HISTORY

PREHISTORY

Two thousand years ago there was an Iron Age Celtic culture throughout the north-west European island. It seems that the Celts had intermingled with the peoples who were there already; we know that religious sites that had been built long before their arrival continued to be used in Celtic times.

For people in Britain today, the chief significance of the prehistoric period is its sense of mystery. This sense finds its focus most easily in the astonishing monumental architecture of this period, the remains of which exist throughout the country. Stonehenge is the most spectacular one.

· Stonehenge was built on Salisbury Plain some time between 5,000 and 4,300 years ago. It is one of the most famous and mysterious archeological sites in the world. One of its mysteries is how it was ever built at all with the technologies of the time (some of the stones come from over 200 miles away in Wales). Another is its purpose. It appears to function as a kind of astronomical clock and we know it was used by the Druids (i.e. Celtic priestly caste) for ceremonies marking the passing of the seasons. It has always exerted a fascination on the British imagination.

THE ROMAN PERIOD (43 -410)

The Roman province of Britannia covered most of present-day England and Wales, where the Romans imposed their own way of life and culture, making use of the existing Celtic aristocracy to govern and encouraging them to adopt Roman dress and the Latin language. They never went to Ireland and exerted an influence, without actually governing there, over only the southern part of Scotland. It was during this time that a Celtic tribe called the Scots migrated from Ireland to Scotland, where along with another tribe, the Picts, they became opponents of the Romans. This division of the Celts into those who experienced Roman rule (the Britons in England and Wales) and those who did not (the Gaels in Ireland and Scotland) may help to explain the emergence of two distinct branches of the Celtic group of languages.

The remarkable thing about the Romans is that, despite their long occupation of Britain, they left very little behind. Most of their villas, baths and temples, their impressive network of roads, and the cities they founded, including Londinium (London), were soon destroyed or fell into disrepair.

· 55BC - The Roman general Julius Caesar lands in Britain with an expeditionary force, wins a battle and leaves. The first ‘date’ in popular British history.

· 61 AD – Queen Boudicca (or Boadicea) of the Iceni tribe leads a bloody revolt against the Roman occupation. It is suppressed. There is a statue of Boadicea, made in the nineteenth century, outside the Houses of Parliament, which has helped to keep her memory alive.

· Hadrian’s Wall was built by the Romans in the second century across the northern border of their province of Britannia (which is nearly the same as the present English-Scottish border) in order to protect it from attacks by the Scots and the Picts.

THE GERMANIC INVASIONS (410 – 1066)

The Roman occupation had been a matter of colonial control rather than large-scale settlement. But during the fifth century, a number of tribes from the European mainland invaded and settled in large numbers. Two of these tribes were the Angles and the Saxons. These Anglo-Saxons soon had the south-east of the country in their grasp. In the west, their advance was temporarily halted by an army of (Celtic) Britons under the command of the legendary King Arthur. Nevertheless, by the end of the sixth century, they and their way of life predominated in nearly all of present-day England. Celtic culture and language survived only in present-day Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.

· King Arthur is a wonderful example of the distortions of popular history. In folklore and myth (and on film), he is a great English hero, and he and his Knights of the Round Table are regarded as the perfect example of medieval nobility and chivalry. In fact, he lived long before medieval times and was Romanized Celt trying to hold back the advances of the Anglo-Saxons – the very people who became ‘the English’!

When they came to Britain, the Anglo-Saxons were pagan. During the sixth and seventh centuries, Christianity spread throughout Britain from two different directions. By the time it was introduced into the south of England by the Roman missionary St. Augustine, it had already been introduced into Scotland and Northern England from Ireland, which had become Christian more than 150 years earlier.

Britain experienced another wave of Germanic invasions in the eighth century. The invaders, known as Vikings, Norsemen or Danes, came from Scandinavia. In the ninth century the conquered and settled the islands around Scotland and some coastal regions of Ireland. Their conquest of England was halted when they were defeated by King Alfred of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex. As a result, their settlement was confined mostly to the north and east of the country.

· King Alfred was not only an able warrior but also a dedicated scholar (the only English monarch for a long time afterwards who was able to read and write) and a wise ruler. He is known as ‘Alfred the Great’ – the only monarch in English history to be given this title. He is also popularly known for the story of the burning of the cakes. While he was wandering around his country organizing resistance to the Danish invaders, Alfred travelled in disguise. On one occasion, he stopped at a woman’s house. The woman asked him to watch some cakes that were cooking to see that they did not burn, while she went off to get food. Alfred became lost in thought and the cakes burned. When the woman returned, she shouted angrily at Alfred and sent him away. Alfred never told her that he was her king.

However, the cultural differences between Anglo-Saxons and Danes were comparatively small. They led roughly the same way of life and spoke different varieties of the same Germanic tongue. These similarities made political unification easier, and by the end of the tenth century, England was a united kingdom with a Germanic culture throughout. Most of Scotland was also united by this time, at least in name, in a (Celtic) Gaelic kingdom.

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD (1066 – 1458)

1066 – This is the most famous date in English history. On 14 October of this year, an invading army from Normandy defeated the English at the battle of Hastings. At the end of it, most of the best warriors of England were dead, including their leader, King Harold. On Christmas day that year the Norman leader, Duke William of Normandy, was crowned king of England. He is known in popular history as ‘William the Conqueror’ and the date is remembered as the last time that England was successfully invaded.

The successful Norman invasion of England brought Britain into the mainstream of western European culture. Previously, most links had been with Scandinavia. Throughout this period, the English kings also owned land on the continent and were often at war with the French kings.

Unlike the Germanic invasions, the Norman invasion was small-scale. There was no such thing as a Norman area of settlement. Instead, the Norman soldiers who had invaded were given the ownership of land – and of the people living on it. A strict feudal system was imposed. The peasants were the English-speaking Saxons. The lords and the barons were the French-speaking Normans. This was the start of the English class system.

· As an example of the class distinctions introduced into society after the Norman invasion, people often point to the fact that modern English has two words for the larger farm animals: one for the living animal (cow, pig, swine, sheep) and another for the animal you eat (beef, pork, mutton). The former set comes from Anglo-Saxon, the latter from French that the Normans brought to England. Only the Normans normally ate meat; the poor Anglo-Saxon peasants did not.

· In the 250 years after the Norman Conquest, it was a Germanic language, Middle English, and not the Norman (French) language, which had become the dominant one in all classes of society in England. Furthermore, it was the Anglo-Saxon concept of common law, and not Roman law, which formed the basis of the legal system.

· It was in this period that Parliament began its gradual evolution into the democratic body which it is today. The word ‘parliament’, which comes from the French word ‘parler’ (to speak), was first used in England in the thirteenth century to describe an assembly of nobles called together by the king.

· In 1215 an alliance of aristocracy, church and merchants force King John to agree to the Magna Carta (Latin meaning ‘Great Charter’), a document in which the king agrees to follow certain rules of government. It restricted the kink’s power and gave new rights to the barons and the people. Some of these rights are basic to modern British law, e.g. the right to have a trial before being put in prison.

· Robin Hood is a legendary folk hero. King Richard I (1189-99) spent most of his reign fighting in the ‘crusades’ (the wars between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East). Meanwhile, England was governed by his brother John, who was unpopular because of all the taxes he imposed. According to legend, Robin Hood lived with his bank of ‘merry men’ in Sherwood Forest outside Nottingham, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. He was constantly hunted by the local sheriff (the royal representative) but was never captured.

QUESTIONS:

1. What is the attitude of the people in Britain to the prehistoric period in its history?

2. How great was the Roman influence on England?

3. What Germanic invasions took place in the fifth and the eighth centuries? What changes did they bring?

4. What roles did King Arthur and King Alfred play in the history of the country?

5. Why is the year 1066 the most famous date in English history?

6. What was the impact of the Norman invasion?

7. What language became the dominant one in England?

8. What was the Magna Carta?

9. When did Parliament start to evolve?

10. Who was Robin Hood?

UNIT FIVE

HISTORY (continued)

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

In its first outbreak in the middle of the fourteenth century, bubonic plague (known in England as the Black Death) killed about a third of the population of Great Britain. The shortage of labour which it caused, and the increasing importance of trade and towns, weakened the traditional ties between lord and peasant. Moreover, the power of the barons was greatly weakened by the War of the Roses.

· During the fifteenth century, the nobles were divided into two groups, one supporting the House of Lancaster, whose symbol was a red rose, the either the House of York, whose symbol was a white rose. Three decades of almost continual war ended in1485, when Henry Tudor (Lancastrian) defeated and killed Richard III (Yorkist) at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Both these developments allowed English monarchs to increase their power. The Tudor dynasty (1485 -1603) established a system of government departments staffed by professionals who depended for their position on the monarch. The feudal aristocracy was no longer needed for implementing government policy. Of the traditional two “Houses” of Parliament, the Lords and the Commons, it was now more important for monarchs to get the agreement of the Commons for their policies because that was where the newly powerful merchants and landowners were represented.

The country had finally lost any realistic claim to lands in France, thus becoming more consciously a distinct ‘island nation’.

It was in the last quarter of this century that Shakespeare began writing his famous plays, giving voice to the modern form of English.

· Henry VIII (1491 – 1547) is on of the most well-known monarchs in English history, chiefly because he took six wives during his life. As a young man he was known for his love of hunting, sport and music, but he didn’t rule well. He was a natural leader but not really interested in the day-to-day running of government and this encouraged the beginnings of a professional bureaucracy. It was during his reign that the reformation took place. In the 1530s, Henry used Parliament to pass laws which swept away the power of the Roman Church in England. However, his quarrel with Rome was nothing to do with the doctrine. It was because he wanted to be free of his wife Catherine of Aragon, who gave him only a daughter, later Mary I, but could not give him a son. But the Pope refused to give him the necessary permission for this, so Henry took England out of the Roman Catholic Church and made himself head of the Church in England. All church lands came under his control and gave him a large source of income. Henry divorced Catherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn in 1533. They had a daughter, later Elizabeth I.

· Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603), was the first of three long-reigning queens (1588 – 1603) in British history (the other two are Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II). During her reign the country’s economy grew very strong. The arts were very active, And England became firmly protestant and confident in the world affairs. However Elizabeth is often seen as a very lonely figure and is known as the ‘Virgin Queen’ because she never married, although she is know to have had relationships with the Earl of Leicester and, later in life with the Earl of Essex.

· The Spanish Armada, a fleet of 129 ships sent by Spain to attack England in 1588, is defeated by the English navy (with the help of a violent storm). The word ‘armada’ is now often used to mean any large group of ships.

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 2740