The British Middle Ages

Important Moments in Medieval

History
• The Norman Conquest
• The Crusades
• Thomas Becket
• Hundred Years War
• The Plague
The Norman Conquest 1066
• William the Duke of Normandy
also known as William the
Conqueror defeated King
Harold of England the Anglo-
Saxon Leader at the Battle of
Hastings.
• The Normans come from an
area in Northern France and
speak French. So, when
William the Conqueror became
the ruler of England the
aristocracy also began to speak
French.
• William the Conqueror's coronation did not
go as planned. When the people shouted
"God Save the King" the nervous Norman
guards at Westminster Abbey thought they
were going to attack William and burnt the
nearby houses.
• The fighting continued for five years for
England
• Burnt the villages they could not control
• Apart from the few Saxon lords who had
accepted William instantly, all the others
lost their lands.
• William gave the Saxon lands to his
Norman nobles, After each English
rebellion there was more land to give
away.
• Over 4.000 Saxon landlords were replaced
by 200 Norman ones
 Language?
• The idea of estates, or orders, was encouraged
during the Middle Ages:
– Clergy
• Latin chiefly spoken, those who pray, purpose was to save
everyone’s soul
– Nobles
• French chiefly spoken, those who fight, purpose was to
protect—allow for all to work in peace—and provide justice
– Commoners
• English spoken, those who work, purpose was to feed and
clothe all above them
 Feudalism
• A caste, social, property and
military system in England.
• Represented as a pyramid
with the King at the top
followed by his aristocracy,
followed by other vassals
they hired and so on until
the very bottom of the
pyramid where there were
landless knights followed by
serfs.
 More about feudalism . . .
• Serfs could not leave the system
until they had worked the land.
• The Knight was the only titled
person who could NOT pass on his
title to the next generation. His
main duty was a military obligation
to his lord, but they were governed
by strict rules of loyalty to their
lord, codes of fighting, treatment of
women, and more (see Chivalry).
• The Feudal System did not always
work, because when an overlord
was weak the system broke down.
• William was careful about giving away the
land because of the French situation.
• Small lands in different territories
• Enough land for himself to assure his strength
• Land in return for a service- French roots –
feudalism
• When a noble lord died, his son could take
hold of the land in exchange for some money
paid to the king
• In 1086, he wanted to know exactly who
• owned which piece of land and how much
it was worth.
• He needed this information so that he
could plan his economy to find our how
much was produced and how much he
could ask in tax. He therefore sent a team
of people all through England to make a
complete economic survey.
• His men asked such questions as: How much land was
there ? Who owned it? How much was it worth? How
many families, ploughs and sheep were there? And so
on. This survey was the only one of its kind in Europe.
Not surprisingly, it was most unpopular with the people,
because they felt they could not escape from its findings.
It so reminded them of the paintings of the Day of
Judgement, or "doom" on the walls of their churches that
they called it the "Domesday" Book.
• It still exists, and gives us an extraordinary amount of
information about England at that time
 Kingship
• William controlled two large areas:
Normandy, which he had been given by
his father,and England, which he had won
in war.
• As the duke of Normandry, he had to
recognise the king of France
• He left his kingdom and lands in France to
his son Rufus, William II in 1087.
• William Rufus did not have a son, so
Robert was on pilgrimage and Henry
crowned himself the king of England.
Robert was furious and attacked but lost,
and then Henry wanted the lands in
Normandy and started a war which he won
and united the lands again.
• His son drowned and he wanted to leave
his lands to his daughter, Mathilda
• Henry nephew, Stephan of Blois, rushed to
England as his uncle had done and crowned
himself.
• Mathilda invaded England four years later.Her
fight with Stephen led to a terrible civil war in
which villages were destroyed and many
people were killed.
• Neither side won and it was agreed that
Stephan would be the king but Mathilda’s son,
Henry would succeed him.
• It took 19 years for the country to recover.
• Henry II was the first unquestioned ruler of the English
throne for a hundred years.
• He destroyed the castles which many nobles had built
without royal permission during Stephen's reign, and
made sure that they lived in manor houses that were
undefended. The manor again became the centre of
local life and administration.
• Henry had much land in France and so his lords as well
Henry’s sons attacked him and his son Richard got his
land.
• Richard joined the war against Muslims
and he got captured by the French king
and got back to England in return for
ransom.
• He was Favouritte among people, Richard
the lionheart.
• Richard had no son, and he was followed
by his brother, John.
• John had already made himself unpopular
with the three most important groups of
people, the nobles, the merchants and
the Church.
• He was greedy and wanted to conduct all
the law courts himself in exchange for the
money.
• He introduced new taxes, taxed more than
usual for the previous ones and French
king invaded Normandry, so he and the
nobles lost their lands there because he
failed to protect them although he had
taken the money.
• In 1209, he quarreled with Pope over who
should be the archbishop of Canterbury
and Pope demanded the French king to
invade England, so John stepped back
• In 1215, he wanted to recapture
Normandry, but the nobles who no longer
trusted him were joined by the merchants
and forced John to sign Magna Carta.
 Magna Carta
• Right to fair and legal trial
• No freedom to majority but to nobility and
freemen
• 24 lords to ensure John kept his promises
• Decline of feudalism in England
• Nobles in cooperation with merchants
• The king had 40 days of fighting service in
war and the king had to pay soldiers in
exchange
 The Crusades
• Christian Europe against the followers of Islam.
• Began in the 11th Century and continued through
the 13th Century
• The prize was Jerusalem or the Holy Land.
• The British lost, but benefited from being around
their culture especially in the areas of
Mathematics, Astronomy, Architecture, and artistic
crafts.
 Thomas Becket (1118-1170)
• His friend Henry II made him
Archbishop of Canterbury to help
him with the Pope.
• Becket sided with the Pope and
angered Henry II who commented
about wishing to kill Becket.
• Four knights took him literally and
murdered Becket.
• The pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales
are traveling to pray at his shrine.
 Dealing with the Celts
• In 1208, Wales became a part of England,
and to ensure it, the oldest prince of
England was assigned Prince of Wales.
• Ireland had been conquered by Norman
lords in 1169. They had little difficulty in
defeating the Irish kings and tribes.
• Henry II , afraid that his lords might
become too independent, went to
Ireland himself.
• He forced the Irish chiefs and Norman
lords to accept his lordship. He did so with
the authority of the Pope, who hoped to
bring Celtic Irish Church under his control.
• Scotland was more problematic
• In 1290, a crisis over the kingship of
Scotland-13 possible heirs
• Invited Edward I to settle the matter
• Had arranged his son to marry Margaret,
the heir to the Scottish throne.
• he assigned John de Balliol but stole the
sacred Stone of Destiny
• William Wallace, a Norman-,Scottish
knight- in 1297, people’s army
• Some triuphs-died in the end
• Edward- the hammer of the Scots
 Law and Justice
• In Saxon times, every district its own laws
and customs, and justice -a family
matter.
• After the Norman Conquest nobles were
allowed to administer justice among the
villages and people on their lands.
• Travelling judges-the king took over the
courts
• The new class of judges how to carry law
and what the punishments are
• From Anglo-Saxon times-The accused
man could be tested in battle
• against a skilled fighter, or tested by
“ordeal”
• In 1215 Pope banished it .
• Trial by jury-12 neighbours
 People
• Ordinary men could not marry easily.
• If a dead boy was found, the Saxons
needed to prove that he was not a Norman
• Robin Hood grew out of the hatred for the
Norman rulers- longbow-not the sword
• Land was overused
• Other activities- blacksmiths, carpenters,
tilers, shephards
• A sharp rise in prices-people could not pay
for their land.
• Borrowed money from the Jews
• They got the land and sold it to powerful
lords-king banished them
 Hundred Years War (1337-1453)
• England v. France
• Unsuccessful militarily but it
changed society because of the
yeoman class
• Yeoman class—small
landowners who became a
dominant force in nonfeudal
England as modern democratic
England was born.
• Chivalry died and lived only in
stories at this time.
• The auld allience
• Wars with France- succesful in the
beginning but lost many lands in time
 Towns
• Towns in England were growing rapidly
• Townspeople grouped themselves into
associations, called guilds, according to
their vocation
• As these guilds became more powerful,
some of them became corrupt
• Also, as towns grew, many combined into
cities. With the growing population, it
was only inevitable that…
The Black Death-Plague (1348-1349)
• Recurred often
• Contributed to the downfall of feudalism as it
killed 1/3 of the population
• Gave more power to the lower classes and
freed the serfs
• An increase in wages-few people
• The king’s and the parliement’s attempts
to control prices
• Towards the end of serfdom
 Heresy-Orthodoxy
• The peasants’ revolt showed that there
was discontent with the crown
• In the next century, the discontent went
towards the Church as well.
• A feudal power-Pope in France –
Englishness
• John Wycliffe-Bible in English-1396-to
leave Oxford
 The War of the Roses
• Began in 1453, when King Henry VI
suffered his first signs of madness
• Parliament appointed his cousin, Richard
of York, as temporary head of England
until Henry was able to return
• Henry recovered briefly and Richard was
forced from office. But Richard was not
willing to leave without a fight.
• This resulted in a Civil War, known as the
War of the Roses, because it pitted the
House of York (Richard’s side) whose
family symbol was a white rose against the
House of Lancaster (Henry’s side) whose
family symbol was a red rose
• The House of Lancaster ultimately won the
Civil War in 1485 (30 years later)
 Section II

Medieval British Society

• Feudalism
• The Class System within the City
• The Role of Women
• Chivalry
• Courtly Love
The Class System within the City

• The class system within the city was different

from the one in the country.
• Feudalism was NOT really evident.
• There was a lower and an upper class, and
people could make their living outside the
feudal system in cities like London and Bath.
The Role of Women
• Peasant women were
expected to bear children,
do all housework, and hard
field work.
• Higher class women were
expected to bear children
and manage the household.
• All women had NO political
rights and were always
subservient to men.
Chivalry
• The system of military
and behavior codes
that governed both
knights and
gentlewomen.
• It inspired Medieval
Romance Literature.
 Courtly Love
• A type of love
encouraged by
Chivalry, it was
ideally nonsexual
admiration where
the woman was
“above the man.”
• Helped to
improve the idea
and treatment of
women in
general.
 Section III

Medieval Language and

Literature
•Ballads
•Morality Plays
•Geoffrey Chaucer
•Medieval Romance
 Ballads
•A narrative poetry from the Middle Ages intended
to be sung.
•Written by unknown authors and handed down in
the oral tradition.
• Rhythms and rhythmical patterns are connected
with music, they are more effective when sung.
•The narrative usually has very little
characterization or background information.
•Contains repetition, dialogue, dialect, and often
supernatural events.
•Popular with the working class.
 Morality Plays
(also known as Mystery Plays)
•A drama written in the Middle Ages that portrays a
biblical story
•First performed in churches and later staged
outdoors
•Often featuring allegorical figures such as Vice,
Mercy, and Death.
•Closely related to miracle plays, which dramatized
saints’ lives.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)
• He is often called the father of British
Poetry.
• He favored writing in the rhyming
couplet, which was later called the
heroic or closed couplet.
• He composed in the vernacular (the
language of the common people,
which was Middle English).
• He was born to a middle class family,
read a lot as a child, and received
some legal training and acquired many
noble patrons.
More about Chaucer . . .
•Chaucer was captured during the
Hundred Yeas War and the King
himself contributed to his ransom,
which shows his importance.
•The Canterbury Tales is
considered one of the greatest
works in the English Language.
•Chaucer was the first poet/author
to be buried in Westminster Abby
in what is now called Poets’
Corner.
 Medieval Romance
• A long narrative in
verse or prose
originating in the
Middle Ages.
• Its main elements are
adventure, love, and
magic