King John

King John and the Magna Carta

Henry II and Becket. What happened?

Click on the picture and answer the questions in your notebook.

Then, try this online Henry II and Becket game.

Biography: Henry II

Look at this web site and write a biography about King Henry II.


http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/timeline-of-king-henry-ii.htm

The sons of William I

William Rufus

William Rufus was a strong ruler. He continued the centralised government of his father, enforced justice among the people and strengthened England's ties to Normandy. But the style of his leadership left much to be desired. He was a corrupt and aggressive king. He confiscated wealth and property from the Church and never kept his promises of reform.

The people didn't like that. And they liked it even less when they saw that not only was the king generous towards these foreingers, he also placed them above the law - the law that was so heavily, often brutally, enforced upon the rest of the people.

William knew that he wasn't very popular with the people. Therefore he was also afraid most of his time, anxious that somebody should succeed in killing him. He really couldn't trust anybody. And one day when he was out in the forest hunting, he was killed with an arrow through his chest. Who did it? We are still not sure. The most probable answer was that Walter Tirel did it. Walter Tirel was a French nobleman who was the king's favourite, but who had quarreled with the king the night before. Tirel was alone with the king that afternoon. But Tirel claimed his innocence. Could it perhaps have been an accident? Or could it have been a plot arranged by somebody else? By his brother Henry, for instance. Already the next day he was chosen king...

Henry II

Henry shared much of the greed and ruthlessness of his brother William. But in the day-to-day affairs he was generally more smart than his older brother. Henry got his will by negotiating, by persuasion and by diplomacy - not by killing everyone he didn't like the look of. Nevertheless he had the same problem as his brother: Henry was constantly in fear of plots and felt that he couldn't trust even his closest servants.

Unlike William, Henry survived, perhaps because he was all in all a more gentle ruler than his brother. No one tried to, or ever succeeded in, killing him. But Henry had another problem: his wife bore him only one son. This son was called William as Henry's father, the great Conqueror.

Unfortunately the handsome young William drowned when his "White ship" hit an underwater rock and sank in 1120, just a few hundred yards off the coast of Normandy. Then there was no legitimate male heir to the throne. Henry's other legitimate child, Matilda who at the time was married to the German emperor Henry V, was the next in line. 

When Matilda's husband died in 1125, she hurried back to England. Henry persuaded his barons to swear an oath to support her. But when Henry died in 1135, they had forgotten about their oath. Instead they supportted Stephen, Henry's nephew from Normandy. So Stephen became the new king of England and in his 19 years on the throne the country was thrown out in a terrible civil war that was only ended when Matilda's son, Henry II, became king in 1154.

http://www.skoletorget.no/abb/eng/vikings/vilhelm_sonner.html

William, the Conqueror and Domesday Book

William I, the Conqueror (1066-1087) organized the political and social structures of England. He imposed a hug control on his land. That’s clear in the survey he ordered in 1086, collected in the famous Domesday Book, a description of the kingdom.
He also promoted a religious change in the monasteries and he erected himself as the defender of the Catholicism. In that point, he was a good strategist as he was able to choose the bishops for the Episcopal and controlled them ad their decisions.
After the conquest, William I shared out the land among the ones who had helped him in the battle. He only respected the Church properties. These pieces of land were given as a system of land tenure, but the king was the real owner of them. It was called omnis terra a rege tenetur. Again, that was another way to keep the kingdom under his completed control. That made the English feudalism was a deep centralist system.
William I gave the fiefs to his barons but he ordered the exact number of knights they could have in them. That was a good way to known by heart the military support that the king could have in case of war. The Normand nobility was formed by 180 barons.

Domesday Book

Domesday Book is a detailed survey of the land held by the King and his tenants in 1086. There isn't any document as it, until the censuses of the 19th century.

But, why did William the Conqueror commission that survey? The King wanted to know how many resources he had.  He also wanted to discover who owned the manors and how much they had to pay as taxes, rents and military services (bringing their knights when the King asked). So, Domesday Book is a tax record, but also a collection of the identities of the King's barons and churchmen and the owners of the manors in England.

The name of Domesday may refer to the Bible, when Christ will judge the humans. It’s supposed that nobody appeal to the evidence of legal title to land, just as happened to Christ’s decisions. It was called Domesday by 1180. It was written in Latin with lots of abbreviations.

There were three or four royal commissioners to do the survey in each circuit. After collecting the information, it was verified by some Jurors. Some of the information was just oral testimony but some other was got in written documents as church payment lists. The commissioners asked for the same information in three different periods of time:  1066, in the time of King Edward, 1066 when William gave it, and now, 1086.

Domesday Book provides details of:

·         13.418 places

·         48 castles

·         112 boroughs

·         60 major religious house

·         6000 mills

·         45 vineyards

·         Markets, woodlands, fisheries, mints, industry

·         Names of landholders

·         Names of sub-tenants

·         Customs

·         Number of freemen, unfree peasants and slaves.

So, Domesday Book reveals an elaborate feudal structure of landholding from the King down.

1. What is the Domesday Book?
2. Why is it called "Domesday"?
3. Why is so important?
4. Explain the questions in the survey.
5. What information did we know with the interpretation of Domesday Book? 

The Normand conquest, the Battle of Hastings

Around 1000 AD, some of the Vikings who had been raiding France got permission from the French king to settle down and live in France instead. They were supposed to help protect France against other Vikings. As part of the deal, these Vikings also converted from their German gods to Catholicism.

These settlers were called the Normans (which is short for North-Men, because they came from the North). The part of France where they lived is called Normandy, the land of the North-Men, even today.

In 1066, one of these Normand men, William, decided to attack England and try to conquer it from the Anglo-Saxons. Williams's mother had not been married to his father when he was born, but William still inherited his father's property and his title of Duke of Normandy. People called him William the Bastard. He wanted to do something big and adventurous, and when the King of England died without leaving a son, William thought he saw a chance to take over England.

So they sailed across the English Channel in a lot of small boats, and when they got there they did beat the Anglo-Saxons in the battle of Hastings. The Anglo-Saxon king, Harold, was shot in the eye with an arrow and died.

William (now people called him William the Conqueror) became the new king of England. He was crowned in Westminster Abbey. He built the Tower of London to live in, to keep himself and his family safe. William and all his friends spoke French, but the English people spoke Saxon. So for a long time there were two languages spoken in England.

(http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/medieval/history/highmiddle/normans.htm)

Now, answer these questions (Remember to use the Interesting and Useful links):

• What is the Bayeux Tapestry?
• Why did the Battle of Hastings happen? Explain the most important events about it.
• Look for more information about the Tower of London and write a description of it.

Who should be king?

Who should be king? (Battle of Hastings)

The Normand Conquest, the begining

On the 5th of January 1066, Edward the Confessor the king of England died. He had no children, which meant he had no direct heir to the throne, but three men thought they should all be the new king of England, and all had good reasons too! They were:

• Harold Godwinson was the Earl of Wessex at the time, and this made him the most powerful nobleman in England and the only Englishman claiming the throne, except for a relative called Edgar who was only eight and was not seriously considered for the throne for obvious reasons.

• Harald Hadraada’s main claim was that Cnut’s son promised his father the throne and that he was a descendant of King Cnut, a former king of England. He also felt that he might get some support from Viking families in the North of England.

• William was Edward’s cousin and was promised the throne by him, and he had helped Edward in the past. William was Duke of Normandy.

  



1) Why did England need a new king?  
2) Why was there no direct heir to the throne?   
3) Who were the three men who had claimed to the English throne?  
4) What roles did the three men have in their countries? 
5) What is a ‘claimant’? 


http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/year7links/conquest_worksheets.shtml

Anglo-Saxons

The Anglo-Saxons arrived to Britain befor the 4th century, but they settled there int he 5th century. Seven were the kingdoms formed:

• Three founded by the Saxons: Essex, Sussex and Wessex in the south-east coast.
• Three founded by de Anglos: Marcia, Oriental Anglia and Northumbria in the center and north just until Adriano's wall. 
• One founded by the Jutes: Kent in the south-west.

In pairs click this link http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/anglo_saxons/ to learn more about Anglo-Saxons.

You have to:

• Answer the quiz Who were the Anglo-Saxons?
• Describe how an Anglo-Saxon village was (Video)
• Explain briefly their clothes and their jobs in Anglo-Saxons life.
• Who was Alfred the Great? Answer the quiz Alfred the Great.
• What happened to them and the Víkings?
• Let's Dig it up: The Anglo-Saxons!!

Gaul: from Visigoths to Franks

Visigoth king Euric (466-480) dominated an important part of the Gaul, setting its capital in Toulouse and he started to take the control of the Iberian Peninsula. When he was dead, his heir, Alaric II, lost all his father achievements: he wasn't a good strateg and the Franks started their expansion.
The Franks, a small group who was living in the north of the Gaul. Clovis, a Merovingian king, was the one who expanded his kingdom. It took more than twenty years of wars and batlles to eliminate his opponents in Gaul: the Soissons, the Alemans and the Visigoths.
In the middle of the 7th century, the nobility was worried for the power that the king had, so they decided to stop him. The Mayor of the Palace was the name that the man who assumed the govern functions. Two of the most important families who took that place were the Pippinids and the Carolingian.

• Look for more information about the Mayor of the Palace and write a breif text about it. Pay attention to the two main families. (minimum 15 lines)

The early Germanic kingdoms

Germanic were all those countries which lived between Rin and Danubi. Further than that point it was the unknown and confused Slavic land.
Germanics were the main character in the disintegration of the Roman Empire. Especially important was the event in 476 when Odoacer, a Germanic military chief, defeated the last Roman emperor, Romul Augustus.
All the Occidental part of the Roman Empire was divided into small Germanic kingdoms, despite there wasn't many population. So, the Germanic power wasn't caused for the number of soldiers and citizens they were, but it was the suitable substitute for the political and military structure of the empire defeated. Also the Germanics converted to Christianity.
Anyway, those kingdoms supported themselves in basic barbarian elements. One of the most important  was the ban, power that each king had to administrate, make laws and orders, for example. So, the Germanic kings had a huge power. However, that power wasn't enough. 

The Anglo-Saxons in Britain

The Middle Ages

The first one to use the concept “Middle Ages” was Cristobal Keller in 1688, but it’s difficult to define this historical period. Nowadays, there are still discussions about its chronological and spatial limits.

During the Renaissance, at the begging of 16^th century with the Tudor dynasty, the Middle Ages were seen as a dark and violent time. But, in the 18^th century that idea changed as, on one hand, the European nationalist ideals began to spread, and, one the other hand, the Romantic ideas succeeded all over Europe. In that time, the Middle Ages were considerate as the specific moment when the European nations were born.

The history of the Middle Ages is an European work as a concept. The main space that was studied by historians was Europe, and the peripheric lands were just analyzed if they had any contact with European kingdoms. But this idea, the Eurocentrism, doesn’t have to be seen as a scorn, but as study of a determinate civilisation. Actually, all the European kingdoms were located in a homogenous world, a specific cultural area named Christianity.

Chronologically, the Middle Ages are divided in two main periods: the Early Middle Ages (1066-1307) and the Late Middle Ages (1307-1485). 

After reading the post, The Middle Ages, do these activities:

1. Had the concept the Middle Ages meant always the same for the historians? Argue your answer.
2. What are we talking about when we say Christianity?
3. Have a look at the link Medieval Times and explain the main differences among the two periods in which the Middle Ages are divided. 

Essential vocabulary

Before starting the course, you have to learn some specific vocabulary related to the history of the Middle Ages. So, you look up the definition in a dictionary online and then translate it into Catalan. Use the links on your right:

• to conquer
• to surrender
• to come to an agreement
• to abdicate
• kingdom
• peasant
• knight
• monk
• nun
• heir
• war
• marriage
• battle
• dynasty
• lord
• weapon
• timeline
• key date or event