The Story of Britain Read online

  William was a giant of a man, head and shoulders taller than any other knight. Others trembled when they heard his name, for the duke of Normandy had never been defeated.

  The year was 1066, and that is where our story begins.

  TIMELINE

  55–54 BCE Julius Caesar raids Britain.

  43 CE The Romans invade Britain and make it the province of Britannia.

  122 The Romans start Hadrian’s Wall to defend the northern border of Britannia.

  410 The Roman legions leave.

  432 St Patrick goes to Ireland to convert the Irish to Christianity.

  457 Hengist defeats the Britons. The Angles and Saxons are here to stay.

  about 490 The Battle of Mount Badon. The Britons fight back.

  500s The Scots move from Ireland to the land of the Picts, which we now call Scotland.

  597 Sent by the pope, Augustine arrives in Britain to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.

  664 The Synod of Whitby. All the Christians in Britain agree to obey the pope.

  731 Bede writes his history of the Anglo-Saxons.

  757–96 Offa, king of Mercia, builds Offa’s Dyke on the border between England and Wales.

  789 The Vikings arrive. They make their first raids on Britain and Ireland.

  840–58 Kenneth Mac Alpin unites the Picts and Scots and becomes the first king of Scotland.

  ?–878 Rhodri Mawr, king of Gwynedd, unites Wales, but is killed by the Vikings and his kingdom breaks up again.

  871–99 Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, fights back against the Danes and becomes the first king of England.

  ?–950 Hywel Dda, Rhodri Mawr’s grandson, gives the Welsh laws.

  1014 The Danish king, Svein Forkbeard, attacks Ethelred the Unready, who flees to Normandy.

  1016 Cnut, Svein Forkbeard’s son, becomes king of England.

  1042 Cnut’s son has no children, so Edward the Confessor, Ethelred’s son, becomes king of England.

  1066 Edward dies. Harold Godwinson, earl of Wessex, becomes king and defeats Harald Hardrada, but is beaten by William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy. The Normans take over England.

  The Norman Conquest

  HARALD Hardrada was the first to invade. He landed in Yorkshire with a great army of Vikings. With him was Harold Godwinson’s brother Tostig, who had quarrelled with Harold the year before and wanted to get his own back.

  Harold Godwinson gathered his army and marched north as fast as he could. “We must beat the invaders one at a time,” he told his advisers. “First we will defeat Hardrada, then march back south to face the Normans.”

  His speed took the invaders by surprise. Hardrada and Tostig were holding a feast to celebrate their landing when the Anglo-Saxons arrived; their men didn’t even have their armour with them. The Norwegians fell back to a place called Stamford Bridge but the Anglo-Saxons’ best soldiers, the “Housecarls”, made a wall of shields that no one could break through. Both Hardrada and Tostig were killed and hundreds of Norwegians slaughtered.

  Panting, still smeared with blood from the battle, Harold addressed his soldiers. “No time to rest!” he shouted. “The Normans will soon attack England as well. We must march south tonight.”

  The English Channel is so narrow that on a clear day the white cliffs of Dover can be seen from France. But its storms can quickly overwhelm sailing ships, and several times Duke William had to delay his invasion while he waited for better weather. At last his chance came and the Normans set off across the Channel by night.

  The Normans spoke French, but they were descended from Vikings – Northmen, or Normans – who had landed on the coast of France and made their home there. They had defeated many enemies before, but the invasion of England was the greatest challenge they had ever faced. As the soldiers stared ahead into the darkness, only William and his brother Odo seemed unafraid.

  When the ships touched land it was William himself who jumped onto the beach first. Men scrambled down the ships’ sides. Soldiers stood up to their waists in water, making human chains to pass ashore barrels of arrows and racks of swords. Then the Norman army was ready to fight.

  Meanwhile, Harold marched south.

  When they first set off, the excitement of beating Hardrada had cheered up the housecarls and they sang songs as they marched. But as the miles stretched out, they grew tired. Their shields and swords seemed to grow heavier, and each hill was greeted with a groan. By the time they reached the agreed gathering place near Hastings on the Sussex coast they were exhausted. Knowing the Normans were near by, some began grimly sharpening their swords, but others were too tired even to do that, and fell asleep with their packs still slung across their backs.

  Next morning, Harold drew up his housecarls along a ridge. Normans filled the valley below. He could see Duke William, the tallest of them, ordering the horsemen into line, for the Normans fought on horseback as well as on foot.

  Then the ground began to shake as the Normans charged.

  When their cavalry reached the Anglo-Saxon line, the shock seemed to make the earth itself quiver. For a moment, there was a terrible confusion of whinnying horses and screaming men as the Anglo-Saxons staggered back. Then the housecarls recovered, and before they knew it, the Normans were retreating back down the hill.

  That wasn’t the last charge, though. Again and again the Normans thundered towards the line of shields on the hill. Waiting in the rear, the women who followed the Anglo-Saxon army knew nothing of what was happening in the battle. Sometimes they heard cheers from the front, and sometimes groans. The fighters who came to refresh themselves with gulps of water were smeared with grime, and their swords red with blood. They had no time even to exchange a word before snatching up their shields to run back to the battle. As the day wore on, the women noticed more and more of them were wounded. But it wasn’t so much the terrible wounds that troubled them as the empty look in the fighters’ eyes.

  “How is the battle going?” they asked. “Have we won yet?”

  Earlier in the day the men might have shouted, “Soon!” Now they merely shook their heads before returning to the fray.

  But towards the end of the afternoon, Harold’s men saw a change.

  “The Normans are retreating!” someone yelled.

  With a shout of relief the housecarls broke their line. King Harold yelled at them not to move, but the soldiers streamed downhill to pursue their enemy.

  That was when Duke William gave the signal to turn round.

  Running away had only been a trick to break the Anglo-Saxon line. Now the Normans turned and fell upon their pursuers. Only a small remnant of the Anglo-Saxon army made it back to the top of the hill. Locking arms, they tried to form a shield wall, but there were many gaps in it. They barely had time to regroup before the Normans charged again.

  “Arrows!” someone cried. Arrows dropped from the sky like hornets. And the next moment a murmur ran along the line.

  “The king … the king has been hit… Harold Godwinson is dead…”

  Afterwards some said that an arrow had hit Harold Godwinson in the eye; others thought he had been struck down by a Norman knight. Whatever happened, the shock was enough to make hope desert the Anglo-Saxons. They lowered their shields; first one man dropped his weapon, and then another. Screams went up from the women in the rear as they saw Normans appearing out of the evening gloom. And among them, head and shoulders above any other man, was Duke William of Normandy.

  The Anglo-Saxons had ruled England for five hundred years, ever since conquering it after the Romans left. At the Battle of Hastings, on 14 October 1066, their rule came to an end. England had new masters, French masters. And it had a new king – William the Conqueror.

  Domesday Book

  WILLIAM the Conqueror hoped that defeating Harold would make the Anglo-Saxon leaders, who were called earls, accept him as king. But he was in for a disappointment. Survivors of the battle gathered together in forests and marshes and attacked the Normans where
ver they could. An Anglo-Saxon leader called Hereward the Wake hid in the Cambridgeshire fens, raiding Peterborough and other towns. Whenever Normans came to fight him, he and his followers retreated into the marshes, using hidden causeways his enemies didn’t know about.

  So William took land away from the Anglo-Saxon lords. After all, he had plenty of French followers who wanted their reward for fighting at Hastings. Normans became earls; Norman knights took over Anglo-Saxon villages and built manor houses where the servants had to listen to the strange sound of French being spoken. William built a castle by the river Thames to make sure that London obeyed him. He called it the Tower of London.

  Meanwhile, his brother Odo ordered a great tapestry to be made, telling the story of the Norman Conquest of England. It showed the Normans preparing their ships and armour, and the moment when Harold was killed. The tapestry can still be seen in Bayeux, in Normandy.

  But despite all William had done, another rebellion began in the north of England. This time William was furious. He led an army to the north to punish the rebels and destroy their land.

  “They will never raise their swords against me again,” he said.

  His soldiers rode from village to village, tearing down barns, slaughtering cattle and destroying crops. Palls of smoke drifted across the moors. In the towns through which William passed, women crouched in the streets, weeping next to the bodies of their husbands.

  But frightening people is not the same as governing them. William decided that if he was to rule England successfully, he had to know more about the country he had conquered. So one year, just after Christmas, he ordered his officials to make a list of everything in England and write it down in a book.

  “Everything?” the officials asked.

  William nodded. “Everything.”

  So every town and every village was listed in William’s book; every field and pasture was measured. The book listed how many cattle there were in each herd and how many sheep in each flock. When it was finished, people called it Domesday Book, because it was like the list that would be made at the Day of Judgement – Doomsday – when Christians believed the world would come to an end.

  After that, the Anglo-Saxons realized there was nothing in England their new king didn’t know about. “Not one ox,” they muttered sorrowfully to each other. “Not one cow. Not one pig!” *

  And at last they understood that they hadn’t just been beatenin a battle. The Normans were here to stay.

  ____________________

  * Quotations in italics are from historical sources.

  The White Ship

  IN those days kings ruled everything. They commanded the nobles (the earls and the lesser lords, who were called barons); the nobles commanded the knights; the knights commanded the ordinary people. In that way, the poorest child in England did what the king wanted. But what happened when a king died? Quite often everyone started quarrelling about who should be king next.

  William the Conqueror had three sons. He left Normandy to the eldest, Robert; and England to the second, who was called William Rufus because of his red face. William Rufus was a strong leader and a brave fighter. He soon quarrelled with Robert and took Normandy for himself. But one day, while he was hunting in the New Forest, he was accidentally killed by an arrow.

  Accidentally? Some people whispered that the youngest of William the Conqueror’s sons, Henry, had murdered William Rufus because he wanted to be king. That was the trouble with giving so much power to kings. People would do almost anything to become king themselves.

  Henry I was a thoughtful leader. He ended the bitterness between Normans and Anglo-Saxons by marrying an Anglo-Saxon princess. He improved the way the country was run by keeping proper accounts of all the money he gathered in tax and spent on the government. The clerks who added up his money used a chequered tablecloth to do their sums on, and that gave the accounts office the name it still has today: the Exchequer. Fortunately Henry had a son, so everyone hoped that when he died there would be no argument about who should be king next.

  Henry was duke of Normandy as well as king of England, so he and his son, William, often had to cross the Channel between Normandy and England. One day, Henry gave Prince William a new ship. It was fast and beautiful. Because of its white sails and white hull, people called it the White Ship, and William couldn’t wait to sail in it. He arranged to meet his new ship at Barfleur in Normandy, but when he arrived he was told he would have to wait for the tide. While he waited, William feasted and drank with his friends, and they invited the sailors to join them. No one noticed that the wind was getting stronger and the waves were rising – they were all too drunk. When it was time to leave, the harbour master tried to stop them, because it was too dangerous.

  “Nonsense!” shouted Prince William.

  The sailors were so drunk they could hardly hoist the sails, and the harbour master watched in terror as the White Ship headed out to the sea. A moment later, a squall whistled out of the darkness, and the ship was picked up like a toy boat on a pond and hurled towards the rocks. For a second, it soared above the waves like a gull; then it was gone and all the harbour master could see was twisted rope and men struggling amid the wreckage. Prince William’s body was washed up on the beach the next day.

  King Henry grieved for the son he had lost. But he also saw trouble ahead, for his only other child was a daughter, Matilda. And England had never had a queen before.

  Matilda

  IN those days women and men weren’t seen as equal. Most people thought women were there to have babies. Poor women cooked and cleaned; rich women played music and sewed. The idea that a woman might run a kingdom seemed mad.

  Matilda didn’t agree. She was used to getting her own way. Matilda was hardly a little girl, after all. At the time of the White Ship disaster she was already grown up and married to the Holy Roman emperor, who ruled most of central Europe. Why shouldn’t she become queen of England after her father?

  To avoid arguments Henry made all the earls and barons promise to obey Matilda after he died. But in private they all shook their heads. And after Henry’s death, Matilda’s cousin Stephen gathered them together.

  “None of us want a woman as ruler,” he said. “Make me king instead.”

  Stephen was popular and a good fighter, so they agreed. They didn’t think Matilda would make a fuss. After all, she was only a woman! But they soon discovered how much they had underestimated her. First she gathered an army and conquered Normandy. Then she invaded England, just like her grandfather William the Conqueror. Matilda’s husband, the emperor, had died by then, and when she married again, she had chosen the richest nobleman in France, Geoffrey Plantagenet. That meant she didn’t have to worry about money, and could concentrate on beating Stephen.

  Stephen could have won the war by capturing Matilda as soon as she landed, but despite his brave appearance he turned out to be weak and indecisive. He said it wouldn’t be right to take a woman prisoner. When his army was beaten in battle, though, Matilda didn’t worry about capturing Stephen. She threw him in jail and rode to London to be crowned “Lady of the English”.

  It seemed as if her dream had come true at last. But Matilda soon threw away her advantage, for she was proud and had a terrible temper. She screamed at earls and treated barons like servants until the English started muttering that they would rather have Stephen back; so when he escaped from jail, the war began again.

  This time Matilda called on her son Henry to help. Henry, who was as brave and strong-willed as his mother, arrived from Normandy with a new army. Despite his assistance, the war went badly for Matilda, but it was then, when her fortunes were at their lowest, that she showed just how brave a woman leader could be.

  That winter, her army was trapped inside Oxford. It was freezing cold, the fields were covered in snow, and Stephen’s soldiers surrounded the town. Matilda ordered her followers to lower her down the walls in a basket so she could escape.

  “You’ll be seen aga
inst the snow!” they protested.

  So Matilda put on a white cloak as camouflage. She climbed into her basket, escaped through the snowdrifts and went on fighting.

  The war continued to go badly, though, and at last Matilda realized she would never defeat Stephen and become queen of England. But she was determined her son Henry would be king. So in return for ending the war, she made a deal with Stephen. And when Stephen died, Matilda’s son, Henry Plantagenet, was crowned king of England – just as his mother had wanted.

  England’s Neighbours

  WHEN William the Conqueror and the Normans invaded, they only planned to take over England, but it wasn’t long before they started looking greedily at the countries that lay beyond – at Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

  William the Conqueror invaded the Scottish Lowlands and forced King Malcolm III to accept him as overlord. After Malcolm’s death, the Scots quarrelled about who should be king next.

  “We’ll have no more Englishmen,” cried Malcolm’s brother, Donald Ban, “and no more Normans!” And he drove away Malcolm’s son Duncan and became king himself.

  Duncan escaped to England, travelled to London and asked the English king, William Rufus, to help him win his kingdom back. The war that followed between Duncan and Donald Ban was as bitter as the war between Stephen and Matilda. When Duncan was killed, his younger brother Edgar took over. Edgar captured Donald Ban, blinded him, and became king of Scotland himself. After Edgar’s death a third brother, Alexander, became king, and then a fourth, called David. But most of them needed English help to keep their thrones. From now on there were always Normans at the Scottish court, and the kings of England were always looking for opportunities to extend their power. Malcolm IV, who followed David, was too weak to resist. When Henry II, Matilda’s son, demanded that Cumbria and Northumbria should become part of England, the Scots told Malcolm he ought to fight back. He just sighed and shook his head.