The Story of Britain Read online

  “What can I do?” he said. “The king of England always has the better of it, by reason of his much greater power.”

  The Welsh were next to find out how hard it was being England’s neighbour.

  Wales wasn’t a single kingdom. Gwynedd, Powys, Morgannwg and Dyfed each had their own king, and that made it much harder for the Welsh to stand up to invaders. Not long before the Normans arrived, Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, king of Gwynedd, overcame all the others to make himself king of Wales. But when Harold Godwinson brought an army to beat him, Gruffudd’s rivals turned against him, and he was killed.

  The Normans invaded Wales as well, but the Welsh fought back, retreating into the mountains when the Normans sent soldiers, and winning their country back when the Normans were occupied with troubles of their own. During the civil war between Stephen and Matilda, Owain, King of Gwynedd, called all the Welsh leaders together and united Wales, making himself king.

  So Henry II set out to humble the Welsh just as he had humbled the Scots. First he commanded Owain to accept him as overlord. Then, when Owain refused his orders, he invaded Wales, and the Welsh had to retreat back to their mountains. They stayed free, but it was clear they would never live peacefully next to a country as powerful as England.

  Finally, having dealt with Scotland and Wales, Henry turned his attention to Ireland.

  Ireland had never been conquered by the Romans or Anglo-Saxons. The Vikings had settled there, but the country was still divided between different kings. Dermot Mac Murrough, king of Leinster, wanted to make himself king of Ireland, but when his ally, Muirchertach o Mac Lochlainn, was killed, Dermot had to flee across the Irish Sea to Britain. There he made friends with a Norman, Richard de Clare, earl of Pembroke, a powerful fighter everyone called Strongbow.

  “If you help me win Ireland,” Dermot told Strongbow, “you can marry my daughter Aoife, and I will reward you with rich lands.”

  Strongbow agreed. He gathered soldiers and knights, told them of the wealth they would find in Ireland, and led them across the sea. One by one he defeated all of Dermot Mac Murrough’s enemies. But then, finding a country of green fields and rich valleys, Strongbow and his men decided to stay. And when Henry II heard of Ireland’s wealth, he was furious that Strongbow hadn’t asked him to help, so he too led an army to Ireland. English soldiers marched across the countryside, burning and looting; English lords claimed valleys for themselves; English knights seized castles and divided up the fields.

  “It was easy to ask the English in,” the Irish whispered to each other. “But how will we ever make them leave?”

  Indeed, it would be almost a thousand years before Ireland was free again. In those years, many English armies would pass through Ireland, and many Englishmen would seize Irish land and make their fortunes. And many hard centuries would pass before the people of Britain and Ireland learned to live together in peace and dignity.

  By conquering Ireland, Henry II became the most powerful ruler the islands had known since the Romans. His empire stretched far beyond Britain and Ireland. Thanks to Matilda, he was duke of Normandy; from his father, Geoffrey Plantagenet, he inherited much of western France; and when he married the richest heiress in France, Eleanor of Aquitaine, he took over all of south-west France as well. You could walk from Newcastle to Spain without leaving Henry’s lands.

  But even an empire wasn’t enough for Henry II. Henry was as fiery and proud as his mother, the sort of person who wants everyone to do as he says. So when he realized there was something in his empire he couldn’t control – the Christian Church – he began to brood. And he decided not to rest until the Church obeyed him as well.

  The King and the Archbishop

  APART from a small number of Jews, everyone in Britain and Ireland was Christian, and the most important building in every village was the church. The Anglo-Saxons had built some churches of stone, but they were nothing compared with the churches constructed after the Normans arrived. Every village soon had a fine stone church, while in the most important towns the Normans built huge cathedrals whose walls rose high above the rooftops.

  Cathedrals took years to finish, and hundreds of men to build them. Masons laboured in the stoneyards, some squaring blocks while others worked the stones which would be fitted to water spouts or pinnacles, carving them into flowers, animals or monsters. Cathedral architects were always trying to come up with new ideas, many of which they copied from France. At Durham Cathedral the central aisle grew so tall that the masons felt dizzy as they looked down at the pavement below. Instead of covering the roof in wood, the architect ordered them to build a vault of stone, so that people entering the cathedral felt as if they were walking into a great stone forest. In Henry II’s time, architects learned how to build pointed arches instead of round ones. The new style was called Gothic. Then they worked out how to stretch windows upwards until walls seemed to have more glass in them than stone. In the setting sun, the stonework glowed like gold, and light glinted off the glass.

  Cathedrals were the greatest and most beautiful buildings in the whole of England, but they didn’t belong to the king – they belonged to the Church. And the people who prayed in them every Sunday were not doing the king’s bidding, but that of their priests and bishops.

  And that made Henry II furious.

  “You may be king of England,” bishops said to him, “but our master is the king of heaven.”

  “You may tell your earls what to do,” said the archbishop of Canterbury, “but my orders come from God himself.”

  At last Henry came up with a plan.

  It is lonely being a king, and Henry, with his raging temper, only had one friend. His name was Thomas Becket. He was not much older than Henry and, like him, loved hunting, feasting and fine food. He was the only person able to stand up to Henry, for he was just as stubborn as the king himself. Henry decided to make his friend archbishop of Canterbury.

  “If I make you its leader,” he told Thomas, “the Church will do as I say!”

  People who knew Becket laughed at the thought of him as an archbishop. He wasn’t even a priest! Becket himself wasn’t sure about the idea. But when the old archbishop of Canterbury died, Henry made his friend archbishop in his place.

  Eagerly the king looked forward to his first meeting with Archbishop Thomas. They would enjoy a fine feast together, he decided, and work out how to deal with the Church once and for all. But when Becket arrived, the king could hardly believe his eyes. His friend had turned into a proper churchman. He wore a rough brown cloak and his feet were bare. He refused to touch any of the rich food the king’s cooks had prepared.

  When Henry told Becket to control his priests, Becket said his master was the king of heaven. When Henry shouted that he expected the bishops to obey him, Becket replied that his orders came from God himself. The two men, who had once been such close friends, became deadly enemies. At last, in a towering rage, Henry banished Becket from the kingdom.

  When he was gone, though, Henry regretted what he had done. His rages never lasted for long, and Becket had once been his closest friend. So envoys were sent to tell Becket he could return.

  But it wasn’t long before the archbishop and the king were arguing as much as ever. The king demanded to be obeyed; the archbishop said he would obey only God. One night at dinner, after hearing of Becket’s latest refusal to follow his orders, the king rose from the table in a furious rage.

  “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” he shouted.

  Henry was not the only one who found Thomas Becket irritating. Plenty of knights at court were jealous of him, and longed for revenge. Four of them, sitting at the back of the room, nodded at each other, then slipped out so quietly that the king didn’t even see them go. They saddled their horses and took the road to Canterbury.

  Thomas Becket was praying with his monks when the knights broke into the monastery. The monks pulled him into the cathedral for safety, but he wouldn’t let them bolt the door.


  “It is not right to turn the house of prayer into a fortress,” he said.

  Evening service had started in the cathedral, but everyone stopped singing when the four knights strode in, brandishing swords. Becket stood by an altar to pray, with his monks around him. One of the knights furiously struck at his head, almost cutting off a monk’s arm. After two more blows Becket slumped to the ground, and a third blow cut his head open. Then, grinding their heels in the blood on the cathedral floor, the knights strode out into the darkness.

  By this time Henry had quite forgotten his rage. When the knights came in and told him what they had done, he shouted for them to be seized as murderers.

  Their leader didn’t even flinch. “But it was you who told us to do it,” he said. “Have you forgotten your own words? ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’”

  Stunned, the king stole away to his bedroom, where he lay all night wide awake. How could he sleep? He had ordered his own friend’s death.

  In the days that followed he had to endure the shocked looks of his courtiers, and angry messages from kings abroad. Pilgrims flocked to Canterbury to pray at the tomb of Thomas Becket, and the pope declared him a saint.

  And so Henry never did become master of the Church. Instead he had to endure his own guilt until he too took the road to Canterbury. There, the most powerful man in Europe was whipped publicly by the monks of Canterbury, and forced to pray for forgiveness at his friend’s tomb.

  Not everything Henry II did was bad. He improved the way laws worked by setting up proper courts and sending judges all over the country to settle arguments. However, his temper never got any better, and he never found a friend to replace Thomas Becket. He quarrelled with his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine; he quarrelled with his five sons. Although he had been such a powerful king, Henry died knowing that not even his own family loved him.

  After his death his eldest son, Richard, became king. Richard was a famous fighter, and as he marched through London to be crowned, the crowd cheered and called him Richard the Lionheart. Everyone looked forward to his reign. But Richard passed hardly any of his time in England. Instead he spent it fighting far away, sometimes in France or Germany, but most of all in the Holy Land of Palestine, on crusade.

  Richard the Lionheart and the Crusades

  HUNDREDS of years before, not long after the fall of Rome, the prophet Muhammed began a new religion in the countries to the east of the Mediterranean Sea. He called it Islam. After Muhammed’s death his followers, called Muslims, spread Islam among the Arabs. Inspired by their new faith, the Arabs expanded their empire until it reached the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. Muslims conquered Egypt and northern Africa. They even crossed the Mediterranean, invaded Spain and marched north as far as France. In the countries they conquered, Muslims maintained the civilized way of life of the Roman Empire. They built great cities and beautiful mosques. However, most people in Europe hated and feared them because they were not Christian.

  Along the way, the Muslims conquered Palestine, the country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean where Jesus Christ had lived. They took over Bethlehem, where Christ was born; and Jerusalem, where he died. Christians hated Muslims owning these holy places, so the pope, head of the Christian Church, declared a holy war against Muslims. He ordered all Christian kings and knights to go to the Holy Land and win it back.

  The knights wore the Christian symbol, the cross, on their armour, so they were called crusaders. They marched to the Holy Land, defeated the Arabs and founded a Christian kingdom in Jerusalem. But the Arabs fought back. They didn’t see why Christians from Europe should govern part of their lands. Besides, Jerusalem was just as holy to Muslims as it was to Christians and Jews. So they attacked the kingdom of Jerusalem, and knights from France, Germany, England and Spain set off on crusades to defend it.

  The crusaders had a shock when they arrived in the east. They had been brought up to think Muslims were barbarians; instead they found most Arabs were more civilized than they were. Muslim scholars studied mathematics and astronomy; their architects designed gardens filled with the sound of fountains and the scent of orange trees, and rooms decorated with beautiful tiles and carpets. The Christian knights, with their shaggy beards and rusty armour, seemed as savage to them as the Viking raiders once seemed to the English.

  But the Muslims were great fighters as well. And just before Richard the Lionheart became king of England, they recaptured Jerusalem from the Christians. Their leader was Saladin, sultan of Egypt.

  As soon as he became king, Richard the Lionheart swore he would win Jerusalem back. So he gathered his knights and set off for the Holy Land on crusade. Richard conquered Cyprus, captured the town of Acre, and even beat the mighty Saladin in battle. He became famous for his courage and daring. He could not capture the city of Jerusalem, however, so at last he made a truce with Saladin and turned for home.

  Unfortunately Richard had quarrelled with some of the other crusaders, who were jealous of him, and on his way home one of them captured him and locked him up in a castle. In England everyone waited for news of the king. But years passed and Richard the Lionheart did not return.

  In the meantime England was governed by Richard’s younger brother, Prince John.

  John Lackland and Robin Hood

  MOST of our story so far has been about kings, earls and knights. But most people weren’t kings or knights; they were just ordinary men, women and children. And in the Middle Ages most of them were very poor.

  Life then was much harder than it is now. There were no proper doctors or hospitals, so people who fell sick often died. There were no cars or trains, so the only way to get about was by horse or on foot. There was no electricity, which meant no fridges, so food went bad quickly, and no light, so people rose at dawn and went to bed at sunset, to make the most of the sun’s brightness. They worked in the fields, ploughing and harvesting by hand because they had no machines. Their backs grew crooked and their shoulders bent, until young farmers looked like old men of eighty.

  Most people weren’t free. They had to work for the knight who ran their village. The knight had to obey the local lord (a baron or an earl), and the lord obeyed the king. The king was at the top of everything. It wasn’t so bad if the king was wise, generous and honest. Unfortunately John, who governed England while Richard was away, was not wise, generous or honest. People called him John Lackland because he had no land or money of his own. And as soon as he took charge of England he set about making himself rich.

  “Put up the taxes!” he roared at his chancellor.

  The people had already been taxed to pay for Richard the Lionheart’s crusade. They had hardly anything left, but John taxed them anyway. After that, the poor had nothing left to eat, so they sat around their fires and told stories instead. The stories they loved best were about a bandit called Robin Hood, who refused to pay John’s taxes and lived in Sherwood Forest as an outlaw. He robbed rich people on their way through the forest and gave their money to the poor. As time went by, other bandits came to join him in the forest. Robin’s friends – Much the Miller’s Son and Alan-a-Dale, Friar Tuck and Little John – became almost as famous as Robin Hood himself. The villains in the Robin Hood stories were Prince John’s sheriff at Nottingham, and the baron Guy of Gisbourne.

  Unfortunately there was no real Robin Hood to feed the poor. When the stories ended, children’s stomachs were still empty, and the fire was still cold.

  “Never mind,” they said. “Richard the Lionheart will soon come back to look after us.”

  Then came news from France that made every poor man and woman in England tremble. Richard the Lionheart had been released from prison, but killed soon afterwards fighting in France. John Lackland was the new king of England.

  Magna Carta

  JOHN was even worse as king than he had been as governor. He became more crafty, and more untrustworthy. Some people believed he murdered his own nephew, because he was jealous of him. When the king o
f France seized his lands in Normandy, John didn’t even fight back, as Richard the Lionheart would have done, but let Normandy go. After that he was known as John Softsword.

  While a good king might run things well, a bad king is worse than useless. John taxed people and wasted the money. He threw his enemies in jail for no reason. He changed laws without asking anyone’s opinion. At last even his barons had had enough.

  “Why should we give up our wealth to a king who wastes it?” they asked. “Why should we obey John Softsword when even the poor people hate him?”

  And so the barons drew up a great charter. They wrote down everything that was wrong with John’s rule, and described how England ought to be governed instead.

  It was the first time people had really thought about what made government fair, and what made it unfair. The barons decided kings couldn’t do just as they pleased. They had to obey rules, like everybody else. They couldn’t seize someone else’s property, or lock people up just because they didn’t like them. In fact, they decided proper law courts were the most important things of all, because everyone had a right to a fair trial.

  “To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right of justice,” they wrote. That meant that no one should bribe judges, that everyone had a right to a fair trial, and that they couldn’t be kept in jail for years waiting for it.

  The barons wrote down their rules, sixty-three of them, and signed their names at the bottom. They called their document Magna Carta, the Great Charter.

  “Traitors!” squealed John when he heard about it.

  He summoned an army, but no one obeyed him any more. Then the barons seized London, and John realized he had to do as they asked. He met them at a field called Runnymede next to the Thames.