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The Middle Ages

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Norman legacy. In December 1154 Henry II became king of England following the anarchy and civil war of Stephen's reign. Stephen had acknowledged Henry, grandson of Henry I of England, as his heir-designate. The Britain of Henry II, and of his sons Richard I and John, was experiencing rapid population growth, clearance of forest for fields, establishment of new towns and outward-looking crusading zeal. The country also witnessed the cultural feast of the '12th-century renaissance' in the arts, exemplified by the Winchester Bible of c. 1160, created from the skins of over 300 calves and lavishly decorated with lapis lazuli and gold applied by a team of manuscript illuminators from continental Europe. Legacies of the Norman invasion of 1066 remained. The aristocracy spoke French until after 1350, so saxon 'ox' and 'swine', for example, came to the table as French boeuf and porc. Ireland was less dominated by Normans. However, much of the regional indigenous culture survived despite Norman monarchy and aristocracy. A combination of external factors made England more inward-looking and more dissonant after 1200. Internationally the crusading ideal was weakening. Population continued to rise in the 1200s, primogeniture became more established and there were many younger warrior sons looking for lands and glory.

Magna Carta. In 1215 John hoped to recapture Normandy. He called on his lords to fight for him, but they no longer trusted him. They marched to London, where they were joined by angry merchants. Outside London at Runnymede, John was forced to sign a new agreement. This new agreement was known as “Magna Carta”, the Great Charter, and was an important symbol of political freedom. The king promised all “freemen” protection from his officers and the right to a fair and legal trial. At the time perhaps less than one quarter of the English were “freemen”. Most were not free, and were serfs or little better. Hundreds of years later, Magna Carta was used by Parliament to protect itself from a powerful king. In fact Magna Carta gave no real freedom to the majority of people in England. The nobles who wrote it and forced King John to sign it had no such thing in mind. They had one main aim: to make sure John did not go beyond his rights as feudal lord.

Magna Carta marks a clear stage in the collapse of English feudalism. Feudal society was based on links between lord and vassal. At Runnymede the nobles were not acting as vassals but as a class. They established a committee of 24 lords to make sure John kept his promises. That was not a feudal thing to do. In addition, the nobles were acting in co-operation with the merchant class of towns. The nobles did not allow John’s successor’s to forget this charter and its promises. Every king recognised Magna Carta until the Middle Ages ended in disorder and a new kind of monarchy came into being in the 16th century.

Henry III (1216 - 1272) was not a soldierly king. His half-hearted campaigns in France were unsuccessful in regaining lands lost by his father, John. By the Treaty of Paris (1259) he admitted failure and secured remote Gascony by giving up claims to lands in northern France, including iconic Normandy. Henry III's reign witnessed many closer links with France, where Louis IX (St Louis) was his brother-in-law. French culture was echoed in Britain, especially in Gothic architecture. But despite Frenchness of manners and names, English barons became increasingly conscious of their Englishness, which they declared in anti-foreign attitudes which focused on immigrant courtiers. It is no accident that scholars have dubbed the spare, simple Gothic architecture of the 13th century 'Early English', epitomised by Salisbury Cathedral, largely built between 1220 and 1258.



England dominant. Crusading continued during the 13th century, indeed Edward I (1272 - 1307) was away crusading when his father died in 1272 and did not return for two years. Such a smooth transition was a tribute to effective government administration in England. Tributes to growing institutions of English government - and hints of a less dominant monarchy - are prevalent in this period: Richard I's realm was governed successfully in his absence for almost his entire reign; Henry III inherited from his unpopular father as a child of nine, with a regency lasting almost a decade; and the transition of power from Henry III to Edward I, when the latter was absent for two years. There was a downside to effective financial organisation. The prosperity arising from peasant agriculture, growing urbanism and burgeoning population growth meant England could focus more directly on its near neighbours Wales, Scotland and to a lesser extent Ireland, in the 13th and early 14th centuries. Wales was partly subdued by Edward I, who put his government's wealth into building the great castles through which he gained control of north Wales. But expansionism wasn't the sole preserve of England. Scotland regained the Western Isles from Scandinavian colonists following the Battle of Largs in 1263.

An opportunity arose for England to become involved at the centre of Scottish politics with the untimely death of Alexander III, who died in a riding accident in 1289. Edward I was called upon to judge different claimants to the Scottish throne, which he did, and his pre-eminence is displayed in a contemporary manuscript illumination which shows him with Llywelyn, Prince of Wales, and Alexander, King of Scotland, on his right and left respectively.

Rebellion. In the last quarter of the 13th century, English dominance over Ireland, Scotland and Wales was apparently being achieved. But that famous image of Edward I with Scots and Welsh rulers illustrates a high point of English predominance. From the last quarter of the 13th century, fundamentals underlying the dynamics of development in Britain and Ireland changed. Population growth slowed down, inflation began to affect wealth. Rebellions in Wales are testament to some Welshmen's continuing struggle for independence. Henry III's struggle with Simon de Montfort, who the king defeated and killed at Evesham in 1265, exemplifies this. De Montfort's unofficial 'model parliament' of 1263 and Edward I's official model of 1295 were designed by magnates to curb royal power by increasing representation of counties and boroughs.

Problems with the feudal army also emerged at the 1295 parliament when the earl marshal refused to serve abroad unless the king was present. He was threatened with hanging, but neither served nor was he hanged. The remainder of the period from 1300 to 1485 is traditionally seen as a disastrous period in English history, which in many ways it was. However, Scotland and Ireland achieved growing independence during this period. A Scottish highlight in the 'wars of independence' was the victory of Robert the Bruce over Edward II at Bannockburn near Stirling in 1314.

Rebellions in Wales, especially that of Owen Glyn Dwr between 1400 and 1409, are testament to some Welshmen's continuing struggle for independence, although their own princes were replaced by English princes of Wales from the time of Edward I.

Famine and plague. The long view of the period from 1300 to 1485 suggests climate and demographic change were probably key determinants of developments in Britain and Ireland. Climatic deterioration began from about 1300, with colder winters and wetter summers. These conditions contributed to the Great European Famine of 1315 - 1322, in which millions perished.

The Black Death, the worst disease in recorded history, which arrived in Europe in 1347 and in England the following year - the disease killed 50% of the population within a year, but the main effect was that it returned with alarming regularity in 1361, 1374 and regularly thereafter until it disappeared from Britain in about 1670. The population of Britain and Ireland before the Black Death may have been 8 million, of which three-quarters lived in England. Decline continued until about 1450, when the population was perhaps two or three million, the lowest count during the last millennium. By 1485 the population was beginning to rise again.

Succession struggle. Climate change and plague were not the only external factors to affect Britain and Ireland. The Capetian royal dynasty in France, which had produced male heirs since 987 AD, died out in 1328, provoking a succession struggle in which Edward II and his son Edward (III to be) were prime claimants. These claims lay dormant for several years, as Edward II's French wife Isabella and Roger Mortimer invaded England in 1326, imprisoned and murdered Edward II and brought Isabella's son Edward III to the throne in January 1327. Isabella and Mortimer were effectively in power, but in 1330 Edward III asserted himself, had Mortimer executed, and staked a claim to the throne of France.

Scotland, like England, could function effectively without a king for long periods. This led to the Hundred Years' War, which lasted from 1337 until the English were defeated and driven from France, except Calais, in 1453. Kings of Scotland spent considerable periods in English captivity, such as David II who was in captivity from 1346 - 1357, and James I who spent 18 of his 31 years as king in prison between 1406 and 1424. The church and its leading institution, the papacy, like the monarchy so strong in the 12th and early 13th centuries, also became weak and disorganised in the later Middle Ages.

Propaganda. Upheavals occurred lower down the social scale following the Black Death and during the wars. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was one manifestation of this, while Jack Cade's rebellion in 1450 another. The topsy-turvy world of late medieval Britain and Ireland did not stabilise abruptly when, as Shakespeare put it, the Tudor Henry VII rescued the crown of England from a bush on Bosworth Field after the defeat of the reigning monarch Richard III in August 1485. Henry V's giant ship of 1,600 tons was a unique achievement and brought peace to the Channel. Much of what the Tudors claimed as 'new government' was already in place in Yorkist England. War against France and Scotland continued, while Ireland remained semi-independent. At the end of the Wars of the Roses at Bosworth in 1485, England actually came under a Welsh dynasty.

Much of the bad press of the 1400s derives from Tudor propaganda. There was, in fact, much to praise in 15th-century Britain.

Common Law - Henry II and the Birth of a State. Whilst many remember Henry II for his turbulent relationship with Thomas Becket and his sons, Richard the Lionheart and John, it was the establishment of permanent professional courts at Westminster and in the counties for which he might be best remembered. These reforms changed forever the relationship of the King to Church, State and society.

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Law and the State. By the 1230s, therefore, law was seen as an important element in national identity, even though English law in reality still had many resemblances to that of France and indeed of other areas. Such an association of law and national identity may be related to the development of the sovereign state, and certainly in modern thinking law and the state are often closely associated. However, 'state' is a problematic word in writing of the Middle Ages. It was not used in its modern sense in the England of c. 1200. It has implications of impersonality which seem inappropriate to a world where the king's anger could have a major impact upon individuals and upon the affairs of the realm. It is also a word with more than one meaning. It can refer to one state as opposed to another, say England as opposed to France. But it can also mean the state as opposed to society, or the state as opposed to the individual.

Law before Henry II and the Impetus for Reform from 1154. Even before the reforms of Henry II (1154-89), which are often seen as the vital period for the creation of English common law, England had known a legal regime characterised by considerable royal control. From Anglo-Saxon England came a tradition of law-making which focused on the king as the protector of the realm, the corrector of wrongs. Likewise, the powerful administration of the period tackled many of the same problems of theft and interpersonal violence as would Henry II, and in rather similar ways. This administration, characterised in particular by the courts of the shire and its sub-division the hundred, survived the Norman Conquest. Crucially, in contrast with some areas of France and elsewhere in Europe, these administrative areas largely remained under royal control. The Normans also brought important elements of their own to English law, most notably customs relating to land-holding.

In the middle of the 12th century, however, both the extensive involvement of the king in particular legal matters and the general administrative pattern were severely threatened by the civil war of King Stephen's reign (1135-54). The need to restore royal authority, to return the realm to its condition in his grandfather's reign, was one of the main forces behind Henry II's reforms. The same desire underlay his efforts to reassert control of the Church. These efforts brought him into conflict with his own chosen archbishop, Thomas Becket, and the circle who conducted the dispute with Becket, and developed their ideas of kingship in that context, were the men whose ideas shaped the legal reforms. At the same time, impersonal factors, such as the growth of literate government, also had an impact upon legal development.

The beginnings of Parliament. King John had signed Magna Carta unwillingly and it quickly became clear that he was not going to keep to the agreement. The nobles rebelled and soon pushed John out of the southeast. But Civil War was avoided because John died suddenly in 1216. John’s son, Henry III, was only 9 years old. During the first 16 years as king he was under the control of powerful nobles and tied up by Magna Carta. Henry was finally able to rule for himself at the age of 25. It was understandable that he wanted to be completely independent of the people who had controlled his life for so long. He spent his time with foreign friends and became involved in expensive wars supporting the Pope in Sicily and also in France.

Henry’s heavy spending and his foreign advisers upset the nobles. Once again they acted as a class under the leadership of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. In 1258 they took over the government and elected a council of nobles. De Montfort called it a parliament or parlement, a French word meaning a “discussion meeting”. This “parliament” took control of the treasury and forced Henry to get rid of his foreign advisers. The nobles were supported by the towns which wished to be free of Henry’s heavy taxes.

But some of the nobles didn’t support the revolutionary new council and remain loyal to Henry. With their help Henry was finally able to defeat and kill Simon de Montfort in 1265. Once again he had full royal authority, although he was careful to accept the balance which de Montfort had created between king and nobles. When Henry died in 1272 his son Edward I took the throne without question.

Edward I brought together the first real parliament. Simon de Montfort’s council had been called a parliament but it included only nobles. It had been able to make statutes or written laws and it had been able to make political decisions. However, the lords were less able to provide the king with money except what they had agreed to pay him for the lands they held under feudal arrangement. In the days of Henry I (1100-1135), 85 per cent of the king’s income had come from the land. By 1272 income from the land was less than 40 per cent of the royal income. The king could only raise the rest by taxation. Since the rules of feudalism didn’t include taxation, taxes could only be raised with the agreement of those wealthy enough to be taxed. Several kings had made arrangements for taxation before, but Edward I was the 1st to create a “representative institution” which could provide the money he needed. The institution became the House of Commons. Unlike the House of Lords it contained a mixture of “gentry” (knights and other wealthy freemen from the shires) and merchants from the towns. These were the two broad classes of people who produced and controlled England’s wealth. In 1275 Edward I commanded each shire and each town to sent 2 representatives to his parliament. These “commoners” would have stayed away if they could, to avoid giving Edward money. But few dared risk Edward’s anger. They became unwilling representatives of their local community. This, rather than Magna Carta, was the beginning of the idea that there should be “no taxation without representation”, later claimed by the American colonists of the 18th century. In other parts of Europe, similar “parliaments” kept all the gentry separate from the commoners. England was special because the House of Commons contained a mixture of gentry belonging to the feudal ruling class and merchants and freemen who did not. The co-operation of these groups, through the House of Commons, became important to Britain’s later political and social development. During the 150 years following Edward’s death the agreement of the Commons became necessary for the making of all statutes, and all special taxation additional to regular taxes.

Church and State. John’s reign also marked the end of the long struggle between Church and state in England. This had begun in 1066 when the pope claimed that William had promised to accept him as his feudal lord. William refused to accept this claim. He had created Norman bishops and given them land on condition that they paid homage to him. As a result it was not clear whether the bishops should obey the church or the king. Those kings and popes who wished to avoid conflict left the matter alone. But some kings and popes wanted to increase their authority. In such circumstances trouble could not be avoid.

The struggle was for both power and money. During the 11th and 12th centuries the Church wanted the kings of Europe to accept its authority over both spiritual and earthly affairs and argued that even kings were answerable to God. Kings, on the other hand, chose as bishops men who would be loyal to them.

The first serious quarrel was between William Rufus and Anselm, the man he had made Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm, with several other bishops, fearing the king, had escaped from England. After William’s death Anselm refused to do homage to William’s successor, Henry I. Henry, meanwhile, had created several new bishops but they had no spiritual authority without the blessing of the archbishop. This left the king in a difficult position. It took 7 years to settle the disagreement. Finally the king agreed that only the Church could create bishops. But in return the Church agreed that bishops would pay homage to the king for the lands owned by their bishoprics. But after Anselm’s death Henry managed to delay the appointment of a new archbishop for 5 years while he benefited from the wealth of Canterbury. The struggle between Church and state continued.

The crisis came when Henry II’s friend Thomas Becket was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162. Henry hoped that Thomas would help him to bring the church more under his control. At first Becket refused, and then he gave in. later he changed his mind again and ran away to France and it seemed as if Henry had won. But in 1170 Becket returned to England determined to resist the king. When this news was brought to Henry in his Christmas court in Normandy, Henry exploded and is said to have uttered the words: 'Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?' It was undoubtedly spoken in anger, but four knights took him at his word. Led by one Reginald fitz Urse, they slipped across the Channel to Canterbury, where they tried to force Becket to return with them and face the King's wrath. He refused and they retired to bed. Next morning, while he was leading morning mass, they attempted to drag him out of the cathedral, and he resisted. It was during this struggle that he received a blow on the head which seems to have tipped the whole thing over into violence and the four knights fell on him with their swords. He died later that afternoon on 29 December 1170. All Christian Europe was shocked and Thomas Becket became a saint of the Church. For hundreds of years afterwards people not only from England but also from Europe travelled to Canterbury to pray at Becket’s grave. The murder of Thomas Becket and his subsequent martyrdom has so overshadowed the reign of Henry II that it is often as difficult to see behind to what caused it as it is to see beyond to the rest of the reign.

The Church at local village level was significantly different from the politically powerful organisation the king had to deal with. At the time of William I the ordinary village priest could hardly read at all, and he was usually one of the peasant community. His Church belonged to the local lord and was often build next to the lord’s house. Almost all priests were married and many inherited their position from their father. However even at village level the Church wished to replace the lord’s authority with its own but it was only partly successful. In many places the lord continued to choose the local priest and to have more influence over him than the more distant Church authorities were able to have. The Church also tried to prevent priests from marrying. In this it was more successful and by the end of the 13th century married priests were unusual

In 1066 there were 50 religious houses in England, home for perhaps 1,000 monks and nuns. By the beginning of the 14th century there were probably about 900 religious houses with 17,500 members. Even though the population in the 14th century was three times larger than it had been in 1066, the growth of the monasteries is impressive.

During the next century discontent with the Church also grew. There had already been a few attacks on Church property in towns controlled by the Church. In 1381 one rebel priest had called for the removal of all bishops and archbishops as well as all the nobles. The greed of the Church was one obvious reason for its unpopularity. The Church was a feudal power and often treated its peasants and townspeople with as much cruelty as the nobles did. There was another reason why the people of England disliked paying taxes to the pope. Edward’s wars in France were beginning to make the English conscious of their “englishness’ and the pope was a foreigner. To make matters worse the pope had been driven out of Rome and was living at Avignon in France. It seemed obvious to the English that the pope must be on the French side and that the taxes they paid to the Church were actually helping France against England. This was a matter on which the king and people in England agreed. The king reduced the amount of tax money the pope could raise in Britain and made sure that most of it found its way into his own treasury instead. Another threat to the Church during the 14th century was the spread of religious writings which were popular with an increasingly literate population. These writings allowed people to pray and think independently of Church control.

At the end of the 14th century new religious ides appeared in England which were dangerous to Church authority and were condemned as heresy. This heresy was known as “Lollardy”, a word which probably came from a Latin word meaning “to say prayers”. One of the leaders of “Lollardy” was John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor. He believed that everyone should be able to read the Bible in English. He therefore translated it from Latin finishing the work in 1396. He was not allowed to publish his new Bible in England and was forced to leave Oxford. However both he and the other Lollards were admired by those nobles and scholars who were critical to the Church, its wealth and the poor quality of its clergy. If the Lollards had been supported by the king, the English Church might have become independent from the papacy in the early 15th century. But Richard’s successor, Henry IV, was not sympathetic. He was deeply loyal to the Church and in 1401 introduced into English for the first time the ides of executing the Lollards by burning. Lollardy was not well enough organised to resist. In the next few years it was driven underground and its spirit was not seen again for a century.

LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CULTURE. The growth of literacy in England was closely connected with the 12th-century Renaissance. Schools of learning were established in many towns and cities. Some were “grammar” schools independent of the Church, while others were attached to a cathedral. All of these schools taught Latin, because most books were written in this language. In spite of the dangers the Church took a lead in the new intellectual movement. In England two schools of higher learning were established, the first at Oxford and the second at Cambridge, at the end of the 12th century. By the 1220s these two Universities were the intellectual leader of the country. Few could go to the Universities. Most English people spoke neither Latin, the language of the Church, nor French, the language of law and of the Norman rulers. It was a long time before English became the language of the ruling class.

With the spread of literacy, cultural life in Britain naturally developed also. In the cities plays were performed at important religious festivals. They were called “mystery plays”, because of the mysterious nature of events in the Bible and they were a popular form of culture. The language itself was changing. French had been used less and less by the Norman rulers during the 13th century. In the 14th century Edward III had actually forbidden the speaking of French in his army. It was a way of making the whole army aware of its Englishness. After the Norman Conquest English (the old Anglo-Saxon language) continued to be spoken by ordinary people but was no longer written. By the end of the 14th century English was once again a written language. But “Middle English”, the language of the 14th and 15th centuries was very different from Anglo-Saxon. This was partly because it had not been written for 300 years and partly because it had borrowed so much from Norman French. By the end of the Middle Ages, English as well as Latin was being used in legal writing and also in elementary schools. Universities increased in number and scope. Oxford and Cambridge were joined by Scotland's St Andrews in 1410 and two other Scottish universities by 1500. Education developed enormously during the 15th century and many schools were founded by powerful men. One of these was William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor of England who founded both Winchester school in 1382 and new College, Oxford. Many other schools were also opened at this time because there was a growing need for educated people who could administer the government, the Church, the law and trade.

The renaissance of Chaucer, Gower, Barbour and Dunbar percolated society. Libraries, such as that of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, were established and the art of biography began. Ideals of internationalism faltered, including crusading, the universal church, monasticism. Nationalism triumphed. Royalty in many respects were as disreputable at the beginning of the period as at the end. War and depopulation allowed women to contribute much more effectively and influentially to society. Throughout England much that we recognise today was established and survives: the parish churches with their towers, now fossilised in their late medieval form by the Reformation; oak-framed timber buildings scattered across the country; universities and schools.

Ireland, Scotland and Wales all enjoy similar cultural characteristics. Maybe it was the wars of the period that led the Scots to place their faith in education with their several universities and the Welsh and Irish to develop their bardic and oral traditions during a turbulent but heroic period of British and Irish history.

And what of the ordinary people? In 1485 over 95% of the people of Britain lived in the countryside, towns despite their small share of national populations had an impact far outweighing their demographic significance.

The Middle Ages ended with a major technical development: William Caxton’s first English printing press, set up in 1476. At first he printed popular books, such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Malory’s Morte d’Arthur.

 

 


Date: 2015-01-29; view: 1390


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