THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR.

Magna Carta and the decline of feudalism.

The beginning of Parliament. The development of towns.

Watt Tyler’s revolt. Chivalry and medieval culture. Wars of the Roses. Chaucer and William Caxton’s first printing press.)

The Renaissance period (The Tudors. The break with the church of Rome. The English Reformation. The Protestant-Catholic struggle. Elizabeth and Shakespeare’s age. Civil war and the Interregnum.

Oliver Cromwell and republicanism. The Restoration.

Constitutional monarchy. Union with Wales and the conquest of Ireland.).

KING JOHN AND MAGNA CARTA

Richard, beguiled by the glamour and prizes of Crusade, departed for Palestine, and on his return was intercepted in Austria and held to ransom by the emperor, Henry VI. Despite a rebellion by his brother, John, the ransom was paid and he returned, only to leave again for Normandy to campaign for his French possessions.

King John

In 1213, John suddenly overturned his own policy, and that of Henry II, by agreeing that England should be a papal fief, its king owing his throne to the Pope. His aim was to obtain Innocent's support in a war against his old enemy Philip Augustus. But his war on France was a disastrous failure and the English barons rose against him, supported by the citizens of London. Magna Carta, their charter of grievance and reform, sixty-two clauses long, was sealed by an unwilling and unrepentant king on 17 June 1215. The barons' subsequent attempt to enforce it led to a split in their own ranks, and warfare followed between those who sided with the king and those who, standing four-square for the Charter, declared John deposed, and invited Louis, son John deposed, and invited Louis, son of Philip Augustus, to assume the throne of England.

John's death in 1216, while on campaign in East Anglia, rescued the country from a civil war that was complicated by the invasion of Louis. His French troops and John's foreign mercenaries ravaged much of the south. In this critical juncture the country rallied round John's nine-year-old son, who became Henry III.

THE REIGN OF HENRY III

During the half-century of his personal rule, Western Europe experienced, on the whole, a state of peace compared with times before and times to come.

French was still the official language of court and law in England. Latin was the international language of learning, diplomacy and liturgy. The English language had no official status. A resident of England, asked to define his identity at this time, would have done so in terms of who his lord was, or perhaps, in terms of his parish or village. Fully three-quarters of the English people were still of the villein class, in a state of semi-servitude, their opportunities and movements restricted to the places where they had been born and by the dictates of the lord of the manor. The change in thinking was brought about by a number of separate elements, which did not have much to do with one another. In England the sea barrier round so much of the country helped to promote a sense of separateness. The emergence of a university at Oxford, first founded in 1167 by scholars who had come from Paris, followed by that of Cambridge in 1209, among Europe's earliest, helped to create a social group of 'clerks', educated men who were greatly influenced by the part-secular, part-religious communities in which their formative years were spent (the student community of Oxford numbered around 1,300 in the 1330s – a considerable figure).

THE DUTIES OF THE KING

AND THE POWER OF THE LAW

The two great formative forces in the emergence of a distinctively English nation were the kingship and the law. A king was expected to rule and govern, to levy specific tolls and taxes, to wage war, to ensure that justice was done, to keep civil peace, to reward his servants, and to be seen to do all these things, as well as to maintain the splendid lifestyle that went with such supremacy and responsibility. A king who failed in these respects might eventually be challenged, as John had been and Henry III was to be, without any urge to destroy or replace kingship itself. To achieve this, without appearing to be merely rebellious and disloyal, it was vital to show in what respects the king had failed, and in what respects he should act differently This was the importance of Magna Carta and such later agreements as the Provisions of Oxford, enforced on Henry III by Simon de Montfort and other barons in 1258. They made it possible to judge the king by his performance.