Lecture 1

HISTORY (I)

Book:
Pre-Roman Britain
The Neolithic Age
The Celts
The Roman Period
Arthurian Britain (The Dark Ages)
The Anglo Saxon Period

A Strong Monarchy: England

(2) Edward III, Confessor 1042-66 AD - The penultimate Anglo-Saxon

king, Edward was the oldest son of Æthelred II and Emma. He had gone to
Normandy in 1013, when his father and mother had fled from England. He stayed
there during the reign of Canute and, at his death in 1035, led an abortive
attempt to capture the crown for himself.
Edward took the throne at the untimely death of Hardicanute in 1042.
Edward's greatest achievement was the construction of a new cathedral,
where virtually all English monarchs from William the Conqueror onward would
be crowned. It was determined that the minster should not be built in London,
and so a place was found to the west of the city (hence "Westminster"). The new
church was consecrated at Christmas, 1065.
In 1066 Edward the Confessor died without an heir. On his deathbed,
Edward named Harold as his successor, instead of the legitimate heir, his
grandson, Edgar the Ætheling. The question of succession had been an issue for
some years and remained unsettled at Edward's death in January, 1066.

Three men competed for the throne: Harold, an English nobleman; Harald
III, the king of Norway; and William, duke of Normandy.
(3) Harold of Wessex was born in about 1022. His father, Godwin of
Wessex, was the most powerful nobleman in England. Harold became Earl of

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East Anglia in 1046. After his father’s death he succeeded him as Earl of
Wessex. From this time on Harold was a loyal supporter of Edward the
Confessor.
In 1063, Harold led an English army into Wales - an area that had never
been overly respectful of English power. Reports from the time indicate that his
army killed every adult Welsh male they came across. His campaign of terror left
parts of Wales depopulated.
Edward died on January 5th 1066. On January 6th, the Witan (the term
used to describe the council summoned by Anglo-Saxon kings. The succession
of a new king had to be approved by the Witan) met to decide who should
succeed Edward as he left no heir to the throne of England. The Witan consisted
of 60 of England's most powerful nobles and they decided that Harold should be
the new king of England. There is a popular belief that Harold somehow seized
the English throne. In fact, it was offered to him by the Witan. The Witan had
discussed the merits of other candidates: William of Normandy, Harold Hadrada
of Norway and Edgar Etheling. Out of the four, Harold was chosen.
As king of England he led the English army into battle against William the
Conqueror in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings. Harold was killed at the Battle of
Hastings on October 15th. The Bayeaux Tapestry shows him getting an arrow in
the eye. In truth, we will never know how Harold died but it is highly unlikely that
a king of England would have been on foot armed with a spear - as the tapestry
shows.

(4) Harald III; the king of Norway Harold III (1015-1066), who is surnamed
Haardraade, or "Ruthless," was king of Norway from 1047 to 1066. He was the
last of the great Viking aristocratic rulers whose fame extended throughout
Europe.
In 1066, drawn by the never-failing Viking compulsion for wealth and fame
overseas, Harold III embarked on the last effective Viking intervention in the
affairs of Western Europe. Harald expanded Norway’s colonial possessions in
the Orkney, Shetland, and Hebrides islands and in 1066 attempted to

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conquer England, allying himself with the rebel earl Tostig against the new
English king, Harold II. After gaining initial victories, Harald’s forces were routed
by the English king in September 1066 at Stamford Bridge, where Harald was
killed.

(5) William, duke of Normandy

Born in 1027, William was the illegitimate son of Robert, Duke of
Normandy and Herleva of Falaise. William began to govern Normandy in
1045. In 1051 he visited Edward the Confessor, the king of England. Later,
William claimed that Edward promised him that he would become his heir. 

(6-7) On 14th October, the Saxon and Norman forces clashed in the
fateful Battle of Hastings. 
The battle continued for most of the day, Harold and his Saxons fought
with steely determination for possession of their country. As dusk began to fall
over Hastings, William ordered his archers to fire high into the air and one of
these arrows is said to have hit Harold in the eye, blinding him, although this
point is disputed by some sources. Whether this was the case or not, Harold fell
mortally wounded under the dragon standard of Wessex.
The Saxon army, seeing that the day was lost, began to flee the field. The
houscarls, Harold's trained professional militia, loyally and valiantly defended the
body of their King to the last, but they too finally fell and Harold's body was
mutilated by the Normans, a vindictive act, which William punished. The battle
was lost and Anglo-Saxon England died with Harold on the battlefield that day.

(8) William was a savage and formidable ruler, by modern standards an

exceedingly cruel one, but his methods produced the desired results and
extinguished the fires of opposition. Many castles and keeps were built across
the country to enforce his rule, originally wooden towers or earthen mottes, in all
over 80 castles were established during the reign, including the White Tower, the
first building in the Tower of London complex. The dominating shadow of the

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White Tower loomed menacingly over medieval London, a visible expression of
Norman power.

(9-10-11) The new King's half brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux,

commissioned a tapestry to commemorate his brother's victory in 1078. It depicts
a series of scenes leading up to and during the conquest. William's conversion of
the New Forest into a royal hunting ground saw the introduction of harsh and
severe forest laws, which caused great resentment amongst the Anglo-Saxons.
The new king kept about 20 percent of the land for himself and divided the
remainder among his major vassals—barons and important churchmen—giving
them the land as fiefs. The barons then gave some of their land as fiefs to their
knights. In this way William introduced the Norman system of lords and vassals
into England. He depended on the military service of his barons and their
vassals, as well as on their aids (payments to him).
The king also depended heavily on the English peasants. They grew the
crops and tended the livestock that were essential to the kingdom, and the dues
they paid were important sources of revenue for the king. In order to keep track
of his resources, William ordered his officials to draw up detailed surveys of the
land, people, livestock, and crops, as well as the dues that were owed the king.
The summary of these reports, which was called Domesday Book, told him
exactly what resources and revenues he could expect each year.
The English king’s political roles were often quite complicated. For
example, William did not give up being duke of Normandy when he became king
of England. Instead, he merely incorporated England into his existing domain.
His conquest drew England into close relations with the rest of Europe. These
relations became even closer after the count of Anjou—a principality in what is
now western France—married William's granddaughter. When their son Henry II
became king of England in 1154, England became part of a vast territory that
included more than half of what is now France. In England Henry was king. On
the European continent, he was duke of Normandy and count of Anjou, and he
held similar titles for his other continental possessions.

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 The English king held all these lands, except England, as a vassal of the
French king. As long as the monarchs were on good terms, this posed little
problem. However, as competition and tensions increased between the two, this
relationship came to be a distinct disadvantage for the English king, who was
bound by the customs of lords and vassals to serve the king of France.
William changed England's laws and inflicted harsh punishments for
offenders. Murder became an officially punishable crime in England and slavery
was abolished.

(12) Anglo-Saxon England was radically altered by the Norman conquest,

it changed the entire way of life then established in the country. Its laws,
aristocracy and church were altered and it introduced the French feudal system.
The Anglo-Saxon language was replaced by Norman French as the language of
the upper classes, modern English is the natural outgrowth of both. The role of
the conquerors and the conquered can still be detected in many English words,
the Saxon cow, tended by the lowly Saxon villain became the Norman beef when
it appeared on the lord's table. The Saxon swine became Norman gammon.
There are countless other examples in modern English which amply illustrate the
role of Saxon servant and Norman master.
The Norman Feudal System, which William introduced into England, was
a complicated hierarchical structure at whose apex sat the king. That lords held
their lands under the king in exchange for homage and military assistance
rendered to him in times of need.

(13-14) Doomsday Book

It was written by an observer of the survey that "there was no single hide
nor a yard of land, nor indeed one ox nor one cow nor one pig which was left
out". The grand and comprehensive scale on which the Domesday survey took
place (see How it was compiled), and the irreversible nature of the information
collected led people to compare it to the Last Judgement, or 'Doomsday',
described in the Bible, when the deeds of Christians written in the Book of Life

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were to be placed before God for judgement. This name was not adopted until
the late 12th Century.

The survey was intended to be compiled into one complete volume, but the
compilation was never fully completed, probably owing to King William's death
before the sole scribe could finish his work. However, the information collected
from the whole survey was retained and still exists today in 2 volumes: 'Great
Domesday' - most of the counties, abridged, and 'Little Domesday' - the 3
counties missing from Great Domesday, in their unabridged form Essex, Norfolk
and Suffolk.

There are 413 pages in Great Domesday ( see above) and 475 pages in
Little Domesday (which shows how much detail was cut out to compile Great
Domesday).

(15) On the death of William, Normandy was bequeathed to his eldest

son, Robert Curthose, England was left to the third son, William Rufus (a second
son, Richard, had been killed whilst hunting in the New Forest) and to the
youngest, Henry, he left a large sum of money.

(16) Henry seized England's crown on the death of his brother, William

Rufus. Henry I was crowned at Westminster on 1st August, 1100 
Henry I proved to be a serial adulterer and begat more illegitimate
children than any other English King, in all he fathered twenty bastards, by a
continuous string of mistresses.

(17-18) Arguably one of the most effective Kings ever to wear the English
crown and the first of the great Plantagenet dynasty, the future Henry II was born
at Le Mans, Anjou on 5th March, 1133. He was the son of that ill-matched
pair, Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and Matilda, (known as the Empress,
from her first marriage to the Holy Roman Emperor) the daughter of Henry I of
England.

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 The House of Plantagenet had its origins in a cadet branch of the original
counts of Anjou, the dynasty established by Fulk I of Anjou at the beginning of
the 10th century. The Plantagenet dynasty ruled England for over three hundred
years, from 1154 -1485. They were a remarkable family, providing England with
fourteen of its kings.
The surname Plantagenet, which was to become one of the most famous
in England, seems to have derived from a nickname adopted by Geoffrey, Count
of Anjou, the father of Henry II and refers to his habit of wearing a sprig of broom
or planta genista in his helmet.

In 1150 - 1151, Henry became ruler of Normandy and Anjou, after the
death of his father. In 1152, he married Eleanor of Aquitaine, the greatest heiress
in Western Europe.
 Using his talented chancellor Thomas Becket, Henry began reorganising
the judicial system. The Assize of Clarendon (1166) established procedures of
criminal justice, establishing courts and prisons for those awaiting trial. In
addition, the assizes gave fast and clear verdicts, enriched the treasury and
extended royal control.
In 1164, Henry reasserted his ancestral rights over the church. The
archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas A Becket refused to comply. An attempted
reconciliation failed and Becket punished priests who had co-operated with
Henry. On hearing this Henry reportedly exclaimed, 'Will no one rid me of this
turbulent priest?' Four knights took his words literally and murdered Becket in
Canterbury Cathedral in December 1170. Almost overnight Becket became a
saint. Henry reconciled himself with the church, but royal control over the church
changed little.
In 1169, an Anglo-Norman force landed in Ireland to support of one of the
claimants to the Irish high kingship. Fearing the creation of a separate Norman
power to the west, Henry travelled to Dublin to assert his overlordship of the
territory they had won. And so, an English presence in Ireland was established.

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In the course of his reign, Henry had dominion over territories stretching from the
Ireland to the Pyrenees.
Henry now had problems within his own family. His sons - Henry,
Geoffrey, Richard and John - mistrusted each other and resented their father's
policy of dividing land among them. There were serious family disputes in 1173,
1181 and 1184. The king's attempt to find an inheritance for John led to
opposition from Richard and Philip II of France. Henry was forced to give way.
News that John had also turned against him hastened Henry's death on 6 July
1189.

(19) Richard was in open rebellion against Henry II when the latter died in
1189 but on succeeding to the throne he acted generously to all who had
remained loyal to his father and honoured his last wishes.
The untimely death of the young Henry later made Richard heir to the
entire Angevin Empire. In 1187, caught up in the crusading spirit which spread
through Christendom, Richard made a solemn vow to free the Holy City,
Jerusalem.
His coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on the 23rd of September
1189.

The word “holocaustum” was first used in the chronicles describing the
mass murder of England’s Jews after his coronation.

Before The Third Crusade, Richard made out a will leaving his nephew,
Arthur of Brittany as heir to the entire Angevin Empire. The English, their French
allies led by Phillip Augustus, and the German contingent led by Leopold V of
Austria, set out on their momentous enterprise. On 11th of July, the Moslem
defenders surrendered the city to the Christian army but the leaders disagreed
over the distribution of the spoils of their victory. On the return journey he was
shipwrecked and taken prisoner by Duke Leopold of Austria, whom Richard had
insulted gravely in the early stages of the crusade. Phillip and John in the

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meantime, had attacked Normandy. Two years and 34 tones of gold later,
Richard was ransomed into freedom but his kingdom was bankrupt.
The last phase in Richard's life was spent in strengthening the Angevin
Empire from the machinations of Phillip Augustus. He formed an alliance against
Phillip with his father-in-law, Sancho VI of Navarre. Richard gained several
victories over the French. At Freteval in 1194 and at the Battle of Gisors in 1198,
when he adopted the motto "Dieu et mon Droit" "God and my Right" which is still
used by British monarchs today.
The King spent very little time with his neglected wife, Berengaria of
Navarre and there was no issue of the marriage. In fact there is reason to believe
that Richard was bi-sexual. Rumours abounded regarding his homo-sexuality in
his own lifetime and he once did penance for the sin of sodomy. Richard did have
at least one illegitimate son, known as Phillip of Cognac, who steps into the
pages of history in Shakespeare's King John.
Richard died on 6th April, 1199. His body was laid at the feet of his father
in Anjuo but his heart was taken to the great cathedral of Rouen as this city was
more the capital city for him than London. His cult of arms: 3 lions = the
Plantagenet and a cross =Aquitaine not England.

(20) King John 1199-1216 - When John, the last child of the great Henry
II and Eleanor of Aquitaine was born on Christmas Eve, 1167 at Beaumont
Palace in Oxfordshire, his father jokingly nick-named him Sans Terre or
Lackland, as there was no land left to give him. It seems ironic then, that John
Lackland was eventually to inherit the entire Angevin Empire.
Originally brought up for a career in the church, he had been placed
at the Abbey of Fontevrault in Anjou, as an oblate, while still in early
childhood, to which the young John reacted rebeliously. 
Henry II hoped to improve his youngest son's prospects, by
betrothing him, at the age of nine, to a wealthy heiress, his second cousin,
Isabella of Gloucester. Isabella was the granddaughter of Robert, Earl of

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Gloucester, the illegitimate son of Henry I. They were duly married when
John was 21 but the marriage failed to produce children.
Henry II attempted to make his favourite son King of Ireland but soon
he was forced to leave Ireland. A fickle character, in his youth John
conspired against both his father and his brother Richard for his own gain.
During Richard's absence on the Third Crusade, John had attempted to
overthrow his justicar, William Longchamp. In the course of returning from
his crusade, Richard was captured by Leopold V, Duke of Austria, and
imprisoned by the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI. England had to raise a
huge ransom for the return of its king. On his release in 1194, Richard
readily forgave his younger brother for plotting his overthrow.
John succeeded to the throne at the age of thirty-two, on the death
of Richard the Lionheart in 1199. Arthur of Brittany, the son of his deceased
elder brother, Geoffrey, had an arguably better claim, but Richard was
reported to have announced John his heir on his deathbed. The shrewd
Phillip Augustus, in accordance with his policy of weakening the Angevin
Empire by creating division amongst the Plantagenets, supported Arthur's
claim and attacked Normandy.
Acting under feudal law, Phillip claimed those territories ruled by
John as Count of Poitou and declaring all John's French territories except
Gascony forfeit, he invaded Normandy. Chateau Gaillard, Richard's
impregnable castle, fell to the French after a long siege in 1203, it was
followed by the rest of Normandy.

(21-22-23) In May, 1213 he agreed to hold England as a fief of the

papacy. Eventually, John was met with the full force of his baron's
grievances, they demanded their "ancient liberties" and the renewal of
Henry I's Coronation Charter. Faced with an armed revolt which may have
cost him his kingdom, the king was forced into compliance. At Runnymede,
near Windsor, on 15th June 1215, he signed the historic Magna Carta or

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Great Charter. The Charter curtailed royal power in matters of taxation,
justice, religion and foreign policy. It was in fact a catalogue of the things
the King would not be allowed to do. If it isn’t the exact Birth Certificate of
Democracy it is for certain the Death Certificate of Despotism. Ten days
after being signed, it was annulled by the Pope.
He died at Newark on the wild stormy night of 18th October, 1216,
leaving England in a state of anarchy and civil war. King John was buried at
Worcester Cathedral, becoming the first of the Angevin kings to be buried
in England. He was succeeded by his nine year old son who became Henry
III. 

(24) Arthur I, Duke of Brittany - The posthumous son of Geoffrey

Duke of Brittany, (fourth son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine) and his
wife Constance of Brittany (daughter and heiress of Conan IV of Brittany
and Margaret of Huntingdon), Arthur of Brittany was born on 29th March,
1187 at Nantes.
Having no legitimate child of his own, Arthur's legendary
uncle, Richard I the Lionheart, designated him as heir to England and the
Angevin Empire in a will drawn up prior to his embarking on the Third
Crusade but when Richard died at the Siege of Chaluz in 1199 the throne
was seized by John. Arhur was captured by his uncle along with his allies
and imprisoned at Falaise Castle, in Normandy and later transferred to
Rouen.  He mysteriously disappeared in April, 1203. Legend has it that he
was drowned by King John.

(25) Henry III 1216-1272 Henry III, the eldest son of King John
succeeded his unpopular father, at the age of nine, to a kingdom in a state
of anarchy. He reached his majority at the age of nineteen in 1227. He
married Eleanor of Provence.

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 The king's failed campaigns in France (1230 and 1242), his choice of
friends and advisers, together with the cost of his scheme to make one of
his younger sons King of Sicily and help the Pope against the Holy Roman
Emperor, led to further disputes with the barons and united opposition in
Church and State.  Although Henry was extravagant and his tax demands
were resented, the king's accounts show a list of many charitable
donations and payments for building works (including the rebuilding of
Westminster Abbey which began in 1245).
The foolish policies coupled with Henry's pathological irresolution in
government produced political revolution. By the Provisions of Oxford
(1258), a council of fifteen nobles to help govern the country was imposed
on the King. Chief among these was Henry's brother-in-law, the French
born Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.
Henry renounced the Provisions in 1262 and war broke out. The
barons, under their leader, Simon de Montfort, were initially successful and
even captured Henry.  However, Henry escaped, joined forces with the
lords of the Marches (on the Welsh border), and finally defeated and killed
de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. Royal authority was restored
by the Statute of Marlborough (1267), in which the king also promised to
uphold Magna Carta and some of the Provisions of Westminster.
Henry III died on 16 November, 1272 aged and became the first of the
Plantagenets to be buried within the Westminster Abbey. Henry was
succeeded by his son, Edward I.

(26) The Making of a Nation In the last decades of the 13 th century the
nations of Britain found their voices loud, confident and defiant; and they
were raised against England.
When the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish acted on their words, the
bloody wars of the British nations became inevitable. The battle for the
making of a nation would begin in the very heart of England.

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 One man was responsible for provoking the peoples of Britain into
an awareness of their nationhood.
All these come as an epitaph of the Plantagenet Empire of Britain.
(27) Edward I 1272-1307 Born in June 1239 at Westminster, Edward
was named by his father Henry III after the last Anglo Saxon king (and his
father's favourite saint), Edward the Confessor. At the age of fifteen, the
Lord Edward as he was then known, was married to his second cousin, the
thirteen year old Leonora or Eleanor of Castile. Although their marriage
was a political alliance the pair became deeply attached. She bore him
sixteen children. The couple's first two sons, Henry and John died in
infancy, their third son, Alphonso, the heir to the throne and Eleanor's
favourite died at twelve years old, leaving their fourth son, Edward as his
father's heir.
As a young man, Edward had joined the Eighth Crusade. In June 1272,
Edward survived a murder attempt by an Assassin (an order of Shi'ite Muslims)
and left for Sicily later in the year. He was never to return on crusade.
Meanwhile, Henry III died on 16 November 1272. Edward succeeded to
the throne without opposition - given his track record in military ability and his
proven determination to give peace to the country, enhanced by his magnified
exploits on crusade. 
Edward finally arrived in London in August 1274 and was crowned at
Westminster Abbey. Aged 35, he was a veteran warrior ('the best lance in all the
world', according to contemporaries), a leader with energy and vision, and with a
formidable temper.
Edward was determined to enforce English kings' claims to primacy in the
British Isles. The first part of his reign was dominated by Wales. At that time,
Wales consisted of a number of disunited small Welsh princedoms.
Under the Statute of Wales of 1284, Wales was brought into the English
legal framework and the shire system was extended. In the same year, a son
was born in Wales to Edward and Queen Eleanor (also named Edward, this
future king was proclaimed the first English Prince of Wales in 1301). The Welsh

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campaign had produced one of the largest armies ever assembled by an English
king. As symbols of his military strength and political authority, Edward spent
some £80,000 on a network of castles and lesser strongholds in North Wales.
As he was in debt and he needed more money, he began by
commissioning a thorough survey of local government (with the results entered
into documents known as the Hundred Rolls), which not only defined royal rights
and possessions but also revealed administrative abuses. Edward's first
Parliament also enacted legislation on wool, England's most important export at
the time.
Edward's assertion that the King of Scotland owed feudal allegiance to
him, and the embittered Anglo-Scottish relations leading to war which followed,
were to overshadow the rest of Edward's reign in what was to become known as
the 'Great Cause'. 
The great Edward I died at Burgh on Sands, Cumberland at the age of
sixty-eight on 7 July, 1307. Apprehensive of his son Edward's ability to continue
his work, he was purported to have asked his flesh to be boiled from his bones,
so that they could be carried with the army on every campaign into Scotland and
that his heart be buried in the Holy Land. His son instead buried his body in
Westminster Abbey, the mausoleum of English Kings, in a robe of imperial
purple. The place where he lies is marked by a simple stone slab which bears the
epitaph 'Here lies Edward, the Hammer of the Scots'.

(28) Edward II 1307-27 It has been said that Edward II was the great
Edward I's only failure. It is true to say that never was there a son less like
his father.
He was the fourth son of Edward I and his first wife Eleanor of
Castile. The death of his older brother, Alphonso, a short time later, made
the four month old Edward heir to the throne. His mother died when he was
five. On 7th February, 1301, at a Parliament held at Lincoln, Edward was
created the first English Prince of Wales by his father.

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 He was homo-sexual and became excessively devoted to a
succession of favorites. King Edward I had banished Edward's lover, Piers
Gaveston, in an outburst of Plantagenet rage, in an attempt to curb their
relationship.
King Edward II's inglorious reign began in 1307. One of his first acts
as King was to re-call Piers Gaveston. The following year, Edward married
the twelve year old Isabella of France, the daughter of Phillip IV by Jean of
Navarre. Although the marriage produced four children, two sons, the
future Edward III and John and two daughters, Eleanor and Joanna, Edward
continued in his addiction to homo sexual favourites.
After the murder of Gaveston, Edward acquired a new favourite,
Hugh Despencer. His deeply insulted Queen, Isabella, was sent on a
mission abroad to do homage to her brother the French King for England's
French possessions. There she plotted against her despised husband with
her lover, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March. On 24th September 1326,
Mortimer and Isabella, the She-Wolf of France as she was known to
contemporaries, invaded England. They were joined by many of the
country's dissatisfied nobles. Edward failed in an attempt to rally London
and fled but was captured and forced to abdicate in favour of his fourteen
year old son, Edward. According to accepted belief, Edward was murdered
in a bestial manner on the orders of Mortimer and Isabella on around 11th
October, 1327.
Edward was interred at Gloucester Cathedral, the funeral was
attended by Isabella and the new king, the fourteen year old Edward III.
Not for the first and not for the last time, it would take the rest of Britain to
teach England just how to be a nation.

(29) Edward III 1327-77 The charismatic Edward III, one of the most
dominant personalities of his age, was born at Windsor Castle on 13th of
November, 1312 and created Earl of Chester at four days old. Although

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nominally King, he was in reality the puppet of Mortimer and his mother,
who ruled England through him.
He was married to his first cousin, Phillipa, the granddaughter of
Phillip III of France. The marriage was a happy one, the two became very
close and produced a large family. Their eldest son Edward, later known as
the Black Prince, was born on 15th June 1330, when his father was
eighteen.
In 1337, Edward created the Duchy of Cornwall to provide the heir to
the throne with an income independent of the sovereign or the state. An
able soldier, and an inspiring leader, Edward founded the Order of the
Garter in 1348.
At the beginning of the Hundred Years War in 1337, actual
campaigning started when the King invaded France in 1339 and laid claim
to the throne of France. 
Not for the first and not for the last time, it would take the rest of
Britain to teach England just how to be a nation.

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