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Read a biography about King Henry V one of the great warrior kings of medieval England, famous for his victory against the French at the Battle of Agincourt.

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Henry V: Henry V, king of England (1413-22) of the House of Lancaster, son of Henry IV. As victor of the Battle of Agincourt (1415, in the Hundred Years' War with France), he made England one of the strongest kingdoms in Europe.

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William Tyndale, (born c. 1490-94, near Gloucestershire, England-died October 6, 1536, Vilvoorde, near Brussels, Brabant), English biblical translator, humanist, and Protestant martyr.

Tyndale was educated at the University of Oxford and became an instructor at the University of Cambridge, where, in 1521, he fell in with a group of humanist scholars meeting at the White Horse Inn. Tyndale became convinced that the Bible alone should determine the practices and doctrines of the church and that all believers should be able to read the Bible in their own language.

Because of the influence of printing and a demand for Scriptures in the vernacular, William Tyndale began working on a New Testament translation directly from the Greek in 1523. After church authorities in England prevented him from translating the Bible there, he went to Germany in 1524, receiving financial support from wealthy London merchants. His New Testament translation was completed in July 1525 and printed at Cologne. Again under pressure, this time from the city authorities, Tyndale fled to Worms, where two more editions were published in 1525. The first copies were smuggled into England in 1526, where they were at once proscribed.

When the New Testament was finished, Tyndale began work on the Old Testament. The Pentateuch was issued in Marburg in 1530, each of the five books being separately published and circulated. Tyndale continued to work on the Old Testament translation but was captured in Antwerp before it was completed. Condemned for heresy, he was executed by strangulation and then burned at the stake at Vilvoorde in 1536.

At the time of his death, 18,000 copies of his New Testament had been printed; however, only two complete volumes and a fragment remain today, at London's British Library. Tyndale's greatest achievement was the ability to strike a felicitous balance between the needs of scholarship, simplicity of expression, and literary gracefulness, all in a uniform dialect. The effect was the creation of an English style of Bible translation, tinged with Hebraisms, that was to serve as the model for future English versions for nearly 400 years, beginning with the King James Version of 1611.

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William Tyndale | Biography, Bible, Death, & Facts

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William Tyndale, English biblical translator, humanist, and Protestant martyr. He believed that the Bible alone should determine the practices and doctrines of the church. He translated the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament into English before being executed for heresy.

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Tyndale was a scholar and theologian whose translation of the New Testament was the first ever to be printed in English. His simple, clear style was a model for...

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Everything you need to know about the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great (849-899), including facts about his life, accomplishments, his family, his death and his burial place...
Q: Who was King Alfred?

A: Alfred was the fifth son of King Æthelwulf (839-58), ruler of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex - the area south of the river Thames. When he was born at Wantage in 849, it might have seemed unlikely that Alfred would ever become king, but in a period of increasing Viking attacks, his four brothers all died as young adults.

Alfred took over as king of Wessex in 871 (bypassing his nephew Aethelwold, son of the late king Aethelred) in the middle of a year of nine major battles between the West Saxons and Vikings, which the former were lucky to survive. Alfred was also tested in 878 when he was forced to retreat to the marshes of Athelney (Somerset), scene of some of the legendary stories about him, including the well-known burning of the cakes.

However, Alfred came back to win a decisive victory in the same year over his Viking opponent Guthrum at Edington (Wiltshire). There were further serious Viking attacks in the 890s, but by this time Alfred had made military improvements and was better able to resist them with the help of West Mercian [an Anglo-Saxon kingdom north of Wessex] and Welsh allies.

In 868 Alfred had married Ealhswith, a descendant of the Mercian royal house, probably as part of a long-term West Saxon plan to bring the royal houses of the two provinces closer together.

They had two sons and three daughters, who survived to adulthood. The middle daughter became abbess of Shaftesbury nunnery, one of two religious houses founded by Alfred. The other was at Athelney, perhaps in thanksgiving for his escape there from the Vikings.

The other two daughters entered into diplomatic marriages to the ruler of Mercia (this was Aethelflaed, who became the 'Lady of the Mercians') and the Count of Flanders. Little is known of Alfred's 'spare', his second son, Æthelweard, but his heir, Edward the Elder, succeeded their father in 899, and continued the family success story.
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Q: Alfred is well known for his victories against the Vikings. What can you tell us about them?

A: Alfred's priority was survival in the face of Viking attacks. There had been four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at the time of Alfred's birth, but before his death all but Wessex had been overrun by the Vikings, and their kings killed or exiled.

Having survived by the skin of his teeth all-out Viking attacks in the 870s, when the other provinces fell, Alfred then enacted a series of military reforms to make Wessex less vulnerable in the future. Most important was a network of fortified and garrisoned sites that created 'fortress Wessex', which the Vikings were unable to penetrate to any great extent in the 890s.

Alfred also organised a rota of military service to make keeping forces in the field for any length of time more viable; the field army could respond quickly to a request for aid from a local garrison should the Vikings attack. The king also overhauled his naval forces, bringing in experienced Frisian sailors to help with his new designs for ships.

Q: What else is Alfred famous for?

A: There are many Anglo-Saxon kings who were great military commanders - what makes Alfred stand out is that he was also interested in learning, and in the promotion of English as a written language.

Here we can see the impact of the great religious and cultural movement from across the Channel, known as the Carolingian Renaissance, which had also much influenced his father. Alfred recruited Carolingian scholars [from what is now France and western Germany], as well as others from within Britain to act as his advisers on improving educational and religious standards in Wessex.

He himself studied key works with them, and these seem to have had a profound effect on his own understanding and concept of duty, which he felt others at his court should share. He assisted in the translation of some of these works from Latin into Old English, so that they could be more readily understood within his kingdom.

Alfred's resistance to the Vikings required a major commitment from his subjects, and so he may well have been attracted to the Carolingian emphasis on obedience to the king as a religious duty, and perhaps also sought to reinforce an English, Christian identity in opposition to a Scandinavian, pagan one.

The title 'King of the Anglo-Saxons' was one he used towards the end of his reign, as he became increasingly influential beyond Wessex itself.

Q: Why is King Alfred significant?

A: Military and intellectual activities were in themselves sufficient to have established Alfred's reputation, but what really made him stand out to succeeding generations was the fact that his Welsh adviser Asser wrote a biography of the king in 893.

This work undoubtedly contains useful information about Alfred and his family, but it is also based on classical, Biblical and Carolingian ideals of kingship, which can cause a difficulty in distinguishing idealisation from fact.

It may be significant that Alfred is not known to have endorsed the work or ordered its circulation. It may not be how he thought of himself or how he wanted to be remembered.

But in the 19th century, when there was great interest in Anglo-Saxon origins of the English state and character, there were no such doubts. Alfred was "the most perfect man in history", and the famous statue in Winchester was erected in 1901 as the climax to international celebrations of the millenary of his death.

Q: In the December 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine, Alex Burghart asked whether we're guilty of overplaying Alfred's greatness. What do you think?

A: Alex Burghart was right to suggest that Alfred's reputation is in danger of being exaggerated. As a result of being the only Anglo-Saxon king to have a contemporary biography, he has been sometimes handed the credit by later writers for everything of note that happened in the Anglo-Saxon period.

Alfred did not invent Anglo-Saxon law or the navy, though he did write laws and design ships. There was also an element of luck in his survival at the beginning of his reign, and in the fact that the Vikings were more interested in eastern England that was closer to their homelands.

Mercian involvement was crucial to his success in defeating the Vikings in the 890s. But to a certain extent Alfred made his own 'luck', a quality much prized in Anglo-Saxon leaders, and the qualities of intellectual curiosity, inventiveness and an essential attention to detail come through in Asser's account, for all its problems.

Alfred does seem to have been a rather exceptional ruler, but it seems to have been a case of the right person in the right place at the right time.

Q: Where, when and how did King Alfred die, and who was he succeeded by?

A: Alfred died on 26 October 899. The exact circumstances and the place of his death are not known.

He was laid to rest at first in the cathedral in Winchester, the Old Minster, but his elder son and successor at once commissioned work on a bigger, grander church - the New Minster immediately to the cathedral's north. It seems to have been intended as a burial place for the new dynasty of English kings founded by Alfred.

The bodies of Alfred and Ealhswith were transferred to New Minster, to be joined eventually by Edward himself and other members of the royal family. Edward continued and developed the policies of his father, and used the idea of garrisoned, fortified centres offensively against Viking-settled areas of eastern England.

By 920 he had extended his rule to the river Humber, and Edward's own son Aethelstan (who reigned from 924-39) gained control of the rest of England to create the country more or less as we know it today.

Q: What might we learn from the discovery of a piece of pelvic bone, most likely belonging to King Alfred or to his son, Edward?

A: In 1110 the monks of New Minster relocated to the suburb of Hyde in the north of Winchester, because of the cramped conditions in the centre, and took with them the bodies of Alfred, Edward and Ealhswith, which were laid in honoured positions in front of the High Altar.

It was thought that their bodies had been lost when the site was dug up for a prison in the late 18th century. In the 19th century an amateur historian claimed he had dug up their bones, but no one locally believed him, and it appears that he had in any case been digging in the wrong part of the site.

These bones were the ones buried in an unmarked grave in St Bartholmew's graveyard in Hyde. Radio-carbon testing established once and for all that they were later medieval in date.

However, Dr Katie Tucker, the osteoarchaeologist from the University of Winchester who led investigations, checked whether there might be other human bones of interest from the previous excavations at Hyde Abbey.

Part of a male pelvis found near the High Altar produced a radio-carbon date centring on the 10th century, thus raising the possibility that it could be part of the body of either Alfred or his son, Edward. This leaves us with the exciting possibility that further remains of them might be recovered.

Asser provides no physical descriptions of either Alfred or Edward, so the thought that we might one day be able to rediscover their appearance and give them a proper reburial is an enticing prospect.
Barbara Yorke is professor emerita of early medieval history at the University of Winchester, from which she has recently retired after a long career. Her research interests lie with early medieval British history, with special interests in kingship, conversion, Wessex, women, religion and 19th-century Anglo-Saxonism This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2014

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Alfred the Great is famous for his victories against the Vikings, and is the only English monarch known as 'the Great'. But how much do you know about him? Barbara Yorke, professor emerita of early medieval history at the University of Winchester, brings you the facts about the Anglo-Saxon king

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Born at Wantage, Berkshire, in 849, Alfred was the fifth son of Aethelwulf, king of the West Saxons. At their father's behest and by mutual agreement, Alfred's elder brothers succeeded to the kingship in turn, rather than endanger the kingdom by passing it to under-age children at a time when the country was threatened by worsening Viking raids from Denmark.

Since the 790s, the Vikings had been using fast mobile armies, numbering thousands of men embarked in shallow-draught longships, to raid the coasts and inland waters of England for plunder.

Such raids were evolving into permanent Danish settlements; in 866, the Vikings seized York and established their own kingdom in the southern part of Northumbria. The Vikings overcame two other major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, East Anglia and Mercia, and their kings were either tortured to death or fled.

Finally, in 870 the Danes attacked the only remaining independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Wessex, whose forces were commanded by King Aethelred and his younger brother Alfred. At the battle of Ashdown in 871, Alfred routed the Viking army in a fiercely fought uphill assault. However, further defeats followed for Wessex and Alfred's brother died.

As King of Wessex at the age of 21, Alfred (reigned 871-99) was a strongminded but highly strung battle veteran at the head of remaining resistance to the Vikings in southern England.

In early 878, the Danes led by King Guthrum seized Chippenham in Wiltshire in a lightning strike and used it as a secure base from which to devastate Wessex. Local people either surrendered or escaped (Hampshire people fled to the Isle of Wight), and the West Saxons were reduced to hit and run attacks seizing provisions when they could.

With only his royal bodyguard, a small army of thegns (the king's followers) and Aethelnoth earldorman of Somerset as his ally, Alfred withdrew to the Somerset tidal marshes in which he had probably hunted as a youth. (It was during this time that Alfred, in his preoccupation with the defence of his kingdom, allegedly burned some cakes which he had been asked to look after; the incident was a legend dating from early twelfth century chroniclers.)

A resourceful fighter, Alfred reassessed his strategy and adopted the Danes' tactics by building a fortified base at Athelney in the Somerset marshes and summoning a mobile army of men from Wiltshire, Somerset and part of Hampshire to pursue guerrilla warfare against the Danes. In May 878, Alfred's army defeated the Danes at the battle of Edington.

According to his contemporary biographer Bishop Asser, 'Alfred attacked the whole pagan army fighting ferociously in dense order, and by divine will eventually won the victory, made great slaughter among them, and pursued them to their fortress (Chippenham) ... After fourteen days the pagans were brought to the extreme depths of despair by hunger, cold and fear, and they sought peace'. This unexpected victory proved to be the turning point in Wessex's battle for survival.

Realising that he could not drive the Danes out of the rest of England, Alfred concluded peace with them in the treaty of Wedmore. King Guthrum was converted to Christianity with Alfred as godfather and many of the Danes returned to East Anglia where they settled as farmers. In 886, Alfred negotiated a partition treaty with the Danes, in which a frontier was demarcated along the Roman Watling Street and northern and eastern England came under the jurisdiction of the Danes - an area known as 'Danelaw'. Alfred therefore gained control of areas of West Mercia and Kent which had been beyond the boundaries of Wessex.

To consolidate alliances against the Danes, Alfred married one of his daughters, Aethelflaed, to the ealdorman of Mercia. Alfred himself had married Eahlswith, a Mercian noblewoman, and another daughter, Aelfthryth, to the Count of Flanders, a strong naval power at a time when the Vikings were settling in eastern England.

The Danish threat remained, and Alfred reorganised the Wessex defences in recognition that efficient defence and economic prosperity were interdependent. First, he organised his army (the thegns, and the existing militia known as the fyrd) on a rota basis, so he could raise a 'rapid reaction force' to deal with raiders whilst still enabling his thegns and peasants to tend their farms.

Second, Alfred started a building programme of well-defended settlements across southern England. These were fortified market places ('borough' comes from the Old English burh, meaning fortress); by deliberate royal planning, settlers received plots and in return manned the defences in times of war. (Such plots in London under Alfred's rule in the 880s shaped the streetplan which still exists today between Cheapside and the Thames.)

This obligation required careful recording in what became known as 'the Burghal Hidage', which gave details of the building and manning of Wessex and Mercian burhs according to their size, the length of their ramparts and the number of men needed to garrison them.

Centred round Alfred's royal palace in Winchester, this network of burhs with strongpoints on the main river routes was such that no part of Wessex was more than 20 miles from the refuge of one of these settlements. Together with a navy of new fast ships built on Alfred's orders, southern England now had a defence in depth against Danish raiders.

Alfred's concept of kingship extended beyond the administration of the tribal kingdom of Wessex into a broader context. A religiously devout and pragmatic man who learnt Latin in his late thirties, he recognised that the general deterioration in learning and religion caused by the Vikings' destruction of monasteries (the centres of the rudimentary education network) had serious implications for rulership. For example, the poor standards in Latin had led to a decline in the use of the charter as an instrument of royal government to disseminate the king's instructions and legislation.

In one of his prefaces, Alfred wrote 'so general was its [Latin] decay in England that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand their rituals in English or translate a letter from Latin into English ... so few that I cannot remember a single one south of the Thames when I came to the throne.'

To improve literacy, Alfred arranged, and took part in, the translation (by scholars from Mercia) from Latin into Anglo-Saxon of a handful of books he thought it 'most needful for men to know, and to bring it to pass ... if we have the peace, that all the youth now in England ... may be devoted to learning'.

These books covered history, geography, philosophy and Gregory the Great's 'Pastoral Care' (a handbook for bishops), and copies of these books were sent to all the bishops of the kingdom. Alfred was patron of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (which was copied and supplemented up to 1154), a patriotic history of the English from the Wessex viewpoint designed to inspire its readers and celebrate Alfred and his monarchy.

Like other West Saxon kings, Alfred established a legal code; he assembled the laws of Offa and other predecessors, and of the kingdoms of Mercia and Kent, adding his own administrative regulations to form a definitive body of Anglo-Saxon law.

'I ... collected these together and ordered to be written many of them which our forefathers observed, those which I liked; and many of those which I did not like I rejected with the advice of my councillors ... For I dared not presume to set in writing at all many of my own, because it was unknown to me what would please those who should come after us ... Then I ... showed those to all my councillors, and they then said that they were all pleased to observe them' (Laws of Alfred, c.885-99).

By the 890s, Alfred's charters and coinage (which he had also reformed, extending its minting to the burhs he had founded) referred to him as 'king of the English', and Welsh kings sought alliances with him. Alfred died in 899, aged 50, and was buried in Winchester, the burial place of the West Saxon royal family.

By stopping the Viking advance and consolidating his territorial gains, Alfred had started the process by which his successors eventually extended their power over the other Anglo-Saxon kings; the ultimate unification of Anglo-Saxon England was to be led by Wessex.

It is for his valiant defence of his kingdom against a stronger enemy, for securing peace with the Vikings and for his farsighted reforms in the reconstruction of Wessex and beyond, that Alfred - alone of all the English kings and queens - is known as 'the Great'.

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Born at Wantage, Berkshire, in 849, Alfred was the fifth son of Aethelwulf, king of the West Saxons. At their father's behest and by mutual agreement, Alfred's elder brothers succeeded to the kingship in turn, rather than endanger the kingdom by passing it to under-age children at a time when the country was threatened by worsening Viking raids from Denmark.

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St. Bede the Venerable, Bede also spelled Baeda or Beda, (born 672/673, traditionally Monkton in Jarrow, Northumbria [England]-died May 25, 735, Jarrow; canonized 1899; feast day May 25), Anglo-Saxon theologian, historian, and chronologist. St. Bede is best known for his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastical History of the English People"), a source vital to the history of the conversion to Christianity of the Anglo-Saxon tribes.

During his lifetime and throughout the Middle Ages, Bede's reputation was based mainly on his scriptural commentaries, copies of which found their way to many of the monastic libraries of western Europe. The method of dating events from the time of the incarnation, or Christ's birth-i.e., ad (anno Domini, "in the year of our Lord")-came into general use through the popularity of the Historia ecclesiastica and the two works on chronology. Bede's influence was perpetuated at home through the school founded at York by his pupil Archbishop Egbert of York and was transmitted to the rest of Europe by Alcuin, who studied there before becoming master of Charlemagne's palace school at Aachen.

Nothing is known of Bede's parentage. At the age of seven he was taken to the monastery of St. Peter at Wearmouth (near Sunderland, Durham), founded by Abbot St. Benedict Biscop, to whose care he was entrusted. By 685 he was moved to Biscop's newer monastery, of St. Paul, at Jarrow. Bede was ordained a deacon when 19 years old and priest when 30. Apart from visits to Lindisfarne and York, he seems never to have left Wearmouth-Jarrow. Buried at Jarrow, his remains were removed to Durham and are now entombed in the Galilee Chapel of Durham Cathedral.

Bede's works fall into three groups: grammatical and "scientific," scriptural commentary, and historical and biographical. His earliest works included treatises on spelling, hymns, figures of speech, verse, and epigrams. His first treatise on chronology, De temporibus ("On Times"), with a brief chronicle attached, was written in 703. In 725 he completed a greatly amplified version, De temporum ratione ("On the Reckoning of Time"), with a much longer chronicle. Both these books were mainly concerned with the reckoning of Easter. His earliest biblical commentary was probably that on the Revelation to John (703?-709); in this and many similar works, his aim was to transmit and explain relevant passages from the Fathers of the Church. Although his interpretations were mainly allegorical, treating much of the biblical text as symbolic of deeper meanings, he used some critical judgment and attempted to rationalize discrepancies. Among his most notable are his verse (705-716) and prose (before 721) lives of St. Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne. These works are uncritical and abound with accounts of miracles; a more exclusively historical work is Historia abbatum ( c. 725; "Lives of the Abbots").

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In 731/732 Bede completed his Historia ecclesiastica. Divided into five books, it recorded events in Britain from the raids by Julius Caesar (55-54 bce) to the arrival in Kent (597 ce) of St. Augustine of Canterbury. For his sources, he claimed the authority of ancient letters, the "traditions of our forefathers," and his own knowledge of contemporary events. Bede's Historia ecclesiastica leaves gaps tantalizing to secular historians. Although overloaded with the miraculous, it is the work of a scholar anxious to assess the accuracy of his sources and to record only what he regarded as trustworthy evidence. It remains an indispensable source for some of the facts and much of the feel of early Anglo-Saxon history.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager.

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

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Saint Bede the Venerable | Biography, Facts, & Legacy

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Saint Bede the Venerable, Anglo-Saxon theologian, historian, and chronologist. He is best known for his historical writings that document the conversion to Christianity of the Anglo-Saxon tribes. The method of dating events from the time of Christ's birth came into general use through his works.

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William Caxton and the introduction of printing to England

A S G Edwards explains how William Caxton brought the printing press to England, and published printed versions of works by writers including Chaucer, Malory, Gower, Cicero and Virgil.

Printing with moveable type was introduced to the Western world in the 1450s by Johann Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany. Gutenberg invented the printing press: this new print technology involved setting pages of type from individually cast metal letter forms that were then run off on a hand press. For the first time it was possible to rapidly and mechanically reproduce multiple copies of the same work. This new technology heralded the beginnings of a massive cultural revolution. Before Gutenberg's invention, books were usually copied by hand, in manuscript, a laborious and cost-intensive process. The potentialities of Gutenberg's machine were quickly grasped and printing spread rapidly throughout Europe in the second half of the 15th century.

Gutenberg Bible

The Gutenberg Bible is the earliest full-scale work printed in Europe using moveable type.

The advent of printing in England was due to the efforts of William Caxton, who was born, probably in Kent, between 1415 and 1424. He was apprenticed to a member of the Mercers' Company in London and subsequently worked for much of his adult life as an English merchant in the Low Countries, particularly in Bruges, where he became governor of the resident English merchants. Caxton's commercial experience must have made him quick to see the potential of print.

Caxton learns to print

Caxton seems to have learnt how to print in Cologne, in what is now Germany. The first evidence of his interest in this new technology was his involvement in the printing there, in 1472, of a massive Latin encyclopaedic work, Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De Proprietatibus Rerum [' On the Properties of Things ']. Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's associate and successor, who printed an English translation of Bartholomaeus in Westminster in 1495/96, says in the verse epilogue to it that 'William Caxton [was] first printer of this book | In Latin tongue at Cologne'. In fact, the Cologne edition was probably undertaken by a German printer, possibly Johannes Schilling, who organised the production of this book for Caxton and instructed him in the techniques of printing while he was resident there. It is possible that Caxton published other books while in Cologne, but the evidence is not conclusive.

Subsequently, Caxton applied the experience he had gained in Cologne by printing various books in the Low Countries. He seems to have published the first book in English in Ghent, in around 1473. This was his own translation of the Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, an account of the Trojan legend. Caxton states in the preface that he had completed the translation while he was in Cologne in September 1471. In the following year he printed another of his own English translations, the Game of Chess. In Bruges, in 1475, he printed a few more books.

The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye

The first book published in English by William Caxton was his own translation of The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, an account of the Trojan legend.

Caxton brings printing to England

In around 1476 Caxton returned to England and set up the first printing shop in the country near Westminster Abbey. From here he issued over a hundred books between 1476 and 1492, the year of his death. The size of his organisation is unclear. But since from early in his career he had been publishing large books he must have had a number of workmen to undertake the various aspects of printing, including typesetting, operating the press, proofreading and binding. The great majority of these books were written in English, although a few were in Latin. One of the first major books he printed, in 1477, was Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Caxton was evidently keen to make available to his readers the writings of the most widely known of medieval English poets. He printed a second edition of The Canterbury Tales in 1483, as well as other poems by Chaucer: his Parliament of Fowls and Anelida and Arcite (both c. 1477-78), and his Troilus and Criseyde and House of Fame, both in 1483. He also printed Chaucer's prose translation of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy (1478). Thus Caxton established the tradition of Chaucer in print that has continued over the centuries.

William Caxton's illustrated second edition of The Canterbury Tales

Illustration of the pilgrims from Caxton's second edition of The Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer's works had had a wide manuscript circulation and Caxton used the medium of print to maintain and extend their appeal as the new print technology began to displace copying by hand. He also printed works of other major medieval English poets whose works had enjoyed manuscript popularity, including John Gower's Confessio Amantis and John Lydgate's Life of Our Lady, both of which were published in 1483. Caxton's printed editions brought these poems to a new, contemporary audience. Evidence of early ownership of copies of his editions suggests the social breadth of that audience, including royalty, nobility, gentry, the mercantile classes and religious houses.

Confessio Amantis

Manuscript of Confessio Amantis by John Gower. The poem was popular in its own day, surviving in 59 manuscripts, and Caxton saw this as an opportunity to create a printed version of the work.

However, most of the books Caxton printed in English were in prose. Once more, some of these reflected earlier traditions of manuscript popularity. Thus, he made available in print for the first time such popular historical writings as the prose Brut, a chronicle of English history, that he printed in 1480 and again in 1482, and an English translation of a Latin universal history, the Polychronicon, published in 1482; both of these works had previously circulated widely in manuscript. He also printed English religious works that had enjoyed a similar earlier manuscript appeal, including editions of Nicholas Love's early 15th-century Speculum vitae Christi ['Mirror of the Life of Christ'] in 1484 and 1490, the Pilgrimage of the Soul (in 1483) and editions of various sermon collections, including two of the Festial of John Mirk (in 1483 and 1491), which was printed with the Quattuor Sermones ['Four Sermons']. The largest religious work Caxton printed was a collection of prose saints' lives, The Golden Legend, in 1483. The final works from his press included several concerned with spiritual well-being: The Art and Craft to Know Well to Die (1490), The Craft for to Die Well (1491) and a collection of spiritual writings generally known as The Book of Divers Ghostly [i.e. spiritual] Matters (1491).

Creating new reading markets

But Caxton was not content to simply draw on pre-existing markets for manuscripts for his readership. He also used print to create new markets for novel and different kinds of writing. His most sustained effort of this kind was the publication of a series of prose romances, essentially a new literary form in England in the later 15th century. The most famous work of this kind was his edition of Thomas Malory's prose Arthurian romance, Le Morte Darthur (1485), one of the biggest books his press produced. He printed a number of other romances of this kind, all in his own translations, including Godfrey of Boulogne (1481), The Knight of the Tower (1484), Charles the Great and Paris and Vienne (both in 1485) and Blanchardin and Eglantine and The Four Sons of Aymon (both in 1490).

Le Morte Darthur

The sole surviving manuscript copy of Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur. Under a microscope it is possible to see tiny ink smudges, which suggest that the manuscript was at one time in Caxton's printing shop.

In all, Caxton published more than 20 translations that he had made himself. In fact, these translations virtually sustained his press, being the single most abundant source of material: publications such as Cicero's Of Old Age, Of Friendship and Of Nobility (1481), Christine de Pizan's early 15th-century French Moral Proverbs (1478) and Fayttes of Arms (1489) and Alain Chartier's Curial (1483) were all the result of Caxton's own translation efforts. He also translated Aesop's Fables (1484), a collection of encyclopaedic material, the Mirror of the World (1481), a lengthy religious work called the Royal Book (1487) and a prose version of Virgil's Aeneid, the Eneydos (1490), from French versions. His collection of saints' lives, The Golden Legend, published in 1483 and again in 1487, was partly a translation from French, supplemented by some lives written in Middle English. He published his only translation from Dutch - the beast fable Reynard the Fox - in 1481 and again in 1489. His rendering of the Vitas Patrum ['Lives of the Fathers'], one of the longest of his translational projects, was not published until 1495 by Wynkyn de Worde.

Aesop's Fables printed by William Caxton, 1484

The fable of the raven and the fox from Caxton's 1484 translation of Aesop's Fables.

Adapting for his audience: Caxton as editor and publicist

Caxton's direct involvement in the books he printed was not limited to publishing his own translations. He was also an editor and publicist who adopted various methods to make the books he printed more accessible - and attractive - to his audiences. Many of the books he published contain his own prefaces or epilogues, explaining the contents and/or the circumstances that led him to publish them. And at times he took an active role in editing a work. He made extensive changes to the manuscript of Malory's Morte Darthur, dividing it into books and chapters and modifying some parts of the text where he felt the language could pose difficulties for his readers. On occasions, he added substantial material of his own to a work. He appended an additional 'Liber ultimus' ['Final Book'] to his edition of the Polychronicon to bring its account of history closer to modern times. Caxton clearly felt it necessary and appropriate to consider what he felt were the needs of his audience in preparing his books for publication.

Caxton's cultural and historical impact

It has been estimated that Caxton published over three million words of his own writings during his career, either in direct translation or in passages he added to books he printed. His own prose made important contributions to the English language, including the introduction of a large number of new words into the lexicon: his writings provide the first recorded use of such nouns as 'concussion', 'fortification', 'servitude' and 'voyager' for example. In all, he provides the first usage of over 1,300 words.

Caxton also introduced a limited number of technical changes to the production of his books over the course of his career. He used a variety of different type fonts and he was the first English printer to commission woodcuts to illustrate his books. They appear for the first time in his edition of Mirror of the World (1481) and thereafter in a number of other books, perhaps most famously in his second edition of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, with its portraits of the pilgrims.

William Caxton's illustrated second edition of The Canterbury Tales

Woodcut illustration depicting the Wife of Bath, one of the 31 pilgrims from The Canterbury Tales.

Caxton's emphasis on trying to develop markets for English writings, both for older and for new kinds of writing, is another important aspect of his historical and cultural importance. The works he printed were a significant factor in the development of literacy and readership in late medieval England. English writings became far more widely available than ever before through the proliferation of copies that print technology made possible. After his death, Caxton's press was taken over by his associate Wynkyn de Worde who, initially using Caxton's own type and woodcuts, further extended the range of publications in English, printing over 800 books before his own death in the 1530s. By then the market for English printed books was firmly established in England.
Further reading
The standard biography of Caxton is by George Painter, William Caxton (London: Chatto & Windus, 1976). This now needs to be read in conjunction with Lotte Hellinga, William Caxton and Early Printing in England (London: British Library, 2010), which modifies a number of Painter's conclusions.

A. S. G. Edwards, PhD, FSA, FEA, is Honorary Professor of Medieval English Manuscripts at the University of Kent at Canterbury and Visiting Professor in the English Department at University College, London. He writes mainly about late medieval English manuscripts and early printed books

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William Caxton and the introduction of printing to England | The British Library

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A S G Edwards explains how William Caxton brought the printing press to England, and published printed versions of works by writers including Chaucer, Malory, Gower, Cicero and Virgil.

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Caxton was the first English printer and a translator and importer of books into England.

Caxton was born in around 1422 in Kent. He went to London at the age of 16 to become an apprentice to a merchant, later moving to Bruges, the centre of the wool trade, where he became a successful and important member of the merchant community. From 1462 to 1470 he served as governor of the 'English Nation of Merchant Adventurers', which allowed him to represent his fellow merchants, as well as act as a diplomat for the king.

Caxton affiliated himself with the household of Margaret, the duchess of Burgundy, sister of the English king Edward IV. She became one of his most important patrons and encouraged him with his translation of 'The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye' from French to English. In the early 1470s Caxton spent time in Cologne learning the art of printing. He returned to Bruges in 1472 where he and Colard Mansion, a Flemish calligrapher, set up a press. Caxton's own translation of 'The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye' was the first book printed in the English language.

In 1476 Caxton returned to London and established a press at Westminster, the first printing press in England. Amongst the books he printed were Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales', Gower's 'Confession Amantis' and Malory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur'. He printed more than 100 books in his lifetime, books which were known for their craftsmanship and careful editing. He was also the translator of many of the books he published, using his knowledge of French, Latin and Dutch. He died in 1492.

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Discover the biography of William Caxton who brought printing to England in the 15th century

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In the last chapter we saw how Spain built up its colonies. In this chapter, we will look at another powerful coloniser of the 14th century.
What is 'the British Empire'?

The British Empire was the most extensive empire in world history. It was a product of the European Age of Discovery in the late 15th century.

The 'first British Empire' included British expansion from the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. The 'second British Empire' included all colonies in Asia and Africa from the 18th century until the early 20th century.

At its height in the late 19th and early 20th century, the British Empire had colonies on all continents. The British colonies made up about a quarter of the world's population and area. As the British Empire expanded, it brought with it European ideas and the English language to its colonies.

Why did the British colonise?

The British began colonising mainly because of their need to trade, rather than the need for military conquest. This is why they are known as a trade-based empire.

In the 16th century, England was a poor country. When they began colonising, it was not as missionaries. When the English put to sea, it aimed to seek immediate profits.

The Industrial Revolution which took place in Europe in 17th century gave rise to the need for raw materials. The British looked at Southeast Asia as a good target as they were rich in natural resources. After some early colonies were established and become the sole markets to buy English goods, the English realised the huge commercial potential of overseas acquisitions. They consequently tried to expand their colonisation.

The British Empire lasted very long because of three reasons. First, the British have good command of the sea. Second, they were outstanding in international trading, and finally, the British rule was flexible.

The First Empire

In the late 16th century, Britain had many chartered companies. They were private companies established by the crown. Having the exclusive right to do business in a certain area, these companies became influential in politics. To expand their business and find buyers for their products, these companies looked for trading posts in the other countries. When the government in these countries was not strong enough, the English gradually took complete control. This enable the British to built up colonies in India and the East Indies as well as Hudson Bay.

The most popular chartered company known during the First Empire is the British East India Company. This company was granted an English Royal Charter by Elizabeth title "Elizabeth I of England" in 1600 to support trading in India.

In the 17th century, the British set up plantations to produce sugar and tobacco on the islands of the Caribbean as well as in North America. These colonies attracted a large amount of European settlers. The British needed labourers to work in these plantations, so they started to trade slaves.

During this time, the common way the British traded with its colonies was that it would sell West Indian molasses, sugar, English cloth, manufactured goods, American fish and timber to its colonies. In exchange for these goods, the colonies would sell them African slaves, who the British could use in their plantations. To secure its right and to increase its wealth, the British government passed a law which allowed only British ships to trade with the colonies. This meant that these colonies could only sell their products to England.

In the early 18th century, chartered companies were reorganised. In India, from the 1740s to 1763, the British East India Company had a conflict with its French counterpart. The British finally won. In 1763, the British established colonies in India and Canada. However, the British met many difficulties when they tried to colonise America. The first British Empire ended with the successful revolution of thirteen colonial states in America.

The Second Empire

Realising the potential of the colonies, the British started to expand further, first by the voyages of Capt. James Cook to Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s and second, through new conquests in India after 1763.

After the victories of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), the British had more colonies. These included, Cape Colony, Mauritius, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, British Guiana (Guyana), and Malta. Early in the 19th century, the British gradually abandoned many strict regulations. It became a very strong country in the world, which allowed it to apply the principle of free trade.

To improve the lives of many native inhabitants, the British government also abolished slave trade in 1807 and slavery in 1833. The British also built up regular civil service to create a more efficient colonial administration. However, when these colonies became less dependent on the British, they also developed a stronger national identity. Thus, they tried to liberalise themselves from the British, who also encouraged these colonies to have a government of its own.

In 1839, Lord Durham, in response to unrest in Canada, issued his "Report on the Affairs of British North America." Durham suggested, that to retain its colonies, Britain should grant them a large measure of internal self-government.

In 1867, the British gradually surrendered their direct governing powers. Australia and New Zealand also became self-governing dominions. However, the British government still needed to control India because of its relationship with the East India Company. To govern territories with large native populations, the British developed a system called the crown colony system. Such colonies were ruled by a British governor and consultative councils from the native inhabitants.

In the later decades of the 19th century, other European countries competed for empire in which the British acquired or consolidated vast holdings. These colonies included Nigeria, the Gold Coast (later Ghana), Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe), South Africa, Egypt, Burma (Myanmar) and Malaya. This forced the British to encourage a tie and solidarity between its colonies. In 1887, the British government issued the Imperial Conference, which was an attempt to strengthen Britain's ties with those colonies that had become self-governing territories.

Legacies

The British left many legacies to its colonial countries. Although we still discuss the values of these legacies, they should be listed as follows:

It brought significant changes to Southeast Asia. The British built more ports, railways and roads to these countries.

The British colonisation changed the social and racial structure of the colonised countries.

The British colonisation led many local intellectuals to rise up to liberalise their country. It led to the appearance of nationalism.

As a result of British colonisation, English became a popular language of the world and continues to be dominant even today.

The British colonisation brought law, order and technology into India and changed them into a modern state.

The modern technology from the British, which was aimed to serve their productions and trading, was also introduced into the colonised countries thus enabling their modernisation and development.

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Great Britain, Colonisation History, Colonisation: resources, power and exploration, SOSE, Year 6, QLD In the last chapter we have seen how the Spanish built up its colonies. In this chapter, we will discover another powerful coloniser of the 14th century. You will understand why there is such a saying 'The sun never sets on the British Empire'.

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British Empire, a worldwide system of dependencies- colonies, protectorates, and other territories-that over a span of some three centuries was brought under the sovereignty of the crown of Great Britain and the administration of the British government. The policy of granting or recognizing significant degrees of self-government by dependencies, which was favoured by the far-flung nature of the empire, led to the development by the 20th century of the notion of a "British Commonwealth," comprising largely self-governing dependencies that acknowledged an increasingly symbolic British sovereignty. The term was embodied in statute in 1931. Today the Commonwealth includes former elements of the British Empire in a free association of sovereign states.

Origins of the British Empire

Great Britain made its first tentative efforts to establish overseas settlements in the 16th century. Maritime expansion, driven by commercial ambitions and by competition with France, accelerated in the 17th century and resulted in the establishment of settlements in North America and the West Indies. By 1670 there were British American colonies in New England, Virginia, and Maryland and settlements in the Bermudas, Honduras, Antigua, Barbados, and Nova Scotia. Jamaica was obtained by conquest in 1655, and the Hudson's Bay Company established itself in what became northwestern Canada from the 1670s on. The East India Company began establishing trading posts in India in 1600, and the Straits Settlements (Penang, Singapore, Malacca, and Labuan) became British through an extension of that company's activities. The first permanent British settlement on the African continent was made at James Island in the Gambia River in 1661. Slave trading had begun earlier in Sierra Leone, but that region did not become a British possession until 1787. Britain acquired the Cape of Good Hope (now in South Africa) in 1806, and the South African interior was opened up by Boer and British pioneers under British control.

Nearly all these early settlements arose from the enterprise of particular companies and magnates rather than from any effort on the part of the English crown. The crown exercised some rights of appointment and supervision, but the colonies were essentially self-managing enterprises. The formation of the empire was thus an unorganized process based on piecemeal acquisition, sometimes with the British government being the least willing partner in the enterprise.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the crown exercised control over its colonies chiefly in the areas of trade and shipping. In accordance with the mercantilist philosophy of the time, the colonies were regarded as a source of necessary raw materials for England and were granted monopolies for their products, such as tobacco and sugar, in the British market. In return, they were expected to conduct all their trade by means of English ships and to serve as markets for British manufactured goods. The Navigation Act of 1651 and subsequent acts set up a closed economy between Britain and its colonies; all colonial exports had to be shipped on English ships to the British market, and all colonial imports had to come by way of England. This arrangement lasted until the combined effects of the Scottish economist Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), the loss of the American colonies, and the growth of a free-trade movement in Britain slowly brought it to an end in the first half of the 19th century.

The slave trade acquired a peculiar importance to Britain's colonial economy in the Americas, and it became an economic necessity for the Caribbean colonies and for the southern parts of the future United States. Movements for the end of slavery came to fruition in British colonial possessions long before the similar movement in the United States; the trade was abolished in 1807 and slavery itself in Britain's dominions in 1833.

Competition with France

British military and naval power, under the leadership of such men as Robert Clive, James Wolfe, and Eyre Coote, gained for Britain two of the most important parts of its empire-Canada and India. Fighting between the British and French colonies in North America was endemic in the first half of the 18th century, but the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the Seven Years' War (known as the French and Indian War in North America), left Britain dominant in Canada. In India, the East India Company was confronted by the French Compagnie des Indes, but Robert Clive's military victories against the French and the rulers of Bengal in the 1750s provided the British with a massive accession of territory and ensured their future supremacy in India.

The loss of Britain's 13 American colonies in 1776-83 was compensated by new settlements in Australia from 1788 and by the spectacular growth of Upper Canada (now Ontario) after the emigration of loyalists from what had become the United States. The Napoleonic Wars provided further additions to the empire; the Treaty of Amiens (1802) made Trinidad and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) officially British, and in the Treaty of Paris (1814) France ceded Tobago, Mauritius, Saint Lucia, and Malta. Malacca joined the empire in 1795, and Sir Stamford Raffles acquired Singapore in 1819. Canadian settlements in Alberta, Manitoba, and British Columbia extended British influence to the Pacific, while further British conquests in India brought in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and the Central Provinces, East Bengal, and Assam.

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British Empire | History, Countries, Map, Size, & Facts

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British Empire, a worldwide system of dependencies-colonies, protectorates, and other territories-that over a span of some three centuries was brought under the sovereignty of the crown of Great Britain and the administration of the British government. Learn more about the British Empire in this article.

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Hundred Years’ War | Summary, Causes, Effects, Combatants, Timeline, & Facts

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Hundred Years’ War, intermittent struggle between England and France in the 14th–15th century over a series of disputes, including the question of the legitimate succession to the French crown. By convention it is said to have lasted from 1337 to 1453, but there had been periodic fighting since the…

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King Harold II of England is defeated by the Norman forces of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings, fought on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, England. At the end of the bloody, all-day battle, Harold was killed-shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend-and his forces were destroyed. He was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.

Just over two weeks before, William, the duke of Normandy, had invaded England, claiming his right to the English throne. In 1051, William is believed to have visited England and met with his cousin Edward the Confessor, the childless English king. According to Norman historians, Edward promised to make William his heir. On his deathbed, however, Edward granted the kingdom to Harold Godwine, head of the leading noble family in England and more powerful than the king himself. In January 1066, King Edward died, and Harold Godwine was proclaimed King Harold II. William immediately disputed his claim.

On September 28, 1066, William landed in England at Pevensey, on Britain's southeast coast, with approximately 7,000 troops and cavalry. Seizing Pevensey, he then marched to Hastings, where he paused to organize his forces. On October 13, Harold arrived near Hastings with his army, and the next day William led his forces out to give battle.

After his victory at the Battle of Hastings, William marched on London and received the city's submission. On Christmas Day, 1066, he was crowned the first Norman king of England, in Westminster Abbey, and the Anglo-Saxon phase of English history came to an end. French became the language of the king's court and gradually blended with the Anglo-Saxon tongue to give birth to modern English. William I proved an effective king of England, and the "Domesday Book," a great census of the lands and people of England, was among his notable achievements. Upon the death of William I in 1087, his son, William Rufus, became William II, the second Norman king of England.

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King Harold II of England is defeated by the Norman forces of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings, fought on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, England. At the end of the bloody, all-day battle, Harold was killed-shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend-and his forces were destroyed.

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www.royal.uk needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding.

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The story of how Duke William of Normandy invaded England in 1066 and effectively ended Anglo-Saxon rule in Britain.

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HISTORY > OLD ENGLISH (c. 500 - c. 1100)

Invasions of Germanic Tribes | The Coming of Christianity and Literacy | The Anglo-Saxon or Old English Language | The Vikings | Old English after the Vikings

More important than the Celts and the Romans for the development of the English language, though, was the succession of invasions from continental Europe after the Roman withdrawal. No longer protected by the Roman military against the constant threat from the Picts and Scots of the North, the Celts felt themselves increasingly vulnerable to attack. Around 430AD, the ambitious Celtic warlord Vortigern invited the Jutish brothers Hengest and Horsa (from Jutland in modern-day Denmark), to settle on the east coast of Britain to form a bulwark against sea raids by the Picts, in return for which they were "allowed" to settle in the southern areas of Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

But the Jutes were not the only newcomers to Britain during this period. Other Germanic tribes soon began to make the short journey across the North Sea. The Angles (from a region called Angeln, the spur of land which connects modern Denmark with Germany) gradually began to settle in increasing numbers on the east coast of Britain, particularly in the north and East Anglia. The Frisian people, from the marshes and islands of northern Holland and western Germany, also began to encroach on the British mainland from about 450 AD onwards. Still later, from the 470s, the war-like Saxons (from the Lower Saxony area of north-western Germany) made an increasing number of incursions into the southern part of the British mainland. Over time, these Germanic tribes began to establish permanent bases and to gradually displace the native Celts.

All these peoples all spoke variations of a West Germanic tongue, similar to modern Frisian, variations that were different but probably close enough to be mutually intelligible. The local dialect in Angeln is, at times, even today recognizably similar to English, and it has even more in common with the English of 1,000 years ago. Modern Frisian, especially spoken, bears an eerie resemblance to English, as can be seen by some of the Frisian words which were incorporated into English, like miel (meal), laam (lamb), goes (goose), bter (butter), tsiis (cheese), see (sea), boat (boat), stoarm (storm), rein (rain), snie (snow), frieze (freeze), froast (frost), mist (mist), sliepe (sleep), blau (blue), trije (three), fjour (four), etc.
The influx of Germanic people was more of a gradual encroachment over several generations than an invasion proper, but these tribes between them gradually colonized most of the island, with the exception of the more remote areas, which remained strongholds of the original Celtic people of Britain. Originally sea-farers, they began to settle down as farmers, exploiting the rich English farmland. The rather primitive newcomers were if anything less cultured and civilized than the local Celts, who had held onto at least some parts of Roman culture. No love was lost between the two peoples, and there was little integration between them: the Celts referred to the European invaders as barbarians (as they had previously been labelled themselves); the invaders referred to the Celts as weales (slaves or foreigners), the origin of the name Wales.
Despite continued resistance (the legends and folklore of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table date from this time), the Celts were pushed further and further back by the invaders into the wilds of Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland, although some chose to flee to the Brittany region of northern France (where they maintained a thriving culture for several centuries) and even further into mainland Europe. The Celtic language survives today only in the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland, the Welsh of Wales, and the Breton language of Brittany (the last native speaker of the Cornish language died in 1777, and the last native speaker of Manx, a Celtic language spoken on the tiny Isle of Man, died as recently as the 1960s, and these are now dead languages).
The Germanic tribes settled in seven smaller kingdoms, known as the Heptarchy: the Saxons in Essex, Wessex and Sussex; the Angles in East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria; and the Jutes in Kent. Evidence of the extent of their settlement can be found in the number of place names throughout England ending with the Anglo-Saxon -ing meaning people of (e.g. Worthing, Reading, Hastings), -ton meaning enclosure or village (e.g. Taunton, Burton, Luton), -ford meaning a river crossing (e.g. Ashford, Bradford, Watford) -ham meaning farm (e.g. Nottingham, Birmingham, Grantham) and -stead meaning a site (e.g. Hampstead).

Although the various different kingdoms waxed and waned in their power and influence over time, it was the war-like and pagan Saxons that gradually became the dominant group. The new Anglo-Saxon nation, once known in antiquity as Albion and then Britannia under the Romans, nevertheless became known as Anglaland or Englaland (the Land of the Angles), later shortened to England, and its emerging language as Englisc (now referred to as Old English or Anglo-Saxon, or sometimes Anglo-Frisian). It is impossible to say just when English became a separate language, rather than just a German dialect, although it seems that the language began to develop its own distinctive features in isolation from the continental Germanic languages, by around 600AD. Over time, four major dialects of Old English gradually emerged: Northumbrian in the north of England, Mercian in the midlands, West Saxon in the south and west, and Kentish in the southeast.

Although many of the Romano-Celts in the north of England had already been Christianized, St. Augustine and his 40 missionaries from Rome brought Christianity to the pagan Anglo-Saxons of the rest of England in 597 AD. After the conversion of the influential King Ethelbert of Kent, it spread rapidly through the land, carrying literacy and European culture in it wake. Augustine was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 601 AD and several great monasteries and centres of learning were established particularly in Northumbria (e.g. Jarrow, Lindisfarne).

The Celts and the early Anglo-Saxons used an alphabet of runes, angular characters originally developed for scratching onto wood or stone. The first known written English sentence, which reads "This she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman", is an Anglo-Saxon runic inscription on a gold medallion found in Suffolk, and has been dated to about 450-480 AD. The early Christian missionaries introduced the more rounded Roman alphabet (much as we use today), which was easier to read and more suited for writing on vellum or parchment. The Anglo-Saxons quite rapidly adopted the new Roman alphabet, but with the addition of letters such as ("wynn"), (thorn), (edh or eth) and 3 (yogh) from the old runic alphabet for certain sounds not used in Latin. later became "uu" and, still later, "w"; and were used more or less interchangeably to represent the sounds now spelled with th; and 3 was used for "y", "j" or "g" sounds. In addition, the diphthong (ash) was also used; "v" was usually written with an "f"; and the letters "q", "x" and "z" were rarely used at all.
Old English literature flowered remarkably quickly after Augustines arrival. This was especially notable in the north-eastern kingdom of Northumbria, which provided England with its first great poet (Caedmon in the 7th Century), its first great historian (the Venerable Bede in the 7th-8th Century) and its first great scholar (Alcuin of York in the 8th Century), although the latter two wrote mainly in Latin. The oldest surviving text of Old English literature is usually considered to be "Cdmon's Hymn", composed between 658 and 680. Northumbrian culture and language dominated England in the 7th and 8th Centuries, until the coming of the Vikings, after which only Wessex, under Alfred the Great, remained as an independent kingdom. By the 10th Century, the West Saxon dialect had become the dominant, and effectively the official, language of Britain (sometimes referred to as the koin, or common dialect). The different dialects often had their own preferred spellings as well as distinctive vocabulary (e.g. the word evil was spelled efel in the south-east, and yfel elsewhere; land would be land in West Saxon and Kentish, but lond further north; etc).

About 400 Anglo-Saxon texts survive from this era, including many beautiful poems, telling tales of wild battles and heroic journeys. The oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cdmon's Hymn, which was composed between 658 and 680, and the longest was the ongoing Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. But by far the best known is the long epic poem Beowulf.

Beowulf may have been written any time between the 8th and the early 11th Century by an unknown author or authors, or, most likely, it was written in the 8th Century and then revised in the 10th or 11th Century. It was probably originally written in Northumbria, although the single manuscript that has come down to us (which dates from around 1000) contains a bewildering mix of Northumbrian, West Saxon and Anglian dialects. The 3,182 lines of the work shows that Old English was already a fully developed poetic language by this time, with a particular emphasis on alliteration and percussive effects. Even at this early stage (before the subsequent waves of lexical enrichment), the variety and depth of English vocabulary, as well as its predilection for synonyms and subtleties of meanings, is evident. For example, the poem uses 36 different words for hero, 20 for man, 12 for battle and 11 for ship. There are also many interesting "kennings" or allusive compound words, such as hronrad (literally, whale-road, meaning the sea), banhus (bone-house, meaning body) and beadoleoma (battle-light, meaning sword). Of the 903 compound nouns in Beowulf, 578 are used once only, and 518 of them are known only from this one poem.

Old English was a very complex language, at least in comparison with modern English. Nouns had three genders (male, female and neuter) and could be inflected for up to five cases. There were seven classes of strong verbs and three of weak verbs, and their endings changed for number, tense, mood and person. Adjectives could have up to eleven forms. Even definite articles had three genders and five case forms as a singular and four as a plural. Word order was much freer than today, the sense being carried by the inflections (and only later by the use of propositions). Although it looked quite different from modern English on paper, once the pronunciation and spelling rules are understood, many of its words become quite familiar to modern ears.

During the 6th Century, for reasons which are still unclear, the Anglo-Saxon consonant cluster "sk" changed to "sh", so that skield became shield. This change affected all "sk" words in the language at that time, whether recent borrowings from Latin (e.g. disk became dish) or ancient aboriginal borrowings (e.g. skip became ship). Any modern English words which make use of the "sk" cluster came into the language after the 6th Century (i.e. after the sound change had ceased to operate), mainly, as we will see below, from Scandinavia.

Then, around the 7th Century, a vowel shift took place in Old English pronunciation (analogous to the Great Vowel Shift during the Early Modern period) in which vowels began to be pronouced more to the front of the mouth. The main sound affected was "i", hence its common description as "i-mutation" or "i- umlaut" ( umlaut is a German term meaning sound alteration). As part of this process, the plurals of several nouns also started to be represented by changed vowel pronunciations rather than changes in inflection. These changes were sometimes, but not always, reflected in revised spellings, resulting in inconsistent modern words pairings such as foot/ feet, goose/ geese, man/ men, mouse/ mice, as well as blood/ bleed, foul/ filth, broad/ breadth, long/ length, old/ elder, whole/ hale/ heal/ health, etc.
It is estimated that about 85% of the 30,000 or so Anglo-Saxon words gradually died out under the cultural onslaught of the Vikings and the Normans who would come after them, leaving a total of only around 4,500. This represents less than 1% of modern English vocabulary, but it includes some of the most fundamental and important words (e.g. man, wife, child, son, daughter, brother, friend, live, fight, make, use, love, like, look, drink, food, eat, sleep, sing, sun, moon, earth, ground, wood, field, house, home, people, family, horse, fish, farm, water, time, eyes, ears, mouth, nose, strong, work, come, go, be, find, see, look, laughter, night, day, sun, first, many, one, two, other, some, what, when, which, where, word, etc), as well as the most important function words (e.g. to, for, but, and, at, in, on, from, etc). Because of this, up to a half of everyday modern English will typically be made up of Old English words, and, by some estimates, ALL of the hundred most commonly-used words in modern English are of Anglo-Saxon origin (although pronunciations and spellings may have changed significantly over time).

By the late 8th Century, the Vikings (or Norsemen) began to make sporadic raids on the east cost of Britain. They came from Denmark, Norway and Sweden, although it was the Danes who came with the greatest force. Notorious for their ferocity, ruthlessness and callousness, the Vikings pillaged and plundered the towns and monasteries of northern England - in 793, they sacked and looted the wealthy monastery at Lindisfarne in Northumbria - before turning their attentions further south. By about 850, the raiders had started to over-winter in southern England and, in 865, there followed a full-scale invasion and on-going battles for the possession of the country.

Viking expansion was finally checked by Alfred the Great and, in 878, a treaty between the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings established the Danelaw, splitting the country along a line roughly from London to Chester, giving the Norsemen control over the north and east and the Anglo-Saxons the south and west. Although the Danelaw lasted less than a century, its influence can be seen today in the number of place names of Norse origin in northern England (over 1,500), including many place names ending in -by, -gate, -stoke, -kirk, -thorpe, -thwaite, -toft and other suffixes (e.g. Whitby, Grimsby, Ormskirk, Scunthorpe, Stoke Newington, Huthwaite, Lowestoft, etc), as well as the -son ending on family names (e.g. Johnson, Harrison, Gibson, Stevenson, etc) as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon equivalent -ing (e.g. Manning, Harding, etc).

The Vikings spoke Old Norse, an early North Germanic language not that dissimilar to Anglo-Saxon and roughly similar to modern Icelandic (the word viking actually means a pirate raid in Old Norse). Accents and pronunciations in northern England even today are heavily influenced by Old Norse, to the extent that they are largely intelligible in Iceland.

By the time Alfred the Great came to the throne in 871, most of the great monasteries of Northumbria and Mercia lay in ruins and only Wessex remained as an independent kingdom. But Alfred, from his capital town of Winchester, set about rebuilding and fostering the revival of learning, law and religion. Crucially, he believed in educating the people in the vernacular English language, not Latin, and he himself made several translations of important works into English, include Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. He also began the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which recounted the history of England from the time of Caesar's invasion, and which continued until 1154.

He is revered by many as having single-handedly saved English from the destruction of the Vikings, and by the time of his death in 899 he had raised the prestige and scope of English to a level higher than that of any other vernacular language in Europe. The West Saxon dialect of Wessex became the standard English of the day (although the other dialects continued nontheless), and for this reason the great bulk of the surviving documents from the Anglo-Saxon period are written in the dialect of Wessex.

The following paragraph from Aelfrichs 10th Century Homily on St. Gregory the Great gives an idea of what Old English of the time looked like (even if not how it sounded):

Eft he axode, hu re eode nama wre e hi of comon. Him ws geandwyrd, t hi Angle genemnode wron. a cw he, "Rihtlice hi sind Angle gehatene, for an e hi engla wlite habba, and swilcum gedafena t hi on heofonum engla geferan beon."
Among the literary works representative of this later period of Old English may be listed the Battle of Maldon, an Old English poem relating the events of the Battle of Maldon of 991 (the poem is thought to have been written not long after) and the Old English Hexateuch, a richly illustrated Old English translation of the first six books of the Bible, probably compiled in Canterbury in the second quarter of the 11th Century. lfric of Eynsham, who wrote in the late 10th and early 11th Century and is best known for his Colloquy, was the greatest and most prolific writer of Anglo-Saxon sermons, many of which were copied and adapted for use well into the 13th Century. A number of other Christian, heroic and elegiac poems, secular and Christian prose, as well as riddles, short verses, gnomes and mnemonic poems for remembering long lists of names, have also come down to us more or less intact.

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The History of English - Old English (c. 500 - c.1100)

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HISTORY > OLD ENGLISH (c. 500 - c. 1100) Invasions of Germanic Tribes | The Coming of Christianity and Literacy | The Anglo-Saxon or Old English Language | The Vikings | Old English after the Vikings More important than the Celts and the Romans for the development of the English language, though, was the succession of invasions from continental Europe after the Roman withdrawal.

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norman conquest of england (military conflict)

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Norman Conquest of England | 3 Minute History

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Invasion and conquest

A century before, in both 55 and 54 BC, Julius Caesar had invaded Britain with the aim of conquest. But revolt in Gaul (modern-day France) had drawn him away before he had beaten down determined British guerrilla resistance.

Britain had remained free - and mysterious, dangerous, exotic. In the popular Roman imagination, it was a place of marsh and forest, mist and drizzle, inhabited by ferocious blue-painted warriors. Here was a fine testing-ground of an emperor's fitness to rule.

For the Claudian invasion, an army of 40,000 professional soldiers - half citizen-legionaries, half auxiliaries recruited on the wilder fringes of the empire - were landed in Britain under the command of Aulus Plautius.

Archaeologists debate where they landed - Richborough in Kent, Chichester in Sussex, or perhaps both. Somewhere, perhaps on the River Medway, they fought a great battle and crushed the Catuvellauni, the tribe that dominated the south east.

Then, in the presence of Claudius himself, they stormed the enemy capital at Camulodunum (Colchester).

But resistance continued elsewhere. Pushing into the south west of Britain, the Romans fought a war of sieges to reduce the great Iron Age hill forts of the western tribes. Driving through and beyond the Midlands, they encountered stiffening opposition as they approached Wales, where the fugitive Catuvellaunian prince, Caratacus, rallied the Welsh tribes on a new anti-Roman front.

Wales took decades to subjugate. Before it was done, the east of Britain exploded in 60-61 AD. Bitterness against Roman oppression had driven Boudicca, queen of the Iceni tribe, into a revolt that came close to expelling the invaders.

Later, under the provincial governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the Romans occupied northern Britain, reaching what is now called the Moray Firth in 84 AD. This, though short of total victory, was to be the high water mark of the Roman empire in Britain.

Occupation

Elsewhere, the empire's frontiers were under attack. Reinforcements were needed. Troop numbers in Britain had to be reduced.

A phased withdrawal was carried out from the far north, eventually bringing the army to a line that stretched across modern Northumberland from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Carlisle on the Solway. This was the line along which Hadrian's Wall was constructed in 120s and 130s AD.

Here, and across the empire, the Romans were drawing symbolic lines across the map. On one side 'civilisation', on the other 'barbarians'. On the ground, the lines were made real in stone, earth and timber.

The line stretched for 73 miles across northern Britain - a ditch, a thicket of spikes, a stone wall, a sequence of forts, milecastles and observation turrets, and a permanent garrison of perhaps 8,000 men.

The rest of the Roman army was also stationed in the west and the north - in lonely auxiliary forts in the Welsh mountains, the Pennines, or the Southern Uplands of modern Scotland; or in one of the big three legionary fortresses at Isca Silurium (Caerleon), Deva (Chester) and Eboracum (York).

Here, through some 350 years of Roman occupation, the army remained dominant. Settlements of craftsmen and traders grew up around the forts, sustained by army contracts and soldiers' pay. Local farms supplied grain, meat, leather, wool, beer, and other essentials.

But change was limited. The land was impoverished and sparsely populated, and the army took what little surplus there was, so there were few of the trappings of Romanised life.

Romanisation

It was only in the lowland zone - south and east of a rough line from Lincoln to Exeter - where parts of Britain began to look distinctly Mediterranean.

When the army moved forward, the politicians took over. Iron Age tribal centres were redesigned as Roman towns, with regular street-grids, forums (market squares), basilicas (assembly rooms), temples, theatres, bathhouses, amphitheatres, shopping malls and hotels.

The models of town planning and public architecture were Roman, but the people in charge were not. The towns were built by local gentry, who, in the space of a generation or two, converted themselves from Celtic warriors and druids into Romanised gentlemen.

Britain's upper classes had found a new style. Blue paint and chariots were out. Gaulish wine and the Greek myths were in. To be successful, to look sophisticated, you now had to project rank and status in the 'empire' fashion.

For the rulers of the empire, changing the culture of conquered elites was good politics. The empire was ruled from the towns, where councils formed of local gentry were responsible for tax-collection and keeping order in the surrounding countryside. It was government on the cheap, but it was still highly successful.

Instead of an influx of foreign overlords stirring up resentment, the native elite ran things on Rome's behalf. And in gratitude for having their power and property preserved, they proved loyal servants. The evidence is in the enthusiasm with which they Romanised.

Most of the twenty or so Roman towns had a full set of public buildings by the mid-second century AD. Already many of the gentry had started building town houses and country villas. From this time onwards there was a full-scale housing boom at the top end of the market.

Big towns like Verulamium (St Albans) and Corinium (Cirencester) soon had fifty or more grand houses and dozens of villas within a day's ride of the centre. Companies of mosaic layers, fresco painters and potters sprang up to feed the boom in luxury living, and the shipping lanes, rivers and roads were busy bringing in such specialities as fish sauce from Spain, Rhineland glassware, and Pompeian bronzes.

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A century before, in both 55 and 54 BC, Julius Caesar had invaded Britain with the aim of conquest. But revolt in Gaul (modern-day France) had drawn him away before he had beaten down determined British guerrilla resistance. Britain had remained free - and mysterious, dangerous, exotic.

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The period of the Scandinavian invasions

Viking invasions and settlements

Small scattered Viking raids began in the last years of the 8th century; in the 9th century large-scale plundering incursions were made in Britain and in the Frankish empire as well. Though Egbert defeated a large Viking force in 838 that had combined with the Britons of Cornwall and Aethelwulf won a great victory in 851 over a Viking army that had stormed Canterbury and London and put the Mercian king to flight, it was difficult to deal with an enemy that could attack anywhere on a long and undefended coastline. Destructive raids are recorded for Northumbria, East Anglia, Kent, and Wessex.

A large Danish army came to East Anglia in the autumn of 865, apparently intent on conquest. By 871, when it first attacked Wessex, it had already captured York, been bought off by Mercia, and had taken possession of East Anglia. Many battles were fought in Wessex, including one that led to a Danish defeat at Ashdown in 871. Alfred the Great, a son of Aethelwulf, succeeded to the throne in the course of the year and made peace; this gave him a respite until 876. Meanwhile the Danes drove out Burgred of Mercia, putting a puppet king in his place, and one of their divisions made a permanent settlement in Northumbria.

Alfred was able to force the Danes to leave Wessex in 877, and they settled northeastern Mercia; but a Viking attack in the winter of 878 came near to conquering Wessex. That it did not succeed is to be attributed to Alfred's tenacity. He retired to the Somerset marshes, and in the spring he secretly assembled an army that routed the Danes at Edington. Their king, Guthrum, accepted Christianity and took his forces to East Anglia, where they settled.

The importance of Alfred's victory cannot be exaggerated. It prevented the Danes from becoming masters of the whole of England. Wessex was never again in danger of falling under Danish control, and in the next century the Danish areas were reconquered from Wessex. Alfred's capture of London in 886 and the resultant acceptance of him by all the English outside the Danish areas was a preliminary to this reconquest. That Wessex stood when the other kingdoms had fallen must be put down to Alfred's courage and wisdom, to his defensive measures in reorganizing his army, to his building fortresses and ships, and to his diplomacy, which made the Welsh kings his allies. Renewed attacks by Viking hosts in 892-896, supported by the Danes resident in England, caused widespread damage but had no lasting success.

Alfred's government and his revival of learning

Good internal government contributed to Alfred's successful resistance to the Danes. He reorganized his finances and the services due from thegns, issued an important code of laws, and scrutinized carefully the exercise of justice. Alfred saw the Viking invasions as a punishment from God, especially because of a neglect of learning, without which men could not know and follow the will of God. He deplored the decay of Latin and enjoined its study by those destined for the church, but he also wished all young freemen of adequate means to learn to read English, and he aimed at supplying men with "the books most necessary for all men to know," in their own language.

Alfred had acquired an education despite great difficulties, and he translated some books himself with the help of scholars from Mercia, the Continent, and Wales. Among them they made available works of Bede and Orosius, Gregory and Augustine, and the De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius. Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle began in his reign. The effects of Alfred's educational reforms can be glimpsed in succeeding reigns, and his works continued to be copied. Only in his attempt to revive monasticism did he achieve little, for the monastic idea had lost its appeal-in England as well as on the Continent-during the Viking Age.

The achievement of political unity

The reconquest of the Danelaw

When Alfred died in 899, his son Edward succeeded him. A large-scale incursion by the Danes of Northumbria ended in their crushing defeat at Tettenhall in 910. Edward completed his father's plan of building a ring of fortresses around Wessex, and his sister Aethelflaed took similar measures in Mercia. In 912 Edward was ready to begin the series of campaigns by which he relentlessly advanced into the Danelaw (Danish territory in England), securing each advance by a fortress, until he won back Essex, East Anglia, and the east-Midland Danish areas. Aethelflaed moved similarly against the Danish territory of the Five Boroughs (Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Lincoln, and Stamford). She obtained Derby and Leicester and gained a promise of submission from the Northumbrian Danes before she died in 918. Edward had by then reached Stamford, but he broke off his advance to secure his acceptance by the Mercians at Tamworth and to prevent their setting up an independent kingdom. Then he took Nottingham, and all the Danes in Mercia submitted to him.

Meanwhile another danger had arisen: Norsemen from Ireland had been settling for some time west of the Pennines, and Northumbria was threatened by Raegnald, a Norse leader from Dublin, who made himself king at York in 919. Edward built fortresses at Thelwall and Manchester, and in 920 he received Raegnald's submission, along with that of the Scots, the Strathclyde Welsh, and all the Northumbrians. Yet Norse kings reigned at York intermittently until 954.

The kingdom of England

Athelstan succeeded his father Edward in 924. He made terms with Raegnald's successor Sihtric and gave him his sister in marriage. When Sihtric died in 927, Athelstan took possession of Northumbria, thus becoming the first king to have direct rule of all England. He received the submission of the kings of Wales and Scotland and of the English ruler of Northumbria beyond the Tyne.

Athelstan was proud of his position, calling himself "king of all Britain" on some of his coins and using in his charters flamboyant rhetoric carrying the same message; he held great courts attended by dignitaries from all over England and by Welsh kings; he subjected the Welsh to tribute and quelled a revolt of the Britons of Cornwall. His sisters were married to continental princes-Charles the Simple, king of the Franks; Otto, son of Henry the Fowler; and Hugh, duke of the Franks. Among those brought up at his court were Louis, Charles's son; Alan of Brittany, Athelstan's godson; and Haakon, son of Harald Fairhair of Norway; they all returned to win their respective inheritances with his support. He was a generous donor to continental and English churches. But Athelstan is remembered chiefly as the victor at Brunanburh, against a combine of Olaf Guthfrithson, king of Dublin; Owain of Strathclyde; and Constantine, king of the Scots, whom Athelstan had defeated in 934. They invaded England in 937, and their defeat is celebrated by a poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Immediately after Athelstan's death in 939 Olaf seized not only Northumbria but also the Five Boroughs. By 944 Athelstan's successor, his younger brother Edmund, had regained control, and in 945 Edmund conquered Strathclyde and gave it to Malcolm of Scotland. But Edmund's successor, Eadred, lost control of Northumbria for part of his reign to the Norse kings Erik Bloodax (son of Harald Fairhair) and Olaf Sihtricson. When Erik was killed in 954, Northumbria became a permanent part of the kingdom of England.

By becoming rulers of all England, the West Saxon kings had to administer regions with variant customs, governed under West Saxon, Mercian, or Danish law. In some parts of the area of Danish occupation, especially in northern England and the district of the Five Boroughs, the evidence of place-names, personal names, and dialect seems to indicate dense Danish settlement, but this has been seriously questioned; many "Danish" features are also found in Anglo-Saxon areas, and Danish names do not always prove Danish institutions. Moreover, the older Anglo-Saxon regions, such as Mercia, which often cut across both Danish and English areas, were politically more significant. Money, however, was calculated in marks and ores instead of shillings in Danish areas, and arable land was divided into plowlands and oxgangs instead of hides and virgates in the northern and northeastern parts of the Danelaw. Most important was the presence in some areas of a number of small landholders with a much greater degree of independence than their counterparts elsewhere; many ceorls had so suffered under the Danish ravages that they had bought a lord's support by sacrificing some of their independence. Excavations (1976-81) have shown 10th-century Jorvik (York), a Danish settlement, to have been a centre of international trade, economic specialization, and town planning; it was on its way to becoming by 1086 (in the Domesday survey) one of Europe's largest cities, numbering at least 2,000 households.

The kings did not try to eradicate the local peculiarities. King Edgar (reigned 959-975) expressly granted local autonomy to the Danes. But from Athelstan's time it was decreed that there was to be one coinage for all the king's dominion, and a measure of uniformity in administrative divisions was gradually achieved. Mercia became divided into shires on the pattern of those of Wessex. It is uncertain how early the smaller divisions of the shires were called " hundreds," but they now became universal (except in the northern Danelaw, where an area called a wapentake carried on its fiscal and jurisdictional functions). An ordinance of the mid-10th century laid down that the court in each hundred (called "hundred courts") must meet every four weeks to handle local legal matters, and Edgar enjoined that the shire courts must meet twice a year and the borough courts three times. This pattern of local government survived the Norman Conquest.

The church and the monastic revival

To those who judged the church solely by the state of its monasteries, the first half of the 10th century seemed a period of inertia. In fact, the great tasks of converting the heathen settlers, restoring ecclesiastical organization in Danish areas, and repairing the damages of the invasions elsewhere must have absorbed much energy. Even so, learning and book production were not at so low an ebb as monastic reformers claimed. Moreover, new monasteries were founded and benefactions were made to older ones, even though, by post-revival standards, none of these monasteries was enforcing a strict monastic rule and several benefactions were held by secular priests. Alfred had failed to arouse much enthusiasm for monasticism. The movement for reform began in England about 940 and soon came under the influence of reforms in Fleury and Lorraine. King Edgar, an enthusiastic supporter, promoted the three chief reformers to important positions- Dunstan to Canterbury, Aethelwold to Winchester, and Oswald to Worcester and later to York. The secular clergy were violently ejected from Winchester and some other places; Oswald gradually replaced them with monks at Worcester. All three reformers founded new houses, including the great monasteries in the Fenlands, where older houses had perished in the Danish invasion; but Oswald had no success in Northumbria. The reformers, however, were concerned with more than monasticism-they paid great attention to other needs of their dioceses; the scholars Abbot Aelfric and Archbishop Wulfstan, trained by the reformers, directed much of their writings to improving the education and morals of the parish clergy and, through them, of the people.

The monastic revival resulted in a great revival of both vernacular and Latin literature, of manuscript production and illumination, and of other forms of art. It reached its zenith in the troubled years of King Ethelred II (reigned 978-1016), after a brief, though violent, reaction to monasticism following Edgar's death. In the 11th century monasteries continued to be productive and new houses were founded; there was also a movement to impose a communal life on bodies of secular priests and to found houses of secular canons.

The Anglo-Danish state

The Danish conquest and the reigns of the Danish kings

Ethelred succeeded as a child in 978, after the murder of his stepbrother Edward. He took the throne in an atmosphere of insecurity and distrust, which partly accounts for the incompetence and treachery rife in his reign. Viking raids began in 980 and steadily increased in intensity. They were led by formidable leaders: from 991 to 994 by Olaf Tryggvason, later king of Norway, and frequently from 994 by Sweyn, king of Denmark. Ethelred's massacre of the Danes in England on St. Brice's Day, 1002, called for vengeance by Sweyn and, from 1009 to 1012, by a famous Viking, Thorkell the Tall. In 1013 the English, worn out by continuous warfare and heavy tributes to buy off the invaders, accepted Sweyn as king. Ethelred, his wife Emma, and his younger sons sought asylum with Richard, duke of Normandy, brother of Emma. Ethelred was recalled to England after Sweyn's death in 1014; but Sweyn's son Canute (Cnut) renewed the invasions and, in spite of valiant resistance by Ethelred's son and successor, Edmund, obtained half of England after a victory at Ashingdon in October 1016 and the rest after Edmund's death that November.

Canute rewarded some of his followers with English lands and ruthlessly got rid of some prominent Englishmen, among them Edmund's brother Edwy. (Edmund's infant sons, however, were carried away to safety in Hungary.) Yet Canute's rule was not tyrannical, and his reign was remembered as a time of good order. The Danish element in his entourage diminished; and the Englishmen Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and Godwine, Earl of Wessex, became the most powerful magnates. Canute married Ethelred's widow, Emma, thus removing the danger of Norman support for her sons by Ethelred. Canute fought a successful campaign in Scotland in 1031, and Englishmen were drawn into his wars in Scandinavia, which made him lord of Norway. But at home there was peace. Probably under the influence of Archbishop Wulfstan he became a stout supporter of the church, which in his reign had the vitality to engage in missionary work in Scandinavia. Religious as well as political motives may have caused his pilgrimage to Rome in 1027 to attend the coronation of the emperor Conrad; from the pope, the emperor, and the princes whom he met he obtained concessions for English pilgrims and traders going to Rome. Canute's laws, drafted by Archbishop Wulfstan, are mainly based on those of earlier kings, especially Edgar.

Already in 1018 the English and Danes had come to an agreement "according to Edgar's law." No important changes were made in the machinery of government except that small earldoms were combined to make great earldoms, a change that placed much power in the hands of their holders. No attempt was made to restore the English line when Canute died in 1035; he was followed by his sons Harold and Hardecanute, whose reigns were unpopular. Denmark passed to Sweyn, son of Canute's sister Estrith, in 1043. Meanwhile the Norwegians in 1035 had driven out another Sweyn, the son whom Canute had set to rule over them with his mother, Aelfgifu, and had elected Magnus.

The close links with Scandinavia had benefited English trade, but they left one awkward heritage: Hardecanute and Magnus made an agreement that if either died without a son, the survivor was to succeed to both kingdoms. Hardecanute died without a son in 1042, but he was succeeded by Ethelred's son Edward, who was known as the Confessor or the Saint because of his reputation for chastity. Magnus was prevented by trouble with Denmark from invading England as he intended in 1046; but Harold Hardraada inherited Magnus' claim to the English throne, and he came to enforce it in 1066.

The reign of Edward the Confessor and the Norman Conquest

It is easy to regard the years of Edward's rule simply as a prelude to the catastrophe of 1066, yet there are other aspects of his reign. Harrying caused by political disturbances or by incursions of the Scots or Welsh was only occasional and localized; friendly relations were usually maintained with Malcolm of Scotland, whom Earl Siward of Northumbria had supported against Macbeth in 1054; and in 1063 the victories of Harold, Earl of Wessex, and his brother Tostig ended the trouble from Wales. The normal course of administration was maintained, with efficient mints, writing office, taxation system, and courts of justice. Trade was prosperous. The church contained several good and competent leaders, and bad appointments-like those of the Normans, Ulf to Dorchester and Robert to London and Canterbury, and of Stigand to Winchester-were the exception. Scholarship was not in decline, and manuscripts were produced in great number. English illumination and other forms of art were admired abroad.

The troubles of the reign came from the excessive power concentrated in the hands of the rival houses of Leofric of Mercia and Godwine of Wessex and from resentment caused by the king's introduction of Norman friends, though their influence has sometimes been exaggerated. A crisis arose in 1051 when Godwine defied the king's order to punish the men of Dover, who had resisted an attempt by Eustace of Boulogne to quarter his men on them by force. The support of Earl Leofric and Earl Siward enabled Edward to secure the outlawry of Godwine and his sons; and William of Normandy paid Edward a visit during which Edward may have promised William succession to the English throne, although this Norman claim may have been mere propaganda. Godwine and his sons came back the following year with a strong force, and the magnates were not prepared to engage them in civil war but forced the king to make terms. Some unpopular Normans were driven out, including Archbishop Robert, whose archbishopric was given to Stigand; this act supplied one excuse for the papal support of William's cause.

Harold succeeded his father Godwine as earl of Wessex in 1053; Tostig was made earl of Northumbria in 1055; and their younger brothers were also provided with earldoms. To settle the question of succession, negotiations were begun in 1054 to bring Edward, Edmund's son (nephew of Edward the Confessor), from Hungary; but Edward died in 1057, leaving a son, Edgar Aetheling, then a child, who was passed over in 1066. In about 1064 Harold of Wessex, when visiting Normandy, swore to support William's claim. Only Norman versions of the incident survive and the true circumstances cannot be ascertained, but William used Harold's broken oath to help secure papal support later. In 1065 Harold acquiesced in the appointment of Morcar, brother of Edwin, Earl of Mercia, to replace Tostig when the Northumbrians revolted against him, and thus Harold turned his brother into an enemy. King Edward, when dying, named Harold to succeed him, and, after overcoming Northumbrian reluctance with the help of Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, Harold was universally accepted.

Harold might have proved an effective ruler, but the forces against him were too strong. The papacy, without hearing the defense in favour of Harold's succession, gave its blessing to an invasion of a people who had always been distinguished for their loyalty to Rome, and this papal support helped William to collect his army widely. The threat from Harold III Hardraade, who was joined by Tostig, prevented Harold from concentrating his forces in the south and took him north at a critical moment. He fought at Hastings only 24 days after the armies of Mercia and Northumbria had been put out of action by enormous losses at Fulford and only 19 days after he had defeated and killed Harold III Hardraade and Tostig at Stamford Bridge. Harold was slain at Hastings, and on Christmas Day, 1066, William of Normandy was crowned king of England. Although the Anglo-Saxon fighting force was perhaps the best in Europe and the defeat at Hastings due largely to a series of historical accidents, it is not difficult to understand the English chronicler's view that God was angry with the English people.
Dorothy Whitelock William A. Chaney

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United Kingdom - The period of the Scandinavian invasions

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United Kingdom - The period of the Scandinavian invasions: Small scattered Viking raids began in the last years of the 8th century; in the 9th century large-scale plundering incursions were made in Britain and in the Frankish empire as well.