonia” (i.e. Scotland). They built a strong wall along the northern border (Hadrian’s Wall) to keep out the raiders (Scots and Picts) from the north.

• 409 AD: Rome withdrew its last legions from Britain, as Rome itself was under fierce siege by the Germanic tribes. (Rome itself was sacked by the Goths in 410.) The Romanised Celts were left to fight alone against the Scots, the Irish and the Anglo-Saxon raiders from Germany.

• Benefits of the Roman rule:– prosperous towns which were the basis of Roman administration and civilisation (e.g.

Colchester – a seat of the imperial Cult, meant to focus the loyalty of the province, where a temple of the deified Claudius was erected; London – the business centre of the province, a supply port and the centre of the system of Roman roads);

– stone-paved highways which continued to be used long after the Romans left and became the main roads of modern Britain;

– glass windows, central heating, running water, Roman baths; – large farms (‘villas’) outside the towns, belonging to the richer Britons who had become

more Roman than Celt in their manners (as opposed to the huts and villages in which most of the Celtic population continued to live);

– the introduction of figurative styles particularly in sculpture, wall-painting and mosaic, but also in the minor arts and crafts (jewellery, pottery, furniture, household goods);

– the introduction of reading and writing (Latin alphabet): Latin speaking town-dwellers and rich landowners/ vs./ the illiterate Celtic peasantry. However, with the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, Latin completely disappeared both in its spoken and written forms. Consequently, it is difficult to say how many Latin words penetrated the English vocabulary through Celtic. E.g.s of authentic borrowings from Latin to Celtic: caester, chester (“castrum” in Chester, Doncaster, Gloucester, etc.); coln (“colonia” in Lincoln, Colchester); port (“portus” in Porchester, Davenport, Portsmouth); wick/ wich (“vicus” in Wickham); pool (“padulis” in Liverpool); street (“strata”), wall (“vallum”), wine (“vinum”);

– the introduction of Christianity in 313 under Emperor Constantine the Great (his mother, Helen, was a Celtic princess from Britain). Saint Patrick first brought Christianity to Ireland (he became the island’s patron saint).

The Anglo-Saxons• At first the Germanic tribes only raided Britain, but after 430 AD they began to settle. One

legend actually claims that they were initially hired by the Romanised Celts to help them fight back the attacks of the Scots and the Picts (e.g. 449 – Hengest and Horsa), but then they turned against their employers and decided to stay despite their hosts’ resistance. A much more reliable source is Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written three centuries later, which was proven correct by archaeological evidence.

↓The Germanic invaders coming from northern Germany and southern Denmark belonged to

three powerful tribes:1. The Angles who settled in the east and in the north Midlands;2. The Jutes who settled in Kent and along the south coast;3. The Saxons who settled from the Thames Estuary westwards between the Angles and

the Jutes. The Anglo-Saxon migrations lasted from about 441 when they secured a permanent stronghold at the mouth of the Thames to about 600 when they virtually controlled the present-day England (‘land of the Angles’).

The British Celts were killed, famished, enslaved and pushed into the corners of the island in Wales (‘the land of the foreigners’), Cornwall and southern Scotland. Others sailed to Ireland or to Brittany on the French coast. (The Celtic resistance to the invaders was immortalised in legends dominated by the figure of King Arthur as a hero of many victories against the Anglo-Saxons.)

• Anglo-Saxon Culture:– a Nordic culture which involved the worship of war gods, which praised the warrior’s

courage, strength, intelligence, and, above all, loyalty to the leader; cowardice, desertion and lack of honour were publicly condemned.

– a religion of dread that taught people not to be afraid of death and to aspire to the ideal of heroic sacrifice on the battlefield. Coldness and pessimism were defining features of the Anglo-Saxon religion according to which Wyrd (Fate) was stronger than the gods themselves.

– The Anglo-Saxon myths and legends were collected in the Edda and handed down from generation to generation. The body of epic poetry celebrated heroes like Sigurd and Beowulf, whereas the elegies spoke of the ups and downs of life, foregrounding, in lyrical terms, the values and beliefs of the Anglo-Saxon society.

– The Anglo-Saxons shared with the Scandinavians the art of decorating weapons, jewellery, and objects of daily use with patterns of great beauty and richness, as well as customs of war and agriculture. (e.g. the Sutton Hoo archaeological site, 1936)

• Government and society:- the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in:

– the 6th century – the ‘Heptarchy’:• Angles: Mercia, Northumbria, East-Anglia;• Saxons: Essex, Wessex, Sussex;• Jutes: Kent.

– the 8th century: as a result of the conflicts between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex grew larger and more powerful.

– the 9th century: only the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex (under the rule of King Alfred the Great) managed to survive the Viking invasion.

- the administrative organisation: shires (counties) – one of the world’s oldest still functioning government unit. In each shire, one shire reeve/ sheriff was appointed as the king’s local administrator, in charge of raising taxes and recruiting soldiers.

- Unlike the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons were not city dwellers. They settled in the countryside. The community was organised around the lord’s manor where the villagers paid taxes, justice was administered and men joined the army (the fyrd). It was the beginning of the manorial system which reached its full development under the Normans.

- The Anglo-Saxon technology changed the shape of English agriculture.- They cleared dense forests and drained wet lands.- Their heavier ploughs allowed them to better plough heavier soils in long

straight lines across the field.- Their system of land ownership and organisation put the land of the community

to better use. They divided the land into two-three large fields, which were further sub-divided into long thin strips (‘hides’) owned by each family and cultivated in the same way as the ones of the neighbours. One field was used for spring crops, a second one for autumn crops, and a third one was left to rest for a year and used, together with the other fields after crop harvesting, as common land for animals to feed on.

- Thus, the Anglo-Saxons set the basis of English agriculture until the eighteenth century.

• Anglo-Saxon hierarchical system:– the king (‘cyning’): 1. ‘the ring-giver’ in times of peace (arm-rings or neck-rings = gold

pieces/ jewellery given as a reward to the warriors for their courage and values); 2. the ‘shield’ and protector in times of war.

The king was elected and assisted during his rule by the Witan, a council made of senior warriors and churchmen. Without the Witan’s support, the king’s authority was in danger.

- the noblemen – ‘eorlas’ (earls) or thanes: they enjoyed material privileges in exchange for their loyalty and military support to the king.

- the ‘ceorlas’: free men entitled to their share of the common land.- the ‘laet’: landless men who cultivated the soil for their lord (serfs).- the slaves: war prisoners or people sold by their families in times of famine to save them

from starvation or convicts in a law-suit. Slaves were working machines that could be bought or sold, even killed by their masters.

The Anglo-Saxons had their own system of punishing manslaughter by paying a sum of money (‘wergilt’ = war money) to the relatives of the murdered man. (The slaves were an exception in this respect; the master paid no wergilt.)The Anglo-Saxon system represented a transition from the tribal to the feudal organisation.

• The introduction of Christianity (7th century):– in the early days of the Anglo-Saxon rule in Britain: heathen Anglo-Saxons /vs./ the

Christianised Celts (Wales, Scotland and Ireland)– 597 AD: Pope Gregory the Great sent a monk, Augustine, to re-establish Christianity in

England. He came as a missionary in Canterbury, at king Ethelbert of Kent’s court, and he became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 601. He continued to convert especially ruling families in Kent, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex and Wessex.

– In Northumbria, Christianity was introduced by Irish monks 40 years later.– The ordinary people in Britain were converted by Celtic Church bishops from Wales,

Ireland and Scotland, who travelled from village to village to spread Christianity. ↓the Celtic Christian Church (ordinary people) vs. the Roman Christian Church (interested in authority)↓663 AD: the Synod of Whitby decided in favour of the Roman Church. The Celtic Church retreated as Rome extended its authority over all Christians, even in the Celtic parts of the island.Christianity brought about the return of learning, reading and writing in Latin, enriching the Anglo-Saxon language with Latin vocabulary. The monasteries became seats of learning and teaching of Latin, Greek, music, astronomy, medicine, miniature art and history (e.g. the Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastic History of the English People). The Vikings

• Vikings (“pirates”; “people of the sea inlets”) came from Norway and Denmark. • end of the 8th century: the first raids along the east, north and west coasts of Britain and Ireland

(London – raided in 842)• 9th-10th centuries: Viking raids in various other parts of the world going as far as Piraeus and

Constantinople. • Viking lore:

– The Scandinavian prose Sagas recorded with extraordinary realism their life of war and plunder.

– “God spare us from the wrath of the Northmen.” – regular prayer in England. • 870: From among the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, only Wessex (incorporating Wessex, little

of Kent and half of Mercia) survived. → England divided into: Wessex and the ‘Danelaw’ (the east and north of England).

• Alfred the Great (871-900): He built walled settlements (burghs) to keep the Danes out. 878 – he defeated the Danes and forced their leader Guthrum to sign the treaty of Wedmore, whereby the Vikings underwent baptism and agreed to retire into the Danelaw.

• King Canute/ Knut/ Cnut: the Viking king of England (elected in 1016), Denmark (1018), Norway (1028) and parts of Sweden. He was on the way to found a Northern Empire with Scandinavia for one pillar and England for the other, reinforcing the cultural bonds between these cultural spaces. When he died in 1035, his incapable Danish successors dissipated the confederation and England returned to Anglo-Saxon monarchs.

• The last Viking invasion: during the rule of the last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson. 1066: Harold had to march north into Yorkshire to fight the Vikings led by Harald Hardrada, King of Norway. The Vikings were defeated at Stanford Bridge.

The Normans• 1066:

– the death of Edward the Confessor (1042-66);– Harold Godwinson chosen by the Witan as the new king. He succeeded to the throne

under the suspicion of having usurped the rights of Edward’s heir, William, Duke of Normandy.

– William’s claims to the English throne:• King Edward had promised the throne to him before his death;• Harold, who visited William in 1064/1065, promised he would not take the

throne for himself. ↓October 13, 1066: William’s troops landed at Pevensey.The battle of Hastings: Better armed, better organised and mounted on horses, the Normans defeated the Anglo-Saxons. Harold died on the battlefield. (The Tapestry of Bayeux – the story of the Norman triumph) William marched to London and he was crowned King of England in Edward’s church of Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1066.- the ‘harrying of the North’: atrocious punitive campaigns meant to put down the resistance of the Saxon earls in the North of England.

• The Norman feudal system: – the King:

• divided the land to the nobles: William gave half to the Norman nobles, a quarter to the Church and kept a fifth for himself. The nobles were given pieces of land in different parts of the country so that no noble could easily or quickly gather his fighting men to rebel.

– the nobles: • received from the king the feu, land held in return for duty or service to the lord.

→ vassals who owed the king obedience, help in time of war and part of the produce of their land.

• The greater nobles gave parts of their lands to lesser nobles, knights, and other ‘freemen’ (yeomen).

• the “homage” ritual: the vassal kneeled before the lord, his hands placed between those of his lord. (nowadays part of the coronation ceremony of British kings and queens)

– the ‘freemen’ (yeomen): some paid for the land by doing military service, while others paid rent.

– the peasants bound to the land (serfs): they were not free to leave the estate and were often little better than slaves.

• Basic principles of feudalism:– Every man has a lord.– Every lord has land.

↓DOOMSDAY BOOK (1088): a general survey of all the lands of the kingdom, their value, owners, quality of the soil, cattle or poultry. It was an inventory of both all the possessions of the country and the social distribution of the population.

• the fate of the defeated: English lords were deprived of their lands in favour of the French barons. All high offices both in the church and state were exclusively filled by French speaking foreigners. The English found themselves excluded from all road leading to honour or preferment. In 1088, only 5,000 thanes were recorded to survive as the local gentry.

• Cultural conditions in Norman England: the 13th century Renaissance– the peaceful ‘invasion’ of Normandy’s industrial and trading classes

↓a) Architecture: the building of England’s twenty-seven greatest cathedrals (Norwich, Gloucester, Oxford, Peterborough, Winchester, St. Albans, Durham, etc.)-styles: 1) the English Romanesque or Norman style (bold massive construction, semicircular arches, flat buttresses, ponderous cylindrical pillars, geometrical patterns); 2) the Gothic (pointed arches, clustered columns, pointed ribbed vaults, flying buttresses, tall and pointed towers and spires, stained glass) b) development of crafts in wood, stone, glass, tapestry and painting (miniatures).c) the first universities: Oxford – 1249; Cambridge – 1284 – seats of learning (John Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Roger Bacon)d) chronicles: The Anglo-Norman Chronicles (written in Latin, but lacking the impartiality of their Anglo-Saxon predecessors); Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora (English and Continental events from 1255) and Chronica Minora (home events between 1200-1250); Walter Map’s Of Courtiers’ Trifles (violent attacks at the corruption and abuses of the clergy)e) Middle English: Latin (the language of the church and scholarship) – French (the language of public life, aristocratic society, law-courts and royal administration, literature, art and cooking) – English (the language of the people at large, of the illiterate lower classes) Battles for Britain

• The defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588)• Fighting the German Luftwaffe (1940)

England versus Spain in the Late Sixteenth Century• Anglo-Spanish relations in the 1570s-1580s:

– the conflict over control of the commercial routes:• Spain ruling over the Protestant Netherlands that fought for independence;

• Spanish ships ‘harassed’ by English “privateers” (‘pirates’ unofficially supported by Queen Elizabeth I; e.g.: Francis Drake, Martin Frobisher, Walter Raleigh) ↔ the result of Spain’s refusal to allow England to trade freely with Spanish American colonies.

– the religious conflict: Catholic Spain vs. Protestant England • 1570 – Elizabeth I excommunicated by Pope Pius V. Loyal Catholics were urged

to depose her. • England supported the Protestant French and the Dutch Protestant rebels.

• 1580s:– Philip II of Spain prospered: he annexed Portugal (1580) and the Azores (1582-3). He

built a great fleet, an “Armada”, exceeding in size the combined fleets of England and the Netherlands. Philip decided to conquer England before he would be able to defeat the Dutch in the Netherlands.

– 1584: the Dutch leader, William of Orange, was assassinated. That created panic among English politicians who feared that Elizabeth I might fall victim too.

– 1585: Phillip II was confident he could seize all English ships in Iberian ports. Elizabeth I responded by sending the Earl of Leicester to Holland with an army, but Leicester was defeated.

– 1587: The Spanish Armada was attacked and partly destroyed by Francis Drake in the Cadiz harbour.

– 1588: The re-built Spanish Armada (the largest that had ever gone to sea, but less fast than the English ships) carrying mainly soldiers (few ships carried cannons and medium guns) aimed at conquering England and controlling the English Channel, so that subsequently Spanish troops could have easier access to the Netherlands. However, the Spanish Armada was defeated by the English weather and by the English guns. Some Spanish ships were sunk, but most were blown northwards by the wind, many being wrecked on the rocky coasts of Scotland and Ireland. In August 1588 Protestant England celebrated with prayers and public thanksgiving. The war with Spain continued until Elizabeth I’s death (1603), but the Britain did not become the scene of a foreign invasion.

The Second World War: The Battle of Britain• September 1939: Germany invaded Poland, and Britain entered the war.• May 1940 – June 1940: The German army invaded the Netherlands, attacked and defeated the

French. France capitulated within 11 days on June 10, 1940. The British army was driven into the sea and was saved by thousands of private boats which crossed the English Channel at Dunkirk.

• Summer-autumn 1940: The German air forces (Luftwaffe) launched a major bombing and raiding campaign over Britain. Their targets: coastal shipping convoys, shipping centres, Royal Air Force (RAF) airfields and infrastructure, aircraft factories and ground infrastructure. Finally, the Lufwaffe resorted to attacks on strategic town areas which culminated in the serial bombing of London which killed thousands of civilians and destroyed most of central London.

In this time of terror, Prime Minister Winston Churchill brilliantly managed to persuade a nation “on its knees” that it would win. The failure of Germany to achieve its objectives of destroying Britain’s air defences, or forcing Britain to negotiate an armistice or an outright surrender is considered both its first major defeat and one of the crucial turning points in the war. If Germany had gained air superiority, Adolf Hitler might have launched Operation Sealion, an amphibious and airborne invasion of Britain.

British Monarchy: from the Anglo-Saxon Kings to the Twenty-first Century

House of Windsor (1)

The Anglo-Saxon Kings The king was elected by the WITAN – the King’s Council – a formal body including senior

warriors and churchmen who issued laws and charters. It was not at all democratic and the king could choose to ignore the Witan’s advice. But he knew that it might be dangerous to do so. For the Witan’s authority was based on its right to choose kings, and to agree the use of the king’s laws. Without its support, the king’s own authority was in danger. The Witan established a system which remained an important part of the king’s method of government. Even today, the king/ queen has a Privy Council, a group of advisers on the affairs of state.

Anglo-Saxon Royalty and the Christian Church– king Ethelbert of Kent – Christianised by Augustine (597);– 663 – the Synod of Whitby – the king of Northumbria decided in favour of the Roman

Church.– Saxon kings helped the Church to grow, but the Church also increased the power of

kings. Bishops gave kings their support, which made it harder for royal power to be questioned. Kings had “God’s approval.” E.g. When king Offa of Mercia arranged for his son to be crowned as his successor, he made sure that this was done at a Christian ceremony led by a bishop. It was good political propaganda, because it suggested that kings were chosen not only by people but also by God.

Alfred the Great (871-900) – chosen by the Witan upon his elder brother’s death, he was compared to Charlemagne owing to his many-sided talents:

– 1. warrior: He defeated the Danes led by Guthrum. → 878: the treaty of Wedmore; 886 – He captured London, which brought all the English not under the Danish rule to accept him as a king; 892-896 – He resisted serious attacks by a large Danish force from the Continent.

– 2. administrator: After the war, the burghs/ boroughs (walled settlements), initially built for defence, became prosperous market towns. He organised his finances and the service due from his thanes, took steps to ensure the protection of the weak and dependent from oppression by ignorant or corrupt judges, limited the practice of the blood feud and imposed heavy penalties for breach of oath or pledge.

– 3. scholar: He believed that only through learning men could acquire wisdom and live in accordance with God’s will. He taught himself Latin and translated, or ordered to be translated, books of theology, history and geography. He had Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and Paulus Orosius’s Seven Books of Histories Against the Pagans translated into English (in fact into the West Saxon dialect). He translated himself St. Gregory I’s Pastoral Care and St. Augustine of Hippo’s Soliloquies. He initiated the keeping of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (c. 890), the first year-by-year historical records ever composed in English. He encouraged the foundation of the first public schools in the monasteries.

Edward the Confessor (1042-66)– more of a Norman than an Englishman, he spent most of his life in Normandy.– more interested in the Church than in kingship, as he lived among Norman monks

during the Danish rule in England↓

Under his rule his secretaries and chaplains at court were Normans and he raised several Normans to be Bishops while he made a Norman Primate of England, i.e. Archbishop of Canterbury. The pattern of the English village, with its manor house and church, dates from Edward’s time. He began the building of Westminster Abbey in London.

– Vita Eduardi (The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster: attributed to a monk of Saint-Bertin, translated into English by Frank Barlow): Written about the time of the Norman Conquest, this text is an important and intriguing source for the history of Anglo-Saxon England in the years just before 1066, attributed to Goscelin of St. Bertin (a manuscript of c. 1100). It provides a fascinating account of Edward the Confessor and his family, including his wife Edith, his father-in-law Earl Godwin, and the queen’s brothers Tostig and Harold (who became king in 1066), laying the foundations of the legend of St. Edward the Confessor.

– Harold Godwinson (1066)– Though chosen by the Witan, this descendent of the most powerful family of Wessex

was challenged by the one who claimed to be the Confessor’s real heir, i.e., William, Duke of Normandy. Challenged in 1066 by both the Vikings and the Normans, he managed to defeat the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada at Stanford Bridge, but he was defeated by the Normans at Hastings. He died on the battlefield with his eye pierced by an arrow.

– Fictional representations:– the play Harold by Alfred Tennyson (1876);– the novel Last of the Saxon Kings by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1848);– the short story “The Tree of Justice” included in Rudyard Kipling’s Rewards and

Fairies (1910), etc. The Norman Kings

William I of Normandy and England (1066-87)– crowned at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066;– He controlled two large areas: Normandy, which had been given by his father, and

England, which he had won in war. Both were personal possessions. To William the important difference between Normandy and England was that as Duke of Normandy he had to recognise the king of France as his lord, whereas in England he was king with no lord above him.

After William I’s death, the management of Normandy and England became a family business. ↓Henry I succeeded his elder brother William II as King of England in 1100 and defeated his eldest brother Robert Curthose to become the Duke of Normandy in 1106. He spent the rest of his life fighting to keep Normandy from other French nobles who tried to take it. After his son’s death, he hoped that the noblemen would accept his daughter Matilda, married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, a great noble in France. His death brought about new warfare between Matilda and her husband from Anjou, on the one hand, and Henry’s nephew, Stephen of Blois, from Boulogne, on the other hand. The terrible civil war came to an end when Matilda and Stephen agreed that Stephen could keep England’s throne but only if Matilda’s son, Henry, could succeed him.

The Plantagenets (The Angevins) Henry II (1154-89) – the first unquestioned ruler of the English throne of the last hundred

years:

– The first of the Plantagenets, he ruled over far more land than the previous kings: owing partly to his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, he reigned over quite an empire stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees.

– He left England with a legal administrative system and a habit of obedience to government.

– His firm rule opposed him to the Church: his controversy with Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury (1162), ended in 1170 with the latter’s murder in the Canterbury Cathedral apparently by order of the former. Thomas Becket was sanctified and his shrine in Canterbury attracted thousands of pilgrims (see Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales).

– His quarrels with his wife, Eleanor, and his sons, Richard and John, loyal to their mother and to the French king, caused a severe family breach. So, in 1189, Henry II died a broken man, disappointed and defeated by his own sons and by the French king.

– fictional representations: the plays Becket (1893) by Alfred Tennyson; Murder in the Cathedral (1935) by T. S. Eliot; Becket, ou l’Honneur de Dieu (1959) by Jean Anouilh; The Lion in Winter (1966) by James Goldman.

Richard I (Coeur de Lion – the Lionheart) (1189-99):– one of England’s most popular kings, although he actually spent very little time in

England, since he participated in the third Crusade for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Muslims. → a chivalry romance knight errant figure turned into a full blooded Englishman (He thrust his hand down the throat of an attacking lion, tore out his heart and ate it with salt.)

e.g. of fictional representations: the medieval legends about Robin Hood; Walter Scott’s novels Ivanhoe (1819) and The Talisman (1825).

– Captured by the Duke of Austria with whom he had quarrelled in Jerusalem, we was ransomed after two years by the English, but he was killed, five years later, in France.

King John (Lack-a-land) (1199-1216): – He misused the machinery of state he had inherited in order to extort money from his

subjects, which he spent in unsuccessful wars to defend his French possessions against the rising power of the Capet kings in France. → 1204: he lost Normandy to Philip Augustus of France.

– He also quarrelled with the Pope over who should be Archbishop of Canterbury (1209-14), which caused him to become unpopular with the Church too. ↓

1215: The barons, joined by angry merchants and supported by the Church and all the other classes (burghers and yeomen), forced king John to sign a Charter of liberties – Magna Carta – at Runnymede (outside London). This Great Charter was a symbol of political freedom and marked the transition from the age of traditional rights to the age of written legislation. A clear stage in the collapse of English feudalism, the Magna Carta proclaimed the rights of all “freemen” to justice, to security of person and property, to good government.

– fictional representations: plays: John Bale’s King Johan (1538); William Shakespeare’s King John (1591-

98, published in the First Folio 1623); Anthony Munday’s The Downfall and the Death of Robert Earl of Huntington (1598); Robert Davenport’s King John and Matilda (c. 1628-29); James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter (1966);

novels: Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819).

The Plantagenets

Henry III (1216-72):– His reign was marked by the failure of his campaigns in France (1230 and 1242) and his

disputes (caused by his keeping foreign advisers and by his excessive expenses in supporting the pope in Sicily) with the barons, led by Simon of Montfort, who summoned the first Parliament in 1264. (Montfort was eventually defeated in 1265 in the battle of Evesham and killed by prince Edward.)

Edward I (1272-1307):– Despite the fact that he defeated Simon of Montfort, he decided to continue the

experiment of summoning the Parliament (then made up only by what later on became the House of Lords, presided over by the King or by the King’s Lord Chancellor). Edward used his royal authority to establish the rights of the Crown at the expense of traditional feudal privileges, to promote the uniform administration of justice, to raise income to meet the costs of war and government, and to codify the legal system.

– the campaigns in Wales and Scotland: Between 1282-84, he managed to break the opposition of the Welsh and to bring them under control. (His eldest son Edward II was created Prince of Wales, a custom preserved ever since.) He interfered in Scotland as an arbitrator among the pretenders of the Scottish crown only to proclaim himself king of Scotland in 1296. His taking over the Scottish crown faced a popular resistance movement, led at first by William Wallace (defeated at Falkirk in 1298 and executed), and then by Robert Bruce (Edward I was defeated by Bruce and died on his way for a second campaign to Scotland to fight him.)

Edward II (1307-27):– Innocent minded, lazy, incapable, he estranged himself from his queen, Isabella of

France, and from his barons, surrounding himself by favourites like Gaveston (eventually captured and beheaded).

– His weakness allowed Robert Bruce to gain ground in Scotland, after the latter’s victory at Bannockburn in 1314.

– Defeated by his wife’s army, he had to abdicate in favour of his son Edward III (the first time that an anointed king of England had been dethroned since Ethelred in 1013). Edward II was later murdered at Berkeley Castle (allegedly by the Queen’s lover, Mortimer; later on, the Parliament decided that Mortimer should be sentenced to death by hanging and the Queen should be deprived of all power and confined for life). (See also Christopher Marlowe’s The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, c. 1592)

Edward III (1327-77):– He restored the authority of the king and founded the Order of the Garter in 1348.– He started the long series of wars against France, known as the Hundred Years’ War,

invading France through Flanders in 1337 and scoring two great victories at Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356) (which turned Edward’s son ‘The Black Prince’ into a legendary ideal of chivalry). At the treaty of Brétegny (1360), the whole southern-western France was assigned to England. The war was equally motivated by the English monarchy’s genealogical claims to the throne of France and by economic reasons (i.e. maintaining Flanders as an export market for English wool).

– Unfortunately, in the late years of his reign, the ravages caused by the Black Death (the plague – 1348-9, 1361-2, 1369), the criticism elicited by his attempts at raising higher taxes, as well as the rather moderate success in France (after the Treaty of Bruges in 1375, only Calais and a costal strip near Bordeaux were England’s) caused his popularity to decline.

Richard II (1377-99):– Though still a child (14), he handled well the Peasants’ Uprising (1381) led by Wat

Tyler and Jack Straw. (Wat Tyler was killed and the uprisings in the rest of the country were crushed over the next few weeks.)

– Highly cultured, Richard II was one of the greatest royal patrons of the arts (patron of Geoffrey Chaucer).

– His authoritarian approach brought him in conflict with several Parliamentarian leaders, here including his uncle, Gloucester, and his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, who were banished. On the death of Henry’s father, John of Gaunt (a younger son of Edward III), in prison, Richard confiscated the vast properties of his Duchy of Lancaster (which amounted to a state within a state) and divided them among his supporters. In 1399, while Richard was on a campaign in Ireland, Henry of Bolingbroke returned to claim his father’s inheritance. Supported by some of the leading baronial families, Henry captured and deposed Richard. Bolingbroke was crowned King as Henry IV. Risings in support of Richard led to his murder in Pontefract Castle. (See William Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1595-96, published in a quarto edition in 1597 and in the First Folio in 1623)

The Lancastrians Henry IV (1399-1413):

– Henry spent his reign establishing his royal authority. The outbreak of the plague in 1400 almost coincided with the rebellion in Wales led by Owen Glendower/Glyndwr. In 1403, Henry’s supporters, the Percys of Northumberland, turned against him and conspired with Glendower - the Percys and the Welsh were defeated by Henry at the Battle of Shrewsbury. (See also William Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, 1596-98)

– The war with France also continued with moderate and fluctuating success on the English side.

Henry V (1413-22): – The type of warrior-king that was the ideal of the time, he scored a great victory against

the French at Agincourt on October 25, 1415. In alliance with unreliable Burgundy, and assisted by his brothers (the Dukes of Clarence, Bedford and Gloucester), Henry gained control of Normandy in subsequent campaigns. By the Treaty of Troyes (1420), he gained recognition as heir to the French throne, and married Charles VI’s daughter Katherine. (See William Shakespeare’s Henry V, 1599-1600) Unfortunately, his success was short lived and he died of dysentery at the age of 34, in 1422.

Henry VI (1422-61, 1470-1):– An ill-fated king, he ascended to the throne of England and France when less than one

year old, upon his father’s and grandfather’s deaths within months of each other. Until he came of age, regency was assumed by his uncles Cardinal Beaufort and the Duke of Gloucester (who opposed each other) in England, and by another uncle, the Duke of Bedford, in France.

– Though genuinely interested in cultural patronage and education, he became a weak, ineffectual king, despised by his queen and his lords, an unsuitable king in a violent society. ↓

– The French, led in battle by Joan of Arc, and ruled by king Charles, started fighting back the English army. Furthermore, after the Duke of Bedford’s death (1435), England’s Breton and Burgundian allies lost confidence in the alliance. Thus, by the end of the Hundred Years’ War in 1453, England had lost everything and the only English possession on the Continent was the port of Calais.

– His simple-mindedness and periods of mental illness allowed for instability at home, as the nobles began to ask questions about who should be ruling the country. Civil war (“The War of the Roses” 1455-1485) broke out between Henry VI’s supporters – the Lancastrians – and those of the Duke of York, Richard Plantagenet (son of the Earl of March, who had lost the competition for the throne when Richard II was deposed in 1399.) In 1460, the Duke of York claimed the throne and, after his death in battle, his son Edward took up the struggle and won the throne in 1461. Henry VI was sent to the Tower, but in 1470, he was rescued by a new Lancastrian army. But he did not rule for long: in 1471, the Yorkists led by Edward defeated the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury (Henry’s son, Edward Prince of Wales died in that battle) and Henry VI was murdered in the Tower. See William Shakespeare’s Henry VI. Parts 1 (1589-92), 2 (1590-92) and 3 (1590-93).

The Yorkists Edward IV (1461-70, 1471-83):

– After Henry VI’s death and Edward IV’s regaining the throne, the civil strife did not stop. In 1478, he had to imprison in the Tower his brother George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, who was executed (allegedly by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine). At Edward’s death in 1483, his heir was too young to rule (only 12) and his ambitious brother Richard of Gloucester took advantage of the situation. (See William Shakespeare’s Richard III, 1592-94 and Thomas Heywood’s King Edward IV, Parts 1 and 2, 1600)

Richard III (1483-5):– Though previously loyal to his brother Edward IV, Richard, who was appointed Edward

V’s protector, became suspicious of the queen’s (Elizabeth Woodville) faction. He received young Edward in London for coronation, but the ceremony never too place: Edward V and his younger brother were sent to the Tower never to be seen again (they were murdered).

– An unpopular king, disliked by both Lancastrians and Yorkists, Richard was challenged by the half-Welsh Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who came from France, claiming the throne as a direct descendant of John of Gaunt, one of Edward III’s younger sons. Supported by many discontented lords, both Lancastrians and Yorkists, Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth in 1485 (thus putting an end to the Wars of the Roses) and was crowned on the battlefield. (See William Shakespeare’s Richard III)

The Tudors Henry VII (1485-1509):

– He united the Houses of Lancaster and York by his marriage in 1486 with Elizabeth of York (Edward IV’s daughter), restored the centralised power of the state and managed to keep the nobles under control.

– He protected the interests of the rising bourgeoisie and of the new nobility and created the merchant fleet. → Literacy extended among the people at large. (1476 – William Caxton set his printing press at Westminster.)

– He used dynastic royal marriages to establish his dynasty in England and help maintain peace.

Henry VIII (1509-47):– Henry VII’s second son, he succeeded to the throne after his elder brother’s death and

married his former sister-in-law Catherine of Aragon.– He built an effective fleet of royal fighting ships and interfered, more or less

successfully, in European politics (Spain, Germany, France and Scotland).

– The Reformation: 1. political reasons: breaking with Rome and putting an end to papal interference in English affairs; 2. personal reasons: his wish to divorce Catherine of Aragon (whose only surviving child was Princess Mary) in order to marry Anne Boleyn (who, the king hoped, could give him a son and heir, but who gave birth to another daughter, Elizabeth). → The Pope refused to grant the divorce and excommunicated Henry, who broke with Rome and married Anne. By the Act of Supremacy (1531), approved of by the Parliament, Henry VIII became the only supreme head of the Anglican Church of England, and all those who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy were charged with treason and executed. Henry’s reformation produced dangerous Protestant-Roman Catholic differences in the kingdom.

– Henry VIII finally got his male heir (Edward) after the execution of Anne Boleyn in 1536 (allegedly for adultery) and his marriage with Anne Seymour.

– See William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII (1613). Edward VI (1547-53):

– Intellectually precocious, but physically weak, he became king at the age of 9 and his short reign was dominated by nobles (e.g. Edward Seymour, his eldest uncle, and the Duke of Northumberland) using the Regency to strengthen their own positions.

– During his reign, the Church of England became more explicitly Protestant.– See Mark Twain’s novel The Prince and the Pauper (1881).

Mary I (1553-58):– Declared illegitimate and removed from the succession to the throne by an Act of

Parliament during her father’s lifetime, she nonetheless benefited from public support as Henry VIII’s daughter against the claimant Jane Grey, named as heir by the dying Edward VI.

– A fervent Catholic, she restored papal supremacy in England and began the conversion of the country back to Catholicism, even at the expense of turning it into a blood bath. (“Bloody Mary”) Her decision of marrying a Catholic prince, Philip of Spain, made her even more unpopular.

– See the plays Marie Tudor (1833) by Victor Hugo and Queen Mary (1875) by Alfred Tennyson.

Elizabeth I (1558-1603):– Home policy:

As she had been declared illegitimate, Elizabeth’s right to the throne had to be recognised by the Treaty of Edinburgh on July 6, 1560.

1559: She reinforced the Act of Supremacy and re-established the Anglican Church. She showed political ability in solving religious problems accepting neither the Roman Catholic Church nor the Calvinist variant of European Protestantism, but relying mostly on the Protestant clergy and wisely keeping England away from the religious wars tearing France apart.

Suspicious of the old aristocracy, she relied on new men like Sir William Cecil and Francis Walsingham and defended her position on the throne cold-mindedly. Her long reign was marked by spectacular executions, chief among which those of: the Duke of Norfolk (1572), Babbington (1586) and Mary Stuart of the Scots (1587), the Earl of Essex (1601).

– Foreign policy: England launched into the contest for commercial and naval leadership against

Spain and France. Though officially denying it, the queen supported the “privateers” (e.g. Frobisher, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh) who roamed the

seas in search of new maritime ways but also of treasure-laden ships to maraud. Furthermore, new trading companies were founded encompassing a vast area from Venice, the Greek islands and the Mohammedan Empire to the Indian seas. Thus, the way was paved for the great British colonial empire in the centuries to come.

The queen carefully kept England away from open conflagration. The only serious attempt at invading England by the Spanish Armada ended up in defeat on July 26, 1588.

– Fictional representations: e.g. the epic poem The Fairie Queene (1590-96) by Edmund Spenser; the novels The Recess, or a Tale of Other Times (1783) by Sophia Lee and Kenilworth (1821) by Walter Scott, etc.

British Monarchy: From the Anglo-Saxon Kings to the Twenty-first Century House of Windsor (2)

The Stuarts The first kings of the United Kingdom, combining the thrones of England and Scotland

for the first time. James I (1603-25):

– Queen Elizabeth I’s nephew and son of Mary, Queen of the Scots; he had been king of Scotland (James VI) for 36 years when he became King of England.

– a theologian and an arts patron → the new translation of the Bible known as the Authorised King James’s version of the Bible; the flourishing of the theatre.

– He mismanaged, on the one hand, the Roman Catholic question, and, on the other hand, the relation with the Parliament.

↓1. The Gunpowder Plot (November 5, 1605): an attempt of a group of Catholic gentlemen of the Jesuit Party to blow up the king and the Houses of Parliament. The leader, Guy Fawkes, was arrested on November 4. (His effigy is still merrily burnt by the English each November 4.) → the reimposition of strict penalties on Roman Catholics.2. Strongly believing, like Elizabeth I, in the divine right of kings, he tried to rule without the Parliament as much as possible. To cover the huge debt he ‘inherited’ from Elizabeth I, he had to ask the Parliament to raise a tax, which the Parliament agreed with on condition James would discuss his home and foreign policy with the Parliament. James insisted that he alone had the “divine right” to make these decisions. He managed to rule successfully without the Parliament as long as England was at peace, i.e. between 1611 and 1621. But when England got involved in the Thirty Years’ War in Europe (1618-48), James could not afford the costs of an army and disagreed with the Parliament who wished to go against the Catholics. Until his death in 1625, James continued to quarrel with the Parliament over money and over its desire to play a part in his foreign policy.

– He neglected the navy and deprived England of her naval power for 30 years. Yet, England continued her international trade in wool, cotton and silk and the ships of the East India Company were sailing as far as Persia and India.

– James I versus the Puritans: The latter denounced the extravagances and dissolute living at the king’s court, and attacked the theatre on account of its being the favourite amusement of an immoral aristocracy. ↓

1. Some Puritans fled across the Atlantic in 1620 to escape prosecution and founded the Massachusetts Colony. (‘The Pilgrim Fathers’ celebrated by the American people on Thanksgiving Day)

2. The Puritans remaining in England became the focal point for resistance against the Stuarts, known as the ‘Roundheads’ and the extremists. (See the Puritan Parliament Members Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, John Hampden and John Pym)

Charles I (1625-49):– An art lover, like his father, he spent a lot inviting artists like Van Dyck and Rubens to

work in England and buying a great collection of paintings by Raphael and Titian, thus increasing the crown’s debts.

– He married Henrietta Maria of France, a fervent Catholic. – He quarreled with the Parliament – especially with the House of Commons - even more

bitterly, mainly over money. He tried to rule without the Parliament, but, when he needed to have new taxes and loans voted, he had to re-summon it. The violent debate over Charles’s financial devices and the reform of the Church along Puritan lines eventually led to the king’s attempt to arrest the leaders of the Parliament. (‘The Great Remonstrance’ 1641) → The Civil Wars (1642-46; 1648-49)

– James I and the Cavaliers/ versus/ The House of Commons, Oliver Cromwell and his Ironsides → The Army, concluding that permanent peace was impossible whilst Charles lived, decided that the King must be put on trial and executed. In December 1648, Parliament was purged, leaving a small rump totally dependent on the Army, and the Rump Parliament established a High Court of Justice in the first week of January 1649. On 20 January, Charles was charged with high treason. Charles refused to plead, saying that he did not recognise the legality of the High Court. He was sentenced to death on 27 January. Three days later, on January 30, 1649, Charles was beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London. → The Commonwealth or Republic (1649-60) was proclaimed, in fact a military dictatorship in which the main power was exerted by Oliver Cromwell.

– Literary representations: e.g. Andrew Marvell’s poem An Horatian Ode. Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland (1650); Alexandre Dumas’s novel Twenty Years After (1845).

Charles II (1660-85):– To prevent the anarchy after Cromwell’s death, the Convention Parliament elected in

1660 called back Charles II from his exile in Holland. (The Restoration) → The Declaration of Breda (1660) promised pardons, arrears of Army pay, confirmation of land purchases during the Interregnum and ‘liberty of tender consciences’ in religious matters, yet a number of repressive measures were taken (e.g. the Act of Conformity which required all clergy, college fellows and schoolmasters to belong to the Anglican Church).

– The early years of Charles II’s reign were also marked by the persecution of the prominent figures of the Commonwealth, the growing unpopularity of the ‘restoration’ of extravagant frivolity at the court, and the growing concern of the Parliament with Charles II’s ‘attraction’ to the Catholic Church (The Test Act 1673, which prevented any Catholic from holding public office) and with monarchy becoming again too powerful.

– The disastrous years of Charles II’s reign: 1665: 1. the plague epidemic in London; 2. the second Dutch war (caused by

English and Dutch commercial and colonial rivalry, it ended in 1667 in a humiliating defeat of the English.)

1666: 1. The Great Fire which virtually destroyed the London of the Middle Ages and of Shakespeare’s plays. It changed the architectural aspect of London and Christopher Wren designed the plan for the rebuilding of London by

replacing neoclassic marble and stone for the medieval brick and timber. (E.g. magnificent buildings in classic Baroque like St. Paul’s Cathedral; other buildings by Wren: the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford and Pembroke College Chapel in Cambridge) 2. the Covenanters’ uprising (a ‘Covenant’ was signed all over Scotland for the defense of the Protestant religion and against the government of the Church by bishops).

James II (1685-88):– Charles II’s Roman Catholic brother, he had a troubled reign marked by the rebellion in

1685 led by Charles II’s illegitimate son and champion of Protestantism, the Duke of Monmouth, supported by the Earl of Shaftesbury. The defeat of the rebels was followed by James’s cruel revenge: he embarked upon a rapid Romanizing of the country, claimed the royal prerogative to suspend the laws of the land, and, in general, pursued with ever increasing violence and illegality the policy to prepare the forcible reconversion of England to Roman Catholicism. → 1685: The King’s Declaration of Indulgence put on trial several bishops + the birth of a Catholic heir to the throne → the Tories and the Whigs offered the crown to the first couple of joint monarchs in the English history.

William (1689-1702) and Mary (1689-94) of Orange:– The Glorious Revolution: On November 5, 1688, William of Orange, the husband of

James II’s Protestant daughter Mary, landed at Torbay. James II was deprived of the crown on account of his deserting his kingdom and the crown was offered to William and Mary. This bloodless ‘Revolution’ decided the balance between Parliamentary and royal power in favour of the former and, in accordance with the Declaration/ Bill of Rights, no king ever attempted to govern without Parliament or contrary to the votes of the House of Commons.

– The Act of Settlement (1701): It secured the Protestant succession to the throne, and strengthened the guarantees for ensuring the parliamentary system of government. According to it, if Mary had no children, the crown would pass to her sister Anne; if she also died without children, the crown would go to a granddaughter of James I, who had married the German elector of Hanover and her children. Even today, if a son or daughter of a monarch becomes a Catholic, (s)he cannot inherit the throne.

Queen Ann (1702-14):– The War for the Spanish Succession (1702-13) ended with the recognition by Louis XIV

of France of Protestant succession in Great Britain and turned John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, into a national hero. Further disagreement over the succession to the throne between the English and the Scottish Parliaments allowed the exiled Roman Catholic son of James II, James Edward Stuart, to land in Scotland in 1708, but he was forced to withdraw to France. (The scene was set for the later uprisings in Scotland led by the Stuart Pretenders against the Hanoverian kings.)

– 1707: Scotland and England were formally united under the name of Great Britain and the flags of the two nations (St. Andrew’s Cross for Scotland and St. George’s Cross for England) were combined to form the present Union Jack. (St. Patrick’s Cross would be added in 1801 after Ireland would be united with Great Britain.)

– literary representations: e.g. Alexander Pope’s Windsor Forest (1713); Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).

The Hanoverians George I (1714-27):

– The great-grandson of James I through the female line, George, Elector of Hanover came to the throne under the Act of Settlement. His claim was challenged by James

Edward Stuart (the ‘Old Pretender’) who landed in Scotland in 1715, following a rising of Scottish clans on his behalf; this was unsuccessful and he soon withdrew.

– He spoke only little English and was unfamiliar with the customs of the country, he was dependent on his ministers (the Whigs dominated the Parliament during his reign – the Whig oligarchy).

George II (1727-60): – His reign was marked by warfare abroad as well as in Scotland.

Despite the king’s bravely participating alongside his soldiers in the battle of Dettingen in Germany and scoring a victory against the French, the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) ended in defeat for the English, except in North America.

In 1745, George’s reign was threatened by Charles Edward Stuart (the ‘Young Pretender’). After some initial success in Scotland where the Highland clans rallied to his cause and defeated the Hanoverians near Edinburgh, the Pretender was defeated in the battle of Culloden (April 1746) and fled to France, thus ending the Stuart attempts to return to the British throne.

– The king’s initial unpopularity gradually turned into a general respect owing to the country’s prosperity. It was under George’s reign that the foundations of the Industrial Revolution were laid with new levels of production in industries such as coal mining and shipbuilding and also in agriculture. Overseas, trade was boosted by successes such as Clive’s victories in India at Arcot (1751) and Plassey (1757), which placed Madras and Bengal under British control, and Wolfe’s capture of the French-held Quebec in 1759 (part of a successful campaign which transferred Canada with its wealthy trade in fish and fur from the French to the British rule during the Seven Years’ War in North America).

George III (1760-1820):– Born of Prince Frederick of Wales and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, he was the first

Hanoverian king born in England and using English and his first language. – The early years of his reign were marked by his conflict with the Prime Minister

William Pitt the Elder and with the House of Commons caused by his attempts at taking a more active part in governing Britain and his wish to choose his own ministers from among a small number of aristocrats who controlled the Parliament. The King’s policy was severely criticised by John Wilkes, an MP, who demanded liberty of the press, the right of the people to choose their own representatives, the abolition of abusive imprisonment. When the king retorted by imprisoning Wilkes, the London citizens rose in protest rioting in front of St. James’s Palace and throughout the city.

– The foreign policy under George III was marked by: The Seven Years’ War (1754-1763): George III considered the war too

expensive and he made peace with France in 1763, without informing Prussia, which was thus left to fight France alone. The Treaty of Paris turned out satisfactory for the British who got control over Canada and Florida (thus controlling all North America east of Mississippi) as well as Bengal (this brought French power in India to an end and made way for British hegemony and eventual control of India).

The War of American Independence (1775-1783): Initially starting from the serious quarrels over taxation between the British government and its colonies in America, the conflict, which opposed Britain to half of the world (the rebelling colonies were supported by France, Spain and the Netherlands), ended in a

disastrous defeat for the British government, which lost everything except for Canada. The United States were granted independence in 1783.

The Napoleonic Wars: The English retorted to the French Continental System by the Continental Blockade and Admiral Nelson saved the English honour when he defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets at Cape Trafalgar (1805).

Further British involvement in the Napoleonic Wars allowed the Duke of Wellington (the ‘Iron Duke’) to emerge as a military leader who defeated Napoleon first at Leipzig (1813) and then, after Napoleon’s return from Elba, at Waterloo (1825).

– Towards the end of his life, George III suffered from seizures of insanity (1811-20). His son Prince George acted as Regent (the Regency).

George IV (1820-30):– marriage difficulties: He had secretly and illegally married a Roman Catholic, Mrs.

Fitzherbert. In 1795 he officially married Princess Caroline of Brunswick, but the marriage was a failure and he tried unsuccessfully to divorce her after his accession in 1820 (Caroline died in 1821).

– Because of the crown’s debts, George was in a weak position in relation to his Cabinet of ministers. In 1829, George IV was forced by his ministers, much against his will and his interpretation of his coronation oath, to agree to Catholic Emancipation. By reducing religious discrimination, this emancipation enabled the monarchy to play a more national role.

William IV (1830-37):– George IV’s younger brother’s reign was marked by the Reform crisis, which started

with the Great Reform Bill (1832) that abolished the worst abuses of the electoral system and represented the capitulation of English landed gentry to the middle-classes.

Queen Victoria (1837-1901): – Queen Victoria is associated with Britain’s great age of industrial expansion, economic

progress and, especially, empire. At her death, it was said, Britain had a worldwide empire on which the sun never set.

Throughout the early part of her reign, she was very much influenced by her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, who took an active interest in the arts, science, trade and industry; the project for which he is best remembered was the Great Exhibition of 1851 (the Crystal Palace). After his death, the queen could not get over her sorrow and refused to appear in public for a long time, which caused newspapers to criticise her and to question the value of monarchy. Eventually, her advisers persuaded her to take a more public interest in the business of the kingdom and she became extraordinarily popular.

Home policy: the ‘Little England’ policy supported by the Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone = avoiding foreign entanglements; supporting the Home Rule for Ireland; promoting the Third Reform Bill (1884) which virtually provided manhood suffrage.

Foreign policy:– English involvement in the Crimean War (1854-56): Britain feared that Russia would

destroy the weak Ottoman Empire, which controlled Turkey and the Arab countries, and that would change the balance of power in Europe, putting Britain’s sea and land routes to India in danger. Unfortunately, the outmoded and inadequate British army was defeated (see the famous Charge of the Light Brigade). An important contribution to alleviating the terrible sufferings of the British troops was that of Florence Nightingale and her band of nurses who reformed the medical and sanitary conditions in the army and paved the way for women’s entry into the medical profession a few years later (Elizabeth Garrett Anderson – 1877).

– The Queen and the empire: Queen Victoria was a very strong supporter of the Empire, which brought her closer to some of her Prime Ministers, i.e., Benjamin Disraeli and the Marquess of Salisbury. The former, in particular, promoted a Conservative ‘Big England’ policy aimed at enhancing British prestige throughout the world. (1875 – the purchase of the Suez Canal; 1876 – Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India.)

Troubles in the British Empire under Queen Victoria:– India: The unwise treatment of Indian soldiers resulted in revolt in 1857 (‘The Indian

Mutiny’). This Sepoy rebellion quickly became a national movement against foreign rule, led by a number of Hindu and Muslim princes. Both the British and the Indians behaved with great violence, and the British cruelly punished the defeated rebels. India was removed from the political jurisdiction of the East India Company and was placed under the Crown, but that did not help the relations between the British and the Indians to recover. The feeling of distrust and distance between the colonisers and the colonised would grow into the Indian independence movement of the 20th century.

– Africa: The interest in slave trade caused the British to use Christianity as a tool for building a commercial and political empire in Africa. That brought them in conflict with other European settlers, like the Dutch ‘Boers’ from South Africa who were defeated only with great difficulty in 1899-1902. (In 1906, self government was set up in South Africa.)

– Canada, Australia, New Zealand: From the 1840s onwards, as a result of the rapid increase in population in Britain, many British settlers were called for the development of colonies. The new comers took over the land to the detriment of the populations which already lived in the three countries. In Canada, most of the natives were pushed westwards, and those not killed became part of the ‘white’ culture. In Australia, most of the aboriginal inhabitants were killed, and only few survived in the central desert areas. In New Zealand, the Maori inhabitants suffered less, but they still lost most of their land. These white colonies were, in time, allowed to govern themselves on condition they accepted the British monarch as their head of state.

As part of her colonial policy, Britain was also engaged in the war with China (1857-58) and interfered, between 1861-65, in the American Civil war supporting the Southern Confederacy.

By the end of the 19th century, Britain controlled the oceans and much of the land areas of the world. But even at this great moment of power, Britain spent more on its empire than it took from it, and this heavy burden would become impossible to bear in the 20th century, when the colonies began to demand their freedom.

The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha Edward VII (1901-10):

– Though his time (the ‘Edwardian era’) was one of significant political and socio-economic changes, the king himself contributed little to the reforms which marked British political and social life. Criticised for his social life, Edward’s main interests lay in foreign affairs, and military and naval matters. In particular, Edward played an active role in encouraging military and naval reforms, pressing for the reform of the Army Medical Service and the modernisation of the Home Fleet. He died before the constitutional crisis that opposed the Conservatives to the Liberal administration could be solved by the latter’s victory in the 1910 elections.

George V (1910-36):– During the First World War (1914-18), the increasing anti-German feeling led the king

to change the name of the royal house from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in 1917.– The king tried to play a conciliatory role during both the civil war in Ireland (which

started with the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916) and the Great Strike in 1926. The Civil

War in Ireland resulted in the setting up of the free Irish state (later the Republic of Eire), while the six northern counties (where 67% of the population were Protestant) remained part of the United Kingdom (as Northern Ireland).

The House of Windsor Edward VIII (Jan.-Dec. 1936):

– He reigned less than a year during 1936 only to stage the first voluntary abdication in British history. A qualified pilot and a highly popular public figure owing to his successful tours at home and overseas, his good war record and genuine care for the unprivileged, Edward VIII had, unfortunately, a very controversial love life. After a number of affairs, he fell in love with an American-born divorcée, Mrs. Wallis Simpson and wanted to marry her. Faced with a constitutional crisis, he chose to abdicate on December 11, 1936. He became Duke of Windsor and his younger brother, the upright, responsible Duke of York, became king George VI.

George VI (1936-52): – George VI gradually gained popularity especially owing to his great achievements

during World War II. He remained for most of the time at Buckingham Palace (the Palace was bombed nine times during the war). He and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, visited severely bombed areas in the East End of London and elsewhere in the country. He developed a close working relationship with his wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, as most of Europe fell to Nazi Germany. Having served in the Navy during the First World War, the King was anxious to visit his troops whenever possible (France in 1939, North Africa 1943, Normandy, Italy and the Low Countries in 1944).

– When India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, George ceased to be Emperor of India. Changes in the Commonwealth meant that its tie was no longer based on common allegiance to the Crown, but upon recognition of the Sovereign as Head of the Commonwealth. (The Commonwealth = a free association of independent states, former British colonies, with the British monarch as its head)

Queen Elizabeth II (1952 to the present): – Family: She married in 1947 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the son of Prince

Andrew of Greece and a great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria. They had four children: Prince Charles, Prince of Wales; Princess Anne (The Princess Royal); Prince Andrew; Prince Edward. Her grandchildren are: Peter and Zara Phillips (b. 1977 and 1981), the children of the Princess Royal Anne and of Mark Phillips of the Queen’s Dragoon Guards; Prince William of Wales and Prince Henry of Wales (b. 1982 and 1984), children of Prince Charles of Wales and Princess Diana (born Lady Spenser); Princess Beatrice of York and Princess Eugenie of York (b. 1988 and 1990); and The Lady Louise Windsor and Viscount Severn (b.2003 and 2007), children of The Earl and Countess of Wessex.

– The royal family acquired a more complex kind of publicity during 1992 which Queen Elizabeth II termed as an ‘annus horribilis’ that culminated with the Prime Minister John Major’s announcement that the decision of the Prince and Princess of Wales to separate “has been reached amicably” after their mutual loathing had been on display for all the world to see through the media. Despite Major’s reassurement that the “succession to the throne is unaffected” many felt the separation as a serious challenge to the royal institution unprecedented since the Glorious Revolution in 1688. The subsequent course of events leading to Princess Diana’s death in a car crash in 1997 followed several years later by the Prince of Wales’s marriage with Mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles exposed the royal house to public criticism.

Cons:– Inherited titles cannot be justified in a democratic age.– The functions of monarchy are meaningless and time-wasting ceremonials that have

been taken over by the executive in virtually every respect.– Monarchy is very expensive with the Queen as one of the richest women in the world

for her personal fortune calculated at £ 6.7 billion in 1990 by Sunday Times, receiving an annual grant of nearly £ 6 million to meet the expenses of the nearly 400 strong royal household.

– Monarchy no longer holds the country together and no longer has an effect on people’s behaviour.

Pros:– Monarchy strengthens awareness of national identity and respect for the authority of

government. – The pageantry and glitter of monarchy attracts thousands of tourists to London and,

consequently, is crucial to the nation’s tourist economy. All in all, republicanism does not exist as a major political force in Britain and the British sense of compromise will most likely find the means to adjust the ancient institution of monarchy so that it may meet the requirements of a modern democratic country like Great Britain.

ENGLISH LITERATUREMEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Popular Ballad

- Definition:

A ballad (from the late Latin and Italian ballare 'to dance') is, fundamentally, a song that tells a story and it originally was a musical accompaniment to a dance. One may distinguish between folk, traditional ballads and literary ballads (e.g. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol)

A categorization of ballads according to dominant theme:

1. Ballads of domestic relations: deal with jealousy, revenge, rivalry, exile,

murder; e.g. Binnorie/ Two Sisters

2. Ballads of superstition: stories of fairies, ghosts and witches; e.g. The Wife

of Usher’s Well

3. Ballads of love and death: true or false love, love testing, faithfulness, and

tragic fate or death of the lovers;

4. Humorous ballads: dealing with domestic quarrels; e.g. Get Up and Bar the

Door

5. Historical Ballads: mostly border ballads about the fights between the Scots

and the English; e.g. Chevy Chase

6. Ballads of outlawry: about Robin Hood and his men.

Basic characteristics common to large numbers of ballads:(a) the beginning is often abrupt;(b) the language is simple;(c) the story is told through dialogue and action;(d) the theme is often tragic (though there are a number of comic ballads);(e) usually there is a refrain.

To these features we may add:- a ballad usually deals with a single episode;- the events leading to the crisis are related swiftly;- there is minimal detail of surroundings;- there is a strong dramatic element;- there is considerable intensity and immediacy in the narration;- the narrator is often impersonal;- there is frequently incremental repetition;- the single line of action and the speed of the story preclude much

attempt at delineation of characterimagery is sparse and simple.

- The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

- The Middle Ages / The Dark Ages / Medieval Times: 6th century – 15th century

- Characteristics: - migration ends

- universities and professional schools

- languages and national literatures

- Roman and Gothic style in art

- 1066 The Norman Conquest

- 700 BC The Celts: Goidels / Gaels, Brythons / Britons, Belgae / Belgic

- similarities with the Anglo-Saxons:

- different tribes

- warriors

- polytheistic

- sacred tree

- oral culture, therefore stress on the value of the vow

- price for bloodshed outside battle

- the importance of the druids

- 55-54 BC Julius Caesar

- 43 AD The Romans: Claudius conquers the south – romanization of the Celts

- Queen Boudicca of the Iceni dies in 61 AD

- the wall of Hadrian

407 – 410 AD Roman legions withdraw

- 5th century The Anglo-Saxons: Jutes, Angles and Saxons

- 449 AD Hengest and Horsa against the Picts

- oral culture

- alphabet of runes

- mythology:

- Odin, the one-eyed god: two ravens (Thought and Memory), two wolves and a horse with eight legs

- Frigga, the wife of Odin and mother of Baldr

- Thor, god of thunder and protector of mankind: the hammer Mjölnir, a belt and iron gloves

- Loki, god of mischief, father of Hel, the wolf Fenrir, and the serpent Jörmungand

- Tyr / Tiw, the one-handed god of justice

- Freya, goddess of love and beauty

- Norns: Urdur (past), Verdandi (present) and Skuld (future)

- the giant Ymir and Yggdrasil, the ash-tree with nine worlds (among which Asgard, Midgard and Hel)

- Ragnarok

Timeline

- 5th century – the Anglo-Saxon conquest begins

- 597 St. Augustine arrives in Kent and starts converting the

Anglo-Saxons to Christianity

- 663 – Synod of Whitby

- 672/3-735 – the Venerable Bede: Historia ecclesiastica

gentis Anglorum/ Ecclesiastical History of the English

Nation

- the end of the 8th century –the Vikings

- 871-899 the reign of King Alfred – English as a language of

scholarship

- 1066 Norman Conquest

The four manuscripts:

- Cotton (?1010) - in the British Library – Beowulf

- Exeter (?960-990) - in the Exeter Cathedral – Seafarer,

Wanderer, Deor

- Junius/ Caedmon (?930-960) in Oxford – Genesis,

Exodus, Daniel, Christ and Satan

- Vercelli (?late 10th century) The Dream of the Rood

Types of texts:

- Poetry: Narrative/ heroic/ epic, Elegies/ lyric poetry,

Christian

- Christian and historical prose

- Miscellanea: charms/ incantations, maxims (e.g. “Wyrd

goes ever as it will”), riddles (e.g. “The wave over the

wave, a weird thing I saw,/ Thorough-wrought, and

wonderfully ornate:/ A wonder on the wave – water

become bone.”)

Characteristics of Old English Poetry:

- composed and delivered orally by a scop / itinerant bard

- lines divided in two by caesura / pause

- each half contains two stressed syllables and a various

number of unstressed

- alliteration = the close repetition of consonant sounds,

usually at the beginning of words; also called ‘head rhyme’

- kennings/ compound metaphors [metaphor=a figure of

speech in which one thing is described in terms of another;

the comparison is usually implicit, whereas in simile it is

explicit]: the ring giver, the dwelling ornament, the sweat

of war, the bone chamber

Genre = a French term for a literary type or class. The major Classical genres were:

epic, tragedy, lyric, comedy and satire, to which would now be added novel

and short story.

Epic genre: the focus is on story, action, events

Lyric genre: the focus is on the inner world of thoughts, attitudes, sentiment

Lyric poetry: The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Deor, The Wife’s Lament, The

Husband’s Message, The Ruin

[elegy=a relatively short reflective or dramatic poem, embodying a contrasting pattern of

loss and consolation, openly based upon a specific personal experience or observation,

and expressing an attitude towards that experience]

The Husband’s Message: “I put together S R

EA W and M, to assure thee with an oath

That while he lives he will fulfil

The pledge and the love-troth

That in days of old ye often spake.”

[S=‘sigel’=sun, R=‘rad’=road, EA=‘ear’=earth,

W=‘wynn’=joy, M=‘mann’=man]

Old English Epic Poetry

An epic = a long narrative poem, on a grand scale, about the deeds of warriors and

heroes. It usually incorporates myth, legend, folktale and history. Examples:

Gilgamesh, Iliad, Odyssey, Beowulf, Virgil’ Aeneid, Milton’s Paradise Lost,

etc.

Ethos = the set of ideas or beliefs, or the moral attitudes of a person or group

Tacitus, in Germania: “When battle has been joined, it is shameful for a leader to be

surpassed in valour, shameful for his retinue to lag behind. In addition, infamy

and lifelong scandal await the man who outlives his leader by retreating from

the battle-line: to defend their chief and guard him, to ascribe to his glory their

own brave deeds, is their foremost oath. The leaders fight for victory, the

retainers for their leaders.”

Beowulf

– MS. Cotton

– Date of composition: 8th century (?)

– Language: West Saxon

– First printed: 1815

– First named: 1805 by Sharon Turner

– Time of events: 6th century and earlier

– Locations: Danish Island of Zealand/Sealand and country of the Geats (South of

Sweden)

– Setting: men are ‘beneath the heavens,’ ‘between two seas,’ on ‘middle-earth,’

‘surrounded by water’

– Structure: Prologue and 43 sections/cantos (3,182 lines) – 2 parts

– Characters: Beowulf, Hrothgar, Grendel, Hygelac, Wiglaf

– History: the death of Hygelac in a raid on the Franks in 521 is recorded in Bishop

Gregory of Tours’ Historia Francorum

– Myth and legend: Weland /Wayland; Sigemund

– Folklore: the symbolism of number three

– Christianity: Old Testament

– Style:

anticipations, comparisons and flashbacks;

laconic understatement and use of the negative: “little courtesy was

shown in allowing me to pass/ beneath the earth wall” (ll. 3089-90), “I

did not swear many oaths unjustly” (ll. 2738-9);

parallelism and antithesis (e.g. light, feasting, order, ceremony vs.

darkness, murder, disorder, savagery);

digressions;

3rd person limited point of view for most of the poem, with occasional

interventions from a 1st person speaker

– Ideals of the Heroic Age:

grave courtesy in receiving and dismissing men of rank;

generosity of rulers;

loyalty of retainers;

thirst for fame;

solemn boasting before and after;

interest in genealogies and pride in a noble heredity

The Battle of Maldon

- in the MS Cotton; transcribed before 1731

- date of the battle: 991

- King AEthelraed Unraed (979-1016)

- Story: Byrhtnoth/Brithnoth’s heroic defeat in a battle against the Vikings at the

mouth of the Blackwater/Pante River

- nostalgia for a heroic past

- Names

“[…] The wolves of war advanced, the Viking troop,Unmoved by water, westward over Pante,Over the gleaming water bore their shields.The seamen brought their linden-shields to land.There Byrhtnoth and his warriors stood readyTo meet their enemies. He told his troopsTo make a shield-wall and to hold it fastAgainst their foes. So battle with its gloryDrew near. The time had come for fated menTo perish in that place. A cry went up.The ravens wheeled above, the fateful eagleKeen for his carrion. On earth was uproar.They let the file-hard spears fly from their fists,Grimly-ground darts; and bows were busy too.Shield received spear-point; savage was the onslaught.Fighters fell dead, young men on either side.Wulfmar was wounded. Byrhtnoth's sister's sonChose death in battle, he was utterlyCut down by swords. But there at once was vengeancePaid to the Vikings, for I heard that EdwardStruck one of them so fiercely with his sword,Restraining not the stroke, that at his feetThe fated warrior fell to the earth.For this his prince, as soon as he had time,Gave grateful thanks to his bold chamberlain.So the stout-hearted warriors stood firmIn battle, and the young men eagerlyCompeted who might first with point of spearDeprive a fated soldier of his life;And all around the slaughtered fell to earth.

Steadfast they stood, as Byrhtnoth stirred them onBade every soldier concentrate on warWho wished to win renown against the Danes.A warlike Viking soldier then advanced,His weapon raised, his shield up in defence,And strode towards the earl, who in returnMarched resolutely forth to meet the churl.They each intended evil to the other.The seaman hurled a Frankish javelinSo that the leader of the troops was wounded.He trust out with his shield so that the shaftWas shattered and the spear and stabbedThe proud, rash Viking who had wounded him.No novice was the earl, he made his spearPass through the young man's neck, guided his handSo that he pierced the pirate fatally.”

The Battle of Brunanburh

- in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: 937

- Location: uncertain

- Story: the combined armies from Wessex and Mercia under King Athelstan meet

the invading force from Dublin led by the Viking king Anlaf (Olaf) and the king

of the Scots and Picts, Constantine

- the beasts of battle

Many a carcass they left to be carrion,Many a livid one, many a sallow-skin –Left for the white-tail'd eagle to tear it, andLeft for the horny-nibb'd raven to rend it, andGave to the garbaging war-hawk to gorge it, andThat gray beast, the wolf of the wild.[…]Then the Norse leader –Dire was his need of it,Few were his following –Fled to his war-ship;Fleeted his vessel to sea with the king in it,

Saving his life on the fallow flood.Also the crafty one,

Constantinus,Crept to his North again,Hoar-headed hero![…]Then with their nail'd prowParted the Norsemen, aBlood-redden'd relic ofJavelins overThe jarring breaker, the deep-sea billow,Shaping their way toward Dyflen again,Shamed in their souls.(rendering by Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Legends of Arthur, the Once and Future King

Literary Works: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, verse narrative, 14th centuryThomas Malory - Le Morte Darthur, prose narrative, 15th century

Camelot

- King Arthur, Igraine, Uther Pendragon

- The Sword in the Stone, Excalibur and its scabbard, the Lady of

the Lake

- Merlin

- Guinevere

- The Knights of the Round Table: Lancelot, Tristan/Tristram (and

Iseult/Isolde), Percival, Galahad, Gawain, Bedivere

- The Grail/Sangreal: from the Celtic cauldron, to Christ’s cup and

to the Fisher King’s Grail

- Morgause

- Morgan le Fay/ Morgana

- Mordred/ Modred

- Avalon

ARTHURIAN LEGEND

- A Selective Chronology -

455–75 Arthur’s reign, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth

537 (?539) Date of Arthur’s last battle, as mentioned in Annales Cambriae

830 Nennius, Historia Brittonum: records battles of Arthur

11th century Probable time of composition for the earliest Arthurian tales from The Mabinogion (Peredur,

Culhwch and Olwen) and Latin saints’ lives from Wales

c. 1105 Modena Cathedral archivolt depicting Arthurian scenes

c. 1135 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain): includes account

of Arthur’s life

c. 1150 Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini (Life of Merlin)

1155 Wace, Roman de Brut: translates Geoffrey’s Historia; first mention of Round Table

c. 1169–81 Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian romances: first mention of Camelot, Grail, and Lancelot’s love for

Guinevere

c. 1210 Layamon, Brut: first English version of Arthurian history (based on Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace)

1290 Edward I hosts Round Table tournament at Winchester and commissions Round Table

c. 1390 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: allusions to Arthurian characters

1469–70 Sir Thomas Malory completes Le Morte Darthur

1485 First printed edition of Malory by William Caxton

1486 Henry VII names eldest son Arthur

1534 First printed edition of Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historia: questions historicity of Arthurian legend

1590–6 Publication of Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene: includes Prince Arthur

1691 Henry Purcell and John Dryden, King Arthur: The British Worthy (opera)

1730–1 Henry Fielding, Tom Thumb: satire set at Arthurian court

1813 Sir Walter Scott, The Bridal of Triermain: Arthurian episode

1832 Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott: Tennyson’s first Arthurian poem

1836–46 Lady Charlotte Guest translates The Mabinogion

1859–85 Tennyson, Idylls of the King

1865 Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde

1882 Wagner, Parsifal

1889 Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur

1922 T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

1923 Thomas Hardy, The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall

1938 T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone; reprinted 1958 as the first part of The Once and Future King

1949 International Arthurian Society founded

1958–9 John Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur (published 1976): retelling of Malory

1975 Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (film)

1982 Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

1982–5 Camelot 3000: sci-fi Arthurian comic strip

1995 Jerry Zucker, First Knight (film): Sean Connery, Julia Ormond, Richard Gere

2004 Antoine Fuqua, King Arthur (film): Clive Owen, Keira Knightley, Ioan Gruffudd

2008-present Merlin (series): Colin Morgan, Bradley James, Angel Coulby, Katie McGrath

The Dream Vision

- Definition: A form of literature extremely popular in the Middle Ages. By

common convention the writer goes to sleep, in agreeable rural surroundings and

often on a May morning. He then beholds either real people or personified

abstractions involved in various activities.

- very often the vision is expressed as an allegory, i.e. a narrative, whether in prose

or verse, which works on two levels of meaning. Most often, the characters

represent concepts and the plot allegorizes an abstract thesis or doctrine. The

central device, in this case, is personification of abstract entities such as virtues,

vices, states of mind, modes of life, and types of character

- Examples:

1. Roman de la Rose/ The Romance of the Rose (13th century) by Guillaume de

Loris and Jean de Meun

2. Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (1308-1321)

3. The Book of the Duchess by Geoffrey Chaucer (1369-1370)

- narrative poem

- written on the death of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, wife of John of Gaunt

- eulogy and elegy

- octosyllabic couplets

“I wonder greatly, by this day’s light,How I still live, for day and nightThe sleep I gain is well nigh naught,I have so many an idle thought,Simply through default of sleep,That, by my troth, I take no heedOf anything that comes or goes,Nor anything do like or loath.All is of equal good to me,Joy or sorrow, whichever be,

For I have feeling now for nothing,But am, as it were, a dazed thingEver on the point of dropping downFor sorrowful imaginationAlways wholly grips my mind.[…]Lo, thus it was, this was my dream.I thought thus: that it was May,And in the dawning I lay…”(translated by A. S. Kline)

4. The House of Fame by Geoffrey Chaucer (1379-1380)

- 3 parts & an abrupt ending

- octosyllabic couplets

- the comic tone predominates

- great mastery in writing the dialogue

“At this the eagle began to screech,‘Let be,’ quoth he, ‘your fantasy;Would you learn of the stars aught?’‘Nay, for certain,’ quoth I: ‘naught.’‘And why?’ ‘Because I am too old.’‘If otherwise, I would have told,You,’ quoth he, ‘the stars’ names, lo,And all the heavenly signs and soWhich ones they are.’ ‘No mind,’ quoth I.‘Yes, truly,’ quoth he, ‘know you why?” (Translated by A. S. Kline)

5. The Parliament of Fowls by Geoffrey Chaucer (?1382-1383)

- a poem in celebration of St. Valentine’s Day (an “occasional piece”)

- written in “rhyme royal” = a stanza form of seven decasyllabic lines rhyming

ababbcc and so called, in all probability, from its use by James I of Scotland.

Because Chaucer was the first to use it, in Complaint unto Pity it is also

known as the Chaucerian stanza.

“What can I say? Fowl of every kindThat in this world have feathers and stature,Men might in that place assembled findBefore the noble goddess Nature,And each of them took care, every creature,With a good will, its own choice to make,And, in accord, its bride or mate to take.” (Translated by A. S. Kline)

6. Piers Plowman by William Langland

- three versions: A (1360s), B (?1379), C (late 1380s)

- structure: Prologue and 22 passus (parts/ steps in the narrative)

- genre: a combination of satire, moral allegory and dream vision

- style: the hieratic and the demotic, the learned riddle and the popular joke fall

out in quick succession

- part of the ‘alliterative revival’ of the 14th century