British History:

First Settlers to the Hundred

Years’ War
Week 2
First Settlers
 Ice Age
• 250,000 B.C.
• 50,000 - 10,000 B.C.
• 10,000 – 5,000 B.C. Lady of Elx

(hunters, gatherers fishermen; deer)

 Stone Age
• 3,000 B.C. – Iberians (pottery;
settled in the Western parts of Britain)
• Stonehenge; henges;
 Bronze Age
• 2,400 B.C. – Beaker people (culture;
Indo-European language)
 Iron Age
• 700 B.C. – The Celts
• Technically advanced; wield iron
• Celtic languages;
• Tribes – tribal councils;
• Druids;
 The Romans (43 – 410 A.D.)
• 55 B.C. – Emperor Julius Ceaser
• 43 A.D. – Emperor Claudius
• Literacy, Latin, Roman Christianity;
• Hadrian’s Wall;
• Infrastructure – towns (York, Chester, St. Albans,
Bath, Lincoln, Gloucester and Colchester);
military roads;
 The Anglo-Saxon Invasion (430 A.D.)
• Angles, Saxons and Jutes
• Warlike, illiterate;
• Kingdoms, language;
• Shires, counties; class system; taxes;
• Christianity –St. Augustine (Archbishop of
Canterbury);
• Monasteries, education; King Alfred the Great;
- Cædmon’s Hymn
- Beowulf
- “The Seafarer”
- Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle
- Ecclesiastical History
of the English People
 Viking Attacks (8th – 10th c.)
• Pillage villages and monasteries;
• Conquer Anglo-Saxon Britain, except for Wessex
(871-899);
• Alfred defeats Guthrum (878); treaty (886) –
Danelaw;
• 10th c. – new attacks; Æthelred (978-1013; 1014-16);
• Cnut and sons (1016-1042);
• Edward the Confessor (1042 – 1066); Harold
Godwinson;
• The Norman Conquest;
 The Normans
 William I The Conqueror (1066-
1087)
• Disorder and rebellion
• Feudalism
• Domesday Book
 William II (1087-1100) (England);
Robert (Normandy)
• Hunting accident
 Henry I (1100-1135)
 Matilda and Stephen I (1135-1154)
• Civil War – the Anarchy
The Plantagenets
 Henry II (1154-1189)
• Unopposed leader
• Legal changes –
English Common Law
• Church and state
• St. Thomas Becket
 Richard I (1189-1199) The
Lionheart
• The Crusades
 John I (1199-1216)
• Normandy is lost
• Magna Carta – limit the power
of the monarch;
• Foundation of Parliament
 Henry III (1216-1272)
• Foreign friends
• Taxes
 Edward I (1272-1307)
• First real Parliament – statutes and
political decisions
• House of Commons – knights, wealthy
class, merchants
• 1284, Wales and England
• Warfare with Scotland; William
Wallace; Scottish nationalism;
 Edward II (1307-1327)
• Debts, failure;