The last legions were withdrawn from the province of Britannia in AD 410 to defend Rome from the Goths. They left behind the infrastructure of some three and a half centuries of occupation and a highly Romanised elite. For all its outward sophistication, however, this Romano-British world was fragile within and without. Soon, the rich pickings it offered were attracting barbarian adventurers from across the seas.  Amongst those who terrorised the coasts were tribes from northern Germany and southern Denmark: Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Their names are preserved in English regions and counties such as East Anglia, Sussex (land of the south Saxons) and Essex (land of the east Saxons). England herself is Engla-lond, land of the Angles.

Hadrian’s wall from Housesteads fort
Image: Wikicommons

In common with their former masters, Britons sought to divide and rule by paying one group of enemies to fight another. Thus was a Jute war-band led by Hengist and his brother Horsa invited to settle in Kent, to serve as mercenaries in defending Britannia against incursions by the Picts (who lived in what is now Scotland). In AD 449 these Jutes landed at Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet and in due course helped their masters to a great victory over the raiders from the north. Yet within a short while employer and employee came to blows. In the ensuing conflict Horsa was killed, but in AD 455 his people were victorious at the battle of Aylesford. So tradition has it that the English conquest began. It was bloody and bitter. In contrast to barbarian conquerors in continental Europe, the newcomers seem to have conducted a campaign of what we would now call ethnic cleansing, dispossessing and driving back the people they overcame. The invaders were pagans. They were pitiless.

They remained so until the coming of St Augustine in AD 589 and their subsequent conversion to Christianity. The arrival of the missionary from Rome was attended by strange correspondences and coincidences. He landed at the very spot at Ebbsfleet where Hengist and Horsa had disembarked one hundred and forty years earlier. Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory the Great, who some time before had seen fair-haired slaves for sale in Rome and had asked where they came from. On being told that they were Angles from Deira, using a Latin pun he replied: “Not Angles, but angels,” and “plucked from God’s ire, and called to Christ’s mercy!” When informed that the name of their king was Aella, Gregory seized on this as a good omen: “Alleluia shall be sung in Aella’s land!” he cried. So it was, and as England became Christianised, campaigns of extermination and dispossession seem gradually to have given way to increased readiness to live alongside the conquered British. A new nation was being born.

Alfred, king of Wessex from 849 to 899, is the only English monarch to bear the epithet “Great.” It is a title he amply deserves, for without him there would quite simply be no England. In 793 Danish raiders attacked the monastery at Lindisfarne on the east coast of Northumbria, putting the defenceless monks to the sword and looting priceless manuscripts and works of art. Thereafter, Danish raids became more frequent and daring year by year. In 865 pillage turned to conquest as a large Danish army landed in Kent. By 876 the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia had been destroyed in battle and their lands settled by the rank and file of the Danish armies. Only Wessex remained outside their control. Alone of the English kingdoms, she had offered resistance stiff enough to turn the invaders’ attention elsewhere, but the respite was short. A renewed Danish assault came in 878. The Viking leader Guthrum launched a surprise attack in the depths of winter, striking deep into West Saxon territory.  Alfred was caught off balance and driven with a small band of followers to seek refuge in the marshes of Athelney in Somerset.

King Alfred the Great
Image: Sceptred Isle Productions Ltd

The king was on the run for several months, launching hit and run raids against the Danes. Then, seven weeks after Easter, he emerged from the marshes and called his people to join him. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (the great early history of the English) records that when he did so: “there came to meet him all the people of Somerset and Wiltshire and … Hampshire, and they rejoiced to see him.” In this sparse account we see the strength of Wessex and the regard in which the people held their king. In the depths of defeat and despair, they rallied to him. Soon afterwards, Alfred led his nation to a resounding victory at Edington, where a white horse was carved into the chalk hillside on the king’s orders after the battle. In the course of the fighting, the English captured the Danes’ standard, a banner depicting a raven (representing the ravens said to attend on their war god, Odin). The spiritual symbolism was powerful. It was underlined a fortnight later when Guthrum sued for peace and agreed to be baptised. The Danes were expelled from Wessex.

For the next eighteen years Alfred was engaged in continual warfare against the Danes, yet never again was the survival of his kingdom seriously threatened. Gradually, he began to take the offensive and to expand the areas under his control. England was kept alive and, in old age, the king at last enjoyed a measure of rest and security he had rarely known: the final three years of his reign were ones of peace. Alfred ensured the survival of the Wessex, yet his achievement goes beyond this. He was a great military leader, but much more besides. Through wise policy he ensured that the West Saxon kings became the acknowledged leaders of all Englishmen who were not under Danish rule. Through generosity in victory and friendship in peace, he laid the foundations for integrating Viking settlers into a new polity. Through promotion of learning, sponsoring Christianity and promulgation of sound laws he helped create a state more solidly based and a system of government more sophisticated than any other in west Europe. The chronicler Asser described Alfred as “enthusiastic and generous in alms-giving to fellow-countrymen and foreigners, extremely affable and pleasant to all men, and a skilful enquirer into the unknown. Many … submitted voluntarily to his dominion, all of whom he ruled, loved, honoured and enriched as if they were his own people.” His originality of mind and breadth of outlook gave a new dimension to English kingship.

The reign of Aethelred the Unready (the un-redd, or badly advised) groans under a weight of adverse circumstance, made worse by the character of the king himself. There is no doubt that he succeeded to a difficult inheritance. He was only eleven years old, and his elder brother Edward fourteen, when their father King Edgar died in 975. There was a disputed succession, with some taking the side of one boy and some of the other. Edward was crowned, but there was civil war and in 978 the young ruler was murdered. The taint of a foul deed clung to Aethelred for many years, though there is no suggestion that he was in any way personally involved in his brother’s killing.

Barely had Aethelred ascended the throne than the Danes resumed their raids on England for the first time in decades. No blame attaches to the monarch for this – the renewed assault was the result of developments within Scandinavia – but his reaction to the attacks was disastrous. Starting in 980, raiding continued with unabated ferocity so that almost every year for thirty years some part of England was harried. Aethelred lacked the steadfastness needed to bring good plans to fruition and he proved a terrible judge of character. Time and again he promoted the lazy, incompetent, corrupt or traitorous. He seemed incapable of choosing good subordinates or of placing confidence even in those few decent men who occupied positions of power and influence. Property was expropriated on the flimsiest excuse. Several times those in high office or their relatives were blinded on the king’s orders for faults real or imaginary. His own arbitrary and inconstant behaviour fed distrust of the crown and ultimately disloyalty. The result was that, although there were honourable exceptions at local level, all too often the armies that England put in the field against the invaders were betrayed by their own leaders. When properly led, English troops showed repeatedly that they were still able to give a good account of themselves, but as time passed the creeping rot of demoralisation spread wider. Year by year the payments required to buy off the Danes (the so-called Danegeld) became larger. The burden on the country, which was required to support the armies of friend and foe alike, was enormous. In 1005 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle speaks of a famine “more severe than any that could be remembered.”

Viking runestone, Sweden
Image: Wikicommons

In 1002 Aethelred’s poor judgment broke out in infamy. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records his hearing that the Danes in England “intended to kill him and all his counsellors, and afterwards to possess his kingdom,” so he ordered the so-called St Brice’s Day massacre. The order was never fully carried out and in any event was impractical of execution in areas of heavy Danish settlement, but amongst those killed was Gunnhild, sister of king Svein Forkbeard of Denmark. Aethelred could scarce have conceived a better way to ensure the undying enmity of a dangerous adversary. So the onslaught continued, without let-up or relief, as long as Aethelred lived. His miserable reign came to an end in 1016.

Thereafter, his son Edmund Ironside led a brief English revival, showing what could be done with proper leadership, but died in the very year of his accession a few weeks after defeat at Assandun by King Cnut of Denmark. On his passing, the exhausted and ravaged country meekly acquiesced in the claim to the throne advanced by Cnut, comforted perhaps by the fact that this Viking ruler was no longer pagan, but baptised a Christian. Not until 1042 was the house of Wessex, Europe’s oldest royal line, restored by Edward the Confessor, another son of Aethelred.

Harold Godwinson is one of the nearly men of English history. He came to the throne on the death of Edward the Confessor in January 1066, having been nominated by the dying king on his deathbed and unanimously elected by the Witan (the high council). In the course of less than 10 months he showed talent, energy and courage worthy of the greatest monarchs. If an air of inevitable doom now hangs over his reign, it is largely the product of hindsight and Norman propaganda. Bad luck dogged his attempts to defend the realm, however. Alert to possible Norman attack, he mobilised a fleet to guard the Channel, but bad weather delayed William’s crossing. By the time the Duke of Normandy was able to move, the English ships had run out of supplies and been dispersed, whilst Harold had been called north to face a second invading army under Harald Hardrada (“hard ruler”) of Norway.

Map showing the invasions of England in 1066
Image: Wikicommons

To cap it all, there was treachery: Harold’s disaffected brother Tostig, who had been exiled in 1065, raided the English coast with a fleet of sixty ships from May 1066. Although defeated by earl Edwin of Mercia at the battle of Lindsey, he escaped to Scotland and subsequently returned to make common cause with Hardrada. Together they were a fearsome army – the joint force numbered some five hundred ships – and after a bloody fight which cost both sides dear, they beat Earl Edwin and his brother Morcar, earl of Northumbria, at the battle of Fulford Gate on 20 September. Meanwhile, however, the king was hurrying to meet the threat.

The campaign that Harold fought in September and October 1066 deserves to rank alongside the finest feats of arms. He surprised the enemy at Stamford Bridge a few miles east of York on 25 September, winning a tremendous victory in which both Tostig and the Norwegian king were killed. So great was the slaughter that the survivors needed just twenty ships to make their escape. Scarce was the battle over before news came that William had landed at Pevensey Bay in Sussex. Straight away Harold led his best troops south by forced marches. They covered 400 miles in just over a fortnight, having destroyed the Norwegian army on the way. The king allowed them a week’s respite in London whilst he gathered men from the southern counties to face William, though most of the new recruits were village levies, many armed with little more than clubs or billhooks. Yet still the battle of Hastings was so hard-fought that its outcome was in the balance almost to the end.

Harold fell on Saturday 16 October 1066 on Caldbeck Hill, which the Normans called Senlac (lake of blood). His brothers Gyrth and Leofwin, together with almost all the nobility and gentry of the southern shires, fell with him. In a single afternoon, England lost her finest soldiers and practically her whole leadership. Many more fled overseas, with a large contingent of exiled Englishmen joining the Varangian Guard, crack household troops of the Byzantine Emperor. The nation they left behind was at the mercy of the Conqueror.

Defeat at Hastings dealt a grievous blow to England, but her spirit was not altogether broken. For two hundred years and more she had borne the assaults of Vikings from Denmark and Norway.  She roused herself for a further effort against the Northmen from Normandy. On news of Harold’s death, the youngster Edgar the Atheling, the only surviving prince of the house of Wessex, was elected king. Yet as William slowly advanced through Kent and Surrey to encircle London, one by one the remaining English leaders (most prominent amongst them Edwin and Morcar, respectively earls of Mercia and Northumbria) began to submit to him. They were influenced no doubt by William’s claim that the throne was his by right, by his promise to uphold English laws and by the fact that the boy-king Edgar was of no age to exercise real leadership. They could not then have envisaged what the reality of Norman rule would be.

Statue of William the Conqueror outside Lichfield cathedral
Image: Wikicommons

Despite this initial submission to William, hardly a year passed between 1066 and his death in 1087 when the Conqueror was not in the saddle directing the suppression of rebellion somewhere in his new kingdom. In truth, many of these outbreaks were minor local affairs that posed no real threat to Norman rule. Some were more in the nature of feudal quarrels amongst the Normans themselves. The exception, however, which clearly shook William and lead to far harsher rule on his part, was the great national revolt of 1068-71. The catalyst for widespread uprising was the killing of the Norman Robert of Comines, whom William had made earl of Northumbria beyond Tees, in 1069. Thereupon, the men of Yorkshire joined with a Danish force to take the newly built castle at York and at this the West Saxons and Mercians, too, took up arms. William’s response was typically vigorous. He bought off the Danes, leaving him free to engage and defeat the English rebels. Thereafter, he showed no mercy. In the winter of 1069-70, the Conqueror set about the deliberate devastation of the most fertile and populous parts of Yorkshire. Not only was livestock slaughtered and stores of grain and other foodstuffs burnt, but the implements which the survivors needed to recover from the disaster by planting and harvesting were systematically destroyed. The destruction was appalling, the suffering agonising.

At length, such resistance as remained centred on the fenland of Cambridgeshire. At Ely lay an island of firm ground amidst the swamp, then so wide and deep that the only practicable means of transport was by boat. Here gathered a desperate group, led by an English thane called Hereward, known to posterity as the Wake, meaning “the Watchful” or “the Wary.” His identity is obscured by lack or contradiction of details, but such fragmentary records as exist suggest that he was a native of Lincolnshire and that he was of turbulent and lawless character, an outlaw before ever he was in revolt against Norman rule. The battle was noble but forlorn, and utterly hopeless once William had ensured that there was no chance of Danish support. The Normans blocked escape routes from Ely with ships and built a causeway across the marsh, whereupon all surrendered save Hereward, who escaped with a handful of followers. What became of him thereafter is unknown. So ended the last serious English challenge to the Conquest. Yet Saxon ideas of kingship were not lost. Their memory remained to inspire later generations.

In a muddy field by the banks of the Thames gathered the signatories to a momentous document: on one side a disgruntled King John, on the other a knot of rebellious barons and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton.  Magna Carta (the Great Charter) was sealed at Runnymede in Surrey on 15 June 1215. It is widely regarded as the foundation stone of English liberties and a key text of the English constitution. Such was its totemic power that it was repeatedly re-issued by subsequent kings: by Henry III and Edward I.  An amendment during the latter’s reign established the principle of ‘no taxation without representation.’

On its face, the document is hardly a democrats’ manifesto. Its sixty three clauses focus largely on matters of concern only to a privileged few, with two primary aims: to define (and thereby limit) the feudal rights of the Crown and to protect the privileges of the Church. Yet by placing a brake on the unfettered exercise of royal authority, it became a bulwark against all oppression. Combined with the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 (a requirement for the authorities to produce in court those being held in custody, which drew on the rights enshrined in Magna Carta) and the Bill of Rights of 1689 (whose sponsors self-consciously thought of it as a new Magna Carta), the result was to secure for Englishmen an unprecedented degree of freedom from arbitrary rule. Thus reaction to the rapacity of grasping John Lackland redounded to the ultimate benefit of his subjects.

The sealing of Magna Carta
Image: Sceptred Isle Productions Ltd

The aggressive expansionism of Plantagenet kings produced a similar defining moment in Scotland: the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320. The signatories declared, “We are resolved never to submit to English domination. We are fighting for freedom and freedom only.” It was a long struggle. William Wallace (1270-1305) first roused Scottish resistance, but success at the battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 was followed by defeat at Falkirk the very next year. Wallace went into hiding, was betrayed and at length was hanged in London as a common bandit, becoming both martyr and hero of Scotland’s cause. After his death Robert the Bruce took up the baton. He, too, was hounded and defeated, until inspired by a spider in a cave to try, try and try again. His perseverance was rewarded. Though it was not fully apparent for generations, victory over the forces of Edward II at Bannockburn in 1314 effectively set the seal on Scottish independence. Thus were seeds of freedom nurtured in England and her northern neighbour. From them in time grew great oaks.

In 1348 England caught the full force of a pandemic that had already ravaged Asia and other areas of Europe. It was fuelled by three related types of plague, two carried by rats and one on the air. The symptoms were horrific: the most common, bubonic form caused painful swellings in groin and armpit, with dark blotches on the skin from internal bleeding. Three or four days of unbearable pain were followed by certain death if the bubo did not burst beforehand. The affliction was called the Pestilence or the Great Pestilence, otherwise known as the Black Death.

The Dance of Death by Michael Wolgemut
Image: Wikicommons

It is commonly reckoned that something like one third of the population of Europe died between 1346 and 1353, though some hazard yet higher mortality. Contemporaries often speak of half or even three quarters of the people around them dying, though it is difficult to substantiate death on such an extravagant scale across entire countries. At all events, it is not fanciful to think of some one and a half millions dead in England, eight millions in France and perhaps some thirty millions for Europe as a whole. Those figures are horrific in themselves, the more so when we remember the population of the entire British Isles in 1346 probably did not exceed five millions.

Reactions to the horror varied from panic and wild debauchery to dutiful fortitude. Many clergy suffered disproportionately through bravely ministering to the sick and dying, whilst others fled for their lives. The authorities were helpless, doctors useless. There was nothing for it but to let the disease run its course. At length, it burnt itself out in Russia in 1353, leaving behind a ravaged continent. The psychological trauma ran deep, heightened by the fact that plague had been absent from Europe for six hundred years. No longer: there were further outbreaks from 1357 to 1365 and thereafter every ten years or so until the end of the century. The macabre Dance of Death made its appearance and a new breed of mendicants, the so-called Flagellants, whipped themselves bloodily from town to town in a bizarre enactment of repentance.  The conviction reigned that God was punishing mankind for its sins. Many claimed that the end of the world was nigh.

Geoffrey Chaucer, who lived between about 1340 and 1400, is widely reckoned the poetic genius of Middle English. His life was full of incident, and he became an active participant in many of the major events of the day. He was almost certainly of an age to remember the horror of the Black Death. He fought in France during the Hundred Years’ War, being captured and later ransomed, was employed on diplomatic missions to France and Italy and most likely on secret service in Flanders. He was probably present at Smithfield in 1381 when the young king Richard II confronted Wat Tyler and the rebels of the Great (or Peasants’) Revolt.

Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales
Image: Wikicommons

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are rightly famous, painting a picture of a whole society in the shape of thirty two pilgrims riding together from tavern to cathedral, entertaining each other and revealing themselves as they do so. His keen eye and sharp pen describe many of the issues of his day, being particularly scathing of corruption, greed and hypocrisy amongst the clergy. More or less contemporary and almost equally esteemed is The Vision concerning Piers Ploughman, usually attributed to William Langland. Here Conscience preaches to the people, Repentance moves their hearts and many are prompted to seek the way of Truth with the guidance of the trusty ploughman.

The world that these poems describe was one of almost bewildering social change. Formerly immutable hierarchies were starting to crumble. Widespread death from plague loosened the bonds of feudalism and the survivors of a decimated peasantry found their bargaining position much improved. Pressure on the land was reduced, workers were in short supply and wages began to creep upwards. Increasingly, obligations of service were commuted to cash payments. All over Europe, attempts were made to preserve the old economic order. In England, the Statute of Labourers was passed in 1351 to hold down wages. Resentment against such measures was widespread and consequently popular risings were commonplace in France, Germany and elsewhere. Revolt usually fizzled quickly with the killing of rebel leaders and dispersal of their followers, but the medieval world was passing.

There was a ferment of ideas: John Wycliffe made the first translation of the Bible into English and the rebel priest John Ball spread egalitarian views. In the popular ditty of the day: “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” This caught the spirit of the time. Following Wycliffe’s lead, the Lollards, objected to prayers for the dead, priestly celibacy and other church ordinances. They attacked the wealth and intolerance of the clergy, proclaimed the right of every man to examine the Bible for himself and held that all authority was founded on God’s grace. This was revolutionary indeed, for it led all too easily to the conclusion that wicked kings, popes and priests should have no power. The authorities could not let this pass. Wycliffe was silenced and those who espoused his teaching were persecuted to extinction. Their thoughts, however, were not so easily expunged and budded afresh in the Protestant Reformation some hundred and fifty years later.

For those who bemoan the moral decline of modern Englishmen, history can be a good antidote. Such was the profanity of the English soldiery during the Hundred Years’ War that the French named them “les goddams.” We are accustomed to look with pride and some degree of astonishment at the roll call of victory after victory against seemingly impossible odds during this conflict: on sea at Sluys (1340), on land at Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), Agincourt (1415), Rouvrai (1429) and a dozen more besides. We choose to avert our eyes from the widespread practice of the chevauchée, an armed raid through French-held territory characterised more often by pillage, rape and murder than any real military objective. We prefer not to consider the activities of the so-called Free Companies, mercenaries who treated France as their playground, where fortunes could be made on the back of plunder. In truth, beneath the gloss of victory lay little glory.

By 1429 France was in a pitiable state. Large swathes of the country were under the control of England or her ally, Burgundy. French armies had been defeated time and again by a foe whose weaponry, tactics and soldiering ability seemed in every way superior. Her capital was in the hands of the enemy and the royal court had been driven to a provincial backwater at Chinon. She had indeed no king, the dauphin being as yet uncrowned, his paternity in question and the legitimacy of his claim to the crown challenged by the English. Dissolution and dithering marked his conduct. Worse yet, a new English offensive was under way. The fearsome warrior king Henry V had died in 1422 leaving an infant son, but the prosecution of the war scarce faltered. The Duke of Bedford, regent for the young Henry VI, urged his commanders forward. Orleans, key to control of the Loire valley and the French-held lands beyond, was invested. Its capture would almost certainly mark the final phase of the war and lead to all France coming under English rule.

Far from the fighting lay a little village called Domrémy. In its fields a peasant girl had since the age of thirteen heard voices and seen visions. She was known to her family and neighbours for her piety and prayerfulness, for her purity, compassion and gentleness. She is known to us as Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc), the Maid of Orleans.  Around eighteen years old in 1429, at this time of great peril her voices told her that now was the moment for her to save France. What she saw and heard changed the course of history.

Orleans in 1429
Image: Wikicommons

By every human measure, France was without hope in the early months of 1429. By every human measure, it was ridiculous to suppose that an untutored shepherdess could win an audience with the future king of France, let alone persuade him to allow her a leading role in his armies. By every human measure, an innocent girl should have been the prey of mocking soldiers, not their revered heroine. That something more than human was at work in Joan’s story is hard to deny: even her enemies conceded that, though they claimed her power was demonic. Accustomed to defeat and anticipating annihilation, the dauphin himself at first was sceptical. When Joan arrived at Chinon, he dressed as one of his courtiers and mingled with them – this in an age when few of the peasantry would have seen their ruler, or even a picture of his likeness. Yet unerringly she sought him out and fell on bended knee before him. “Most noble dauphin,” she said, “the King of Heaven announces to you by me that you shall be anointed and crowned king in the city of Rheims, and that you shall be his vice-regent in France.”

The dauphin nevertheless remained alert to the charge of having leagued himself with a sorceress. He thus ensured that every conceivable test was made of Joan’s purity and orthodoxy, until at length he and his advisers were satisfied and she was sent with the army to relieve Orleans. Joan’s bursting on the national stage was accompanied by religious revival. Clergy travelled the country preaching and calling on the people to repent. Soldiers, mindful of the presence of the Maid in their midst, laid aside swearing and vice. Thus the French marched forth, with a girl at their head, clad in armour and bearing a banner of her own devising. Within three years the siege of Orleans was broken, the dauphin crowned king at Rheims and the English embarked on the long retreat that at length saw them expelled from France: by 1453, only the enclave of Calais remained in English hands. Joan did not live to savour victory. She was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English, who put her on trial for witchcraft. Under great pressure she at first disclaimed having received any divine commission, but when this did not set her free, she spoke with renewed courage: “If I said that God did not send me, I should condemn myself; truly, God did send me … I have [abjured] for fear of the fire and my retraction was against the truth.” She was burnt at the stake in Rouen on 30 May 1431.

There is nothing like comprehensive defeat in war to sow dissent and discord. So it was in England as her gains in France were steadily eroded. Henry VI came of age in 1437, and proved a pitiful king. Military disaster overseas was compounded by incompetence at home, where his wife Margaret of Anjou dominated government. So appalling was the monarch that he was twice deposed (and once reinstated) before eventually being murdered in 1471. A weak sovereign and a disputed succession ushered in the dynastic contest known since Victorian times as the Wars of the Roses, comprising over a quarter century of tribal strife under the banners of the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster. From 1450 onwards England was laid low as rival armies pressed the claims of competing candidates for the throne, each descended from Edward III: Henry VI for Lancaster and for York first its duke Richard and then his son Edward, Earl of March (later Edward IV).

Medieval warfare (from Froissart’s Battle of Crécy)
Image: Wikicommons

Battles were fought the length and breadth of the land, from small and scrappy skirmishes to great set-pieces. The pendulum swung first one way and then the other. Richard, duke of York gained brief ascendancy after the battle of St Albans in 1455 before the Lancastrians recovered control and the upstart duke was slain in battle at Wakefield in 1460. The tide turned again with comprehensive Lancastrian defeat at Towton on 29 March 1461, fought in a snowstorm on Palm Sunday, the outcome decided by the late arrival of Yorkist reinforcements under the Duke of Norfolk. This savage engagement cost the lives of an estimated twenty to thirty thousand Englishmen, a greater proportion of the population than perished on the first day of the Somme offensive in 1916 – one in every hundred, the equivalent of over six hundred thousand today. Towton is the largest, longest and most murderous armed contest ever to take place in these islands. Its closest rival, another Yorkshire bloodbath at Marston Moor in 1644, had only a quarter of the casualties. Shakespeare did not exaggerate when he wrote in Richard II of the coming Wars of the Roses: “the blood of England shall manure the ground and future ages groan … disorder, horror, fear and mutiny shall here inhabit, and this land be called the field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls.” The carnage was the culmination of disastrous choices by the nation and its leaders.

After Towton the earl of March, who had already taken the title Edward IV, was formally crowned king and Henry VI fled overseas.  In 1469 it was the usurper’s turn to be shunted aside in favour of a reinstated Henry VI, but Edward returned to win decisively at Tewkesbury in 1471 and thereafter held the throne until his death over a decade later. All the while, the country and the common people suffered. So weak did royal authority become that for long periods the balance of power was held by Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. Such was his influence that he was known as Warwick the Kingmaker. It was his support that enabled Richard of York in 1460 to force Henry VI into recognising him as heir. In 1469, it was Warwick’s changing sides that led to Henry VI being restored to the throne the following year. The earl remained a force in the land until he was defeated and killed at the battle of Barnet in 1471.

Edward IV died in 1483. Two years later, the wretched conflict came at last to an end when Henry Tudor defeated Edward’s brother Richard III at Bosworth. As Henry VII, the new monarch wisely did all in his power to make sure that a line was drawn under the war. Symbolically, the Tudor Rose included both the white of York and the red of Lancaster.

After the Norman Conquest, French remained the official language of law courts for three hundred years (until 1362, during the reign of Edward III). Similarly, the common people were denied access to the Bible in their own tongue. Most ordinary folk, of course, were illiterate but even those who could read would normally only have access to the Latin Vulgate. This state of affairs had first been challenged on a widespread scale in England by the Lollards, but the Protestant Reformation of the early sixteenth century gave criticisms of abuses by the Church extra force. Into this world came a man driven by passion: a desire for learning, a longing for the Word of God and a yearning to share that Word with others. This compelling force led him to burst out one day to a clergyman whom he considered a disgrace to the cloth: “If God spare my life, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of Scripture than thou dost.” His name was William Tyndale and though he was not the first to translate the Bible into English – Wycliffe had already produced an English version of a large part of both Old and New Testaments – Tyndale’s work was influential far beyond his predecessor’s.

To some degree the impact of Tyndale’s Bible was a consequence of being in the right place at the right time: Protestantism was undermining traditional church hierarchies and emphasised the right of everyone to examine the Bible for him- or herself. It benefitted from new technology, as printing meant that large numbers of Bibles could be printed on the continent and smuggled into England. It reflected the fact that changes in language were already rendering Wycliffe’s version unintelligible. Yet Tyndale also deserves credit for his courage and self-sacrifice, his diligence and scholarship, perhaps above all for his economy and elegance of expression. So accurate and felicitous was the result that the Authorised Version produced in the reign of King James I (1603-1625) was in overwhelming proportion based on Tyndale’s work. Many phrases that have passed from the Bible into common usage are pure Tyndale. Together with the works of William Shakespeare and the Book of Common Prayer, he has been one of the central influences on the formation of modern English.

The Bible issued to Parliamentary soldiers during the English Civil War
Image: Sceptred Isle Productions Ltd

For his pains, this scholar of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic was forced to flee his own country and to live in hiding overseas. There he adopted various disguises and aliases, rightly fearful that agents of the English king were in search of him. Henry VIII (reigned 1509-1547) had earlier been awarded the title Defender of the Faith by the Pope for authoring a pamphlet defending traditional orthodoxy and had no desire to let writings that were banned by the church into his realm. Indeed, Sir Thomas More (who became Henry’s Lord Chancellor – or chief minister – following the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey in 1529) seems to have developed something of a fixation with Tyndale and pursued him unremittingly.  Tyndale was eventually strangled and burnt at the stake as a heretic in Brussels in 1536, having been tracked down and entrapped by an agent probably sent by More, then handed to the local authorities for sentencing and execution. He refused to save himself by abjuring his life’s work and went bravely to his death. As flames licked about him, he cried, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”

More martyrs followed. During the reign of Henry VIII’s daughter Queen Mary (1553-1558) nearly three hundred Protestants were burnt at the stake. Amongst them were Archbishop Cranmer and Bishops Hooper, Ridley and Latimer. The last words of the Archbishop of Canterbury and of the Bishop of Worcester in particular have resonated down the centuries, making a deep impression on all who heard them. Latimer, burnt alongside Ridley at Oxford in 1555, called out to his friend as the flames licked about him: “Courage, Master Ridley. With God’s good grace we shall this day light such a fire in England as shall never be put out.” A year later Cranmer, author of the greater part of the Book of Common Prayer and thus instrumental in establishing the Calvinist orthodoxy of the Church of England, who had earlier recanted of Protestantism and then thought better of it, held his right arm to the flames and said: “For as much as my hand hath sinned, by writing contrary to my heart, it shall be the first to burn.”

The queen who had these men put to death, devout and sincere as she undoubtedly was, is the Bloody Mary of infamy. When she died childless after a reign of six years, the popular support that had accompanied her accession and enabled her to weather the usurpation of Lady Jane Grey had evaporated. Her passing was unlamented, her only lasting legacy the loss of England’s last piece of territory in France. She said that she died “with Calais engraved on my heart.”

In the sixteenth century Spain was not just a European power of the first rank, but a world power beyond compare. Under her control came all South America bar Brazil, the whole of Central America and much of the Caribbean, together with what are now the southernmost parts of the United States. In the Far East, she held the Philippines. Within Europe, her Habsburg kings were also rulers of the Spanish Netherlands and much of Italy. Her resources of manpower and of bullion from the New World seemed inexhaustible. It was not realised at the time that the yearly import of vast quantities of gold and silver was the source of rampant inflation, nor that the illusion of bottomless wealth was encouraging severe imperial overstretch. In 1588 only her strength was apparent. For years England had provoked Spain: through raiding of Spanish treasure fleets, through support for Dutch rebels and through her unrepentant Protestantism. King Philip II determined that enough was enough. A mighty fleet was equipped: seventy three fighting vessels, attended by over fifty freighters and lighter craft, together carrying 2,400 guns, crewed by eight thousand sailors and carrying in addition seventeen thousand soldiers. Their orders were to sail up the Channel, pick up a further sixteen thousand men of the Duke of Parma’s forces from the Netherlands and land these, together with the Armada’s own complement of soldiers, in the southern shires. Little serious resistance was expected to Parma’s battle-hardened force and in truth the raw recruits of the English army cut a sorry sight alongside the veterans of the Spanish tercios, then acknowledged as the finest infantry in Europe.

The words of Elizabeth I as she addressed her troops at Tilbury in Kent were defiant: “I know that I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England, too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.” The reality was that, unless the Spanish could be prevented from landing, the outlook was bleak. All depended on the outcome of the war at sea. As Drake shrewdly observed, “The advantage of time and place in all practical actions is half a victory; which being lost is irrecoverable.”

The Armada sets sail from Ferrol, Spain
Image: Wikicommons

Elizabeth had at her command some of the most talented sailors England has ever produced. The Lord High Admiral (Lord Howard) was not an experienced seaman, but he was a good chief and a wise judge of men. With Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher and others at his side, he was able to achieve a deliverance that seemed almost miraculous. As the Armada sailed up the Channel, scores of English ships clustered around it, dodging Spanish attempts to grapple at close quarters and pouring broadside after broadside at the enemy. The image is glorious, the truth rather more prosaic. Despite a prodigious expenditure of powder and shot, by the end of the third day of fighting the English had only succeeded in capturing, sinking or disabling two Spanish vessels. Whilst Howard’s fleet had suffered little damage, the Armada was still a formidable force and its formation remained intact.

A turning point came on 28 July 1588. Eight fire ships were sent amongst the Spaniards by night as they lay at anchor off Calais. In the event, these did not destroy a single vessel and burnt themselves out harmlessly on the sandbanks east of the town, but they did something that the English had been unable to achieve hitherto: they broke the Armada’s cohesion. Scattering into the North Sea pursued by an adversary with his tail up, the Spaniards took a terrible pounding from shot and shell and were driven beyond the point at which wind and currents made junction with Parma impossible. Their enemy continued to harass them along the North Sea coast as far as the Scottish border and then left them to the mercy of the elements. The battered remnants of the once-proud force limped home several months later. Only some sixty ships returned, with a loss of perhaps fifteen thousand men killed, captured and dying. Many vessels that were not lost in action were sunk in storms around the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. The English rejoiced at their deliverance.

During the war with Spain the dog that did not bark was the feared fifth column within England: its Roman Catholic minority. Those who remained loyal to the Pope had been driven underground, but a network was kept alive to enable them to continue worshipping in secret. Country houses up and down the land still proudly show their ‘priest’s holes’ where the celebrant of Mass could be hidden during searches by government agents. Those who declined to embrace state-sponsored religion were called recusants (from the Latin recusans, meaning refusing) and these adherents of the old faith lived a curious double life, often mixing outward conformity to Anglican rites with their inner allegiance. One such was the composer William Byrd (1543-1623). He was able to walk the tightrope with such skill that in 1563 he became organist at Lincoln cathedral. Thereafter Elizabeth I appointed him joint organist of the Chapel Royal with his co-religionist Thomas Tallis, with whom he was granted a licence to print and publish music and whom he succeeded in 1585. For all his success, however, Byrd never forgot where his heart lay: his treatment of Psalm 137 is in effect a coded statement of continued loyalty to Rome.

The expectation that religious allegiance would trump national feeling made this embattled group dangerous in the eyes of government and people alike. Nor was the danger wholly illusory. Elizabeth was the intended victim of a number of Catholic plots, excommunication by the Pope in 1570 having absolved subjects of loyalty to her. It is easy now to overlook what a fraught time this was, even after defeat of the Armada removed the most direct military threat. In the last days of Elizabeth I’s reign there was grave uncertainty about the political future, as an ageing and childless queen neared the end of her days; there was disquiet about the uneasy compromise governing religious affairs, with Puritans at one end of the spectrum, Roman Catholics at the other and the Church of England in between; there was discontent at economic disruption resulting from closure of the monasteries, the enclosure of common land and a new class of indigent poor thereby created. The country was coming by degrees to that fork in the road that led eventually to civil war.

Signature of Elizabeth I
Image: Wikicommons

The reality of the potential threat was made clear early in the succeeding reign, for in 1605 a group of Roman Catholics, of whom Guy Fawkes remains in popular imagination the central figure, conspired to blow up King James I during a sitting of Parliament. The plot was discovered before the intended date of its execution:  5 November, still celebrated with bonfires and fireworks each year as the date of the Gunpowder Plot. Fawkes and the other conspirators were executed, not for their religious beliefs, but for treason. The link between Roman Catholicism and treason thereafter became so fixed in the minds of most Englishmen that the merest hint of suspicion was capable of producing hysterical overreaction. Nevertheless, despite (or perhaps even to some degree because of) this turbulent background, the Elizabethan era saw an astounding cultural flowering, with poet and playwright William Shakespeare its proudest legacy.

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s finest tragedies. In the opening scene, three witches prophesy that the victorious general will become thane of Cawdor and thereafter king of Scotland. When the first prediction comes to pass, Macbeth’s wife persuades him to murder King Duncan so as to make the realm his. Remorse, despair and madness unfold against a background of further killing before the usurper dies in battle and the rightful order is restored. The play was most probably finished in 1606, by which time the first Stuart king of England, James, had been three years in London (after already reigning more than thirty years in Scotland). This “wisest fool in Christendom” was the reputed author of the True Law of Free Monarchies, published in 1603, the year of his accession to the English throne. The book responds to the contention that a king is elected by and is responsible to the people and makes the countervailing argument: that kings are established by God and are responsible to him alone.

Being a foreigner in England, James trod carefully. His son was less circumspect. As the reign of Charles I progressed it became increasingly obvious that Parliament and the king had competing and mutually exclusive concepts of government. The former looked to the privileges it had won from often reluctant monarchs in preceding reigns and sought to protect and augment them, the right to vote taxes being particularly jealously guarded. The latter proclaimed with increasing stridency the so-called divine right of kings and sought to free administrative purse-strings from the unwelcome control of elected representatives.  The contest increasingly acquired a religious overlay as Puritans sided with Parliament, whilst high Anglicans and Roman Catholics aligned with the king.

The True Law of Free Monarchies
Image: Wikicommons

For eleven years the monarch dispensed with Parliament altogether, using ingenious and ever more desperate schemes to raise the money he needed, imagining that he could with impunity ride roughshod over the accumulated freedoms of the English, dispense with the people’s elected representatives and rule by decree. At last, however, the need for cash was so acute that he could not avoid recalling Parliament to vote new taxes. The result was uproar as pent-up resentments burst in a torrent against the king and his ministers. The stage was being set for civil war. Shortly, the nation would be forced to choose: between Parliament and the king, between rebellion and loyalty, between competing visions of right and wrong. On 22 August 1642, the monarch made what was effectively a declaration of war by raising his standard outside the walls of Nottingham castle. The place is called Standard Hill to this day. There he called on loyal subjects to join his army. In fact, few did, for Nottingham’s sympathies lay with Parliament. Nevertheless, the king had set his people on the road to a calamitous conflict, in which perhaps as many as one in twenty of the population may have died.

An extended version of the above can be found in Redeeming a Nation: biblical reflections on English history by Philip Quenby (Onwards & Upwards Publishers, 2012).