Mediaeval History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Mediaeval History’
Edward II was given the crown of England on condition that he had nothing more to do with Piers Gaveston, and he did not keep his word.
Edward II succeeded Edward I in 1307, and was nothing like his father. Edward ‘Longshanks’ had been a man of determination, firm in governance at home, single-minded in his campaign to bring Wales and Scotland to heel. His son, though ‘fair of body and great of strength’, could govern neither England nor himself.
Henry VI’s campaign to confirm himself as King of France looked to be in trouble after the Duke of Brittany switched sides.
In 1425, England’s Henry VI and France’s Charles VII were still fighting the Hundred Years’ War for the French crown. That October, John V, Duke of Brittany followed his brother Arthur’s example and backed Charles. The Earl of Salisbury and other English generals replied with raids on Brittany from their base at Saint-James in Normandy, and by February, Arthur could see that brother John needed help.
Charles Dickens laments William the Conqueror’s brutal rampage through rebellious Durham and Yorkshire.
The Harrying of the North was William of Normandy’s rampage through the lands around Durham and York in the winter of 1069-70. Following victory over King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William was crowned King of England on Christmas Day that year, but the people of England, and their Viking friends in Ireland and across the North Sea, did not meekly acknowledge their new lord.
Embarrassed by the behaviour of his Norman bishops and abbots, King William I asked monk Guitmond to come over and set an example.
After seizing the English crown in 1066, William the Conqueror appointed French clergyman as bishops and abbots across England. Many were contemptuous and greedy, few spoke English and some used gendarmes to enforce their French ways. William begged Guitmond of the Abbey of St Leufroi in Normandy to set a better example, but Guitmond said the problem went deeper than that.
Charles Dickens tells the story of Hereward the Wake, the last Englishman to stand up to William the Conqueror.
After seizing King Harold’s crown at Hastings in 1066, William of Normandy had to face a series of challengers from among the English and their friends in Ireland and Scotland. William crushed the revolt of Harold’s sons Edmund and Godwin, visited slaughter and burning on Durham, bought off the Danes and the Earls Edwin and Morcar — and left one man to lead the rebels in a last desperate stand.
However grim and severe the thirteenth century baron might be in his public duties, at dinner-time it was all wine, laughter and song.
The English barons of the thirteenth century were men lordly and stern, knights bold enough to present King John with the Great Charter at Runnymede in 1215, and to bring John’s son Henry III to heel at the Battle of Lewes in 1264. But they could afford to unbend a little at home, where they kept a splendid and lively table.