Then, try this online Henry II and Becket game.
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.
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
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.
William, the Conqueror and Domesday Book
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.
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?
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