The man known to history as William the Conqueror
was born at Falaise in the Normandy region of northern France, in either 1027 or 1028. The De Obitu Willelmi, meaning ‘On the Death
of William’, which was written in the late eleventh century to commemorate William’s
death in 1087, stated that he was 59 years of age when he died. If this is accurate William must have been
born sometime between the 10th of September 1027 and the 9th of September 1028. Like many other noblemen of the High Middle
Ages William’s family did not use a surname and since his byname of ‘the Conqueror’
was one which he acquired much later, we should consider him for the first forty years of
his life as simply William of Normandy. His father was Robert of Normandy who in 1027,
at around the time of William’s birth, had ascended to the position of Duke of Normandy,
ruler of the large duchy of Normandy in northwest France which dominated the valley of the River
Seine as it flowed outwards from Paris into the English Channel. His mother was a woman named Herleva whose
precise background is unclear. One story has it that she was a servant of
the ducal household at Falaise, others that she was the daughter of a tradesman from the
town. One of William’s recent biographers has
suggested she was a daughter of one of the senior ministers of the dukes of Normandy. Yet although Herleva’s background is uncertain,
there is no doubt that her liaison with Robert of Normandy was not within the confines of
marriage or recognised by the church. Accordingly William was not a legitimate child
and although he would succeed his father he was nevertheless regularly referred to throughout
his life as bastardus, or the bastard, in reference to his illegitimacy. The duchy of Normandy into which William was
born and which he would soon rule was a relatively new dukedom or territory in France. Its origins lay in the late ninth and early
tenth centuries. William’s great, great, great grandfather
was Hrólfr Ragnvaldsson, a Viking who in the late ninth century led a large Viking
contingent which launched several raids into the north of the kingdom of the Franks in
what is now France, however, unlike many other Viking war parties which simply raided regions
and moved on, by the 870s Hrólfr and his Viking followers had settled in the Lower
Seine river valley from where they could exact money from Paris and farm the rich farmland
of the Normandy region. This situation lasted until the early tenth
century, when eventually the French king, Charles III, in 911 decided to accommodate
Hrólfr as one of his own subjects, rather than continue to be harassed by these Viking
warriors. Thus, in 911 Hrólfr became the first Count
of Normandy and he changed his name to that which he is most commonly known by today. He called himself Rollo, and in time his ancestors
would adopt the title of dukes of Normandy. He was also baptised, beginning the process
whereby these Norse settlers in northern France converted to Christianity in the course of
the tenth century. Thus, William was born into a Norse family,
but one which had rapidly Gallicised. For instance, they adopted the languages and
culture of their new homeland, speaking French and Latin and employing laws which were partially
Germanic and partially acquired from the civil law of the Romans as it was passed down to
the Frankish kingdom, however, they brought some of their own culture to the region as
well. Consequently this was soon understood to be
a unique culture which was present in northwest France, one which would have an enormous impact
on Europe during the High Middle Ages. The people here were called the Normans and
their culture was Norman culture. The word comes from the term for Normandy,
the land they inhabited, which effectively means ‘The Land of the North Men’ in recognition
of the Normans’ origins in Scandinavia. William’s childhood is relatively shadowy
compared with our extensive knowledge of his later life, he evidently received some sort
of literary education, but the details are unclear other than a nugget of information
which reveals that a mysterious ‘Ralph the Monk’ was involved. By the time he was just seven or eight years
old the duke’s young son was already being included in ceremonial events concerning the
feudal governance of Normandy. For instance, when some of Robert’s feudal
lords paid homage to him William was present at these ceremonies in recognition of the
fact that their fealty would pass to him one day when Robert died and William succeeded
him. One had to grow up fast as a potential lord
in eleventh-century Europe. Easily the most traumatic and momentous event
in William’s young life occurred in 1035 when he was either seven or eight years old. The boy would have been aware even at this
young age of his father’s prolonged absence from Falaise, in 1034 he had undertaken a
pilgrimage to visit Jerusalem in the Holy Land, however on the way home he fell ill
and died at Nicaea in north-western Anatolia, in what is now Turkey, on the 2nd of July
1035. When news of his death reached Normandy the
young William, as Robert’s only son, though illegitimate, was now proclaimed duke of Normandy. Rumours which emerged at the time that Duke
Robert had been poisoned in Anatolia are almost certainly spurious and his sudden illness
and death could have been owing to any wide range of maladies which were barely understood
at the time. William’s reign during his minority was
chaotic. Already during Robert’s reign there had
been a number of overly powerful lords exercising too much independence from the ducal court
at Falaise and with an eight year old boy now the duke of Normandy, these tendencies
only became greater. Consequently William’s guardians spent much of the 1030s and early
1040s trying to re-establish ducal authority. The situation even declined to the extent
that William had to be moved around the Normandy region for his safe keeping. Despite these early challenges, William was
able to assume the rule of Normandy in his own right upon turning fifteen, most likely
in 1042. It is from this date that major chroniclers
of William’s life such as William of Jumiéges and William of Poitiers began to describe
him as being at the centre of events occurring in Normandy. For instance, William’s first active military
success is described as being the capture of Falaise from a recalcitrant local lord
named Thurstan Goz. This occurred early in 1043 when William was
probably fifteen years of age. Thereafter in the years ahead he succeeded
in re-establishing ducal authority throughout northwest France, aided to a great extent
by the king of France, Henri I. The most significant moment in this stabilising
of his rule in Normandy came in the early summer of 1047 when William was on the cusp
of entering his twenties. At this time he managed to see off a serious
challenge to his legitimacy when his cousin, Guy of Brionne, claimed the duchy for himself. William eventually defeated Guy at the Battle
of Val-és-Dunes near Caen in Normandy, following which he imposed a ‘Truce of God’ on the
other Norman nobles, a medieval concept which was at its height in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries and which called for Christian lords to swear vows of peace towards one another. Following this William cemented his control
of the region by appointing his half-brother Odo as bishop of Bayeux in 1049, a major position
in western Normandy. Throughout their accounts of these events
of the 1040s, William’s biographers and chroniclers, typically monks and other religious
figures writing in his own day or shortly afterwards in the late eleventh and twelfth
centuries, were at pains to suggest that the young duke was a major driving force in the
reform of the duchy and the consolidation of power in his own hands in the 1040s. However, whether these accounts were exaggerated
later or not is open to some dispute. It is also from the period of the late 1040s
and into the 1050s that we first hear regular mention in contemporary histories of figures
such as William FitzOsbern and Roger de Montgomery as acting as William’s advisors, these men
would advise William for many years to come and their appearance in the historical record
at this time, gives the impression that a stable and coherent government had been formed
in the late 1040s. Several of these individuals would also be
William’s closest confidantes and commanders when it came to his famous invasion of England
many years later. Thus, by mid-century, William had strengthened his control over Normandy
and ended the instability which had characterised the region since the
early 1030s. Having done so, William’s thoughts turned
towards securing his line. In 1050 he married Matilda of Flanders, the
daughter of Count Baldwin of Flanders in what is now southern Belgium. Baldwin was one of the most powerful rulers
in northern Europe at the time and the marriage was a major diplomatic coup for William. In time the union would result in four sons,
Robert, Richard, William and Henry, and five daughters, Adelida, Cecilia, Matilda, Constance
and Adela. Two of these sons would sit on the throne
of England in time to come. William’s career subsequent to 1050 and
the events which have made him one of the major figures in English history must be assessed
in light of developments in England as far back as the 1010s. In 1013 Sweyn Forkbeard, the King of Denmark
and ruler of the Danes, a Norse people who had been raiding Britain extensively since
the 980s, conquered England and usurped the throne from King Æthelred, the head of the
Wessex line of kings. Although Æthelred quickly fought back and
resumed the kingship in 1014, he died in 1016, making his son, Edmund Ironside, the new king. However, Edmund was now cast into a new war
with the son of Sweyn Forkbeard, Cnut, by the end of 1016. Cnut had managed to seize control of much
of England from Edmund and when the Wessex king died in November, Cnut proclaimed himself
king of all England, a powerful ruler who now reigned over a North
Atlantic empire stretching from England, east to Denmark and north into Norway. He would rule until 1035 and was remembered
as Cnut the Great. Despite Cnut’s ascendancy, the Wessex line
was not wholly defeated. In 1016 Æthelred’s other son and Edmund
Ironside’s brother, Edward, fled with the rest of the family across the English Channel. They found refuge at the court of the dukes
of Normandy where they acted as kings of England in exile and were afforded many honours by
William’s grandfather and father in the 1020s and 1030s. Then in the early 1040s, just as William was
entering his early manhood and preparing to rule in his own right, the situation changed
again in England. Cnut was succeeded in 1035 by his son, Harold
Harefoot, who subsequently died in 1040, only to be succeeded by another son of Cnut’s,
Harthacnut. However, Harthacnut was a young man without an heir who was also suffering
from some unspecified illness, possibly tuberculosis, accordingly
in 1041 he made preparations for the succession should he die. His dispensation for England was that Edward,
now known by the byname ‘the Confessor’ owing to his religious piety, should return
from Normandy and succeed him as King of England, should he die without producing an heir. This subsequently occurred the following year. Thus, the Wessex line of kings was restored
in England in 1042. Edward did not quickly forget the support
he had received from the dukes of Normandy and the honours they had been afforded in
northern France throughout his and his family’s long exile in the quarter of a century after
1016. Although there is a substantial controversy
over these events, it is very possible that in 1051, when a crisis arose in England between
Edward and the powerful Anglo-Danish House of Godwin, the king promised William of Normandy
that he would succeed him as King of England following his death, Edward being without
a legitimate heir and largely leading a celibate life. There is substantial reason to believe that
this promise was actually made in 1051. Many of our most important sources for William’s
life attest to it. For instance, the Gesta Willelmi or Deeds
of William written by William of Poitiers around 1066 and the Gesta Normannorum Ducum
or Deeds of the Dukes of the Normans compiled by William of Jumiéges around 1070, both
include this version of events, however these could be dismissed as having been written
after William had made his claim to the throne of England and conquered the country and as
such might be deemed politically biased. But there is also evidence from the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, a long history of England in the Middle Ages, which pre-dates William becoming
king. Recent studies have proven that the relevant
sections of the chronicle detailing Edward’s promise to William, were written in the 1050s
or early 1060s before William became king of England. Consequently the author would have had no
political reason to include this version of events if it was not true. There is then every reason to believe that
Edward did in fact make William his heir in 1051 and that the Norman duke’s claim to
the throne of England was authentic and strong as a result. Whatever the truth of these matters, their
material significance for William would not become a concern for another fifteen years
as Edward lived well into the 1060s. In the interim William faced further challenges
at home in Normandy. Despite his earlier alliance with Henri I
of France, William clashed with the French monarch on several occasions in the 1050s,
a result of the splintered and decentralised power arrangement which predominated in France
throughout the eleventh century. Several invasions of Normandy were undertaken
by Henri, between 1053 and 1057, but when William won a substantial victory against
the king and his allies at the Battle of Varaville in August 1057, the tide was turned. William now went on the offensive against
Henri and when both the king and his foremost ally, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, died in 1060,
William was able to impose his power throughout northern France. In 1063 he even managed to bring the entire
county of Maine, a substantial French province to the south of Normandy, under Norman rule. This brought extensive additional resources
under William’s control which would aid greatly in his invasion of England a few years
later. One of William’s most significant building
projects also dates to this time. In 1062 he and Matilda began their patronage
of the construction of a new church and nunnery in the town of Caen in Normandy. The complex was originally intended to consist
of two main buildings, the Abbaye aux Dames or Women’s Abbey, intended for a group of
Benedictine nuns, and the Abbaye aux Hommes or Men’s Abbey, devised as a monk’s abbey. Eventually the wider complex would become
known as the Abbey of Sainte-Trinité and stood throughout the late medieval and early
modern periods as one of the most impressive religious establishments in northern France. However, it was not fully completed until
1130, long after both William and Matilda had died, an indication of the sheer ambition
of the project. When completed it consisted of a main church
built in the Gothic style, with transepts spreading out from the back thereof into the
abbeys for the nuns and monks. These transepts were built in the early medieval
Romanesque architectural style and so the church and abbeys at Caen which William patronised
are a melding of the main architectural style of both the Early and High Middle Ages, a
statement of a world which like the Duchy of Normandy stood at the end of one period
of Europe’s history and the beginning of another. Having secured the southern border of Normandy,
William turned his attention west in 1064 towards the Celtic duchy of Brittany and its
ruler, Conan II. This resulted in the Breton-Norman War which
would last until 1066, eventually ending in something of a stalemate, but it is curious
for having involved Harold Godwinson, earl of Wessex in England and the head of the powerful
House of Godwin. Harold had most likely been sent to France
to reaffirm King Edward’s earlier offer to William to succeed him as England’s ruler. At this time William made Harold swear an
oath that he would accept his succession. This latter event is vividly depicted on the
Bayeux Tapestry, a seventy metre long cloth tapestry produced in the 1070s and which still
survives today. It depicts the events leading up to William’s
claim to the English throne and his subsequent invasion of England in 1066. Housed today in the Bayeux Tapestry Museum
in the town of Bayeux in Normandy in northern France, it is a remarkable survival and a
striking record of William’s ascent to the kingship of England, or at least how he wished
people to understand how he had risen to the kingship. The meeting of William and Harold in northern
France in the mid-1060s was to take on a striking significance in early 1066, King Edward the
Confessor, by now in his sixties, fell into a coma late in 1065, he never fully recovered
and he died on the 5th of January 1066 in London. He still had no clear heir and Edward’s
lack of clarity and indecision over the succession now opened a window of opportunity for Harold. The following day, on the 6th of January,
the Anglo-Saxon Witan, the assembly of Anglo-Saxon and Danish lords and members of the ruling
class of England, met and proclaimed Harold as the new king of England. The stage was now set for a major showdown
with William. Within weeks, plans were underway in Normandy
for William to enforce his claim as Edward’s successor, indeed it is almost certain that
William had been preparing politically and militarily for Edward’s death throughout
the 1060s. Hundreds of warships and transport boats were
now gathered or placed under construction in the ports of northern France and William
reached out to his recently acquired subjects and allies from across northern France to
aid him in his invasion. A debate has arisen in recent years as to
how William actually prepared his invasion force. This was, by some standards,
the largest amphibious invasion and action undertaken anywhere in Western Europe since the days of the Roman
Empire. But the Romans were the dominant power of
the known world at the time and capable of massive logistical operations, whereas William
was the duke of a minor principality in northern France by comparison. How then, many medievalists and historians
have wondered, did William prepare such an invasion force and transport it across the
English Channel in such a short period of time? What historians of this subject increasingly
believe is that the Norman Invasion of 1066 was only made possible by the diffusion of
new technologies to northern France from other parts of Europe in the course of the eleventh
century. For instance, William’s army would have
involved upwards of 3,000 war horses. Studies have concluded that the kind of longships
and galleys used in the North Atlantic during the Early Middle Ages simply could not have
carried these across the English Channel in anywhere near the necessary amount of time
for him to have carried out his campaign in 1066. Instead, William was relying on a specific
type of ship for transporting horses, the design of which had reached Normandy from
the Byzantine Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean in the first half of the eleventh century. Thus, from a logistical point of view, the
Norman Invasion of 1066 and William’s expedition was only possible because of the changing
nature of medieval Europe in the eleventh century and the increasing diffusion of knowledge
and technologies around the continent. William was not the only claimant to the throne. Harold also faced a challenge from his own
brother, the earl of Northumberland, Tostig. As the earl of a large domain in northern
England and a member of the powerful House of Godwin, Tostig had his own considerable
support to claim the throne. He had already been implicated in a rebellion
in the north in 1065, prior to Edward’s last illness and death. Now in 1066 he clashed directly with Harold
who banished him from England. Tostig spent the spring and summer months
scheming with various foreign powers in the world of the North Atlantic. He took refuge with his brother-in-law, the
Count of Flanders, Baldwin V, who gave him financial and military support to raid southern
England in the summer. Tostig even considered allying with William,
but eventually he looked further east to Norway, and at some point in the summer of 1066, he
made contact with King Harald Hardrada of Norway and convinced the Norse monarch to
lay his own claim to the English throne. Harald Hardrada received Tostig’s petition
favourably. He quickly prepared an
invasion force of approximately 10,000 men and 300 ships which landed in northern England in the early autumn. Initially Hardrada and Tostig made good progress,
a substantial victory was won against some regional forces outside the town of York at
Fulford on the 20th of September 1066, but in the days that followed, Harold arrived
to the north himself with his armies. The forces of the English King Harold and
the Norwegian King Harald finally met at the village of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire on
the 25th of September 1066, The result was a stunning victory for the English Harold. Both Hardrada and Tostig were killed in the
engagement and thousands of the Norwegians were killed or badly wounded. Such was the scale of the defeat, that of
the 300 ships which had conveyed the Norse army to England, only two to three dozen were
needed to bring what was left of the army back to Norway. Harold had seen off the first major threat
to his rule, but the greater one waited to the south and the distraction created by the northern invasion of Hardrada
was not insignificant in the campaign which followed. Having spent the summer rallying his allies
and supporters in France, William’s invasion force of perhaps somewhere between 8,000 and
12,000 men crossed the English Channel on the night of the 27th of September, making
their full landing near Pevensey in East Sussex on the morning of the 28th. The date is significant, as Harold had been
making preparations in the south throughout the summer and early autumn against William’s
landing, but the invasion by Hardrada and Tostig in the north had drawn his forces away,
allowing for a smoother landing in the south. Thus, the stage was set for the final showdown
between Harold and William. Having disembarked, William moved his forces
to the nearby town of Hastings in late September and early October, and in the process his forces devastated the
surrounding Sussex countryside, requisitioning food supplies for the army
and also as a form of psychological warfare. No sooner had he defeated Hardrada in the
north, than Harold had to quickly make his way south to see off the second invasion. On the other hand, William did not advance
north towards London and Harold’s forces. He was content to wait and allow Harold to
come to him in Sussex. His reasons were two-fold:
first, he had established a strong base of operations at Hastings with good supplies collected from the surrounding
region; secondly, he did not wish to sever his lines of communication with his fleet
by advancing inland. Clearly William was preparing for the possibility
of an unsuccessful military engagement against Harold and the eventuality that he might have
to make a hasty retreat back across the Channel to Normandy. By the 13th of October Harold had advanced
south to near William’s position at Hastings. When William received word of the king’s
arrival in East Sussex and his encampment to the northeast of the town, he prepared
his troops and marched out from Hastings at shortly after dawn on the morning of the 14th. The ensuing battle, one of the most critical
in English history, has become known as the Battle of Hastings, but it did not actually
take place in or next to the town of Hastings itself, rather the clash occurred roughly
eleven kilometres to the northwest of the town near a steep ridge in the Sussex countryside. The area is now the site of the village of
Battle, named in honour of the conflict which occurred there nearly a millennium ago. The exact specifics of how the battle played
out are a matter of some dispute, not least because contemporary histories and accounts
tended to greatly distort events for political reasons in its aftermath. For instance, the number of troops involved
are usually exaggerated to a great extent. Nevertheless, historians today are agreed
on the general facts of the battle, William brought at least 7,000 men with him out of
Hastings and perhaps as many as 10,000, a large proportion being Norman heavy cavalry,
the elite warriors of eleventh-century Europe. Harold had a similar number, but these were
tired after the month of exertion in marching all the way north to Yorkshire and then returning
quickly to the south, fighting the Battle of Stamford Bridge along the way. The battle commenced in the early morning
at Battle and lasted all day, a long engagement for the time. Harold’s forces had the advantage of the
high ground, having occupied the high ridge at the site, but they were restricted by having
the forest of the Weald at their back. Thus, while William’s forces were disadvantaged
by having to move uphill they had greater room to move about the battlefield. In the end, three factors won the day, William
was able to deploy his archers to pick off Harold’s troops on the ridge. Secondly, his cavalry were superior to Harold’s. But the most significant factor was William’s
generalship. Throughout the day he used a number of feigned
or pretend retreats to disrupt the English lines and strike at weak points in Harold’s
arrayed men. These attacks eventually reduced considerably
the number of Harold’s elite troops, the housecarls, in the English shield wall. These were replaced by auxiliary troops, but
eventually the barrage of feigned attacks and strikes at weaker points in the English
king’s shield wall proved fatal. It was during one of these feigned retreats
late in the day, that Harold himself was struck down and killed. With the king dead, the Anglo-Saxon and Danish
forces allegedly broke. Many fled and others surrendered. Thus, by the time the sun set on the 14th
of October 1066 over the field at Battle and near the town of Hastings, Harold Godwinson
was dead and William of Normandy was one gigantic step closer to claiming the English throne. Any assessment of the Battle of Hastings does
also need to bear in mind the adage that history is written by the victors. Our sources for the battle and indeed much
of the wider Norman Conquest of England come almost exclusively from Norman writers who
were sympathetic to William and naturally critical of Harold, or from other sources such as the Bayeux Tapestry
which were unequivocally pieces of propaganda designed to extoll William’s
victory. For instance, many sources suggest that Harold
was killed late in the battle when an arrow hit him in the eye, but others suggest he
died early on in the conflict. Whatever the chronology of this, nearly all
contend that Harold’s army began to collapse and flee once their king was killed, suggesting
a disordered and poorly trained body of troops. But others still, which are less flattering
of William, contend that Harold’s forces actually held together quite well even after
the king was killed and attempted to flee with his body. Others are vague about the actions of the
Normans. For instance, the battle largely concluded
with the Normans pursuing some of Harold’s forces to a site known as ‘Malfosse’ or
‘The Evil Ditch’. Exactly where this is and what happened here
is unclear, but it is probable that the Normans massacred some of the remnants of Harold’s
fleeing army at this site, an act remembered in the name of the place in local lore. From a military perspective, Hastings was
not just the critical battle in the war for the throne of England in 1066, it also reflected
the changing order in the North Atlantic world, as for nearly three-hundred years the world
of Scandinavia, Britain, northern France and the Low Countries had been dominated by the
military power of the Viking people, who burst out of Europe in the late eighth century,
with their longboats and infantry warriors. Hastings marked the triumph of Franco-Norman
fighting tactics, with its mixed infantry and cavalry, over the Anglo-Saxon and Danish
troops which had long dominated the North Atlantic world. In the aftermath of the battle William did
not immediately assume the English crown. This was complicated by the creation of a
new king by the lords of the Witan in London. The man chosen was Edgar Ætheling, a grand-nephew
of King Edward the Confessor and the grandson of King Edmund Ironside who had briefly ruled
England fifty years earlier in 1016. When news of Harold’s defeat and death at
Hastings reached London in the days that followed a decision was taken to proclaim Edgar, a
boy of perhaps thirteen years of age at the time, as the king. Edgar’s reign would be one of the shortest
in English history. In the immediate aftermath of the Battle of
Hastings, William proceeded cautiously, securing the towns of Dover, Canterbury and Winchester
before making any attempt to seize London. By this means he secured the south and the
midlands and isolated the supporters of the puppet king in the capital. Just weeks later, as William’s armies advanced
towards London, the supporters of the young king made the decision not to continue the
charade of pretending William could be resisted. The boy king and his supporters met with William
not far from the capital in early December. Here an agreement was reached which allowed
Edgar to abdicate peacefully. This action, and the seizure of London, completed
the initial Norman Conquest. William of Normandy was crowned as King of
England in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. The ceremony was presided over by Aldred,
the archbishop of York, who performed it in English, before Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances,
a diocese in Normandy, translated Aldred’s words into French, in a ceremony which indicated
how a foreign people had effectively conquered England. In an ominous sign of the bloodshed which
would mark much of William’s reign as ruler of England, some of William’s soldiers stationed
outside the abbey believed William had been assassinated when they heard what were actually
shouts of acclamation from within. In a panic they began setting fire to some
of the houses around Westminster. It is after this rather chaotic coronation
ceremony that William ceases to be known as William of Normandy, and instead becomes William
I, or as he is more commonly known to history, William the Conqueror. It would be incorrect to suggest that the
shift which occurred in England in 1066 was limited to a few set-piece battles and a change
of ruler, after which, things settled down again quite quickly. England had been conquered by a foreign power,
one which brought with it, new ways of governing, laws, cultural mores and even a different
language. As we will see, over the next twenty years
of his life, William and his Norman followers would transform England from a hybrid Anglo-Saxon
and Danish land, into a new Anglo-Norman kingdom. As one of the great historians of Medieval
England, Richard Southern, once noted “no country in Europe, between the rise of the
barbarian kingdoms, in the fifth century, and the 20th century, has undergone so radical a change in so short a
time, as England experienced after 1066”. Some of these changes were immediate. The changing order saw thousands of Anglo-Saxons
and Danes who had been strong supporters of the House of Wessex or the Danish lords flee
England, either for Denmark, Norway, Scotland or even neighbouring Ireland. Many would attempt to organise new invasions
to restore the old rule of the Anglo-Saxons and Danes, but most would never return. In their place, William brought in thousands
of Norman settlers from France, perhaps as many as 20,000. These medieval colonists did not enormously
dilute the existing population, which is believed to have been somewhere around two and half
million people in England by the mid-eleventh century, but they did place a strong body
of Normans in positions of power in many of the towns and villages up and down eleventh-century
England. Over time, these newcomers transformed English
society. The most obvious and enduring sign of this
was the introduction of the language of the conquerors, Anglo-Norman, a dialect of Old
French with some traces of Norse in it, reflecting the Viking heritage of the Normans. Over time much of the diction of Anglo-Norman
was absorbed into English, thus fundamentally altering the language spoken in England into
a hybrid of Germanic and Romance languages. This process would take centuries to fully
occur however, and for the remainder of William’s reign the conquering class spoke a version
of French and the bulk of the population still spoke Old English. Thus, bilingualism would have become necessary
for many working in government or as traders in London and other towns from the late 1060s
onwards. Along with this lingual change, shifts in
the functioning of government and the law also occurred. Law French became the language of the courts,
a position it would hold legally until the eighteenth century. Moreover the court system became more centralised
under Norman rule, a move which helped in the development of the Common Law in the two
centuries that followed. A truly positive development which followed
from the Norman Conquest was the gradual phasing out of slavery as a major feature of society
in England. Already by the time of the Norman Invasion
in 1066 slavery was a far less common practice within Norman society than it was in England
and Britain. The Domesday Book which, as we will see, was
compiled in the mid-1080s, twenty years after the Norman Conquest, indicated that there
were some 28,000 slaves officially listed in England. While such figures were doubtlessly inaccurate
to some extent, given the issues in precise record-keeping during the eleventh century,
this was clearly a significant drop on the number of slaves which had been present in
the country prior to 1066, suggesting William and his followers had manumitted or freed
many slaves following the conquest. This process continued thereafter. Slavery was not banned in England, nor indeed
was it in most of Europe until the nineteenth century, but it was gradually phased out. By the twelfth century the number of slaves
in England had decline by as much as 30% on what it had been prior to 1066 and this process
continued during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By the Late Middle Ages slavery was considered
something in England, as elsewhere in Europe, which could not be imposed on fellow Christians. Another very substantial change which William
brought about, was his reform of the English church. At the time of the conquest, the church in
England was very loosely organised. William tied it much more closely together
and appointed several followers to senior positions in order to impose uniformity. Lanfranc, a celebrate Benedictine monk, was
made archbishop of Canterbury in 1070, the same year that William’s chaplain, William
of Bayeux was made archbishop of York. Between them the pair oversaw the creation
of a centralised Anglican church which strove to maintain its independence from the Papacy
in Rome on many matters, an independent streak of Anglicanism, which
foreshadowed many developments in the English church in years to come. But the real heart of the changes wrought
throughout England in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest lay in the sphere of land
ownership. William had many followers who had supported
him, not just in his campaign against Harold in 1066, but through several periods when
he needed their military and political support in the 1040s and 1050s. England was now their bounty. We can gain an insight into just how great
this land transfer was from the Domesday Book. It comprises a vast survey of landownership
in eleventh century England, two decades after the Norman Conquest and was the most extensive
account of landownership produced for the country until the nineteenth century. What it reveals is the manner in which William
rewarded his French and Norman followers in the aftermath of the conquest, by granting
them vast territories throughout the country. Leading lords and followers had enormous estates
bestowed on them. These were often huge chunks
of land in geographically strategic regions which they were also expected to control in the interest of the Normans,
as the conquerors of this foreign land. For instance, one of William’s strongest
supporters, Robert de Beaumont, heir to the title of Count of Meulan in Normandy, had
fought with William at Hastings. He was rewarded with over 90 manors in England
in the years that followed, strategically centred around Warwickshire and Leicestershire. Thus, this leading companion of William’s
was to hold the English midlands for the Norman interest and was given enormous estates in
the region with which to do so, in the years ahead. The new Norman stone castles, which eclipses
the wooden motte and baileye fortifications which the Danes and Anglo-Saxons had preferred
in England up to that time, would have begun to appear throughout the countryside, as a
means of securing Norman rule here if the Anglo-Saxons and Danes should rise up. In recognition of his immense authority in
the area, Robert was made the first earl of Leicester later in his life. He was not alone in being placed in a position
like this. Another senior companion of William’s in
1066, William de Warrene was granted lands in at least thirteen counties by the 1080s,
particularly around Sussex and Surrey. He was ennobled shortly before his death in
1088 as the first earl of Surrey. William FitzOsbern, the lord of Breteuil in
Normandy, was a close companion of William’s who was also related to the Conqueror. He was given a position of prominence in the
West Midlands and March region bordering into Wales, particularly the counties of Herefordshire,
Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire. Here he was given Clifford Castle, Berkeley
Castle and Monmouth Castle as imposing symbols of Norman rule, fortifications which he expanded
significantly. He was also quickly made earl of Hereford
to symbolise his pre-eminent position in the English West Midlands. Through these measures, William and his Norman
companions imposed their rule over England in the years following the conquest. This was not a benign conquest, enormous land
transfers of this kind severely uprooted people and turned England upside down. Moreover, the conquest itself in late 1066
caused severe devastation of the countryside of southern England, it was not long before
it provoked resistance. In 1067, William had returned to France to
oversee his domains there. Unrest began rising as soon as he left for
France. When he returned to England later that year,
an extensive programme of castle building had already been undertaken by William FitzOsbern
to try to impose greater control over the regions beyond London and the Home Counties,
and early in 1068, William campaigned into the West Country where Norman rule was being
resisted. It is hard to minimise the role FitzOsbern
played in this element of the conquest for his cousin. As well as establishing castles in the West
Midlands and the March region where he was appointed as the Conqueror’s
primary representative, he initiated the construction of numerous other castles in southern England on the new
king’s behalf. These included Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle
of Wight where a fort had been built by the Romans a millennium earlier and adapted for
further uses by the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings in later times. FitzOsbern oversaw the construction of a new
castle here which would later gain some infamy as being where King Charles I was imprisoned
by parliament in 1648 prior to his being put on trial and executed. FitzOsbern would have emerged as perhaps the
single most important figure in England in the 1070s and 1080s had he not eloped to the
Low Countries in 1070 in an effort to establish himself as the new Count of Flanders, an ambition
which resulted in his death at the Battle of Cassel in February 1071. The late 1060s saw perhaps the greatest threat
to the newly established Anglo-Norman kingdom, a major rebellion broke out in Northumberland
in 1069, which coalesced around the figure of Edgar Ætheling, the House of Wessex member
who had briefly been proclaimed king in London in the winter of 1066, the rebels here were also aided by contingents
of Danes from Scandinavia, but all were driven north into Scotland when
William campaigned against them in 1069. This was a brutal military action, with William
devastating the countryside of northern England. A near contemporary chronicler, Orderic Vitalis, who is generally regarded
as an accurate chronicler, who did not sympathise with the Norman conquerors,
described William as bringing, quote, “famine and the sword” to northern England in 1069. His description is corroborated by the evidence
of the Domesday Book, which showed that land values here in the north of England were still
enormously lower in the 1080s than they otherwise should have been, a sign of how much damage
William and his followers inflicted on the region to suppress its independence. Further campaigns followed in 1070 in the
northwest along the coastline near Chester and the March region bordering Wales, new
castles were quickly erected and Norman overlords imposed their will, the last major pockets
of resistance here were not finally crushed until 1071. Thus, we might consider that far from being
a short military conquest in 1066, the Norman Conquest was actually a long six year campaign
in which England was subjugated by the Normans, through a brutal strategy of military conquest,
enforced famine and the replacement of the Anglo-Saxon and Danish aristocracy with a
new nobility of Norman knights, ruling the country from their imposing stone castles. The campaign in the north of England, or ‘The
Harrying of the North’ as it has become known, was at the apex of the campaign of
destruction. Between 1069 and 1071 the countryside around
towns and cities like York was effectively laid waste, leading to such extreme famine
and migration that it is now understood that tens of thousands of people probably starved
to death in northern England at this time, while in some parts of the northern counties
the population had declined by as much as 75% even years later, a result of the methods
employed by the Normans here during the conquest. Many people simply fled to Scotland and overseas
in the wake of the arrival of the Normans. Thus, the Norman Conquest of England was not
a sanguine transfer of power from one ruler to another as a result of a battle in southern
England in 1066, but an extremely bloody process which disrupted the lives of people all over
England for many years. Hand in hand with this brutal policy of military
subjugation, William also implemented a propaganda campaign in the late 1060s and 1070s to justify
his invasion of England and the benefits of Norman rule. We have already seen that writers such as
William of Poitiers and William of Jumiéges were writing soon after the conquest, in ways
which depicted William’s career leading up to 1066, and the actions of that year,
in a favourable light. For instance, William of Jumiéges, who was
certainly a Norman monk favourable to the new king and who must have been in his sixties
by the time of the Conquest, began working in the late 1060s, while England was still
in the process of being pacified by the Normans, on the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, meaning Deeds
of the Dukes of the Normans, an extremely favourable account of the dukes of Normandy,
particularly William, and his reign since the 1040s. These reverential accounts of William the
Conqueror would shape the perception of him in a very positive light for centuries to
come. Other efforts were more visual and symbolic. The Pope in Rome, Alexander II, ordered in
1070, that William and his followers should do penance for the sins they had committed
in killing many people during the conquest and in the months and years after, William
took this as an opportunity to further glorify the conquest. The ‘penance’ he undertook was to order
the construction of an abbey for the religious order of the Benedictines. It was to be built on the battlefield to the northeast of Hastings, where
William had effectively won the throne of England in October 1066. The altar of the church within the abbey was
apparently placed at the exact location where Harold had fallen during the battle. Dedicated to St Martin, Battle Abbey was only
completed after William’s death, but is a striking example of Norman propaganda in
England. The abbey, as it still stands today, is dominated
towards the front by two large crenelated towers between the main gatehouse and entryways. Further battlements stretch out from there
giving the impression of a defensive structure, although this was meant as a residence of
the largest religious order in eleventh-century Europe. Elements of the abbey have either been damaged in the intervening millennium
since its construction or were moved for safe keeping at various
points such as during the English Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century. One of these is understood to have been a
triple light stained glass window depicting St John the Baptist and the Crucifixion of
Jesus. The abbey is also believed to have housed
the Battle Abbey Roll, a commemorative list of the main companions who accompanied William
on his expedition to England in 1066 and who fought at Hastings. While historians of medieval England generally
do believe that the Battle Abbey Roll existed, it has not survived down to the present day
and instead William’s decision to commemorate his allies and companions in this way is only
known to us second-hand from accounts such as Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, written
in the late sixteenth century. More famous than Battle Abbey and the Battle
Abbey Roll is the Bayeux Tapestry previously mentioned. Its exact origins are not entirely clear,
but it is assumed that it was commissioned either by William’s wife, Matilda, or his
half-brother, Odo, earl of Kent and bishop of Bayeux. The latter theory seems the more likely and if so it was very likely
that Odo had it commissioned to be placed in the newly built Bayeux Cathedral,
when it was consecrated in July 1077. Yet even if Odo did commission it, it is highly
unlikely that William was not aware of the project or had not granted it his seal of
approval, because as a visual display of the ‘official’ history of the Norman Conquest,
standing in Bayeux Cathedral from 1077, the tapestry would have told William’s subjects
in Normandy the story he wished them to believe, about how he had come to be the King of England. It consists of 58 individual scenes, many
of which are given Latin titles to aid the viewer’s interpretation of what they are
seeing. These primarily refer to events which occurred
between 1064 and 1066, beginning with Harold’s visit to France and his acknowledgement of
William as King Edward’s designated successor. As such the scenes highlight the contested
nature of the English kingship in the two years prior to William’s invasion of England
and the tapestry concludes with his victory at Hastings. Throughout it seeks to legitimise the Conqueror’s
claim to the English throne in law as a result of the events of the mid-1060s and then to
celebrate his military triumph in southern England when he elected to press his claim
through force of arms. There is a providential aspect to the narrative
employed as well, with one scene featuring Halley’s Comet and showing a future vision
of an invasion fleet. The idea here is meant to be that William’s
invasion and victory were foretold by the heavens and that the passage of the Comet
over England in 1066 was believed to be an omen of the favour William’s cause was held
in. Overall the Bayeux Tapestry
is a highly sophisticated piece of political propaganda by the standards of the eleventh century, one which affirmed
the just nature of William’s ascent as King of England and the Norman Conquest of Britain. In the aftermath of the final conquest of
the country, William made clear his priorities in terms of his domains. They lay in France, and for the remainder
of his life, some fifteen years, he would spend approximately four-fifths of all his
time in Normandy and elsewhere on the continent, only returning to England for short periods
of time. Our natural inclination to think that William
would have made England his home in the 1070s, is based on our knowledge of England’s later
position as a great world power, but in the world of eleventh-century Europe, the real
heart of William’s territories lay in France, closer to the centre of Norman and French
culture, which was gradually spreading out to conquer many other parts of Europe, notably
much of southern Italy and Sicily. He was also needed in France, as unrest arose
there in the mid-1070s and forced him into several years of military campaigning, firstly
to resume control of the County of Maine in 1073, following a revolt which had broken
out there during his absence in England, and then to campaign against the French, whose
power was being restored under the new monarch, Philippe I. These difficulties in France were not the
only ones which William faced in the 1070s. In 1070 the King of Denmark, Sweyn II, despite
promises to William that he would withdraw any Danish troops from England and cease to
interfere in the region, decided to personally lead an expedition across the North Sea. There he joined with a prominent Anglo-Saxon
rebel who had drawn many opponents of the Normans to his cause, Hereward the Wake. Hereward effectively had control over the
Isle of Ely in eastern England and part of the Fens region nearby at this time and Sweyn
now brought additional troops to bear here. William was able to buy off the Danish king
by paying a substantial Danegeld, the name for a tribute to the Danes from an English
king which had been paid intermittently since the ninth century, but the rebellion in the
Fens was not so easily suppressed, in part because the marshy terrain of the Fens was
unconducive towards the Normans bringing their heavy cavalry to bear against Hereward and
his troops. It was only when William arrived to take personal
command of the campaign here in 1071 that the stalemate was broken. A pontoon was constructed between the mainland
and the Island of Ely which allowed William and his troops to storm to Hereward’s main
stronghold here. Thereafter several of the rebel leaders were
either executed or imprisoned, while others were pardoned and effectively bought off with
new grants of land to win their loyalty. Hereward may have been amongst the latter,
but accounts are conflicting and some have him fleeing into exile in Scotland after the
rebellion was broken in 1071. This was not the end of William’s troubles
in England. In 1075 a new revolt broke out in the country,
though in this instance it was not driven by Anglo-Saxon or Danish
lords who were unreconciled to the Norman Conquest, but rather came from amongst William’s Norman subjects themselves. The origins of this lay in the marriage of Emma FitzOsbern, the daughter
of William FitzOsbern, the king’s great companion whom he had made
the first earl of Hereford, but who had died in Flanders in 1071, to Ralph de Guader, another
prominent Norman lord in England whom the Conqueror had ennobled as the earl of East
Anglia in 1069. The king had refused to sanction this marriage,
but Emma and Ralph had gone ahead with it in any event while the king was in France
in 1075. The real driving force behind this act of
disobedience to the crown was, however, not Emma or Ralph, but Emma’s brother, Roger,
who had succeeded their father as the second earl of Hereford back in 1071. In the years that followed he had formed ambitions
to carve out his own independent principality in England in the absence of the king himself,
who had spent most of his time since the Norman Conquest in northern France. Thus, in 1075 he married his sister to the
earl of East Anglia with a view to forming an alliance with de Guader and launching a
combined revolt against William’s rule in England. The Revolt of the Earls, as it is termed,
was soon joined by the earl of Northumberland, Waltheof, an Anglo-Saxon lord of northern
England. The combination of three of the most powerful
lords of England in revolt was a major threat to William, but the king benefited from a
number of fortuitous events in the first weeks of the rebellion. First Waltheof lost heart quickly and decided
to abandon his allies, while the leaders of the English church and the southern nobility
rallied to the king’s cause and raised troops to prevent the southern descent of Hereford
and East Anglia while William was preparing to return to England. By the time de Guader made his move from Norwich
towards Cambridge a large royal army had been gathered to confront him and he fled to Denmark,
leaving Emma to oversee the defence of Norwich. Eventually she negotiated terms whereby herself
and her new husband were allowed to retire quietly to some lands they held in Brittany in north-western France in
return for relinquishing their estates in England. The earl of Hereford was not so lucky and
William had him imprisoned following the crushing of the revolt. He would remain confined for the remainder
of the king’s reign. While the Revolt of the Earls in 1075 posed
a clear threat to William’s rule in England, albeit one which was easily seen off owing
to a number of fortuitous developments, the most pressing issue for William in the 1070s
was a family dispute which arose between 1077 and 1080 between William and his eldest son
and designated heir, Robert. William had left Robert in charge of Normandy
when we had left for England in 1066, and the dispute might well have arisen as a result
of disappointed hopes held by Robert, that he would effectively rule the French duchy
thereafter, with William living in, and contenting himself, with his new English domains. The conflict, though settled by 1080, foreshadowed
rivalries which were to bedevil the family for years to come. War with Scotland in 1079, brought William
back to England for an extended period of time in 1080 and 1081, no doubt the resulting
military campaigns throughout Northumberland, served to further destabilise a region which
had already suffered greatly under Norman rule. It was also during this time, that he travelled
deep into Wales, firstly on pilgrimage to St David’s in the extreme west of the country
but also as a means of imposing some sort of overlordship over the Welsh princes there,
the first in a longer and intermittent process, whereby English rule was established in Wales
during the late middle ages. The final years of William’s reign were
in many ways an anti-climax after the heights of achievement seen in the 1060s when the
Normans had united so much of Britain and France under the rule of one man. A further conflict arose with Robert in 1084,
which led to his exile from the Norman court, he would not return during William’s lifetime. The mid-1080s also saw an emergency arise
within England over an expected invasion of the country by a joint force of Danes and
Flemish troops under the King of Denmark, Cnut IV, who sought to challenge William for
control of the country. Demonstrating the callousness of the Normans
towards their English subjects, the new lords of the country implemented a policy of scorched
earth throughout eastern England in preparation for the invasion, the idea being to deprive
any army which landed of crops and other supplies to sustain themselves. In the event the invasion never materialised,
as Cnut died in Denmark before it ever departed, but the Domesday Book attests to the manner
in which east England was devastated by the Normans, who prized the military benefit of doing so, over the damage
it did to the communities who lived here. The perception of England as being a country
which was militarily occupied by the Normans in the 1070s and 1080s, rather than a nation
which had been liberated by the benevolent Duke of Normandy, is further cemented by William’s
ongoing building programme in the later part of his reign. Much of this involved continuing the castle
construction which had been undertaken in the late 1060s around England, but other elements
of which were more pointed in their symbolism. For instance, in 1078 William initiated the
construction of a new military fortress on the edge of the city of London, the beginning
of what we now know as the Tower of London. The first building here, which today is known
as the White Tower and which is the most iconic part of the Tower, was effectively a military
compound built overlooking London and designed to intimidate William’s new subjects. The denizens of the capital had, after all,
attempted to crown a new king in the shape of Edgar Ætheling rather than accept William
as their monarch after his victory at Hastings in 1066. William’s distrust of Londoners evidently
lingered long afterwards. For centuries to come this was the heart of
the security state in England, with ordnance and weapons stored here down to modern times. William was making a statement in erecting
such an imposing military complex on the outskirts of London. He was telling his new subjects in the capital
of England that if they tried to support a new pretender or aided his enemies in any
way he could strike at them swiftly. The Tower, dominating the skyline of the city
and passed which all boats entering and leaving London along the River Thames had to pass,
was a statement of military power. There is also a possibility, one which is
seldom commented upon in studies of William the Conqueror’s reign, but which is not
entirely implausible, that he was considering a military campaign west to Ireland during
the latter stages of his reign. Ireland had been a bridge too far for many
powers operating from France and Britain in past times. The Romans, for instance, had never tried
to conquer the island, though they were familiar with what they called Hibernia and its geography
and politics, while the English crown would not launch a full invasion of the western
island for nearly a hundred years after William’s time when Henry II sanctioned an expedition
there in the late 1160s. However, there is evidence that William was
in contact with some of the primary regional lords and rulers there in the late 1070s and
early 1080s, notably the O’Briens of Thomond in Munster in the south of the country. The country was not unified, but divided into
dozens of different polities which were often at war with each other. The idea that William was considering a military
expedition against this politically divided region in the last years of his life is heightened
by a section in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in which it is stated that William would have
conquered Ireland if he had lived for a few more years, fuelling the idea that he was
planning a new campaign westwards over the Irish Sea. If this was the case, it seems probable that
William’s goal was more to cut off any support which the Welsh and Scottish were receiving
from Ireland, rather than to actually conquer the country, but in any event, it is a curious
and largely forgotten footnote to William’s later reign that he might have been considering
such an Irish expedition. William spent Christmas 1085 at Gloucester
and it was while he was here, that the Domesday Book was commissioned. This was more often called the Winchester
Roll in its own day or Liber de Wintonia, meaning the ‘Book of Winchester’, as a
result of being housed at Winchester. It gradually became known as the Domesday
Book from the late twelfth century onwards, the reference being to Doomsday in the perceived
sense of the finality the book offered in its records of landholding in Anglo-Norman
England. The undertaking to produce it was immense
by the standards of the eleventh century. William had sent crown agents and officials
out to survey every shire in England and to compile lists of who owned the land in each
district and how much of it, as well as their property in the form of goods and slaves. The number of such officials involved must
have been considerable when we consider some of the details unearthed during the survey. For instance, Domesday records that there
were 5,624 mills built in communities across England, a level of socio-economic data which
is completely untypical of medieval sources. Administrative exercises of this kind were
unwieldy undertakings in the Middle Ages and it is a sign of his dedication to assessing
the landholding situation of his new kingdom that William ever initiated it to begin with. It is also remarkable how
speedily the commissioners and crown officials managed to carry out their work. It is likely that portions of the Domesday
Book were brought to William, while he toured some of southern England in 1086, but he would
never have seen the finalised text in the format in which it survives today, at the
National Archives of the United Kingdom at Kew in London, as it was not fully finished
and collected together until after his death. It is fitting that one of the final acts of
William’s reign was to order its compilation, the Domesday Book presented a striking picture
of how the Norman Conquest had transformed England, and of the 1400 or so Anglo-Saxon
and Danish tenants-in-chief who had formed the upper caste of landholders in England
prior to 1066. Only two were still in place in 1086, when
the Domesday Book was compiled. Several thousand freemen and freewomen below
these tenants-in-chief, still held lands which their families had possessed prior to the
Conquest, but these now owed service and taxes in kind and cash to their new Norman overlords,
those who had been placed throughout England, and who lived in the many stone castles which
had been built, in the twenty years since William of Normandy had become William I of
England. The fame of the Domesday
Book and the administrative work involved evidently spread beyond England in the years that followed. Around the turn of the century the Norman
rulers of Sicily attempted a similar survey of landholding across the Italian island,
inspired by what the Conqueror had undertaken in England a decade and a half earlier. It is testament to the fact that as well as
being a military leader, William was also a modernising administrator and ruler. William left England for the last time in
the autumn of 1086, he returned to France where his enemies on that side of the Channel,
including the King of France, had yet again taken advantage of his absence in England,
to begin attacking his possessions in Normandy and elsewhere. In 1087 he stabilised the situation and then
campaigned towards Paris. It would be his last military action in a
life which had consisted of nearly fifty years of warfare. In July while undertaking a siege of the town
of Mantes to the northwest of Paris he became ill, possibly having suffered a riding accident,
which caused the pommel of his saddle to rip into his stomach. As a result of the injury, he was removed
back north to Normandy, first to the town of Rouen and then to the Abbey of St Gervase
outside the town. It was here on the 9th of September 1087,
at about sixty years of age, that the conqueror of England, the Norman who had united much
of France and England under one ruler, finally died. In the days that followed William’s body
was transported to Caen, where it was laid to rest in a tomb in the Abbey of St Etienne. The succession was a more complicated matter. As early as 1063, William had designated his
eldest son, Robert, as his successor as duke of Normandy, however, the matter of the succession
to the throne of England had never been fully resolved and the falling out between William
and Robert had suggested that Robert would not succeed him. Moreover, it was common practice amongst the
Normans for multiple sons to split the inheritance from their father, but as the second son,
Richard, had predeceased William and had died in 1081. The next eldest son was William, called William
Rufus for his red beard. The arrangement now reached, was that Robert
would succeed to the duchy of Normandy as agreed in 1063, but William would succeed
his father as King William II of England. The fourth son, Henry, was given very little,
though he would eventually succeed William II as King of England many years later in
1100. As perhaps befitted William the Conqueror’s
life and the bloodshed which followed him, his sons would spend many years after 1087
at war with each other, for power in the political world of northern France and England, and
when Henry himself died in 1135, England was yet again thrown into civil war. Thus, for all that the Conqueror did to transform
England after 1066, his immediate family could never peacefully rule the country for very
long. While the decades following William’s death
might have witnessed a gradual decline into family feuding and quasi-civil war in England
and Normandy, more broadly his reign set the template for the history of the English state
in the High and Late Middle Ages. For instance, it was William who established
the English state along the lines which it would further develop into during the centuries
ahead, with English developing as the spoken language, but French remaining the language
of the law courts. But perhaps more significantly it was William
who established the new Anglo-Norman state’s claim to Wales and Scotland during his reign,
while ultimately providing England with a continental legacy in France. This would form the backdrop of English history
for the next 400 years as successive kings sought to impose English control over Wales
and Scotland with varying degrees of success and intermittently sought to reimpose English
control over significant parts of France, even in the face of the growing centralisation
of the French state and the crown’s increasing ability to combat the English there. Thus, William the Conqueror set the template
for much of England’s subsequent history through to the fifteenth century. William’s body and tomb in death have had
a turbulent history. He was laid to rest in the Abbey of St Etienne
in Caen in Normandy, next to the Abbey of Sainte-Trinité which he and his wife Matilda
had patronised the construction of back in the early 1060s. The first disturbances surrounding his tomb
occurred on the day of William’s funeral when a local peasant first disrupted proceedings,
claiming the land that the religious buildings there had been built on was his by right,
while subsequently that day as the Conqueror’s body was being lowered into the tomb it was
discovered that the passage had been made too narrow. When they forced the body it damaged it and
a putrefying odour was emitted. Thus, William’s damaged corpse was laid
to rest. It was exhumed for the first time in 1522
on the orders of Pope Adrian VI. The exact reason for doing so is unclear,
but once the local French cardinal had examined the embalmed body and the tomb he was quickly
reinterred. This was, though, just the
first of many exhumations during the early modern period. Forty years later, as the French Wars of Religion
broke out across France in the 1560s, a mob of Calvinists in Normandy opened the tomb
on the suspicion that the Roman Catholics of the town of Caen had hidden treasure or
other valuables in William’s tomb. Some of the remains of the Conqueror’s body
were known to have been damaged and destroyed at this time. What remained was reinterred eventually, but
only until the early 1790s when following the French Revolution a fresh mob yet again
desecrated the tomb. This time most of William’s bones were thrown
into the River Orne. Only a single thigh bone survived. Eventually this was exhumed again in 1961
and more formally placed in a new tomb surmounted by a marble slab in front of the altar of
the Abbaye-aux-Hommes in Caen in 1987. It is there that, what little remains of the
Conqueror’s bones, rest today. There is no doubting that William of Normandy,
who became William the Conqueror, was one of the most significant figures of English
history, and one of the most consequential rulers of Medieval Europe. Having assumed the rule of a relatively unstable
duchy in northern France when he was just seven or eight years old, he succeeded in
his young adult years in not only securing his position in Normandy, but also in browbeating
the King of France and effectively conquering the County of Maine in the late 1050s and
early 1060s.At the peak of his powers in France, he began in 1064 to campaign west into the
duchy of Britanny. It was at this point, when his military and
political power on the continent was at the strongest it would perhaps ever be in his
lifetime, that Edward the Confessor died in England without an heir, the result was a
military invasion in 1066, the Battle of Hastings that October and William’s coronation as
King of England on Christmas Day, but the real conquest took six years and was a bloody,
brutal affair which unleashed misery on many people living in England at that time. In its aftermath William and his followers
transformed England, totally in the case of landholding, and gradually in the case of
its culture, with the adoption of new laws and customs, and eventually the creation of
a new language in modern English, which blends the pre-conquest Germanic language of the
Anglo-Saxons and the post-conquest French of the Normans. By temperament, William was by all accounts
a relatively amiable character, though this surely only veiled a more ruthless, taciturn
streak. He was clearly religious and founded many
churches, though he had limited appreciation for the supposedly universal sovereignty of
the Pope in Rome, and his governance of the church within his own dominions, pre-empted
that which Henry VIII would later attempt by nearly 500 years. He was, it appears, faithful to his wife Matilda
during their long marriage, an unusual occurrence for the time. Nevertheless, he was a largely uncultured
figure, one who hardly patronised the world of learning in England or France, and who
pursued his political and military ambitions with a dogged single-mindedness born of a
strong character. It was this single-mindedness which brought
the Normans to England and transformed the country forever. What do you think of William the Conqueror? Was he a great king who united England after
many years of unstable kingship or was he an ambitious tyrant who brutalised England
in his effort to reduce it to Norman rule? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching. The man known to history as King Henry II
of England was born on the 5th of March 1133 at Le Mans in Normandy in northern France. His father was Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, Touraine
and Maine, and in that capacity, he was the ruler of much of north-western and central
France, particularly those regions to the west of Paris, at a time when France was divided
into a number of powerful principalities, with the French King otherwise ruling over
a relatively decentralised overlord. Geoffrey was known by the epithet ‘the Handsome’
or ‘the Fair’. Henry’s mother was Matilda, known as Empress
Matilda, on account of her subsequent position as the possible heir to her father’s dominions,
she was the daughter of King Henry I of England and had previously been married to the Holy
Roman Emperor, Henry V. Matilda’s lineage was pivotal for the future
of her son’s life. Her father, Henry I, was the fourth son of
William the Conqueror, the duke of Normandy who in 1066 had crossed to England and conquered
the country for the Normans. As a younger son, Henry had not succeeded
to any of his father’s lands when William died in 1087, but when his older brother William
Rufus died in 1100, Henry seized the throne of England. In due course, his own son and successor William
was in line to succeed him, but in 1120, when Henry was already in his early fifties, William
died in a naval accident known as the White Ship disaster and the issue of the succession
was now thrown wide open. Matilda, as one of Henry’s daughters, provided
one potential line of succession, although it was generally accepted, that a woman could
not succeed to the throne at the time. This aside, Henry I concluded as he aged,
that Matilda would indeed provide his successor, though her marriage to her husband Geoffrey. Thus, despite some family quarrels between
the king and his daughter and son-in-law, there was a strong claim that the two-year-old
Henry should succeed his grandfather, when Henry I died after a brief illness on the
1st of December 1135. However, this would not happen, and the virtual
usurpation of the English throne, by Henry I’s nephew, Stephen of Blois, ushered in
a period of civil war which would last for nearly twenty years. The nearly two-decade long period, from Henry
I’s death in 1135 to the eventual full ascent to power of Henry II in 1154, is often referred
to as “The Anarchy”. Stephen of Blois’ seizure of power in the
aftermath of Henry I’s death and the competing claims of the infant Henry, driven by his
mother Matilda and father Geoffrey, ensured that there would be no stable succession. While Stephen was the nephew of William the
Conqueror, having been born to the Conqueror’s daughter Adela, his accession was not accepted
without hesitation by his English and Welsh subjects. It would cause the first stages of a crisis
between the English monarchy and the English barons, which would escalate for decades to
come, with rebellions arising within Wales and border clashes with Scotland occurring,
during the course of the 1130s and 1140s. Then most forcefully, Matilda and Geoffrey
began to press their claim and that of their infant son. In 1139, Matilda led a direct invasion of
southern England, with several key noble allies. While she and Geoffrey and their allies were
unable to achieve a complete victory over Stephen at this time, they did secure key
footholds, in the south of England, and using their bases of support in France, particularly
around Anjou, they were able to continue the conflict in such a way, that “the Anarchy”
would continue for many years to come. Into the 1140s, “the Anarchy” continued. As it did, Henry was growing up oblivious
to the wars being fought across the English Channel in his name. His first years were spent largely in France,
as indeed the vast majority of Henry’s life would be, this he shared, with many of the
early Anglo-Norman kings of England, whose power base lay largely in Normandy and the
other French possessions. Later, from the age of seven, he resided at
his father’s home in Anjou, where he was educated by Peter of Saintes, a well-regarded
grammarian and scholar of the mid-eleventh century. But when he was nine years of age, a more
active involvement for the young would-be monarch was decided upon by his parents. He was sent to Bristol, which was one of the
principal towns of England in Late Medieval times, as well as a focus of support for Henry’s
cause in England, in the 1140s. This transfer of Henry to England, was at
once political and also somewhat dangerous, placing him within reach of Stephen’s armies
in England, but galvanising Matilda and Geoffrey’s supporters, who for a time, knew that the
child on whose behalf they were fighting, was in England itself. Here Henry continued his education for some
time, before returning to France in 1144, where he received his later education, as
he entered his teenage years, under William of Conches, a scholastic philosopher, who
was a leading early figure in the Christian Humanist movement. By 1147, Henry was taking
a more active involvement in affairs. That year, he led a military expedition himself
to England from Normandy, the beginning of a period in which he would press his own claims
to the throne of England and, in addition, he was also gaining powerful friends. From the late 1140s, King David I of Scotland
was a prominent ally, although an attempt to seize the northern capital at York, from
Stephen’s forces failed in 1149. Thereafter matters in France distracted from
a full prosecution of the war in England. The French King, Louis VII, who had been absent
in the Orient for some time, as one of the principal leaders of the Second Crusade, now
returned to western France and was immediately troubled by the possibility that Henry would
unite Normandy, Anjou, and the family’s other French possessions, as well as England,
all under his rule. Such a king would be possessed of as great
a domain as Louis himself and would actually command greater resources than him. Accordingly, War followed, but a resolution
was quickly patched up in 1151, whereby Henry paid homage to Louis as his feudal overlord
and provided the French king with a number of small properties belonging to the duchy
of Normandy, the title to which, Henry had officially been granted in 1150. When Henry’s father Geoffrey of Anjou died
in September 1151, Henry united the disparate French territories of his mother and father
under his own rule, including Normandy, Anjou and Maine. These extensive properties in the north and
northwest of France were soon added to, when Henry married in 1152. His bride was Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman
who at thirty years of age was eleven years Henry’s senior. She had also been married previously, to none
other than King Louis VII of France. As the daughter of William X, Duke of Aquitaine,
a man who died without a son in 1137, Eleanor had ascended as duchess of the large duchy
of Aquitaine, which extended across a large part of western France. She had married Louis the same year, but by
1152 the union had only produced two daughters, and as female successors were excluded in
the succession to the French monarchy, neither could succeed Louis. Despairing of an heir, and with Eleanor seemingly
having lost interest in their marriage, Louis successfully acquired an annulment, in March
1152. Within weeks, the reason for Eleanor’s apathy
towards Louis was clear to all, as she married the young duke of Normandy just twelve weeks
after her marriage ended. Louis was furious at both this insult to his
honour and at the fact that Henry now had a claim through his marriage, to a further
large territory in western France. The fallout from Henry’s marriage to Eleanor,
led briefly to renewed conflict between the young duke and King Louis in France. Yet this only lasted for a few months and
by 1153, with an unprecedentedly large power base in northern and western France, Henry
was in a position to decisively challenge Stephen in England. By that time, nearly two decades after the
civil strife between Stephen and Henry’s supporters had begun, the English king was
in control of large parts of the north, east and south of England, including London, while
Henry’s base lay in the west, particularly around the River Severn valley. He also had a number of prominent allies,
including the powerful northern lord, Ranulf of Chester. However, by 1153 when he arrived in England,
the war situation was profoundly different to how it had been for so many years. Henry was no longer a child, but was a very
powerful French lord in his own right. This, combined with a lack of support from
amongst his nobility in England, enjoined the king after a limited campaign, to agree
a treaty with Henry. Under the terms of the Treaty of Winchester,
or the Treaty of Wallingford, as it is sometimes referred to and which was formally signed
in 1154, Stephen would remain as King of England, but upon his death, Henry would succeed him. Finally, after twenty years and limited bloodshed
in its final stages, the Anarchy had come to an end. Henry did not have to wait long for the terms
of the Treaty of Winchester to be implemented. In 1154 Stephen was no longer a young man. Exactly how old he was by this time is not
100% clear, but he was at least in his late fifties and possibly in his early sixties
at the time, a relatively old age for the twelfth century. Stephen might well have viewed the Treaty
as a temporary expedient, during which time he could regroup and muster support for his
son William’s cause to succeed him over Henry, but if this was the case, ill health
scuppered his plans. Then, in the late autumn of 1154, he fell
ill from a serious stomach ailment while in Kent and died shortly afterwards on the 25th
of October. Henry, by a rather fortuitous series of events,
had gone from being at war with Stephen in early 1153, to succeeding him as King of England,
just a year and a half later. It was the culmination of a meteoric ascent
which had seen Henry acquire vast territories through succession, marriage, diplomacy and
military action between 1150 and 1154. Henry is generally deemed to have been the first of the English kings
known as the Plantagenets, although this term was not used to refer to
the English royal family until the fifteenth century, over three hundred years after Henry’s
accession. The Plantagenet designation divides Henry
and his successors from the kings of England who ruled from William the Conqueror in 1066,
through to Henry’s own accession, and lasts up to the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses
in the fifteenth century. The term Plantagenet, is something of a lingual
construct, rather than being a family name in and of itself. It derives from a nickname which Henry’s
father, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, was given during his lifetime,
in recognition of a bright yellow, flowering plant, which he used to wear as a symbol of
his house. The name Plantagenet is derived from this,
as the Latin for the same common broom plant is Planta Genista, which subsequently through
common usage became the French term Plante Genest and was then further anglicised as
Plantagenet. As a result, the dynasty of English kings
which held the throne, from Henry’s eventual accession in 1154, through to the advent of
the Tudors in 1485, is known as the Plantagenets. Upon his succession, Henry became the ruler
of what has become known as the Angevin Empire, or the possessions of the Angevin kings of
England, this empire would be held by himself and two of his sons. This imperial designation was granted to Henry’s
dominions as an acknowledgement of both the extent of the territories he ruled, as well
as their cosmopolitan nature. By the time he ascended to the throne in 1154,
Henry ruled all of England, and virtually the entirety of northern and western France,
including the duchy of Normandy, the county of Anjou, from which the Angevin imperial
title was derived, the duchy of Aquitaine by right of his wife, as well as extensive
territories in Maine and Gascony in France. The English crown had virtually secured control
over Wales as well by this time, a process which had started under William the Conqueror,
nearly a century earlier, while England’s long history of involvement in Scotland ensured
that Henry had a certain amount of influence here also. This, combined with a role within Brittany in northwest France, through
a marriage arrangement in the 1180s, as well as the rapid conquest
of much of Ireland in the early 1170s, ensured that by the middle years of his reign, Henry
II was the ruler of a vast empire for its time, one which stretched from Dublin to London
and south as far as the Pyrenees. Just who was the new king of this vast expanse
of territory in western Europe? To begin with, his name itself was somewhat
ambiguous. In the Late Medieval period, individuals were
very often referred to, by a place with which they were associated, or a sobriquet. For instance, the first Anglo-Norman king
of England had been William of Normandy, prior to his conquest of England and subsequently
became known as William the Conqueror. And as we have seen, subsequent generations
would come to refer to Henry and the royal family which he created as the Plantagenets,
but at the time, and indeed in chronicles and government records for hundreds of years
to come, he was more usually referred to, by the quite unusual name of Henry FitzEmpress. This was in honour of the fact that Henry’s
claim to the throne and that of his successors, descended by right of his being the son of
the Empress Matilda. Furthermore, unlike some of his predecessors,
we have a clear idea of what Henry FitzEmpress looked like. He was of an average height, but was clearly,
a well-built individual with a large chest, albeit somewhat stooped as the years went
by, a not uncommon development for individuals who spent long periods of their life on horseback. He had blue-grey eyes and reddish hair which
he kept short. By temperament the new king was said to be
at once gentle and friendly to those within his inner circle, while also being possessed
of a fiery, and even explosive, temper, one which he often employed to get his way, when
he met with resistance from his advisors and senior nobility. He was also an extremely energetic individual,
one who rarely rested in the same place for prolonged periods of time at ease, as many
other monarchs of his own day and later would do. Indeed, one of his common
traits was his preference for standing at court, rather than sitting. Moreover, his leisure time was often spent
hunting and hawking. However, Henry also possessed a sense of humour,
as at court, he procured the services of a flatulist, Roland the Farter, who would perform
‘one jump, one whistle and one fart’ for the King and it is recorded that he was rewarded
with the Manor House of Hemingstone in Suffolk for his services, along with 30 acres of land. But, as well as this, Henry was also possessed
of an intellect. He was well read, could engage in debate with
scholars and would have travelled across much of Europe without the need for interpreters,
such was the breadth of languages he spoke. Furthermore, chroniclers of the times attest
to his loyalty, towards those who were equally loyal to him, but that he displayed unwavering
resentment against those whom he felt had betrayed him. In time this latter trait would create enormous
difficulties for his rule and tarnish the legacy of what was otherwise a highly successful
reign. Whilst Henry had finally secured the throne,
after years of struggling with Stephen and brought the political anarchy which had subsumed
England to an end, Henry’s reign was quickly confronted by a fresh challenge and it came
from his own brother Geoffrey. In December 1155, Geoffrey initiated a revolt
in France, calling for parts of the family’s French possessions to be handed over to him,
now that Henry had assumed power in England, specifically the counties of Anjou, Maine
and Touraine. An extensive family conference in France in
February 1156, failed to resolve the conflict, but within months, without any major military
action, Henry managed to crush his brother’s ambitions, in part by making Geoffrey the
new Count of Nantes and in the end, the challenge proved beneficial to Henry’s cementing of
his rule. He used the opportunity presented by Geoffrey’s
revolt, to crush the independence of some of those French knights and nobles under his
dominions, who had sided with Geoffrey, and when Geoffrey himself died in 1158, the time
proved opportune to fully cement Henry’s control over his French possessions. Now, Henry would have unequivocal control
of the growing Angevin Empire, a hegemony which would not be challenged for nearly twenty
years. In part, Henry’s success came about because
of his own boundless energy, combined with a shrewd pragmatism. The young king knew what was achievable and
worked to implement it. But his accomplishments in bringing stability
to England and France after so many years of turmoil, must also be attributed to the
intelligence with which he selected his advisors. Significant amongst them, was his mother Matilda,
who had done so much to champion Henry’s cause in his youth, at a time when he barely
knew what it was, that was being fought over. She worked extensively with the Church and
patronised the Cistercian reform movement, throughout the 1150s and 1160s, until her
own death in 1167. Other close advisors included Henry’s uncle,
Reginald of Cornwall, the earl of Arundel, William d’Aubigny and the justiciars Robert,
earl of Leicester and Richard de Lucy. Several senior bishops were also brought into the administration, but no
figure was as ubiquitous and influential in the young king’s government,
than the man he made Lord Chancellor of England, Thomas Becket. A protégé of the archbishop of Canterbury,
Theobald of Bec, Becket was recommended to Henry in the mid-1150s and quickly became
an indispensable part of his regime, increasing Henry’s revenues throughout England. What each of these advisors offered was experience
in administration which the young Henry otherwise lacked. These years would also see the almost continuous
growth of Henry’s family and eventually Henry and Eleanor would have eight children
in total. Surprisingly, in a time of high infant mortality,
all but one of the eight survived infancy and by 1170, their surviving four sons and
three daughters ranged in age from fifteen years old, to just three years old. The elder daughters, Matilda and Eleanor,
were married to the duke of Saxony named Henry the Lion, and Alfonzo, the king of Castile,
respectively, while the third daughter was Joanna. The eldest son was Henry’s namesake, who
was married to Margaret, the daughter of the king of France, Louis VII. Henry Jnr’s younger brothers were Richard,
Geoffrey and John, two of whom, even as younger sons of the king, would eventually go on to
have extremely consequential lives and careers in their own right, Richard not least, as
a king and the Lionheart who would battle with Saladin in the sands of the Holy Land
on the Third Crusade, and John as a future king of England, whose famous clash with his
barons and nobles in the early thirteenth century, would result in the fashioning of
the Magna Carta, the Great Charter. Henry’s relationship with his sons would
soon come to dominate the latter half of his reign. Although he was very often distant from his
English dominions, Henry II took a decidedly strong interest in the administration of his
kingdom and the oversight of the courts there. For instance, he initiated a series of inquests
and issued many royal edicts, which led to the development of a more coherent and centralized
bureaucracy. For instance, an ordnance of 1170, brought
local officials such as sheriffs and major local landholders, under greater royal scrutiny
and made it clear that, wide-scale corruption would no longer be tolerated, even if Henry
was absent in France or elsewhere. And other regulations standardised some specific
elements of oversight. For instance, the Assize of the Forest Act
of 1184, brought the regulation of forests and the taking of wood from the same, into
a formal and standardised form of royal control. Other extremely important laws in this regard,
provided new prohibitions around the ability of landlords to simply eject tenants from
their lands and around how freeholds could be created and maintained. These new regulations also evolved the system
which allowed twelve knights to adjudicate on disputes at the local level, which eventually
would lead to the development of the modern jury system. In terms of taxation, Henry increased the
rates payable based on a knight’s service from as early as 1166, based on a document
known as the Cartae baronum or the Baronial Chart. This was the first country-wide listing of
dues which were owed to the crown by knights and was used by Henry’s exchequer officials,
to increase the potential yield from military taxation. Some of these taxes were gradually increased
during the course of the 1180s, to pay for exchequer increases, which were necessary
to support the Crusades to the Holy Land, as the Muslim lord Saladin was threatening
to recapture Jerusalem and the Crusader states there. Ultimately, Henry’s administrative reforms
are most clearly defined by the uniformity which he lent to the kingdom’s courts and
taxation. In the early twelfth century, a series of
competing judicial systems still existed in England, in large part owing to the overlapping
Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Viking traditions in use across the kingdom, but by the end
of Henry’s reign, a much greater degree of uniformity had been leant to the system
of administration. In the end, Henry II's managerial policies
were leading to a situation at the local level, where a system had been created, which one historian has defined as a
species of self-government at the king’s command, meaning that local
courts and administrators could govern themselves, as long as they gave ultimate authority to
the king. Henry was, perhaps above all else, an innovator
as a king of England, in contrast to William the Conqueror and his immediate successors,
in that Henry understood how to manifest and display the royal power which he had attained. In an effort to impress his contemporaries,
he employed numerous building programmes and other measures, which in more modern times
would be referred to as acts of propaganda. For instance, Henry had a great leper house
or Lazarus constructed at Caen in France in the early 1160s, whilst there were many other
royal building projects underway throughout Normandy, Aquitaine, Anjou, Maine and England, which commanded the enormous
respect of contemporaries, such was their grandeur. These displays of wealth and power, were intended
to convey an aura of strength and prosperity and were designed to indicate that a strong
monarchy had returned, after the years of anarchy which preceded Henry’s full accession. And Henry was well attuned to the statement
architecture could make. An enormous keep was built above the Cliffs
of Dover, which greeted so many visitors to England, as they sailed to Kent from northern
France. This building programme also extended into
the ecclesiastical sphere, Henry acting as a patron of a great many impressive church
establishments, both in France and in England. All of this served to cement and aggrandize
Henry’s rule, something which was much needed in the aftermath of the Anarchy of Stephen’s
reign. Having secured his rule during the course
of the 1150s and introduced a number of highly effective reforms to consolidate his grip
on the Angevin Empire in the years that followed, Henry might have looked forward to a more
sanguine, peaceful time in the 1160s, one in which he could enjoy the fruits of his
earlier accomplishments. However, it was not to be so. The 1160s were largely defined in Henry II’s
reign by conflict, and it came from the strangest of places. We have already seen that one of the individuals
in whose hands Henry placed great power, in the first years of his reign was Thomas Becket,
whom he made Lord Chancellor of England. This patronage of Becket reached its height
in 1162 when, following the opening of a vacancy in the position, he promoted Becket to become
the archbishop of Canterbury. As archbishop Becket was the senior ecclesiastical
officer in all of England and was theoretically answerable only to the Pope in Rome, in the
management of many church affairs. Henry’s reasoning for this promotion was
clear. He wanted an individual who would do his bidding
as archbishop. Yet it would prove to be one of his few bad
moves. A year later, in the summer of 1163, at a
major conference held at Woodstock, Becket first quarrelled with Henry, by attacking
the king’s effort to turn an annual payment which was paid to sheriffs by the church,
into a form of royal revenue. This was an extraordinary clash, vitriolic
in its anger, during the course of which, Henry turned in fury on the archbishop and
stated that, “By the eyes of God, it shall be given as revenue and entered in the royal
rolls,” to which Becket responded that, “By the reverence of the eyes by which you
have sworn, my lord king, there shall be given from all my land or from the property of the
church not a penny.” It was just the first step, in an increasingly
intense rivalry between the king and England’s most senior religious figure. This was all very different to what Henry
had expected in 1162, when he promoted Becket, he expected a compliant senior cleric, who
would act in unison with him as king. The conflict would drag on for the remainder
of the 1160s and eventually formed one of the most turbulent and controversial aspects
of Henry’s reign, one which is still widely remembered and written about today, over 800
years later. Soon after the initial clash between the pair
at the Council of Woodstock, the king and the archbishop quarrelled yet again, over
the issue of Becket’s right to excommunicate tenants-in-chief on the church’s vast lands
throughout England, without first seeking out royal approval. Henry, perceiving Becket’s behaviour in
this respect, to be a breach of his royal position, began to pressurise the bishops
of England, to acknowledge his superior authority over such matters, compared to that of Becket
as primate of the English church. These clashes culminated in the Constitutions
of Clarendon in 1164, where Henry presided over a synod which sought to reduce clerical
independence. Ultimately, it was no surprise when Becket
resisted any efforts by Henry, to weaken the church’s jurisdiction and rights, and Henry
responded by stripping Becket of several large estates, which Becket held by right of his
previous role as Lord Chancellor of England. A tit for tat exchange followed, throughout
the mid-1160s, with Becket trying, with some considerable success, to interfere in Henry’s
marriage arrangements for his wider family, an issue which the archbishop of Canterbury
had some significant jurisdiction over, and Henry for his part, taking over Becket’s
personal residence at Berkhamstead and using it henceforth as a royal Christmas retreat. Thereafter, as things ratcheted up in the
mid-1160s, the struggle between the pair became increasingly personal. Some distance was maintained between the pair,
following the Constitution of Clarendon and the various scuffles of the mid-1160s, but
the ultimate conflict was simply being delayed, largely by Pope Alexander III, who was himself
an exile in France, owing to political strife in mainland Europe, involving the Holy Roman
Emperor, Frederick ‘Barbarossa’, and who had advised Becket to keep his distance from
Henry. Nor was the king inclined to let the matter
go, and so from 1164 onwards, he attempted to break Becket’s political resistance,
by imposing a series of highly punitive financial fines on the archbishop, some of which concerned
his previous exercising, of the office of Lord Chancellor of England and which culminated
in the charging of an obscene bill of £30,000 against Becket, the equivalent of tens of
millions of pounds in today’s money. Rather than accept such measures, Becket entered
into outright opposition to Henry, fleeing to Flanders in the Low Countries, or modern-day
Belgium. Now, the pair would not see each other directly
again for five years, Becket variously spending time in Flanders and at the Papal court of
Pope Alexander III in exile, during the late 1160s. It is difficult to know on whom the majority
of the blame for what had already occurred and what subsequently occurred should be placed. Henry was certainly an autocratic monarch,
but Becket was also a cleric who thrived on being at the heart of political intrigue. Moreover, the archbishop liked the fact, that
he was the centre of much of Europe’s political correspondence, as the King of England fought
with his senior ecclesiastical official. Henry for his part, hated this need for celebrity
in Becket and viewed the archbishop’s disloyalty after having been promoted by him, in a highly
unfavourable light. And yet a rapprochement was eventually reached
in July of 1170, as the leading monarchs of Western Europe and the Pope intervened to
make the King of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury see eye to eye. It was ultimately an ephemeral peace. When Becket landed in Kent in the south of
England on the 1st of December 1170, after five years in exile on the continent, he cannot
have expected what would happen. Disputes over land yet again arose and within
days it was clear, that Henry desired to be rid of Becket once and for all. Four knights who were followers of Henry from
northern France, duly took up the charge. On the afternoon of the 29th of December 1170
they entered Canterbury Cathedral and murdered the archbishop within the church. The clash had residual consequences for Henry. The conflict between the church and the King
of England intensified and Pope Alexander III quickly had Becket canonised in 1173,
one of the swiftest acts of bestowing sainthood ever undertaken by the Roman Catholic Church. Yet Henry tried his level best to separate
himself from the murder, which he did not orchestrate directly, with a diplomatic drive
amongst the monarchs of Western Europe. Ultimately Henry feared his excommunication
by the Pope, whereby he, even as one of Europe’s leading monarchs, would be officially excluded
from taking the sacraments and receiving the services of the Catholic Church. Although a general rapprochement was worked
out, between Henry and the Pope in the course of 1172 and 1173, it was a chastening experience. Overall, the clash with Becket must be remembered
as one of the least successful and dire aspects of Henry’s reign. He had sought to increase his control over
the church, particularly its land and wealth, and succeeded in little other than creating
a church and state crisis, which dragged on for an entire decade. Yet it was a significant moment in English
ecclesiastical affairs, one which foreshadowed the more significant rupture which occurred
over three centuries later, during the reign of Henry VIII. While the clash with Becket generally dominated
the 1160s and early 1170s for Henry, another major aspect of his reign was playing out
during these years, one which would have enduring consequences for England and Britain down
to the present day. This involved the island to the west. Ireland had never been conquered by the Romans
and it remained largely aloof from Britain too, during the Early Middle Ages, although it too, had experienced
various Viking encroachments from the late eighth century onwards. Nevertheless, by the mid-twelfth century,
it was still a land largely made up of competing Irish kingdoms, controlling different parts
of the country, such as the provinces of Leinster and Connacht. Yet this rivalry between small kingdoms, was
about to have an enormous bearing on England’s involvement with Ireland, as in 1166 the King
of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada, pressed a claim to the high kingship of Ireland, and
when this was successfully resisted by Rory O’Connor, the King of Connacht, Diarmait
petitioned for outside help from Henry II. Although Henry did not directly offer aid,
he did allow some of his subjects, particularly those in Wales, to consider aiding Diarmait. This was to be the beginning of much strife
in Ireland. In 1169, one of the major Cambro-Norman lords
of Wales, Richard fitz Gilbert or Richard de Clare, who was also known as Strongbow
and who had succeeded in 1148, as earl of Pembroke in Wales, was successfully solicited
by Diarmait to undertake a military incursion into Ireland, to ally with Diarmait against
his Irish enemies. In a bewilderingly quick military campaign,
between 1169 and 1171, when Strongbow and his allies, beginning with Robert fitz Stephen,
first began arriving in Ireland, they succeeded in conquering large swathes of the country. For instance, Waterford was quickly seized
by Strongbow upon his first landing in the south of the country, in the early autumn
of 1170, and he then moved on to capture Dublin itself. As a result Diarmait was able to consolidate his position within Ireland
and was soon challenging his rivals in Connacht and the broader west
of the country, as the Cambro-Normans in the south and east of the country were consolidating
their position, one which would not diminish in one form or another, for over 700 years. Moreover Diarmait’s death in 1171, removed
him as the driving force behind Strongbow’s invasion and created a situation in which
de Clare and his allies, could begin to carve out their own principalities and act upon
their own initiatives. All of this quickly agitated Henry, who now
perceived de Clare as becoming a potential threat, as an over-mighty subject across the
sea in Ireland. Accordingly he mounted his own expedition
to Ireland in the autumn of 1171, as Rory O’Connor was himself attempting to strike
back against Strongbow and his allies around Dublin and Waterford. In the months that followed, Henry II succeeded
in firstly asserting his control over Strongbow and his other subjects in Ireland, who may
have begun to view themselves as lying outside of his jurisdiction in Britain, while also
receiving the submission of a very large number, of the more powerful regional Irish rulers
and kings. Ultimately, this campaign of Henry’s between
the autumn of 1171 and the late spring of 1172, transformed the nature of the English
intervention in Ireland. What was originally a
campaign by some opportunistic mercenaries, led by Strongbow, became a concerted political intervention in Ireland by the English
crown. Although Henry quickly left Ireland in 1172,
three years later the Treaty of Windsor was negotiated with the Irish lords, which effectively
acknowledged the English crown as the ruler of Leinster, Meath, Dublin, Waterford and
Wexford. As time went by, this rule extended further
north to incorporate East Ulster, leaving the English crown in control of over half
of Ireland and cementing its role there for centuries to come. While the Irish conquest must be viewed as
a huge success for Henry’s reign, at least from the Anglo-Norman perspective, if not
from that of the Irish, it was soon followed by further turbulence within Henry’s wider
dominions. This fresh unrest, following quickly upon
the near decade long controversy surrounding Becket, must have stung Henry even more than
the perceived betrayal, of the man he had promoted to Lord Chancellor and then Archbishop
of Canterbury. It came from within the king’s own family. As we have seen, Henry and Eleanor’s union
had produced many children by the end of 1160s. It was customary in western Europe in the
twelfth century, that a ruler who held such extensive territories as Henry did, would
begin to hand over control of some of these, to his sons as they came of age. Henry himself had been granted the duchy of
Normandy by his father, while he was still a teenager. Now the king’s eldest surviving son and
namesake, typically called Henry the Young King, having turned seventeen in 1172, began
to grow restless at his father’s failure to devolve some power to him, despite naming
him as his legal heir in 1170. The young Henry was encouraged in this resentment
by two sources. One was his father-in-law, Henry II’s on-off
nemesis, King Louis VII of France, whose daughter Margaret the young Henry had married. The other was, shockingly, his own mother
and King Henry’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. This unrest soon turned into outright plotting
and then civil war, one which would come to dominate much of the mid-1170s throughout
the Angevin Empire. During it, Henry’s consummate abilities
as a tactician and diplomat were yet again on display. Before he was fully aware of what the young
Henry, Eleanor and King Louis were even plotting, a massive alliance had been formed against
him, which included the Kingdom of Scotland and the powerful counts of Boulogne, Flanders,
Dreux and Blois in France and the Low Countries. Moreover, to add insult to injury, Eleanor
had succeeded in drawing King Henry’s other sons, including Richard the Lionheart, who
was also of a substantial age like young Henry, into the conspiracy. But despite this array of enemies, King Henry
pulled through. The Count of Boulogne was knocked out of the
conflict, when he was killed by a crossbow bolt in the summer of 1173, while this also
effectively removed the Count of Flanders, the Count of Boulogne’s brother, from the
war. Similarly, the back of the rebellion was broken
in Britain, when King William I of Scotland was captured at the Battle
of Alnwick in Northumberland, in July 1174. Henry studiously stayed away from these conflicts
and oversaw events from afar, allowing his enemies to damage their own efforts through
overt involvement. But surely the most significant moment in
the war came, when Eleanor was captured as she was travelling to Paris from Poitou, and
this combined with the military defeats of their allies, forced the young Henry and his
brothers to concede to their father in 1174. Yet despite the victory of Henry FitzEmpress
over his family, many of the familial problems which had brought about the rebellion, would
remain and continued to fester, in the years that followed. Henry never forgave Eleanor and in 1175, he
sought to obtain an annulment of their marriage from the Papacy, a move which was protested
vigorously against, by his sons, Henry, Richard and Geoffrey, and which was in any event,
blocked by Pope Alexander III. Nevertheless, it was a clear indication of
how precarious the familial situation was, in the aftermath of the
civil war of the mid-1170s. And more tangibly Eleanor was kept effectively
under imprisonment by Henry in the years that followed, although his sons were given more
leeway. For instance, Richard was given some authority
over the duchy of Aquitaine after 1174 and when Geoffrey married Constance of Brittany
and effectively brought that duchy in northwest France into the Angevin sphere of influence
in 1181, he too was afforded some control over the region. The young Henry, though, as the leader of
the rebellion was never truly forgiven. When he died prematurely in 1183, in his late
twenties, he had not been given control of any major territory. While the period from 1173, through to the
young Henry’s death a decade later, had been largely characterised by instability
during King Henry’s reign, primarily wrought by his own family, the death of the king’s
heir, opened up a period of full-blown political crisis. In part, this was driven by conflict between
the sons themselves, each of whom had ambitions to succeed to various parts of the Angevin
Empire and could benefit at the expense of the others. This tension became more extreme with the
death of the young Henry in 1183. Now Richard was King Henry’s heir, but the
question remained as to what territories would pass to him and which would be cut off from
the wider Angevin inheritance and granted to Geoffrey and John. And as ever the court at Paris looked on,
waiting to see what would happen. In 1180, Louis VII was succeeded by his son,
Philip II or Philip Augustus, as he was more commonly known, and it was in this new monarch’s best interest to ensure
that the Angevin inheritance was split amongst Henry’s sons, a move which
would weaken them compared to his own powerbase in central and eastern France, although in
this respect, Philip’s aims were hampered in August 1186, when Geoffrey was killed in
a jousting accident. There were now just two sons, Richard and John, amongst whom Henry
could split his dominions. The result of Geoffrey’s death, was war
between Henry and Philip Augustus, one which would prove the last significant military
and political engagement of his life. He hired large numbers of Welsh mercenaries,
the very kind who had driven the conquest of Ireland nearly twenty years earlier, to
launch a campaign into France in the course of 1187, aided in this instance by the Counts
of Flanders and Blois, the enemies of an earlier time. However, now, he was joined in his efforts
by Richard and John, as the burgeoning Plantagenet dynasty showed some rare unity, in the face
of this act of overt aggression by the French king. Then a meeting between the two kings in April
1187 failed to reach a compromise and, in the summer, lengthy clashes occurred in central
France, around the region of Berry. The resulting engagements were sporadic. For two weeks, the opposing armies skirted
next to each other around the River Indre, while diplomatic efforts to avoid a full pitched
battle continued. It is a remarkable feature of this time, the
degree to which Henry and the French kings attempted to avoid major engagements, which
would fully resolve their conflicts, and then yet again, before a major conflagration occurred,
a temporary peace was patched up. Again the diplomatic armchairs seemed to have
shifted and Henry’s son Richard had apparently intervened with the French king. While the conflict had temporarily abated,
the succession issue still remained unresolved, but what would come to be the last months
of Henry’s reign in 1188 and 1189, leant a final degree of resolution to it. When the French King Philip yet again invaded
Berry, a renewed unity was achieved between Henry and his eldest surviving son Richard. The fighting brought Henry himself out of
England and into France, with renewed forces of English and Welsh troops. War erupted all along the frontier, between
Philip’s French dominions and those of the extended Angevin Empire in northern and western
France. Large settlements were attacked and largely
destroyed. Eventually, a temporary peace was finally
patched up in the early winter of 1188, when the ever powerful and influential Counts of
Blois and Flanders refused to engage any further in the hostilities, which pertained in France. Details of a peace were worked out in the
weeks that followed and marriage negotiations between Richard and Philip’s royal family
were further brought under consideration. These negotiations would still be underway
when Henry’s life entered its final chapter. A parley occurred between the respective sides
in May 1189, but behind the scenes, King Henry was preparing for renewed war with the French. As ever, extensive mercenary units from Wales
had been recruited. At the end of the parley, fighting broke out
again, but Henry was unable to prosecute the war which followed. His health had been failing for some time,
the result of a severe ulcer. Diminished physically, and perhaps worn out
psychologically, owing to the continuous conflicts with his family members, so many of whom had
pre-deceased him, Henry appeared at a final conference with Philip, with whom Richard
was now unequivocally allied, in July 1189. At this meeting, Henry was visibly ill. As a result he agreed to some conciliatory
terms, but was said, by a contemporary chronicler, Gerald of Wales, to have defiantly whispered
in his eldest surviving son’s ear, “God grant that I may not die until I have my revenge
on you.” If he did say this, and the account may be
spurious, he would never live to see that wish fulfilled. Two days later Henry II, the man who had ruled
England for thirty-five years and had created the Angevin Empire, died at the age of 56. Just hours before he collapsed into a final
fever, he learned that his other son John had joined Richard’s new rebellion. As a result, many chroniclers and scholars
have judged, that this final act of betrayal had all proved too much, after years and years
of family strife. He was buried in the abbey of Fontevrault
in the County of Anjou. Despite the massive difficulties which had
arisen in Henry’s family relations, throughout the 1170s and the 1180s, the succession to
his rule would not prove as fraught as had been that which followed the death of Henry
I over a century earlier, with its nearly twenty years of Anarchy, before Henry’s
own accession in 1154. But the succession in 1189, was complicated,
nonetheless. Henry’s eldest surviving son, Richard Coeur
de Lion, or Richard the Lionheart, as he is more commonly known, had already taken the
Crusaders’ Cross in France in 1187 and committed himself to travelling to the Holy Land, to
try to secure Jerusalem from the great Arab lord Saladin, who would eventually reconquer
the city that year, after nearly a century of it being in Christian hands. Although he was still in western Europe when
his father died and was duly crowned as King of England at Westminster on the 3rd of September
1189, two months after his father’s death, he soon set off for the Holy Land in January
1190. He would not return for several years, and
in the interim, his younger brother John assumed a great degree of authority in England. It was the beginning of a period of renewed
unrest within England, one which worsened after John succeeded Richard, in his own right
in 1199 and which culminated in a major baronial revolt in England, the First Barons War, in
1212. Consequently, the political consensus which
Henry II managed to create for much of his reign, quickly broke down following his death. Henry II must surely have a place, amongst
the English kings who are most difficult to decipher. There is little doubting his achievements. For instance, the very act of his accession
and consolidation of power, ended a period of nearly twenty years, during which England
and its French possessions had been wracked by political anarchy, owing to the insecure
succession to King Henry I. By way of contrast, Henry II not only secured
his ascent to power in his youth, but consolidated his power in such a way, as to set England
on the path to becoming the most centralised state in Late Medieval Europe. Beyond this, his marriage to Eleanor and his
intervention in Ireland, created the so-called ‘Angevin Empire’, a political entity which
spanned England, Wales, substantial parts of Ireland and much of France including Normandy,
Maine, Anjou and Aquitaine. All of this is a formidable achievement, but
against it, must be considered the failings of his rule, notably his inability to control
the ambitions of his children and even his own wife. As a result, a state of civil war essentially
existed within his kingdom, throughout much of the 1170s and 1180s. But perhaps most significantly, his clash
with Thomas Becket and the murder of an archbishop of Canterbury during his reign stands considerably
against him. For these reasons we might say that Henry
II was an enigmatic ruler, a king who aspired to greatness and whose reputation was irrevocably
tarnished by one or two key failings. What do you think of King Henry II? Was he one of England’s greatest kings or
are there aspects of his reign, most notably his clash with Thomas Becket, which tarnish
him beyond repair? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching. The man known to history as King Edward
I was born at some stage on the night of the 17th of June 1239 or the early
hours of the 18th at the Palace of Westminster which was then lying on the
western outskirts of the city of London. His father was King Henry III of England, a
monarch who had ruled the country from childhood, but was only just beginning to exercise some
actual authority himself in his early thirties as Edward was born. Henry was an extremely
pious, religious man who was devoted to the cult of Saint Edward the Confessor and
he named his eldest son after the saint. His mother was Eleanor of Provence, a
French noblewoman whom his father had married three years before Edward was born.
Henry and Eleanor’s marriage was a happy one in a time when royal weddings were often
arranged for political purposes. In the years following Edward’s birth she and
Henry would have four further children, a boy Edmund, and three girls, Margaret,
Beatrice and Katherine. Three of Edward’s siblings would survive into their adult years,
but Katherine died before her fourth birthday. Young Edward was born at a time when England
was in the midst of considerable political turmoil. His grandfather, King John,
who had ruled England from 1199 to 1216, had been a controversial and in many ways a
weak ruler. In the early 1200s he had engaged in a series of disastrous conflicts in France
which resulted in the loss of much of England’s extensive territories in the north of the country
to King Philip II of France, notably the Duchy of Normandy which had formed the core of the English
presence on the other side of the English Channel. Then in the mid-1210s John had faced a revolt by
his own English lords known as the First Barons’ War. John initiated some political reforms before
his death in 1216 in order to quell the unrest, including the Magna Carta or ‘Great Charter’ of
1215, but the succession of Edward’s father when he was just nine years old ensured that there
would be no quick end to England’s domestic turmoil. Henry III was a pious and in many ways an
honourable ruler, but he was ineffective in some other ways and easily dominated by court factions
for much of his long reign. Consequently, Edward’s younger years were dominated by unstable politics
throughout England, further civil strife, an extensive revolt in Wales and on the international
stage a failure to recover any of England’s former territories in France. Eventually, Edward would
be sucked into the civil strife of his father’s reign and he would often find himself in
opposition to the king’s own government. As was typical for royal children at the time
Edward was raised largely away from his parents in his own royal household. Letters from his
father demonstrate a fatherly concern for the young prince, though perhaps not of the kind
which would be typical today. In 1242, when he was around three years old Henry expressed a concern
that Edward didn’t have good wine to drink. In his youth Edward’s care was handed over to Hugh
Giffard and then in 1246 to Bartholomew Pecche, a close friend of the king’s. Serious concerns
arose concerning Edward’s health around this time and these issues did not fully abate until the
early 1250s. The details of how he was educated are unfortunately quite scant, but this was
a time when there was a greater emphasis on pursuing martial abilities and other pursuits such
as hunting and jousting than there was on academic accomplishment for a future king. As a result,
Edward would be no scholar king. In the mid-1250s Edward, who became known as the Lord Edward from
a young age, was granted considerable authority over the crown’s possessions outside England,
specifically Ireland, Gascony and Wales, each of which afforded him a large income and gave him
a certain degree of independence from his father. From 1256 Edward’s official seal was being used
in Ireland to indicate his senior position there. In 1154, though he was just fourteen years of
age, Edward was married to Eleanor of Castile, who herself was a year and a bit younger
than Edward. The marriage of the pair, who were barely entering their teenage years,
was a political act designed to shore up English power in its remaining French territory
of Gascony, which lay just to the north of the Kingdom of Castile in Spain. Despite the
arranged nature of the marriage it was a very happy one. Eleanor and Edward were devoted to
each other and she accompanied him everywhere, even years later heading on Crusade with him
to the Holy Land. A long marriage which lasted over 35 years resulted in many children.
It is believed there were fourteen in all, though the exact number is not entirely clear
at a time when infant mortality and stillbirths were common. These generally arrived in a
twenty year period between 1264 and 1284, though only one son, the future King Edward II,
survived into adulthood, as did five daughters, Eleanor, Joan, Margaret, Mary and Elizabeth,
although Eleanor would die as well before she reached her thirtieth year. Thus, at least eight
of their children died in infancy or childhood, a rate which even by the standards of the time
was unusually cruel on Edward and Eleanor. By the late 1250s Edward was being pulled into
the political strife of his father’s reign. Numerous issues, including the perception
of the king’s fiscal recklessness and his excessive support for the French relatives
of the queen at court, combined to force many of the English lords and some of the powerful
French faction led by an influential political figure called Simon de Montfort to push Henry
into make concessions at a parliament held at Oxford in 1258. The so-called Provisions of
Oxford saw many of Henry’s French councillors expelled from positions of influence and the
government of England was all but handed over to a group of 15 councillors who were selected
from amongst the leading magnates and nobles of the realm. Edward’s position in all of this
was ambiguous and he did not overly support his father. Indeed when an even more radical series of
measures, known as the Provisions of Westminster, were forced on the king in 1259 the rebellious
lords who implemented these had the support of Edward himself. All of this effectively resulted
in a drastic reduction in the king’s power, while Edward, who had felt stifled by his
father in recent years attained a greater position of authority within this form of
conciliar government of the late 1250s. Though often viewed as a weak king, Henry was not
willing to acquiesce with this curtailment of his power. He now moved to acquire the aid of the
French king, Louis IX, against his own nobles by formally relinquishing English claims to the
Duchy of Normandy and other French territories which had effectively been lost to the French over
half a century earlier. In return Louis provided Henry with financial and military support with
which he returned to England in 1260 and began re-establishing his royal authority. By late
1261 de Montfort had been exiled to France and Edward had reconciled with his father after
much jostling. He was briefly sent to Gascony in France where he stabilised the region, but
as the disturbances in England continued he was recalled. Then, when de Montfort crossed back from
France to England in the spring of 1263, a new opposition movement began to emerge at Oxford. By
the autumn armed clashes between the king and his opponents were occurring and by the winter of
1263 de Montfort’s alliance of fractious lords were able to seize control of London. This time
it was decided to put matters to King Louis IX to act as an arbitrator in the dispute. But Louis
sided with Henry and proposed the annulment of the earlier provisions that had been agreed at Oxford
and Westminster in 1258 and 1259. Given this de Montfort and his allies chose renewed war and
what is known as the Second Barons’ War commenced. Unlike in the late 1250s, when the civil war
commenced in 1264 Edward was steadfastly loyal to his father. In April he played a leading
role in the capture of Northampton where one of Simon de Montfort’s son was gathering a large
baronial army. But the war would be won or lost in the south and early that summer it started to
go very badly. At the Battle of Lewes in Sussex in the south-east of England on the 14th of May
1264 the royalist forces engaged de Montfort’s army. Edward led the cavalry on the right
wing of his father’s army to good effect, but the battle was lost overall as de Montfort’s
forces occupied a strategic position on the high ground of Offham Hill. In its aftermath Edward was
taken as a hostage and placed under confinement, while Henry was forced to make massive concessions
to de Montfort. For all of a year de Montfort was virtually an uncrowned King of England, but
when Edward escaped and began building up a royalist force again in the Welsh marches the
tables turned. He was now effectively the head of the royalist cause as his father remained a
prisoner of de Montfort’s. Concerted campaigns throughout the summer of 1165 brought
much of the north and western England back under crown control and de Montfort
was forced to engage Edward in the field at Evesham on the 4th of August 1265. Here Edward
outmanoeuvred de Montfort before the battle, who was placed on the defensive from the
offset. The result was a crushing victory for Edward in the course of which de Montfort
was killed and the king was finally released. Victory at Evesham did not bring the war to an
end. Campaigning continued through late 1265 and into 1266 before the last major stronghold,
Kenilworth, was placed under siege. Edward briefly joined this action in the summer of 1266.
The dictum of Kenilworth was issued in October, which laid out terms whereby those who had been
in rebellion would be able to repurchase their lands from the crown. It was hoped by this that
the garrison would surrender, but they refused and held out until December. By then Edward had
gone north to deal with further operations to mop up rebels there. A final push was made by
the lords on London early in 1267. It was led by the Earl of Gloucester and posed a serious
threat that the tide of the war could yet again turn, but Edward entered into negotiations
with Gloucester who was effectively bought off. With this matters began to wind down.
A more conciliatory line was taken towards those who were still in arms, which led to
the laying down of weapons in many locations. Edward campaigned to the Isle of Ely in the early
summer, which was seized with little difficulty, while a final push into the Fens in early July
saw the last of the rebels surrender. The Second Barons’ War was over and Edward had played a
key role in victory for his father’s cause. Plans were quickly initiated to reach a political
settlement in order to bring the tensions that had caused the Second Barons’ War to an end. The
result was the Statute of Marlborough which was issued in November 1267 whereby some of the legal
and fiscal reforms that had been desired in the late 1250s and which Edward had briefly supported,
were implemented, this time with royal consent. It is unclear what part Edward played in the debates
over these changes. Indeed it is difficult to determine what his exact role in government was at
all in the late 1260s. Disputes arose frequently involving him, one with the Earl of Gloucester
over their overlapping jurisdictions around the town of Bristol. There is some evidence
of Edward being involved in royal councils, but certainly not on the scale that one would have
assumed would be the case given his prominence in ending the war, though he did receive extensive
estates in the land confiscations that followed the conflict. Overall it had been a mixed
political apprenticeship for him. He had gained extensive experience as a military commander
and to a lesser extent as an administrator, but Edward had also gained a reputation,
one which is perhaps overstated at times, for being politically manipulative, someone
who had been willing to throw in his lot with his father’s enemies in the late 1250s, but
then changed sides quickly in the early 1260s. Despite his father’s increasing old age and
infirmity Edward became determined in the late 1260s to depart on a Crusade to the Holy
Land. The Crusades had been a central pillar of life in Europe during the High Middle Ages.
Beginning in the 1090s the Papacy had begun urging Christendom’s monarchs, lords and
knights that it was their solemn duty as the faithful of God to try to reclaim the Holy
Land, and the city of Jerusalem in particular, from the Muslim heathens there. A First Crusade in
the final years of the eleventh century had proved enormously successful, with Jerusalem and several
other cities such as Antioch and Acre captured and four Crusader states established. However, in the
course of the twelfth century these had declined and Jerusalem was eventually conquered by the
Muslim lord Saladin in 1187. Despite a concerted effort by Edward’s great-uncle, King Richard
the Lionheart, to reclaim it during the Third Crusade in the early 1190s, the city remained out
of Christian hands and the other Crusader states continued to decline into the thirteenth century,
despite numerous further Crusades. Edward’s father had long hoped to head on Crusade himself, but now
Edward took up the mantle for him. In the early 1170s Edward would head on what was to be the
Ninth Crusade, but which is typically referred to as Lord Edward’s Crusade, such was his centrality
to it. It was preached in response to the threat posed to the remaining Christian presence
in the Levant by the Mamluk sultan Baibars. When the crusade had been called by the Pope,
the French king and his sons had agreed to take the cross and travel to the Holy Land.
As a consequence Edward possibly felt duty bound to do so on behalf of the English royal
family, though there is little doubting that he was also an enthusiastic participant. The
expedition was funded in part by the crown, but Edward bore a considerable amount of the
expenses through his own household, a not inconsiderable burden. Approximately 225 knights
agreed to travel with the prince and these were complemented by several hundred further troops
and auxiliaries. Most of these were royalists who had fought on the crown’s side in the civil
conflicts in England of the 1250s and 1260s, and there was a reluctance by many of those lords
who had only recently reconciled with the crown to engage in the royal expedition. As a result of
all this the crusade which set off from England in the summer of 1270 was a decidedly small one by
comparison with some of its forbears. Recruitment had been difficult and even the financing
precarious and based to a considerable extent on a loan of £17,500 from King Louis IX of France,
the leader of the much larger French contingent, with plans for some taxes to be raised
in England to pay for it retrospectively. Edward’s army was travelling behind the much
larger French contingent and when he finally caught up with them in the late autumn of 1270 at
Tunis in North Africa he learned that King Louis IX had died of dysentery some weeks earlier.
There the new leader of the French contingent, Charles of Anjou, entered into a negotiation with
the emir of Tunis whereby the expedition would be diverted to Sicily in order to see to matters in
Italy, where the French had become involved in the south of the country some years earlier. Edward
was indignant with this diversion and instead elected to continue with his small contingent
along the original route and headed eastwards as planned, landing at the crusader stronghold
of Acre in the Holy Land in mid-May 1271. The Lord Edward’s Crusade possibly scored an immediate
victory upon his arrival. The Christian port was threatened by the Mamluk leader, Baibars, at the
time and some of the contemporary sources suggest that Edward’s arrival prevented an onslaught on
the town, however, the Arab sources are altogether less congratulatory of the English lord on this
count. In any event when Baibars did appear outside the walls of Acre early that summer,
with far superior forces than Edward possessed, he could have almost certainly taken the
town had he decided to besiege it.
Edward’s admittedly meagre forces spent over six
weeks ensconced at Acre before finally making a foray to St George-de-Lebeyne about 25 kilometres
from the town. The piercing summer heat and some food poisoning stalled any efforts to proceed
further. A campaign against Qaqun about 65 kilometres from Acre in the early winter was more
successful and resulted in the defeat of a Muslim force outside the town, but the main citadel
could not be taken and the crusader’s eventually retreated to Acre once again. Ultimately the issue
was that little could be achieved with the very limited resources in men and money available to
Edward following the French abandonment of the Crusade a year earlier. Accordingly, it was not
surprising when Hugues III, the King of Cyprus and titular King of Jerusalem, concluded a truce
with Baibars to last ten years in the early summer of 1272. Edward was angry at the decision, but
the Cypriot king was anxious to take advantage of the willingness of the Mamluk leader to agree
such terms, which had become necessary after a large foray by the Mongols into the Levant late in
1271 that temporarily threatened the Mamluk rear, had quickly dissipated. Edward remained in the
Holy Land until September 1272, during which time he held hopes of perhaps changing Hugues’s
mind, but the Crusade was effectively over. Probably the most notable incident during
Edward’s time in the middle east occurred one night in his bed chamber when
he was attacked and almost killed by an assassin. It is unclear who ordered his
death as some accounts state it was Baibars, whereas others say it was ordered by a mysterious
“Old man of the Mountains” who was a leader of a fanatical Islamic sect. During this attempt on
his life, Edward was able to fend off and kill his assailant but was stabbed with a poisoned
knife during the struggle. His wife Eleanor, according to accounts, then sucked the poison from
the wound, possibly saving her husband’s life in the process and the two then left the Holy land
in September of 1272 as it was evident that their lives were in danger and also that little more
could be done to further the Christian cause. Edward set off on the return journey to England
in September. He left behind a crusader presence which was living on borrowed time. In the
years that followed, pressure on Acre from the Mamluke and others continued and Edward,
like his contemporary monarchs across Europe, would receive repeated calls for further aid
to be sent throughout the 1270s and 1280s. These were not heeded in any substantive
way and finally in 1291 the Crusader presence in the Holy Land was brought to
an end nearly 200 years after it began, when Acre fell to the Mamluks. Back in the autumn
of 1272 Edward headed home via southern Italy. He was there by early 1273 where he learned the
news that his father had died the previous November and that he was now King of England.
However, despite receiving this information, he did not head hastily for England. Rather
he engaged in a slow journey through Italy and southern France before heading to Paris to pay
homage to the new French king, Philip III, who was theoretically Edward’s liege lord over his lands
in France. Edward then visited those few meagre remaining possessions which England held on the
continent in Gascony, before finally returning to England in August 1274, by which time the country
had been without a king for nearly two years. Plans for Edward’s coronation had been underway
well before his eventual landing in England on the 2nd of August 1274. Consequently it was possible
for the ceremony to be held just over two weeks later on the 19th of August. Disputes invariably
arose concerning precedence, with Edward’s brother Edmund pushing for him to be given a greater role
as he had acted as steward of the realm during Edward’s absence, while a perennial argument at
medieval royal coronations over the seniority of the archbishops of Canterbury and York saw the
latter excluded altogether from the ceremony. Otherwise things went smoothly and the celebration
took place on a grand scale. An enormous banquet involving thousands of cows, oxen, pigs and
chickens was to be held, while other staple fare of the medieval and early modern periods such as
swan, cranes and goats were prepared. Westminster Abbey was redecorated at considerable expense.
When the coronation finally came it was the first to involve the coronation of both a King and
Queen of England since the Norman Conquest over 200 years earlier. The Archbishop of Canterbury,
Robert Kilwardby, placed the crown on Edward’s head, which he duly removed, affirming that he
would not wear it again until the lands England had lost under his father were reclaimed. Thus did
he affirm that it was the beginning of a new age. The man who had just become king is often
represented as a dour Machiavellian, but this is not precisely accurate. Standing at six foot,
two inches Edward acquired the name Longshanks on account of his unusual height at a time when few
men reached six foot. By the time he was crowned the blonde hair of his youth was beginning to
darken and it would turn grey in his middle years. He spoke with a very slight lisp, but with
purpose and persuasively. In religious terms he was orthodox and made the conventional donations
to churches and monasteries, while hardly being possessed of anywhere near the religious devotion
of his father. He was probably not well read, but expressed his cultural proclivities through
his patronage of architecture and painting, notably supporting Walter of Durham who did much
to decorate the interiors of Westminster Abbey. By disposition he could be good natured and
amiable, but also prone to violent outbursts. He enjoyed hunting and was a keen supporter
of the tying of the Arthurian legend to the English monarchy. Ultimately, though his
administrative abilities were limited in many ways, with very little understanding
of the nuances of finance and logistics, but what he lacked in this regard he more
than made up for with his sense of purpose and forcefulness, traits which had been
lacking in an English monarch since the days of his great-uncle, Richard the
Lionheart, over seventy years earlier. One of the first issues that arose for Edward as
king back in England came from the west in Wales. The Normans had established a significant amount
of control over Wales following their conquest of England in the eleventh century and that had
been maintained and even strengthened for much of the twelfth century, but the weakened state of
the English crown during the reigns of Edward’s grandfather and father had seen a succession
of rebellions there by the Welsh princes, notably Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, in an attempt to
re-establish Wales’s independence from England again. However, ap Gruffudd failed to realise
that the English crown’s position was stronger by the 1270s. Therefore Edward expected Llywelyn
to pay homage to him, as his ancestors had done as a matter of course. His grandfather, Llywelyn the
Great, for instance, had paid homage to both King John and Henry III in the 1200s and 1210s. Thus,
when Llywelyn invaded English territory in the march region Edward considered it the actions of
a rebellious subject and became determined to act against him. He was aided in this by the fact that
ap Gruffudd had alienated several of the other Welsh princes who had sought refuge at the English
court. Thus, in the summer of 1277 Edward at the head of a great royal army of 15,000 men advanced
into northern Wales with a fleet in support. No violence was needed. Llywelyn realised that this
overwhelming show of force was an indication that his ambitions needed to be tempered and he came to
terms with Edward through the Treaty of Aberconwy whereby his authority was severely curtailed
in Wales and he agreed to pay a huge indemnity of £50,000 to the English crown. Consequently
the homage of the Welsh lords which had been paid to kings such as Henry II in the twelfth
century was quickly re-established under Edward. This certainly did not settle the matter. A new
war broke out five years later in 1282 and on this occasion Edward faced a combination of the Welsh
princes, many of whom had allied with him in 1277, but who were disillusioned at his failure
to sufficiently reward them for their aid in the aftermath of that invasion. Llywelyn’s
brother Dafydd initiated proceedings by attacking Hawarden Castle in April, which was followed by
further attacks on English castles in the region. Edward showed a similar resolve to that which
he had demonstrated five years earlier. As he perceived it Llywelyn and the other Welsh lords
were not independent princes of a foreign land, but rebels of a country long controlled by England
who were refusing to pay proper homage to him as their monarch. This was a mind-set which
Edward would employ later towards England’s northern neighbour as well. A large host was once
again assembled and sent into northern Wales to surround the ap Gruffudd stronghold in Snowdonia.
When Llywelyn subsequently attempted to break out of the encirclement into central Wales he was
killed in action at Irfon Bridge on the 11th of December 1282, while efforts to continue to war
by his brother Dafydd were ineffective. Thus, the last Welsh stronghold surrendered in April
1283, just one year after the war had commenced. Dafydd ap Gruffudd was handed over to Edward’s
government shortly thereafter and executed, thus breaking the resistance of the foremost
opponents of English intervention in Wales.
Victory in 1283 saw one of the most thorough
English reductions of Welsh independence ever seen. The Statute of Wales was passed in 1284
and extended English systems of government into Wales. New English-style counties were created
and English local government introduced. Many Welsh nobles were disinherited and their lands
granted away to English followers of Edward. To cement this new imposition of English rule a
comprehensive programme of castle building was also undertaken at sites like Conwy, Caernarfon
and Harlech. New towns quickly emerged at these same sites and others such as Flint, Aberystwyth
and Rhuddlan, while efforts were made to Anglicize existing Welsh towns. Yet there were limitations
to all of this and it should not be assumed that Edward I completed the English conquest of Wales.
Rebellions broke out in 1287 and again in 1294, the latter requiring a huge injection
of English military power. Almost 30,000 men were involved in one fashion
or another before the revolt was finally suppressed in the spring of 1295. All in all
the endeavour distracted Edward from issues he was facing elsewhere by the 1290s and had cost
the crown an enormous sum of £55,000 to crush, highlighting how precarious control over
Wales would remain for many years to come. The issue of financing such armies as were
employed in Wales at various points between the mid-1270s and the mid-1290s was a major
concern for an administration that aimed to reassert English power in a substantial fashion
on several fronts. A major overhaul of the English finances and government was undertaken as a result
to increase the inflow to the exchequer. No sooner had Edward been crowned than he appointed a
close ally, Robert Burnell, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Burnell immediately announced
a commission of inquiry into various aspects of the government finances and administration, the
primary purpose of which was to identify concealed lands which the crown had title to, but records
of which had been lost. Though the results were mixed, this inquiry did influence the formation of
the extensive Statutes of Westminster which were promulgated in the spring of 1275. This was the
first of several acts down to 1290 which sought to end abuses of land tenure and the subinfeudation
of land whereby the lords were robbed of their feudal dues. The rights of tenants were also seen
to, while the crown sought to restrict the church and others from granting away lands without
royal approval, the better for the crown to receive its own income from such transactions.
Overall this legislation constituted major changes to the crown finances, landholding
and issues of debt in medieval England. While the inquiry of 1274 and the resulting
Statutes of Westminster in 1275 began the process of reforming certain elements of landholding
and other issues pertaining to the crown, they did not solve the fiscal problem. Additional
financial measures were introduced as a result in 1275. A customs duty of six shillings and eight
pence was placed on sacks of wool being exported from England. The English cloth trade at the time
was very considerable and this modest customs duty yielded approximately £10,000 a year into Edward’s
exchequer, a sum equivalent to tens of millions of pounds today. Added to this was a one-off tax
of one-fifteenth of the value of moveable goods, a medieval wealth tax of sorts which yielded
upwards of £80,000. These measures were augmented by reforms to the running of the exchequer, while
the church also faced additional taxation from 1279 onwards. That same year a recoinage was
undertaken, a measure that was engaged in for the dual purposes of removing forged coins from
circulation and gaining the crown an additional financial windfall in its reissue of new coins.
Such measures had to be undertaken regularly in an age when coin value was still based largely on
the silver content of the coins in circulation. While these efforts at financial reform were
broadly successful they still did not prove sufficient for Edward’s government to meet the
cost of its wars over the years. For instance, when unrest arose in Wales again in the
early 1280s it took the crown by surprise and money had to be raised fast. Initially the
deficit was met by taking loans from the wealthy merchant communities of the towns totalling over
£16,000. When this proved insufficient to meet the military situation regional assemblies
were called for early in 1283 in the north of England and other districts. Italian
merchant bankers such as the Riccardi family, whose influence as bankers extended across
much of Western and Central Europe by the late thirteenth century, were also turned to.
What all of this revealed was that despite how effective the reforms of the 1270s had been
England still could not finance a major war effort for an extended period of time without resorting
to extraordinary measures to collect additional money. Consequently further reforms of the
exchequer were undertaken in the 1280s, notably the Statute of Rhuddlan which aimed to improve
bookkeeping and root out some of the corruption that was endemic in all pre-modern societies.
These measures ultimately saw increasing efficiencies in the administrative apparatus
of the English state during Edward’s reign. All of this legislation and fiscal improvement of
the 1270s and 1280s played out against a backdrop of parliamentary reform. Today, the Magna Carta,
which was passed in the dying months of King John’s reign, is typically seen as the great
constitutional event of the High Middle Ages in England, but this is generally overstated.
While it ensured some rights to the English nobility in their relationship with the crown,
the more significant developments in parliament, the legislative assembly which would go on to
become the mother parliament of modern democracy, actually began to occur during Edward’s reign.
For instance, it was Edward who oversaw the beginnings of the system whereby parliamentary
members were returned down to the modern era. This stipulated that two knights were to be
returned to parliament from every county and two burgesses from every corporate town, a system
which began to implement national representation for the first time. This presaged the constituency
system which most modern democracies elect their parliaments according to today. In addition,
Edward established a tradition in his first parliament of 1275 of asking parliament
for permission for extraordinary taxation, a development that was designed to avoid the
constitutional conflicts that had dogged his father and grandfather’s reigns. In the process
Edward’s major contribution to parliamentary developments in England was to establish a
reciprocal relationship between crown and country. The crown and government could request
taxes and the country could ask for favours and reforms in return. This system would operate
effectively until the seventeenth century. There were administrative and financial successes
elsewhere. Though events in Ireland are generally little commented upon in studies of Edward’s reign
there were significant developments there during his forty plus years in power. Much of the country
had been first conquered by England in the late twelfth century, though some parts of it remained
outside of English rule. It was still expanding during Edward’s reign, though based largely on
the initiative of the English lords there. Two measures are notable though. A Lay Subsidy Tax
was initiated in 1292 and this was used in the years that followed to fund the establishment of a
new Irish parliament with elected representatives which met officially for the first time in 1297.
It would last for over 500 years until the Act of Union subsumed the Irish parliament into the
English parliament at Westminster. In addition to this Edward’s reign saw a notable strengthening
and expansion of the court system in Ireland, with centralised courts in Dublin and regional
courts in the provinces dispensing justice under the common law. As a result of all this
Ireland generated a healthy profit for the English exchequer by the end of Edward’s
reign and English political commentators on Ireland of the early modern period would
look back from a vantage point of over 250 years and view the early fourteenth century
as the heyday of English rule in Ireland. A further issue which impacted on the finances
of Edward’s kingdom was the position of the Jewish people. A sizeable Jewish population had
emerged in England during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. As elsewhere in Europe many
Jewish people began working as money lenders, as this was a profitable endeavour and the Roman
Catholic Church forbade Christians to practice usury, the loaning out of money at extortionate
rates. Therefore by the early twelfth century, the Jewish community in England was playing a
role in the economic life of the country that was significant considering their actual numbers. This
coincided with a growing Anti-Semitism in England. Jews were perceived by medieval Christians as
being guilty of deicide, the murder of god, in having called for Jesus’s execution. This,
combined with the issue of Jewish moneylending and their growing role in the economy,
had led to increasing persecution of the country’s Jewish community during Edward’s
father’s long reign, notably in extorting heavy sums of money from the country’s Jews
through extraordinary taxation on them and the application of heavy pressure on the country’s
Jewish people to convert to Christianity. Edward increased these Anti-Semitic policies as
soon as he became king. In 1275 the Statute of Jewry was passed which outlawed Jewish people
from practicing usury, relieving many of those who owed money to Jewish money-lenders of their
debts, confining the Jewish people into ghettos in certain towns and cities and forcing those over
seven years of age to wear a yellow badge marking them as Jewish. Taxes specific to all Jews over
twelve years of age were also introduced. These extremely punitive measures were only in effect
for fifteen years, for in 1290 Edward, having determined that many Jewish people continued to
act as money lenders across the country, decided to expel the Jewish population from England
altogether. Edward had just returned from a journey to his French possessions in Gascony
in the late 1280s and needed to levy additional taxes to pay for the campaign. To make this more
acceptable to the nobility and gentry he included a promise to expel the Jewish community from
England, a measure which he duly followed through on in 1290. This carried the additional benefit
that Edward was able to confiscate Jewish lands and properties into crown possession and sell
them off at a financial windfall. The expulsion was carried out relatively quickly with perhaps
between 2,000 and 3,000 Jewish people exiled from England in the early 1290s, often heading
for Eastern Europe which was much more tolerant of their presence. Some small few remained
in England disguised as Italian bankers.
Like each of his predecessors Edward was
concerned with France, though in a different manner to previous kings of England. His father
had reached agreements with the French in the 1250s which effectively reconciled the English
crown to the loss of the extensive territories in northern France, above all the Duchy of Normandy
which King John had lost in the 1200s. As such there was not the same requirement of Edward
to attempt to re-establish English control over Normandy and other areas as had been the case in
the early years of Henry’s reign. Nevertheless, the English crown retained a considerable
presence in France, controlling Gascony in the south-west of France and this necessarily
involved Edward in French affairs. He visited Gascony several times, often in an effort to
launch reform campaigns there and most notably in the late 1280s. This resulted in a major
series of reforms that were agreed in 1289 and which sought to regulate the conduct
of the senior English officials in Gascony, the seneschal of the region and the constable
of the town of Bordeaux. Yet what remained the major problem for Edward in Gascony was that he
held the region as a fief of the French monarch, rather than in his own right, a situation
which in the 1290s would lead to war. Edward had maintained good relations with
King Philip III of France who had succeeded his father following Louis IX’s death at Tunis on
his journey to the Holy Land back in 1270. Edward had paid homage to Philip when passing through
France on his return home from the Crusades in the mid-1270s and he paid a visit to Paris again
in 1279. Outstanding differences between the two crowns had been resolved on this occasion, leaving
Anglo-French relations in a good place. Relations between Edward and the new monarch, Philip IV,
who succeeded his father in 1285, were also good, which makes the outbreak of war in the 1290s
between England and France something of an unusual development. The cause was a localised conflict
between England and some French merchant sailors operating in the English Channel. Edward felt
his move against these elements in his capacity as King of England was entirely justified, but
Philip viewed it as an act of rebellion by Edward as Duke of Aquitaine, the title he bore as lord of
Gascony. Thus the war which broke out in 1294 was a result of Edward’s overlapping jurisdictions
as both an equal of the King of France as King of England, while also being a subject of
the King of France as Duke of Aquitaine. After some military engagements in the English
Channel with the French merchant vessels there, Philip summoned Edward to Paris to account for
his actions. The English monarch was unwilling to show obeisance to a fellow monarch in this
fashion and so sent his brother Edmund on his behalf. A compromise was reached at this
point whereby Edward would hand over some minor fortresses as surety in Gascony,
while Edward would marry Philip’s sister, Margaret, a woman nearly forty years his
junior. Edward’s first wife, Eleanor, had died in 1290 after 36 years of marriage,
meaning Edward could marry the French king’s sister as a means of resolving the dispute which
had arisen in the English Channel. However, the entire arrangement turned out to be a
ruse on Philip’s part in order to have the parlement of Paris vote through the confiscation
of the Duchy of Aquitaine from Edward. With the outbreak of outright war Edward’s plans
also changed and he now began to develop ambitions to reacquire some of the territories
lost by his grandfather ninety years earlier. Edward’s strategy from early on in the war was
to develop a major alliance of continental powers against the French. In particular he sought
allies amongst the many principalities of the Low Countries and western Germany which in the
late medieval period were divided into dozens of small dukedoms, counties and city states, and
with the powerful Duke of Burgundy who controlled extensive territories in eastern France. In this
way Edward hoped to build up a power base in the Low Countries around the Duchy of Brabant
and the counties of Gueldres and Holland, whereby England would strike into north-eastern
France towards Paris, rather than operating out of Gascony as the French would suspect. This
action was delayed until 1297, by which time the English had encountered mixed fortunes in
their clashes with the French in Gascony. In any event the military campaign in the Low
Countries turned into a costly debacle from which Edward only managed to extricate himself in
the spring of 1298. Thus, this strategy proved a consummate failure in the final years of the
thirteenth century, but the idea of building an alliance of European allies and striking
against France from the Low Countries was one that would be employed effectively by Edward’s
grandson against the French many years later. The failure of Edward’s grand alliance ended the
most intense period of the war against France, but it took some considerable time for
the war to be brought to a conclusion, even following the negotiation of a truce late
in 1297. In 1299 a major step was taken when the previously negotiated marriage between Edward and
Philip’s sister Margaret finally took place. The couple, who had a 40 year age gap, were married at
Canterbury on the 10th of September 1299. Despite the difference in their ages the marriage was a
relatively satisfactory one for both parties with Margaret bearing Edward two sons and a daughter,
and she never remarried after Edward passed away several years later. Meanwhile, final peace terms
between England and France were finally ironed out in 1303 with a virtual return to the status quo
ante bellum. The war had been a costly fiasco for both parties. Military operations in Gascony
alone had cost Edward’s exchequer approximately £350,000, while over £150,000 was paid in
contributions by the English government to the small states of the Low Countries
and Germany to win over their aid in the 1290s to almost zero benefit. Such
was the massive cost of the war that a formal coronation as queen for Margaret
was never held to avoid the expense.
This expense in France and the Low Countries
was a particular annoyance for Edward as in the course of the war the primary goal of his foreign
policy had switched from France to Scotland. King Alexander III had died there in 1286 leaving his
three year old granddaughter, Margaret of Norway, as his heir. But Margaret died in 1290, bringing
to an end the direct line of King William the Lion which had ruled Scotland for over 120 years.
There were now over a dozen contenders for the Scottish crown, but the two foremost were Robert
Bruce, fifth Lord of Annandale, and John Balliol, Lord of Galloway. In order to prevent the
country sliding into civil war the Council of Guardians which had been appointed in Scotland
to govern during Margaret’s youth appealed to King Edward to act as an arbitrator. Edward now
viewed this as an opportunity to re-establish a greater degree of English influence over Scottish
affairs. As with Wales, Edward viewed Scotland as a subordinate part of the Kingdom of England, one
which England had exercised a significant amount of influence over since the late eleventh century
when William the Conqueror and his successor, William II, had established a degree of Norman
control over the northern kingdom. While this had lagged in the course of the century prior
to his accession Edward viewed the succession crisis as a good opportunity to re-assert
English royal power in Scotland. Accordingly, after he supported the candidacy of John Balliol
who became King John I in 1292 Edward made it clear that he now considered Balliol a vassal who
was expected to pay homage to him and Scotland as a quasi-subject kingdom. Balliol and the
Scots, however, were unwilling to countenance this and after war broke out between England and
France in 1294 Balliol not only refused to send Scottish troops to aid Edward, but entered into
negotiations with the French to form an alliance. This was largely the trigger for Edward’s
decision to invade and occupy Scotland in 1296. Edward ordered an army to prepare at Newcastle
upon Tyne in March 1296. At the same time he sent envoys north with demands of the Scots that
they hand over the border castles of Roxburgh, Jedburgh and Berwick as surety against any
potential alliance they might form with the French. The Scots not only refused this, but a
Scottish army led by John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, moved south into England against Carlisle Castle
on the 26th of March 1296. Here Edward had appointed Robert Bruce, sixth Lord of Annandale,
as governor of Carlisle Castle. It is indicative of how some Scottish lords at the time did indeed
view Edward as a sovereign with some considerable rights over Scotland that they were willing to
engage in service to the English monarchy even within England. Bruce’s son and namesake would
play a major role in the events which would follow over the next thirty years in Anglo-Scottish
relations. Comyn failed to seize Carlisle Castle, though his forces did set fire to the town,
while further border raids followed by the Scots throughout April. This, however, was as
good as military affairs would proceed for the Scottish in 1296. In late March Edward led his
forces across the River Tweed into Scotland. They seized Berwick, at that time the southern outpost
of Scotland, within days and Edward made his headquarters here for some time while he planned
his next move, as the Scots prepared their forces near Dunbar Castle a few miles up the coast of
Scotland from Berwick. It was here that the early stage of what would become a long thirty year war
between England and Scotland would be decided. The Battle of Dunbar was fought between
Edward’s forces led by John de Warenne, sixth earl of Surrey, and the Scots led by John
Comyn, earl of Buchan, on the 27th of April 1296. It appears from the surviving evidence that
this was largely a clash between two relatively small cavalry forces consisting of perhaps a
few hundred heavy cavalry on both sides. The Scots held a strong position on the high ground
but their lines broke up when they believed that the English were leaving the field. Consequently
an organised English cavalry charge routed the Scots and sent them fleeing. About 100 Scottish
lords and knights were taken prisoner and the following day when Edward appeared in person,
Dunbar Castle surrendered. In the aftermath of the battle several other major castles across
Lowland Scotland simply surrendered to Edward’s invading forces. Edinburgh Castle held out,
but also fell after a week long siege. Thus, a brief campaign had ended in total victory
for Edward. King John Balliol surrendered, hoping for mercy, but Edward had him stripped
of his crown and sent him south to captivity in England. Shortly afterwards Edward headed south
himself with the Stone of Scone, the traditional inauguration stone of Scottish kings, in his
train. The importance of this was clear. John was no longer King of Scotland and the country would
have no other king but Edward henceforth. Edward viewed this as the simple culmination of a process
that had begun over 200 years earlier when William the Conqueror and William II had begun asserting
a degree of English control over Scotland. In the aftermath of the campaign of 1296 the
government of Scotland was largely handed over to Englishmen, with English garrisons established
at key locations throughout the country. However, the victory had ultimately been far too
easily won and the back had never really been broken on Scottish resistance. Moreover,
as Edward became once again preoccupied with events in France the opportunity was quickly
presented in 1297 for a revolt. This was led by three individuals. Robert Bruce, who would many
years later become a King of Scotland himself, was the grandson of Robert Bruce who had
been a contender to the throne back in the early 1290s before Balliol was made king.
A second rebel leader was Andrew de Moray, a prominent esquire from north-eastern Scotland.
The third, and certainly the most famous, was Sir William Wallace. Despite latter depictions
of him as a romantic rebel of the commons, Wallace was a member of the lesser nobility of Scotland.
Acting independently of each other to begin with the trio managed to incite popular revolts against
English rule across the country which culminated in a first major victory over English arms at
the Battle of Stirling Bridge in September 1297. Moray was fatally wounded at Stirling Bridge and
Wallace was consequently chosen in its aftermath as Guardian of Scotland, a regent of sorts
elected by the Scottish nobles in the absence of a Scottish monarch. For the time being Edward
was in no position to retaliate. In 1297 he was busy overseeing the long planned co-ordinated
action with his erstwhile allies in the Low Countries. Perhaps most significantly he faced
the most serious bout of domestic unrest of his reign within England itself as the nobility and
church leaders expressed several grievances over the cost of the wars in France, Scotland and Wales
and the lack of proper consultation with them by the monarch. Edward, who was more than aware of
the troubles fractious nobles had caused both his father and grandfather, moved swiftly to justify
his actions, issuing a long letter in which he apologised for his recent overbearing rule, but
arguing that this was needed to bring the wars to a swift conclusion. This did not entirely placate
the nobles, who petitioned for an amendment to Magna Carta, the great charter which King John had
agreed with his nobles in 1215 to enshrine respect of their rights. While this was not granted,
there were promises made that the extraordinary requirements being made of the nobility would not
be asked of them again. Inadvertently the revolt in Scotland may have aided his cause as when the
Scots began raiding into northern England in the aftermath of the Battle of Stirling Bridge it
convinced many in England that Edward’s pleas for extraordinary taxation and other requests at this
time in light of the emergency were justified. Edward quickly responded to the incursion of the
Scots when he returned to England from Flanders in the spring of 1298. A large army of upwards of
20,000 troops was quickly assembled and led north by Edward, many of them being Welsh infantry which
had been pressed into service to demonstrate their loyalty after the major Welsh revolt of the
mid-1290s. They assembled at Roxburgh in late June and it was from here that Edward proceeded
north towards Falkirk. Here he met Wallace’s army in the field on the 22nd of July 1298. Edward’s
forces were far numerically superior to the Scots, but the large Welsh contingent was
fractious. The Scots numbered some 6,000 men, comprising approximately 4,000
long spearmen who formed into four schiltrons, hedgehog-like phalanxes used to break any charge,
including those by heavy cavalry. The gaps between these were then filled by approximately
500 cavalry and over 1,000 archers. These schiltrons had been used to devastating effect at
the Battle of Stirling Bridge the previous year, but here they did not prove as effective, because
Edward’s cavalry was used to circle the Scots, holding their spearmen in place while thousands
of Edward’s crossbowmen and archers rained down projectiles on them. By the end of the day
both sides had lost upwards of 2,000 men, but for Wallace, whose forces were much smaller
than Edward’s this was a devastating blow. Despite his triumph at Falkirk Edward
was unable to capitalise and re-secure control over all of Scotland in the months that
followed, restricting his hold to the castles of the border region and southern Scotland.
Moreover, developments in France and his marriage to Margaret ensured that Edward was yet
again distracted by events elsewhere in 1299, allowing the Scots the opportunity to retake
Stirling Castle following a lengthy siege. With the war in France all but over from late
1299 onwards Edward was able to focus more on Scotland from 1300, but despite annual
campaigns into the country his cause was hampered by Wallace and the other Scottish leaders
being unwilling to risk another major defeat, such as had occurred at Falkirk. As a result
Edward was fighting an enemy in the early 1300s that proved unwilling to meet him directly on
the field of battle. But victory could be won by duplicity and diplomacy too. Robert Bruce was won
over in 1302 to his cause by Edward, while peace in France the following year ended any hope of aid
to the Scottish from that theatre. A year later many of the Scottish lords came to terms with
Edward after the English retook Stirling Castle. The Scottish cause was dealt a further blow
in the autumn of 1305 when William Wallace was captured near Glasgow by John de Menteith,
a Scottish knight loyal to the English crown, and handed over to Edward’s government.
He was taken to London where he was hung, drawn and quartered at Smithfield on the 23rd of
August 1305. Meanwhile Edward moved to consolidate his hold over Scotland by appointing his nephew,
John of Brittany, son of Edward’s sister Beatrice, as royal lieutenant of Scotland, while English
officials were also installed as chancellor or chamberlain within the Scottish government.
This process continued down the ranks, with English constables appointed to oversee the border
towns and castles, and sheriffs established in the Lowland regions as well. The near total victory
which Edward had once again won was emphasised in the decision to appoint English judges to
some of the positions on the Scottish bench, while a review of the Scottish legal system to
streamline it with the English common law was initiated. As with the decision to remove the
royal inauguration stone from Scone in 1296, further symbolic gestures were made to emphasise
Scottish subjugation, notably the reference around this time in English correspondence to
Scotland as ‘land’ rather than as a ‘kingdom’. Edward’s victory in 1305 was to prove as
ephemeral as that which he achieved in 1296. At a meeting at Greyfriars Kirk in Dumfries near
the Anglo-Scottish border on the 10th of February 1306 between Robert Bruce and Robert Comyn,
the only two viable remaining candidates for the Scottish throne, Bruce killed Comyn. The
cause of the quarrel was that Comyn attempted to renege on an agreement whereby one of them
would relinquish their claim to the throne in return for a grant of lands that would make
him the primary magnate in all of Scotland, while the other would become king. When Comyn
reneged Bruce killed him and five weeks later he had himself proclaimed as King of Scotland,
ending a ten year hiatus during which Edward had effectively ruled the northern kingdom
with no monarch north of the border. The inauguration was symbolically performed at
Scone, the traditional site for the crowning of Scottish kings, despite Edward’s seizure of
the inauguration stone and bringing of it to England ten years earlier. Some royal robes
were brought out of hiding to solemnise the occasion. As he did so Robert launched a new
rebellion against English rule in Scotland. Bruce’s decision to revolt early in 1306 might
well have been a propitious move designed to exploit Edward’s increasingly poor health. By
now the king was nearing his seventieth year, a ripe old age by the standards of the late middle
ages. Despite his infirmity a substantial army was nevertheless readied under the command of
Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and Henry Percy and sent north, together with a further
force under the command of the Prince of Wales, the future Edward II. In the meantime Edward
became incredibly vindictive following this latest setback in a war he had been trying
to win for ten years and was determined to demonstrate that he considered this to be
a treasonous rebellion by his own subjects, rather than actions occurring in an independent
kingdom. As a result, many prominent Scots residing in England were executed in the
course of the summer and autumn of 1306 for having tenuous links to Bruce, while others were
imprisoned in cages on public display at some of the border fortresses in southern Scotland,
a highly unusual punishment for the time. The initial campaign did not proceed well for
Bruce. Having advanced into Scotland de Valence parleyed with Bruce at Methven in mid-June
1306 with their forces on the field. It being late in the day both sides agreed to wait to
do battle until the next day, but as Bruce’s forces bivouacked several miles away that evening
de Valence’s forces fell on the Scots in a highly dishonourable breach of the English commander’s
word. Heavy losses were sustained and Bruce only barely managed to fight his way out of the
slaughter. Then on the 13th of September the Prince of Wales captured Kildrummy Castle from the
Scots, taking Bruce’s brother, Nigel, captive and several other senior supporters of the Scottish
king. One of these, Sir Simon Fraser, was taken to London and executed, despite having been a former
courtier at the English court. This was in keeping with Edward’s policy of showing no mercy towards
any supporters of Bruce’s cause throughout 1306. The king himself remained in no fit state
health-wise to command on the field and despite Bruce’s campaign being at a low ebb in the
autumn and winter of 1306, matters began to turn early in 1307. Bruce spent the winter either in
the Hebrides of western Scotland or the Orkneys building up his support in the Gaeltacht of
Scotland, while possibly also visiting Ireland. Reinforced he returned to the Scottish mainland
early in the spring of 1307 and began a guerrilla war in south-western Scotland. Ominous signs that
Edward would not be able to reverse the situation again in Scotland were seen in April 1307 when
Bruce first won a small victory over de Valence’s men at the Battle of Glen Trool, and then a much
more decisive win at the Battle of Loudon Hill in Ayrshire. Here de Valence led as many as 3,000
men against a force of under a thousand Scots led by Bruce, but the Scots utilised the terrain
effectively to nullify de Valence’s numerical superiority. Spearmen were used to the same effect
as at Stirling Bridge years earlier to gain a major victory for Bruce over the English. Edward
was apparently furious with these new reversals which signified an end to the possibility of any
quick overcoming of the fresh unrest in Scotland. This was the context in which King Edward I’s
life came to an end. Several weeks after the loss at Loudon Hill he reviewed some of the English
troops amassed at Carlisle Castle near the border, before finally proceeding north towards Scotland
despite his poor health. His condition immediately deteriorated as he contracted dysentery and
while camped at Burgh by Sands just south of the Scottish border on the morning of the
7th of July 1307 Edward Longshanks died. A tradition holds that Edward’s deathbed
wish was that his heart be carried to the Holy Land as part of a new crusade which
the king had always had ambitions to launch, but had never found the time propitious to do
so. He would have died that summer morning in his sixty-eigth year believing that much of his
life’s work was at least incomplete and perhaps heading towards failure as Scotland had recently
acquired its first king after a ten year hiatus and Bruce had won several victories on the field
of battle against Edward’s forces. Moreover, it must have been clear to him that no matter
how often he sent large armies into Scotland and established a seeming control over the country,
it always ended up in rebellion within months. He was succeeded by his son, Edward, Prince
of Wales, with whom ominous signs of his reign being dominated by powerful favourites had
already emerged. After a few further months of campaigning in Scotland Edward headed south
and was crowned king in February 1308.
Edward’s death ushered in a period of political,
social and economic crisis in England. His son’s twenty year reign was chaotic, with Edward
II favouring a range of political favourites who aroused the enmity of the wider political
community of England. This was compounded in the mid-1310s when a run of very poor weather
struck Europe. In 1314 this led to nearly 150 days of continuous rain followed by widespread
harvest failures which led to one of the most catastrophic famines in the continent’s history.
Simultaneously an outbreak of a very virulent form of cattle disease occurred which saw livestock
numbers plummet. Tens of thousands died across England as a result of these events. And while
Edward II’s successor in 1327, Edward III, proved a far more capable ruler, Europe was ravaged by
one of the most catastrophic plague epidemics in human history, the Black Death, in the 1340s and
1350s, killing upwards of half of the population. It is perhaps a measure of the strength of the
English state that had emerged by the end of Edward I’s reign that his grandson, Edward III,
was able to wage a sustained war against France to try to resurrect England’s territorial
empire on the continent in the face of such demographic and economic chaos as was wrought by
the famines and plagues of the fourteenth century. Ultimately, however, Edward’s efforts to
bring Scotland under English rule ended in failure following his own death. In the late
1300s Robert Bruce became the undisputed leader of the Scottish independence movement. As his
forces grew he placed ever greater pressure on the English presence in Scotland, after victory
at the Battle at Loudon Hill in the closing weeks of Edward’s reign, another battle was won at the
Brander Pass in 1308 before expelling the English from Edinburgh. However, the ultimate conflict did
not occur until 1314 when the Scots won a striking victory over Edward II’s forces at the Battle of
Bannockburn. A year later Bruce’s brother, Edward, invaded the north of Ireland, beginning
a three year campaign designed to weaken England’s resolve to remain in Scotland by
opening a second front across the Irish Sea. Still the war waged on and in 1320 the Scottish
nobility issued the Declaration of Arbroath affirming their independence from England,
a position which was given Papal approval in 1324. Even so it was not until a further
major victory on the field of battle in 1327 at the Battle of Stanhope Park that the war which
Edward I had started over thirty years earlier was finally brought to an end with the Treaty of
Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328 whereby England finally acknowledged Scottish independence
and Robert Bruce as King of Scotland.
King Edward’s body was embalmed after his death
in Scotland and brought south. It lay in state at Waltham Abbey for some time before he was finally
buried in Westminster Abbey on the 27th of October 1308, nearly four months after his death. His
tomb was fashioned in a plain manner from Purbeck limestone, a stone mined from the island of
Purbeck in Dorset. This was not ornate and there was no royal effigy added to the tomb. Incredibly
this austerity may have been owing to a lack of funds for a more sumptuous burial. Despite all the
fiscal and administrative reforms of his reign, Edward’s wars had been so costly that he had
left England largely bankrupt. In 1774 the Royal Society of Antiquaries of London had the
tomb opened, discovering that Edward’s body was well-preserved over four and a half centuries
later. An inscription was found on the tomb, badly faded by then, which had been
added by the last abbot of Westminster, John Feckenham, in the mid-sixteenth
century. Part of it read Malleus Scotorum, which means ‘The Hammer of the Scots’. Edward
has subsequently come to be known by this title in recognition of the manner in which the
war in Scotland came to define his reign, for good or for bad, and despite the
ultimate failure of the endeavour. Edward I was one of medieval England’s most
significant monarchs, of that there can be no doubt. First and foremost he reformed and
revitalised crown government after decades of unrest under his grandfather and father, during
which time there had been two civil wars, most of the French territories had been lost and the Welsh
princes had acquired de-facto independence across much of Wales. The 1270s and 1280s saw royal
government reconstructed in an impressive fashion, with reforms implemented to shore up English
control over Gascony and Wales reconquered with an extensive programme of Anglicisation undertaken
there. Edward did not complete the conquest of Wales, but he contributed more than any other
monarch to doing so. While many Welsh people would not view this as an achievement, if it is viewed
purely from the perspective of a centralising state of the High Middle Ages it constituted a
considerable accomplishment of Edward’s reign, one which forced the Welsh lords to once again
pay homage to the English crown and which furthered a process that had been initiated
in Wales during the Norman Conquest of the mid-eleventh century. At home, although he
was not really an administrator himself, Edward appointed a number of capable individuals
to senior ministerial positions and these oversaw a programme of reform which reformed English
land law, the collection of taxes and various other measures which strengthened the
English fiscal and administrative state and made it capable of waging the wars
of the second half of Edward’s reign. However, the problems of Edward’s reign began to
mount in the 1290s. From 1292, when he supported John Balliol’s claim to the Scottish throne as a
subject monarch, he was increasingly determined to bring Scotland under English rule. As with
Wales this must be viewed from the perspective of the late thirteenth century. Edward did not
overtly perceive of himself as conquering a foreign nation. Rather it was his view that he was
re-asserting a form of English rule in Scotland that had first been instituted under William the
Conqueror and William II. Although it had lapsed in the intervening period to a considerable
extent, he viewed the opportunity presented by the succession crisis there in 1290 as one
through which he could force the Scottish lords to once again pay homage to him as their liege lord.
However, matters became more complicated in 1294 when he became embroiled in a war with France
which presaged the Hundred Years War initiated under his grandson forty years later. Edward’s
fleeting efforts in this respect proved enormously costly and yielded zero benefits to either him
or the French. But it was in Scotland that things really turned sour. Edward must surely have felt
like he had achieved a tremendous success in 1296 when he defeated the Scots and effectively
subsumed Scotland into England, leaving the northern kingdom without its own king for the
next ten years, even one who had been selected by Edward to effectively act as a vassal like John
Balliol was in 1292. But success in the north was always ephemeral. In 1297 under figures like
Wallace and de Mornay the Scots rose successfully. Edward twice more seemed to have reduced them in
1298 and 1305, but on both occasions no sooner had he returned to England and the dust settled than
a fresh revolt arose. The final one, by Robert Bruce, in early 1306, who made himself King of
Scotland after a ten year interregnum, was never fully subdued and eventually resulted in Scottish
independence being reacquired many years later. What do you think of King Edward I? Was he
one of England’s most contradictory kings, one who created a powerful, centralised English
state, but one who also tarnished his legacy through his actions in Scotland and by his
expulsion of the country’s Jewish community? Please let us know in the comment section, and in
the meantime, thank you very much for watching. The man known to history as King Edward III,
was born on the 13th of November 1312, at Windsor Castle in the English county of Berkshire. His father was Edward II, King of England,
Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine in France, who had succeeded his father, the imposing
Edward I, otherwise known as Edward Longshanks, in 1307, when he was just twenty-three years
of age, while Edward II had produced a son around the time of his accession, this child,
Adam Fitzroy, was illegitimate, and as a result the birth of the future Edward III in 1312,
was greeted with great joy, as he secured the royal succession. Edward III’s mother was Queen Isabella,
the daughter of the King of France, Philip IV, born in 1295, she grew up at the various
French royal palaces around Paris, before being married to Edward II in January 1308,
when she herself was just twelve years of age, and only a few months into what would
become, Edward’s highly tumultuous reign. The England into which the future Edward III was born in 1312, was
experiencing great instability, Edward I had created one of the most powerful
kingdoms in Europe, in his lengthy reign between 1272 and 1307, he completed the English conquest
of Wales, intervened in Scotland and extended English rule across the Irish Sea in Ireland,
he also reformed the judiciary and administration, to complete a process whereby England became
the most centralised state in Europe of the High Middle Ages. However, the formation of this highly centralised and expanded English state
under Edward Longshanks, presented a major problem following his death
in 1307, his son, Edward II, was a weak ruler, one who placed enormous power in the hands
of a series of favoured individuals throughout his twenty-year reign, a practice which created
great resentment amongst the English lords and political community. The first of these favourites, Piers Gaveston,
had established a close relationship with Edward in around 1300, when they were both
still teenagers, it is still widely debated whether or not the relationship was sexual
in nature, but upon Edward’s accession in 1307, Gaveston was granted immense powers,
he was eventually made first earl of Cornwall and granted many offices, however his behaviour
highly offended the nobility and the king was forced to temporarily exile him to Ireland,
where he served as the royal viceroy, and ultimately, having returned to England from
one such exile, he was in the summer of 1312, killed by two senior English nobles, the earl
of Lancaster and the earl of Warwick. This happened just months before the future
Edward III’s birth at Windsor Castle, but the years ahead did not see any improvement
in the circumstances of Edward II’s rule, in the course of the 1310s, the king began
displaying a similar partiality to that which he previously showed to Gaveston, towards
Hugh Despenser, the son and namesake of the earl of Winchester. As the Despenser family rose in power in the
years ahead, the English nobility’s opposition to Edward II’s rule increased ever further,
additionally, Edward I’s gains in Scotland were overthrown in 1314, when the English
were heavily defeated by a Scottish army led by Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn,
as if all this were not bad enough, a famine gripped England in the mid-1310s, thus, the
England the future Edward III was living in during his infancy, was experiencing great
unrest, in large part owing to the poor governance of his father. Surprisingly little is known about his upbringing,
but young Edward would have been totally oblivious to the state of the country at the time he
was a young man, somewhat curiously, he was never made Prince of Wales, as nearly all
direct heirs to the throne of England since the late thirteenth century have been, instead
he bore the honorific title throughout his youth of earl of Chester. A separate household, independent from that
of the king and queen, was established for Edward and it was this which he was raised
in, Edward was also joined by several siblings in his youth, his brother John was born in
August 1316, followed by two sisters, Eleanor and Joan, in 1318 and 1321. Edward may have been partially educated by Richard Bury, a distinguished
scholar of fourteenth-century England, but in any event, his education and
upbringing would have centred more on the outward physical world, rather than the mental
word of books, he learned to read and write English and French, but he was only ever possessed
of a rudimentary ability to write Latin, he may also have learned some Flemish and German,
but, if the evidence of Edward’s later life is anything to go by, his primary concerns
in his youth, would have been horsemanship and skill in arms, this, after all, was the
High Middle Ages, when a king’s ability to lead his people in war, was of more consequence
than his knowledge of the minutiae of government administration. As he neared his tenth year, the political
situation in England reached breaking point, in 1321, a civil war broke out in England,
triggered in large part by the king’s ongoing support and lavish favour bestowed on the
Despenser family and their allies, this revolt was led by Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, a first
cousin of the king’s and one of those who had brought down Piers Gaveston in 1312. Although the king successfully snuffed out
this rebellion the following year in 1322 and Lancaster was executed that March near
Pontefract Castle, the tensions did not end there. Hugh Despenser was now ascendant within England,
but he increasingly had a new enemy in the queen herself, Isabella had always resented
her husband’s favourites, but she had not clashed with Gaveston, but with Despenser. In the 1320s it was different, the queen could
not see eye to eye with her husband’s favourite and as the months went by, this increasingly
drove her against her husband, and soon a showdown would occur. Ultimately, it was events in France, which
brought the political instability which had characterised Edward II’s entire reign to
a conclusion, the kings of England had held possessions in France since the time of the
Norman Conquest of England in 1066, England’s conqueror at that time was William, Duke of
Normandy, ruler of a large stretch of northern France. The two centuries that followed, saw this
continental empire increase to include further regions in the southwest of the country, including
the duchy of Aquitaine, and then decline, such that Normandy and other lands were lost. By the early fourteenth century, the kings
of England held only the duchy of Aquitaine in France, this was a personal possession
of the English Plantagenet monarchs, rather than a constituent part of the English kingdom,
moreover, because the duchy was a constituent part of the French kingdom,
Edward II theoretically owed fealty to the king of France, and until his death in 1314, this was Isabella’s father,
Philip IV, but thereafter a series of brief reigns followed, finally stabilising in January
1322 with the accession of Charles IV, Isabella’s brother. It was this familial tie, between the new
French king and the English queen, which provided the first stirrings of Edward II’s downfall
in the mid-1320s, shortly after Charles’s accession in France, in 1323 a dispute arose
in Aquitaine which saw an official of the French king hung by the seneschal of the duchy,
Edward II’s senior representative there. In response, Charles IV invaded the duchy,
an action which now led Hugh Despenser to have Isabella arrested in England, as a French
alien in the country, back in France, Charles IV responded to news of his sister’s imprisonment
in her adopted home, by sending an emissary to Edward II in England, recommending that Isabella should be sent to
France as his ambassador to undertake peace negotiations, it was an
unorthodox arrangement, but one which the English king consented to, Isabella left for
France in March 1325. This was the beginning of the end for Edward
II. In France, Isabella came into the orbit of
Roger Mortimer, an exiled English lord around whom a faction of Englishmen opposed to Edward
II and the Despensers had coalesced in France, the queen and Mortimer would soon enter into
a relationship. More significantly, in September 1325, the
young Edward, earl of Chester, the future great king, Edward III, was dispatched to
France. Why Edward sent his twelve-year-old son to
continental Europe is still something of a mystery, the most likely explanation is, that
he was unwilling to travel to France himself and appear before Charles IV as part of the
peace negotiations, during the course of which, he would have been required to pay homage
to Charles, a fellow king, but one who Edward was technically a subject of as duke of Aquitaine. Accordingly, Edward seems to have hit on the
idea of transferring the duchy of Aquitaine to his twelve-year-old son, as a way of avoiding
acknowledging his subordinate position to the French king. Whatever the reasons, it was a dreadful strategic
error. With the young Edward in
France, the anti-Despenser faction of English nobles at the Gallic court in Paris, led by Isabella and Roger Mortimer,
now had a viable contender to the English throne, to present as a figurehead for a revolt,
the error was soon realised in England, where the Despensers and the king, sent a command
to send the young Edward back home, but Isabella refused this. Thus, by the end of 1325, many of the necessary
conditions were in place, for Isabella and Mortimer to attempt to overthrow Edward II’s
regime and the Despensers in England, but Isabella’s brother was reluctant to help. For all that Charles IV had been willing to
help Isabella during her predicament in England, he drew the line at sponsoring an invasion
of England. Accordingly, in the summer of 1326, Isabella,
Mortimer and their supporters, with the young prince Edward in tow, headed for Hainault,
a small principality near what today is the border between France and Belgium, there,
Isabella came to an agreement with the count of the territory, William I, that in return
for military aid, she would marry Prince Edward to William’s daughter, Philippa, he agreed
and provided Isabella and Mortimer with several hundred men. This small force was ultimately enough, in
late September 1326, Isabella, Mortimer and about 700 men landed in Suffolk. In the weeks that followed, support for Edward
II simply evaporated throughout England, years of resentments at his reckless rule and the
undue favour he had shown to the Despensers suddenly burst forth. Most critically, the city of London declared
for Isabella and Prince Edward, in mid-November the king was apprehended in south Wales and
placed under arrest at Kenilworth Castle, while the senior members of the Despenser
family were captured and quickly put to death. Thereafter, the end of Edward II’s reign
was concluded with a relative degree of peaceful action, on the 13th of January 1327, parliament
resolved that Edward II had to be deposed in favour of his son and namesake. The resolution was put to the king at Kenilworth
and in tears, he agreed to abdicate on the 20th of January. The Crown Prince Edward,
was accordingly proclaimed as Edward III, King of England, Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine, in London on the 25th
of January, a week later, he was formally crowned at Westminster Abbey. All of these actions were undertaken in the
name of young Prince Edward, who had just turned fourteen in November 1326. There is no doubting that Edward was little
more than a pawn at this stage and that power in England now rested in the hands of his
mother Isabella, her lover Roger Mortimer, and their followers. It had been agreed by parliament in January,
that the young king would rule in conjunction with a council consisting of four bishops,
four earls and six barons of the realm, but this arrangement was quickly side-lined by
Isabella and Mortimer, the pair would effectively rule England for the three and a half years
that followed. A number of problems confronted the realm
during these early days of Edward III’s reign, the most pressing was the status of
the former king, Edward’s father. In the late spring of 1327, he was moved to
Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, however, a more lasting solution needed to be found,
Isabella and Mortimer’s regime was quickly creating unrest, particularly
owing to dissatisfaction at the power Mortimer now exercised, and this unrest was coalescing in some circles, around the idea of freeing the
former king and reinstating him on the throne, a final resolution to the
matter was reached on the 21st of September 1327, when the man who had ruled England for
two decades as Edward II, was discreetly murdered on Isabella and Mortimer’s orders at Berkeley
Castle. An arguably even greater problem confronted
the new regime to the north. Seeing the instability which the overthrow
of Edward II had created as an opportunity, the Scots, led by Robert the Bruce, had begun
a series of raids into northern England and the crown’s possessions in Ireland. Thus, in the summer of 1327, the young King
Edward III undertook his first military campaign into the north, this has become known as the
Weardale Campaign after the River Wear where so much of it occurred and played out in July
and August 1327. During the course of it James, Lord Douglas,
in association with the earls of Mar and Moray led a contingent of perhaps as many as 10,000
Scots south into northern England. Meanwhile, Isabella and Mortimer, as the newly
ascendant power in England, saw the possibility of a successful campaign against the old enemy
of Scotland as a good means of legitimising their new hold on power in young Edward’s
name. Thus in mid-July 1327 they headed north from
York with their own forces to engage Douglas and the Scots. Two weeks of jostling now occurred between
the two sides, as they manoeuvred around northern England trying to track each other’s location
and gain a tactical advantage before a stand-off occurred near the River Wear for three days. Then, finally, on the night of the 3rd of
August and into the early hours of the 4th, the Scottish attacked the English camp penetrating to the very centre of the
English royal encampment. In this moment, young Edward came exceptionally
close to being captured by Douglas’s troops, but although the ropes of the tent itself
were cut, the young monarch remained unharmed and uncaptured. This was the peak of the Weardale campaign. The Scottish attack was pushed back at its
most dangerous and although several further days of toing and froing ensued, ultimately
the Weardale Campaign was inconclusive and early in 1328, the regime was forced to stabilise
the northern border by agreeing to the Treaty of Northampton, whereby Edward renounced the
English crown’s claim to the throne of Scotland and acknowledged Robert the Bruce as King
of Scotland. However, the campaign and the nearness of
his capture had sparked in Edward a desire to master the art of war. Never again would he find himself so defenceless
in the face of an enemy on the field of battle. To compound matters, with the relative failure
of the Weardale Campaign, a diplomatic incident, which would have consequences which could
not have been foreseen at the time, erupted in February 1328. On the first day of that month, the French
king, Charles IV, Isabella’s brother, died, he had only daughters as his issue, and since
it had been decided that a woman would not succeed him, this brought the direct line
of the Capetian kings of France to an end, having ruled the country since the late tenth
century. There were just two candidates to succeed
Charles IV, firstly, Edward III of England who had the best claim, as a grandson of Philip
IV, Isabella’s father, the long ruling King of France from 1285 to 1314, and secondly
Philip of Valois. However, Edward’s claim was never given
real consideration in France, where the thought of a foreign monarch ruling France jointly
with England was not considered tolerable by the French nobility, consequently, the
claim of Philip of Valois, a direct descendant of Philip III of France, who had ruled between
1270 and 1285, was favoured, he was formally proclaimed as King of France on the 1st of
April 1328 and crowned at Rheims Cathedral as Philip VI on the 29th of May. It is important to remember when assessing
the events which followed, that Edward did have the better claim to the French throne
through his mother. Moreover, as a king himself already, he regarded
Philip as a social inferior, one who was merely a Count. This sense of his own divine right to rule
and superior claim would instil in Edward a great desire to emerge victorious from the
coming conflict. In the interim, between Philip’s accession
and his coronation at the end of May, a deputation arrived in Paris sent by Isabella and Mortimer,
to protest at Edward’s exclusion from the succession, however, despite their remonstrations,
the French would have none of it, eventually after months of objections Edward, by now
sixteen years of age, travelled to France in the spring of 1329 and paid homage at Amiens
Cathedral to Philip VI as his subject as Duke of Aquitaine. On the surface, this was an end to the matter,
but the dispute over the succession would prove much, much more extensive, than the
apparent show of acceptance in 1329 suggested. While these storms were brewing with both
Scotland and France, Edward was growing and developing his own independence. In November 1327, he had been married by proxy
to Philippa of Hainault, in line with the agreement Isabella had reached with Count
William of Hainault, in return for his support in overthrowing Edward II in 1326. However, while Edward had been willing to
follow his mother’s lead on this and many other matters in 1327 and 1328, by 1329 he
was becoming his own man and was less willing to allow the realm to be governed by his mother
and Mortimer. That year, allies of the young king sent secret
communiques to the Papacy in Avignon, where a rival Papacy to that in
Rome had been established, these messages alerted the Avignon Papacy, that the king was not able to rule in his
own right. Matters came to a head in 1330, enemies of
Mortimer’s had begun to spread rumours by now, that Edward II was still alive and a
plot was discovered to launch a rising in the old king’s name, led by his half-brother,
the earl of Kent. However, what really spurred the young king
to action, were rumours that Isabella was pregnant with Mortimer’s child. Concerns were now raised by Edward’s advisors,
notably a close confidante, William Montagu, that a plan might be undertaken by Isabella
and Mortimer to usurp the throne from Edward, in this scenario, Mortimer, who was still
married to his wife of nearly thirty years, Joan, would divorce her, then marry Isabella,
and the pair would place their own child on the throne. After a confrontation at Nottingham Castle
in mid-October 1330, Edward elected to act. On the night of the 19th of October, the young
king, still a few weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday, along with Montagu and a dozen or
so other companions, burst into Isabella and Mortimer’s apartments at Nottingham, a scuffle
ensued, in which a number of their attendants were killed, before the king had his mother
and her lover arrested. A parliament was summoned in the days that
followed and an announcement made to the political nation, that henceforth Edward would rule
in person. Mortimer was dispatched to London, where he
was accused and convicted without trial, of various high crimes and misdemeanours. On the 29th of November 1330, he was the first
individual to ever be executed at Tyburn, the site of a great many political executions
in England, in the centuries that followed. Edward spared his mother, but her political
career was over. In the aftermath of Mortimer’s execution,
she was packed off to Windsor Castle, where she is rumoured to have suffered a partial
nervous breakdown, she remained there under house arrest until 1332, before being allowed
to retire to Castle Rising in Norfolk, here she led an expensive, but largely sedentary
life for a quarter of a century. Her family retained contact
with her and occasionally there were even talks of her travelling to France, but Edward evidently balked at allowing
this, to a mother who had favoured Mortimer over her own son in the first years of his
reign. She became increasingly pious later in life
and became a nun of the Order of Saint Clare, shortly before her death on the 22nd of August
1358. With his mother and Mortimer now out of the
way, Edward III was free from late 1330 onwards, to begin ruling in his own right, just as
he turned eighteen years of age. The years ahead would see many triumphs, while
England had endured a quarter of a century of nearly constant turmoil, owing to Edward
II’s weak rule and then the usurpation of the throne by Mortimer, Edward’s reign would
see England’s power restored and expanded. Under his leadership, the country would ascend
to a height unparalleled at any other time in the medieval period. This expansion of English power began in Scotland,
in the aftermath of the Treaty of Northampton, agreed early in 1328, between King Robert
of Scotland and Mortimer and Isabella on Edward’s behalf. Robert had agreed to accept the territorial
claims of several English border lords, to lands in southern Scotland, notably Henry
Percy and Henry Beaumont, however, little was done to actually convey ownership of the
lands in question to these lords of northern England by Robert, nor was that state of affairs
remedied by the minority government which ruled Scotland from 1329 onwards, following
Robert’s death and the accession of his young son, David II. As a consequence, these lords began to agitate
to acquire these lands in the early 1330s. Known as ‘The Disinherited’, they now
began conspiring to overthrow the Bruce line in Scotland, by supporting once again, the
Balliol claim to the Scottish monarchy, the family which had been championed by Edward’s
grandfather, Edward Longshanks, over thirty years earlier, thus, Edward Balliol, the rival
claimant to the Scottish throne, was brought over from France by the ‘Disinherited’
lords, led by Henry Beaumount. Simultaneously they petitioned Edward III
for permission to undertake an invasion of Scotland, which was refused, although perhaps
with enough implicit support for their actions, that the ‘Disinherited’ now elected to
launch their own military action, independent of the king. In the summer of 1332, these lords launched
a naval expedition from Yorkshire, which landed at Kinghorn in Fife in eastern Scotland. Proceeding inland, they won a crushing victory
over the Scots at the Battle of Dupplin Moor, on the 11th of August 1332, the figures are
very imprecise, but perhaps as many as 5,000 Scots were killed, with very minimal losses
for the forces of the ‘Disinherited’ and the Balliols. Six weeks later at Scone, Edward Balliol was
crowned as King of Scotland, thus setting in motion the Second Scottish War of Independence,
which would last for a quarter of a century. Edward had not directly
supported the ‘Disinherited’ and Balliol in their invasion of Scotland, but a decision now needed to be made on his
stance towards the usurper. At a parliament in England which convened
at Westminster in September 1332, it was quickly suggested to Edward, that
the Treaty of Northampton, agreed in 1328, should be scrapped and Balliol’s claim to the throne of Scotland acknowledged. In order to gain Edward’s support, Balliol
even let it be known, that he was willing to concede that Scotland would be a fief or
vassal state of the English crown and would pay homage to Edward III. These offers aside, Edward was reluctant to
commit himself to a potentially lengthy war in Scotland, but his hands were forced early
in 1333 when Balliol was pushed into northern England, having suffered a military reverse
at the Battle of Annan in December 1332, this set of circumstances now required Edward to
throw his full support behind Balliol. The English parliament and the government,
including the offices of the exchequer and the courts, were moved to York, where they
would remain for the next several years, as the young king sought to re-impose English
control over Scotland, which his grandfather had been able to establish many years earlier,
but which had evaporated under Edward II’s ineffectual rule, it is an indication of the
single-mindedness and clarity of purpose with which Edward III pursued his goals throughout
his reign, that he simply relocated the organs of English government to the north of the
country, once he committed himself to the war in Scotland. The first action to be taken, was to try to
seize the border town of Berwick, which was a part of Scotland at the time, a siege was
initiated by Balliol, with Edward’s support in March of 1333. The king arrived himself to campaign on the
border in the early summer, by which time, the garrison and townspeople had made it clear
to the government of David II to the north, that they would surrender if they were not
provided with military support by mid-July. The response to this
ultimatum from the townspeople of Berwick, would lead to the first of Edward III’s many great military victories. The Guardian of Scotland during David II’s
minority, Sir Archibald Douglas, now assembled a significant army of upwards of 20,000 men
and advanced southwards to engage Edward’s forces, they clashed on the 19th of July 1333
at Halidon Hill, some two kilometres to the north-west of Berwick. Edward III started the Battle of Halidon Hill
heavily outnumbered, the English army consisted of less than 10,000 men, while Douglas led
approximately twice this amount to Berwick, however, what Edward lost in numbers was partially
made up for in strategic positioning, the king had occupied Halidon Hill specifically
because it dominated the surrounding region and he had resisted all temptations to move,
even when Douglas raided further south into northern England in the days leading up to
the battle. The English were also possessed of superior
military abilities, which would benefit Edward not just at Halidon, but many other times
in the years to come, paramount here was the use of the six foot long longbow, which could
deploy volleys of iron-tipped arrows, that penetrated chain mail armour in rapid succession,
this was a much more effective projectile than the slow, cumbersome crossbows that were
the mainstay of most European armies in the early fourteenth century, the widespread use
of the longbow was just one component of the military revolution, which Edward III was
responsible for in the mid-fourteenth century. The Battle at Halidon Hill commenced at about
midday, although numerically superior, the Scots were required to advance up Halidon
Hill where Edward’s armies occupied the high ground. It would have been advisable for Douglas to
have never tried to engage Edward while he maintained the high ground, but with the ultimatum
given by Berwick to the Scottish government about to expire the next day, Douglas had
little option but to try to relieve the town before it surrendered to the English besiegers. The result was an utter rout, the English
longbow was used to devastating effect, to decimate the Scottish armies as they attempted
to advance up the hillside, eventually the Scottish forces broke and the English, led
by Edward, advanced downwards themselves, chasing the fleeing Scots towards the sea,
by the end of the day thousands of Scottish troops were dead, perhaps as many as half
of Douglas’s army of 20,000, while Douglas himself and five Scottish earls lost their
lives during the battle. Halidon Hill was an immense triumph for Edward,
one of the most substantial victories ever won by an English force against the Scots,
it also began developing Edward’s reputation throughout Europe as a very formidable military
commander, moreover, English arms were now in the ascendant, where previously English
armies had been regarded on the continent, as distinctly inferior to their counterparts
in France and elsewhere. Politically the victory placed Edward in an
extremely advantageous position in Scotland, Berwick quickly surrendered and a number of
Scottish magnates paid homage to the English king in the days and weeks that followed,
more pressingly, Balliol was restored to the Scottish throne and in February 1334, he agreed
to surrender eight counties constituting the entirety of southern Scotland below the Firth
of Forth and the Solway Firth, then in June 1334, Balliol paid homage to Edward as his
liege lord at Newcastle. David II and his followers fled to France,
completing a whirlwind campaign in which Scotland had been almost entirely brought under English
control in eighteen months. Thus, by mid-1334, the northern frontier seemed
to have been secured, in a way which it had not been since the days of Edward Longshanks,
but where Edward III succeeded, his erstwhile ally, Edward Balliol, seemed to constantly
be found wanting, no sooner had Edward reinstated him in Scotland, than Balliol managed to provoke
another revolt in the summer of 1334, he was quickly forced to flee Scotland again, once
again leading Edward to intervene on his behalf, late in 1334 and into 1335, in 1336 he would
even campaign into the Highlands, but his encroachments continued to generate resistance. Thus, by 1337, Scotland remained somewhat
unsecured and the war would drag on for many years to come, yet, there is little doubting
the overall success of Edward’s policies towards Scotland in the 1330s, he put England
on a surer footing in the north than it had been for thirty years and secured territorial
concessions along the border, most significantly he captured Berwick, which would remain an
English stronghold on the Scottish border henceforth, except for a brief period in the
fifteenth century. Moreover, Edward might well have gone on to
establish an even greater control over Scotland, had it not been for other affairs drawing
his attentions elsewhere in 1337, the distraction would come from France and the fallout would
have consequences for both England and France which would reverberate for over one-hundred
years. The causes of what has come to be known as
the Hundred Years War lay in the earlier death of Charles IV in 1328 and the end of the Capetian
dynasty in France, as we have seen, Charles’s death led to the accession of Philip of the
House of Valois as Philip VI of France in the spring of 1328, in reality, Edward had
a better claim to the throne of France, but the French nobility had quickly elected to
support Philip’s accession, being unwilling to have an English foreigner rule them, Isabella
and Mortimer had reluctantly accepted this state of affairs and sent Edward to France
in 1329, to pay homage to Philip, in his role as Duke of Aquitaine, however, the matter
did not end there and would be resurrected in the years ahead once tensions created an
opportune moment for the issue of the succession to be revisited. In many ways, it was the war in Scotland which
created the opportunity for Edward to renew his claims in France. France and Scotland were perennial allies
throughout the late medieval period, this ‘Auld Alliance’ being formed out of their
mutual antagonism with England at various times, it is unsurprising then to find that
David II and his advisors had fled to France, following Edward’s victory at Halidon Hill
in 1333. Over the next few years as Edward attempted
to fully conquer Scotland, Philip VI of France offered substantial support for David’s
cause, this peaked in 1336, when an enormous French invasion of Scotland was mooted, but
Edward was able to stave off the possibility of this, by devastating the coastal regions
of Scotland, burning crops and rounding up livestock, no French army could land there
if it would not be able to find food to sustain itself in the weeks that followed, and so
the invasion was called off. Other controversies led to a further deterioration
in relations between France and England in the mid-1330s, notably the refuge that Edward
provided to Philip VI’s cousin and mortal enemy, Robert, count of Artois, in England,
but in the end it was the simplest route towards the eruption of conflict, which caused the
Hundred Years War. Edward’s most vulnerable territory lay in
France itself, on the 24th of May 1337, Philip VI formally announced that he was confiscating
the Duchy of Aquitaine from Edward. Late that summer, the Count of Eu was sent
into the Gascony region with an invasion force, which devastated the countryside, but did
not seize the duchy’s main town of Bordeaux from the English there, this invasion constituted
the first military action of a war that would last for over a hundred years. Once the war was entered into in 1337, Edward
and England were immediately faced with a tactical problem, Aquitaine was located in
the south-west of France and was relatively difficult to supply from England, as a result,
Edward’s strategy from the very inception of the war was to strike at the French, by
attacking Philip VI’s possessions directly across the English Channel in northern France
and to use territorial gains here, as a means of pressuring the French monarch into ceasing
his attacks on Aquitaine. Yet there were problems with his methods too. As he had done in Scotland recently, Edward
would try to attempt to burn and pillage the countryside of France as a means of forcing
the French to the negotiating table and gaining a strategic advantage. But his approach may have
been more counter-productive than anything else. This type of scorched earth policy could often have the direct opposite
result, instead instilling a hatred of Edward and his armies amongst
the common people of the regions they were brutalising. As such, it did not serve to win over these
areas, but actually made them more solidly loyal to the French in the long run. Even this strategy, though, had its drawbacks, principally in terms of the
logistics of transporting an army to northern France. By the mid-fourteenth century, the English
merchant fleet was substantial, but the ships of the time were small and it would prove
highly difficult to transport an army of the size Edward would need to gain military victories
in northern France, this was the problem which Edward faced in 1337 upon the outbreak of
war with France. The solution which presented itself, mirrored
a strategy which Edward’s grandfather, Edward I, had employed in the 1290s, he looked for
support amongst the many princes and rulers of the Low Countries and in Germany, hence,
in the summer of 1337, the young king, still just twenty-four years of age, dispatched
the bishop of Lincoln, Henry Burghersh, and his close ally, William Montagu, recently
ennobled as the earl of Salisbury, to Europe. Alliances were quickly negotiated in the weeks
that followed, with Hainault, Gelders and Brabant in the Low Countries,
and, most significantly, with Louis, Duke of Bavaria, the current Holy Roman Emperor. Overall Burghersh and Montagu were able to
acquire commitments from these rulers to provide approximately 7,000 troops to aid Edward in
France, as well as shipping and other logistical support, to bring the 10,000 men which Edward
intended to bring across to France himself, meaning that a force of nearly 20,000 men
would be brought into the field in northern France. Yet these alliances came at a cost, Louis and the other princes had
been promised substantial financial subventions from England to pay
for the mobilisation of their armies, these amounted to £124,000 alone by the end of
1337, a very considerable sum for its time which amounted to several times Edward’s
annual income, therefore Edward was forced to borrow heavily from the merchant banking
families of Italy in the opening stages of the war, to pay for the alliance he had created,
new taxes were also introduced in England and parliament was persuaded to vote Edward
an extensive subsidy or one-off payment. This latter development was significant. Though some accounts tend to view the manner
in which kings such as Edward III and earlier his grandfather, Edward I, had recourse to
parliament for subsidies and financing as a self-indulgent use of the parliament, such
recourse was actually crucial to the development of the English parliamentary system. It was always understood in Late Medieval
and Early Modern times, that parliaments were called when the king or queen of the day needed
funding from the political nation and the political nation in return could express its
grievances and requests to the monarch. Edward’s use of parliament in this way,
actually facilitated the gradual development of the ‘mother parliament’ in the fourteenth
century. Eventually Edward set sail with his armies
from England on the 16th of July 1338 and passed Antwerp in the days that followed with
nearly 5,000 men, a meeting followed on the 5th of September at Koblenz on the River Rhine
in Germany between Edward and Louis of Bavaria, at which the Holy Roman Emperor appointed
the English king as vicar general of the Empire, a significant title which theoretically put
the military resources of the entire Empire at Edward’s disposal. With this title in place and his armies largely
assembled in the Low Countries, Edward was finally in a position to take the field in
northern France in the spring of 1339, however, this first year of active military campaigning
brought with it some frustration, as Philip VI refused to engage Edward in direct combat,
an engagement at La Capelle in north-eastern France in October was the closest they came
to meeting on the field of battle and this proved a largely abortive clash. Perhaps it was owing to his frustrations at
this first year of military campaigning, that Edward now made the momentous decision to
resurrect his claim to the French throne. Up until early 1340, his stated reason for
being in France was to defend his possessions in Aquitaine, but this changed in January
1340, the decision may have been due to a new ally of Edward’s, Jacob van Artevelde,
a native of Ghent who had become the predominant political figure in the towns of Flanders,
in what is now modern-day Belgium. Van Artevelde threw Flanders’ support behind
Edward in 1339 and persuaded the English monarch to resurrect his claims to the French throne,
a right which Edward formally expressed on the 26th of January 1340, when he first began
using the title and arms of the kings of France. Edward’s decision to claim the French throne
was perhaps his most famous and enduring act, in a lifetime characterised by innovations
and achievements, the monarchs of England would claim the French throne down to 1802,
more immediately it gave England reason to involve itself on the continent, in ways which
would allow the English state to retain a foothold in France, until the middle of the
sixteenth century. Having claimed the French throne at the outset
of 1340, the focus of the war shifted that year to the naval campaign in the English
Channel, Philip VI had been building up an impressive fleet in the early stages of the
war, which, with contingents provided from his ally, the Kingdom of Castile in Spain,
amounted to just over 200 ships by the summer of 1340, the English fleet was being quickly
added to and by the time a decisive engagement was fought in 1340, it had been brought to
approximately 150 ships. The decisive naval engagement of this period
of the Hundred Years War, occurred at Sluys off the coast of Flanders on Midsummer’s
Day, the 24th of June 1340. Here the numerically smaller English fleet
managed to engage the French ships from relatively close quarters, as a result, the English longbow
which had been used so effectively in Edward’s armies since Halidon Hill in 1333, was used
to devastating effect, by the evening it is estimated that as many as 18,000 French mariners
and soldiers had lost their lives, and all but 23 of over 200 French ships had been destroyed
or captured, while all of the French senior naval commanders had lost their lives. Edward demonstrated here, that he was not
just a military commander on land, but that he was also able to win substantial victories
at sea, indeed, he had been in the thick of the fighting himself and was wounded by an
arrow in the thigh. Sluys was a very considerable victory indeed
for Edward, it secured English control over the English Channel for years to come and
ensured that the south of England was free from any potential naval attacks, throughout
the mid-fourteenth century. However, a challenge now faced Edward, which
could not be defeated in a land or naval battle, the cost of the war had escalated considerably,
accordingly, in November 1340, a few months after the victory at Sluys, Edward returned
in a secretive fashion to England, to confront the government, which he had placed in charge
of affairs in his absence, on the financial issues. Notably the archbishop of Canterbury, John Stratford, was furious at
first, but a reconciliation of sorts was eventually patched up between
the pair in 1341, as Edward’s attention was yet again drawn to Scotland. While the war had been raging in France in
the late 1330s and into the early 1340s, events in Scotland had necessarily fallen down the
pecking order of priorities for Edward, but the conflict here had never ended, indeed
David II, by now entering his late teenage years and developing his own independence
as a claimant to the Scottish throne, had returned to the country from France in the
summer of 1341, both Edinburgh and Stirling had quickly been seized for the Bruce cause
thereafter, these occurrences now required Edward’s attention and in the autumn of
1341, he once again made Scotland a priority, campaigning on the
Anglo-Scottish border throughout the winter of 1341 and 1342. Yet, while Edward might have wished to divert
his attentions in a sustained fashion towards Scotland, before long, the war in France became
the ultimate priority again. In April 1341, John III, the duke of Brittany,
the ruler of the duchy of Brittany, a substantial fiefdom in the extreme northwest of the country,
died without a clear heir, the succession dispute which now arose, presented an opportunity
for Edward to test whether his claim to the title of the crown of France had any weight
in France. To do so, Edward supported the claim of John
de Montfort, a relative of the recently deceased duke through his niece, while King Philip
VI of France was supporting the claim of Charles, Count of Blois, to succeed to the duchy. Thus began what is known as the War of the
Breton Succession, a major component part of the wider Hundred Years War, and one which
would drag on in its own right, for the ensuing quarter of a century. In the immediate sense, the war in Brittany
offered Edward a good opportunity to continue to challenge Philip’s authority in France,
one which he exploited expertly in the years ahead. The War of the Breton Succession continued
apace into the mid-1340s and it was this localised conflict which was the pretext for Edward,
to begin preparing a major new invasion force in England in 1345. It would be the following year before it finally
left for France, but when it did the campaign of 1346, would produce some
of the most significant engagements of the entire Hundred Years War, and some of Edward’s most famous military
victories. The exact goals and purpose of the 1346 expedition
to France, were kept largely secret while it was being prepared in England early in
the year, and indeed it is still not clear if there was a specific strategy in mind from
the beginning, or if the approach was eventually decided upon and developed in response to
events in France. Whatever the overall plan had been, we know
what actually occurred, Edward’s army, consisting of between 12,000 and 15,000 men landed on
the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy on the 12th of July 1346, his goal was to undertake
an extensive chevauchée or military raid across French territory, a strategic approach
which Edward became particularly fond of in France and which formed another central plank of the military revolution
which Edward implemented amongst the English armed forces in the mid-fourteenth
century. The campaign was enormously successful in
the weeks that followed, the first major strategic victory came on the 26th of July, when the
town of Caen in Normandy was seized by Edward, a sack of the city lasted five days thereafter,
before Edward’s forces headed west, the route to Paris now lying open. As substantial as the sacking of Caen had
been, though, the main military success of Edward’s 1346 campaign, occurred a month
later. As the English king advanced on Paris, Philip
VI was furiously gathering his forces to protect the French capital, and by mid-August, the
French monarch had gathered together an army, consisting of well in excess of 20,000 men,
which heavily outnumbered Edward’s forces, which numbered approximately 12,000 men by
the late summer. Meanwhile, Edward had skirted Paris and turned
north towards Flanders, where he hoped to combine with some of his erstwhile allies
from the Low Countries, thus, when the two monarchs finally clashed on the 26th of August
1346, it was far to the north of Paris near Calais, just outside the
town of Crécy-en-Ponthieu. The Battle of Crécy on the 26th of August 1346, would prove to be one
of the most consequential engagements of the entire Hundred Years War. When word reached Edward that Philip’s army
was nearby, he had his own forces occupy the high ground on the right bank of the River
Maie, as it flowed passed the village of Crécy, the use of the high ground had served Edward
well at Halidon Hill and it would do the same here. The English forces were formed into three
units, one of dismounted close combat fighters led by Edward himself, and these were flanked
on either side by two divisions of longbow-men. The French attack came late in the afternoon
and would prove disastrous, the favoured French projectile weapon of the crossbow, proved
completely inferior to the English longbow and a division of French crossbowmen quickly
broke, under sustained English longbow fire, Philip then attempted to send his cavalry
directly up the hill towards the English centre, but like the Scottish at Halidon Hill, the
French cavalry was completely overpowered by sustained longbow fire from the English,
as they attempted to surmount the high ground. By the time the cavalry charge reached Edward’s
arrayed close-quarters infantry division, they were already severely weakened. The resulting clash was an enormously bloody
affair, with the French suffering many casualties, by the time the French broke off and left
the field in defeat, towards dawn on the 27th of August, approximately 4,000 French troops
had been killed, while just a few hundred of Edward’s troops had been lost. If there were any doubt by 1346 of the superiority
of the English longbow against continental methods of warfare and the use of the crossbow
as a projectile, the Battle of Crécy dispelled that doubt, it also solidified Edward’s
reputation as one of the great military commanders of Europe, having comprehensively defeated
the French king, despite being outnumbered by nearly two to one at the outset of the
engagement on the 26th of August, significantly, Crécy was also notable, for the use by Edward’s
forces of a small number of canon, the first recorded instance of the use of artillery
in a field battle in Western Europe. The immediate implication of Edward’s astounding
victory at Crécy, was that northern France was now largely unprotected, as a result,
Edward turned his forces towards the nearby town of Calais and laid siege to it on the
3rd of September. It would take nearly a full year to capture
the northern French port, but eventually on the 3rd of August 1347 it fell, this must
surely stand as one of Edward’s greatest accomplishments. Calais would remain in English hands for over
two centuries, only finally being retrieved by the French in 1558. The victory at Crécy and the inception of
the eventually successful siege of Calais, were not the only major successes Edward’s
England was enjoying in the late summer and autumn of 1346. While the king was in France, the conflict
had continued on England’s northern border with Scotland, in the early autumn David II
now attempted to take advantage of Edward’s absence on the continent by invading northern
England, it would prove to be a catastrophic error, he was encouraged in this by Philip
VI, who called on his Scottish ally to honour their alliance by attacking England. On the 17th of October 1346, David II’s
forces, numbering approximately 12,000 men, clashed with an English force of just slightly
over half the number David brought into the field, at Neville’s Cross near Durham. The English forces, led by Lord Ralph Neville,
comprehensively routed the numerically superior Scots, perhaps as many as 2,000 of the Scottish
army’s troops were killed, but most ominously David II was captured by Neville’s forces. Thus, by the autumn of 1347, Edward’s fortunes
were soaring. In France he had won a stunning victory over
Philip at Crécy, in the late summer of 1346 and he followed it up a year later, by capturing
the town of Calais. In Scotland, the de Bruce contender to the
throne had been captured, leaving Edward in an extremely powerful negotiating position,
both in France and Scotland. To consolidate his position, Edward negotiated
a nine months long truce in October 1347 and set off for England victorious. It was at this zenith of achievement back
in England during the winter of 1347 and 1348, that Edward elected to follow through on an
idea he had been harbouring since at least 1344. Enthralled by the idea of King Arthur and
his Round Table, Edward had long had designs to set up his own Round Table and knightly
order, and in 1344, he had even begun construction work on a headquarters for such a knightly
order at Windsor Castle. Now, with his military fortunes prospering
in both France and Scotland, he elected to implement a version of this scheme, this was
to be a knightly order dedicated to St George, it was named for the sword belt which the
knights of the order would carry, thus was born the Order of the Garter, a chivalric
order which remains the most senior order of knighthood in the British honours system,
down to the present day. The order’s emblem is a garter with the
motto Honi soit qui mal y pense, which translated from the Middle French means ‘Shame on him
who thinks evil of it’. The phrase is said to have been uttered by
King Edward at court when the Countess of Salisbury’s garter slipped from her leg
while she was dancing. The king uttered the words as a rebuke to
some courtiers who were laughing at the incident and so his words became emblematic of chivalrous
honour. However, this story is most likely spurious
and there is no actual written account of this version of events until the 1460s, over
a century after the founding of the Order. At the time of its foundation, the Order of
the Garter consisted of Edward himself and twenty-five knights. Many of those who were amongst the founder
knights are unsurprising, for instance, Edward’s eldest son and namesake, Edward, known as
the Black Prince, was one of the first knights, as was Henry, earl of Lancaster, and several
of the most senior nobles of the realm and supporters of Edward’s cause such as Thomas
de Beauchamp, eleventh earl of Warwick; Jean de Grailly; Ralph Stafford, first earl of
Stafford; William Montagu, second earl of Salisbury; John de Lisle, second Baron Lisle;
Bartholomew Burghersh, second Baron Burghersh; John de Beauchamp, first Baron Beauchamp;
John de Mohun, second Baron Mohun; Thomas Holland, first earl of Kent; and John Grey,
first Baron Grey. But there were one or two surprising figures
amongst the first Knights of the Garter, in particular the inclusion of Roger Mortimer,
second earl of March, seems a curious pick. This was the grandson of none other than,
the attempted usurper of Edward’s royal authority in the late 1320s, Roger Mortimer,
who was executed at Tyburn in 1330, this younger Mortimer had been rehabilitated in the early
1340s, in part owing to his friendship with the Black Prince. Rounding out the list of the first members of the Order of the Garter
were Sir Hugh Courtenay; Sir Richard Fitzsimon; Sir Miles Stapleton;
Sir Thomas Wale; Sir Hugh Wrottesley; Sir Nele Loring; Sir John Chandos; Sir James Audley;
Sir Otho Holand; Sir Henry Eam; Sir Sanchet D’Abrichecourt and Sir Walter Paveley. Many of these individuals had accompanied
Edward in his campaign to France in 1346 and it seems relatively clear that the Order was created in 1348 in part,
as a means of memorialising the great victories Edward had won at Crécy
and Calais. In tandem with the establishment of the Order
of the Garter, Edward began a vast reconstruction of Windsor Castle. Conscious of the propaganda value of an imposing royal residence, Edward
oversaw the most significant expansion of the primary royal residence of
the High Middle Ages, eventually expending £50,000 on the new complex, the most expensive
building project undertaken by any English monarch during the medieval period. And yet it was just one of many great residences
which Edward could hold claim to. For instance, he had inherited Woodstock Palace
in Oxfordshire, a vast royal residence in Oxfordshire which King Henry I had built and
where the Black Prince was born in 1330. Woodstock would later become the site of Blenheim
Palace. However, just as Edward’s reign was peaking,
it was hit by catastrophe, one which Edward could do nothing to prevent, the bubonic plague,
or what is more commonly referred to as the Black Death in its fourteenth century iteration,
arrived in Europe in 1347, having been carried to the continent from the Black Sea region,
where it was hosted in the fleas which lived on black rats. These were transported to Western Europe in
1347, on board the ships of some Genoese merchants who had trading concessions in the ports of
the Crimea, on the northern shores of the Black Sea. Bubonic plague causes a dreadful illness and
death, during the first week of infection the infected individual develops flu-like
symptoms including a fever, headache and vomiting, then the individual’s lymph nodes begin
swelling to form what were known in the fourteenth century as ‘buboes’, generally on the
neck, armpits and groin or where one had been bitten by the fleas which carried the plague. These ‘buboes’ would eventually break
open and gangrene would develop in the extremities of the body such as the fingers, toes and
the tip of the nose, death, when it occurred, however, would be due to organ failure, as
the disease ravaged the body internally. Estimates of both the population of Europe
at the time and the mortality rate of the plague, are notoriously imprecise, but it
is generally understood that between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death killed as many as
30 million people in Europe, approximately one-third of the population of the continent. The plague arrived in England in the late
summer of 1348 and the first recorded cases in London occurred in October. Edward was wholly aware of how fatal it could
prove, as his fourteen-year-old daughter Joan had succumbed to the disease in Bordeaux in
France right around the time that the disease first appeared in England in the summer of
1348. As a consequence, like many other English
monarchs after him, Edward left London and spent much of the months that followed, in less densely populated areas,
where this catastrophic plague was circulating less aggressively, this was effectively a form
of medieval quarantine. The Black Death caused enormous difficulties
in England, not just in terms of the sheer scale of the mortality and suffering inflicted
by it, but also in terms of the social and economic disruption the pandemic unleashed. A parliament which had been planned for 1349
was abandoned and the courts were adjourned for months, meanwhile, mass graves were dug to bury the dead and the
country began implementing quarantine and sanitation measures, as best
it could for a medieval state. Though such measures seem relatively simple
by contemporary standards, recent events of the twenty-first century, have highlighted
how critical simply quarantining and removing of the still diseased bodies of the dead are,
to solving any pandemic and Edward’s government was efficient in doing so after the initial
onslaught of 1348. But the most pressing issue in the aftermath
of the first calamitous wave of the disease was the issue of labour shortages, with the
population of the continent drastically reduced, a lack of manpower would bedevil the European
economy for decades to come, however, this crisis was offset in England through one of
Edward’s most subtle but significant achievements. In the summer of 1349, a preliminary ordinance
regulating labour was issued by the king and this was followed up on in 1351, with the
Statute of Labourers. Through this, the labour market was regulated
by fixing wages at their pre-plague level, ensuring that the English economy could continue
to function, even with a drastic labour shortage in the 1350s. Although it may lack the fanfare of Edward’s
military victories, the passage of the Statute of Labourers was a highly significant aspect
of the reign of Edward III. It stabilised the English labour market in
the period of chaos which ensued from the Black Death and through it, England was the
only country in Europe, which was able to implement effective labour controls in the
1350s. There is some debate as to efficacy though,
and historians have also pointed to the fact that the Statute did create social tensions
and unrest as well amongst workers, who felt they were being short-changed in a labour
market which was advantageous to them in the aftermath of the plague. Moreover, enforcement of the Statute of Labourers
on the local level in England was largely entrusted into the hands of the Justices of
the Peace, judicial officers who enforced the laws on the county level. These officers already existed prior to the
emergency created by the Black Death, but the 1350s saw them gain greater authority
and significance as local officers of the crown, hence, Edward not only oversaw the
stabilisation of the labour market in the aftermath of the Black Death, through the
Statute of Labourers, but the method by which this was done, saw the office of the Justice
of the Peace begin to emerge in its modern form. The Justices of the Peace would occupy an
important position in English local government for centuries to come and the office was exported
to many other countries, between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Further domestic reforms were implemented
by Edward in the 1350s, to better respond to the crisis brought on by the Black Death,
the most noteworthy was surely a considerable reform of the English coinage which was initiated
in 1351, gold coins were introduced and a new silver coin called the groat also entered
circulation. Edward was no administrator with a penchant
for the minutiae of government reforms such as were being carried out in the early 1350s,
but his strength in this respect, lay in his ability to pick individuals who were well
suited to overseeing his domestic policies and delegating authority to them. Paramount here, were officials such as John
Thoresby and William Shareshull, who oversaw the implementation of measures such as the
re-coinage in the middle years of the century. The reform of England’s finances was especially
necessary to maintain the perennial war effort, the wars with France and Scotland had not
gone away, but the continent-wide emergency created by the Black Death, ensured that the
truce which Edward had negotiated with Philip VI, late in 1347, was largely maintained through
the late 1340s. The death of the French
king, Edward’s long-standing rival, on the 22nd of August 1350, encouraged Edward to begin aggressively pursuing his
claims in France again, against Jean II, Philip’s son, however, a renewed French alliance with
the kingdom of Castile in Spain, and the presence of a Castilian fleet in the English Channel
in the early 1350s, limited Edward’s ability to carry out any further invasion of France
at this time, in the meantime, the succession war continued in Brittany as a proxy of the
Hundred Years War. As a result of this latter delay and the fallout
across Western Europe from the Black Death, no new major campaign would take place in
France until the mid-1350s. When it eventually came in 1355, Edward planned
a two pronged invasion, one directly across the English Channel to northern France, beginning
in Normandy, with a subsidiary campaign being undertaken to the southwest in Gascony. The latter campaign through Gascony would
feature one of Edward’s sons in a prominent fashion for the first time. Edward and Queen Phillipa had at least twelve
children, born at regular intervals between 1330 and the mid-1350s, nine of these lived
beyond infancy, a high ratio for the late medieval period, of these nine, five were
sons and four were daughters. Edward’s heir was his son and namesake,
Edward, born in 1330 and known as the Black Prince, he would play a significant role in
the war in France from the late 1350s onwards, having previously commanded a detachment at
Crécy, when he was just sixteen years of age and having also been a founding member
of the Order of the Garter two years later. Indeed, it was the Black Prince who commanded
the campaign in Aquitaine in 1355. Of his other issue, Edward’s third oldest
surviving son, John of Gaunt, so-named after the town of Ghent where he was born in 1340,
just three months before the Battle of Sluys, was also destined to play a significant role
in the Hundred Years War as well as in England’s domestic politics in the last fifteen or so
years of Edward III’s life. The dual expeditions of 1355, did not arrive
in France until late in the year, the king himself led his expedition in person across
the Channel to Calais, in the very later autumn, but news then arrived in France that the Scots
had yet again, taken advantage of the English engagements on the continent to invade northern
England, accordingly, Edward quickly made his way back across the English Channel, and
in January 1356 he led his last military campaign into Scotland, reasserting English control
over the border region. As a result of this ‘about-turn’ in northern
France, the Black Prince’s campaign to Aquitaine, would prove much the more consequential of
the two English expeditions to France of the mid-1350s, the heir to the throne travelled
with roughly 300 ships and several thousand men for southwest France in mid-September
1355 and was at Bordeaux by October. The military campaign season was nearly over
by this time, but Edward Jr. made a short foray inland towards Toulouse, before retiring
back to Bordeaux for what remained of the winter. While the campaigns of 1355 had proved lacklustre,
that of 1356 was one of the most significant of the Hundred Years War. The Black Prince set out in July, on a great
chevauchée, an extended military raid through France, proceeding east through central France
with a force of approximately 6,000 men, the Black Prince’s forces burnt several towns
and villages including Bourges, before doubling back towards Bordeaux in late August. It was during this movement that the French
king, Jean II, elected to engage the English army. Jean might well have believed that the Black
Prince was an inferior commander compared with his father and in any event, the French
forces numbered over 10,000, holding an extensive numerical advantage over the English, but
if Jean II believed these factors would give him the upper hand, he was sorely mistaken. At the resulting Battle of Poitiers, which
took place on the 19th of September 1356, the Black Prince’s forces heavily defeated
the French yet again, a feigned retreat first throwing the French lines into disarray and
the English longbow once again being used to devastating effect, perhaps as many as
2,500 French troops were dead by the end of the battle, but most substantial was the capture
of Jean II himself. With David II of Scotland still in English
custody since the Battle of Neville’s Cross ten years earlier, the kings of France and
Scotland were now both Edward III’s captives, this placed the English king
in a highly advantageous position, he eventually elected to ransom both in return for military, territorial and
political concessions. On the 3rd of October 1357, the Treaty of
Berwick was reached with the Scots, whereby David II was released after eleven years in
captivity. Edward Balliol had relinquished his claim
to the Scottish throne in 1356, so Edward III could now have pressed his own claim to
Scotland had he wished to, but instead he opted for a more sanguine approach. David II was released in return for a ransom
of 100,000 marks, or just under £67,000, but the arrangement ensured Edward’s final
acceptance of the de Bruce kings’ suzerainty over Scotland, thus bringing the long Second
Scottish War of Independence to a conclusion, after a quarter of a century of conflict. The arrangement eventually arrived at in France,
in return for Jean II’s release, took longer to negotiate. In the interim, the French king was taken
to England and held at various locations including the Tower of London and a preliminary treaty
to release Jean and put an end to the war, was worked out in London in 1358. Through this it was agreed that Edward would
be acknowledged in his possession of Calais and granted the neighbouring County of Ponthieu
in the north around the modern-day region of Picardy, while the duchy of Aquitaine would
be expanded to incorporate much of western France, a very sizeable ransom would also
be paid in return for Jean’s release. Yet this draft agreement could not be finalised
and as a result in 1359, Edward began preparing a new military expedition against France and
expanded his demands to include former English possessions in Normandy, as well as control
over Maine and Anjou and suzerainty over the duchy of Brittany. In return, Edward promised to renounce all
of his claims on the throne of France, but the territorial concessions the English king
was now seeking, would have involved England taking direct possession of almost half of
France and virtually the entirety of the north and west of the country. The French could not
seriously consider acquiescing to this latest negotiating position, even with their king in English custody. As a consequence, active military campaigning
recommenced in the autumn of 1359, when an army of over 10,000 men commanded by Edward
himself, departed across the Channel for Calais, a long and destructive march through eastern
and central France followed in the ensuing months, with Edward threatening, though not
taking, both Rheims and Paris, although he was unable to win a strategic victory which
would have improved his bargaining power at renewed peace negotiations. By the late 1350s, the French were wary of
meeting Edward and his English forces head-on, having suffered multiple defeats against English
armies which they heavily outnumbered over the past fifteen or so years. In the midst of this stalemate, negotiations
recommenced in the early summer of 1360, the resulting Peace or Treaty of Brétigny, so
named after the town near Chartres where it was negotiated, was eventually ratified by
Edward on the 24th of October 1360. Under its terms, Jean II was to be released
in return for an enormous ransom of £500,000, Edward was to renounce his claims on the French
throne and in return, he would receive the territorial concessions which Jean had agreed
to in London in 1358, being Calais, the county of Ponthieu and an enlarged duchy of Aquitaine. Ultimately some of the terms of the Treaty
of Brétigny would never be ratified. Specifically, Edward was reluctant to relinquish
all his claims on the crown of France and Jean II was reticent about removing all claims
he had to suzerainty over the duchy of Aquitaine, yet the Treaty was agreed to and would hold
for nearly a whole decade. The treaty is typically seen as marking the
conclusion of the first phase of the Hundred Years War, if one were to try to evaluate
it in these terms, it would have to be concluded that the Treaty signified a major victory
for England in that same conflict and marked arguably the peak of Edward’s reign. England’s territorial possessions in France,
were greater as a result of the Treaty of Brétigny than they would be at any other
point during the Hundred Years War. Clearly then, the peace of 1360 was a major
victory for Edward and ensured that during the 1360s, the English king could rest easy,
knowing he was at the height of his powers in France and the Scottish border had been
firmly secured, with the arrangement reached with David II in 1357. By comparison with the three decades which
had preceded it, the 1360s were a comparatively tranquil period of Edward’s reign. The Peace of Brétigny would last for nearly
the whole of the 1360s and as a consequence England enjoyed the first period of sustained
peace of Edward III’s long reign. Given the entirely advantageous footing the
country was on by the time the first stage of the Hundred Years War ended in 1360, this
was hardly an undesirable situation. On the domestic front, there were a number
of important developments during these years, for example in 1362, with
the assent of parliament, Edward set about reforming the wool staple, the mechanism whereby wool was exported out
of England. The goal now, was to set up a new staple at
Calais for the export of wool to the continent, through a single continental port, the initiative
had considerable significance, as the English wool trade, arguably the country’s greatest
export commodity for the ensuing three centuries, was largely sold through markets in northern
France and above all in the Low Countries, through the thriving mercantile centre of
Antwerp. For many years to come after the reform of
the staple in the 1360s, in attempting to establish a staple at Calais,
Edward was pre-empting the market demands of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Yet the most substantial domestic reform of
the 1360s concerned the English language. When the Normans conquered England between
1066 and the early 1070s, they brought with them the French language and established it
as the language of government and the law courts. During the course of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, a new language developed, a hybrid of Norman French and the Germanic tongue spoken
by the Anglo-Saxons prior to the Norman Conquest. This ‘English’ language, known as ‘Middle
English’, had become the common tongue of the English people by Edward III’s reign,
but French remained the language of the courts and government nonetheless. Edward attempted to overhaul this, in 1362
a Statute of Pleading was passed, which ordered English to be used in the law courts, similarly, when parliament met in 1363,
the opening formalities were conducted in English, rather than French,
for the first time, consequently the 1360s saw a number of important advances in the
formal adoption of English as the language of government and the courts in England. Elsewhere, the 1360s were also an important
period in the governance of the Lordship of Ireland, because of the focus on France and
Scotland during the majority of his reign, Edward had been unable to devote much time
personally to Ireland, a country which the English crown ruled about half of in the east,
north and south of the island. A number of Irish lordships ruled the western
half of the country and continued to challenge English rule there. Accordingly, in the early 1360s, Edward entrusted
the governance of Ireland to his second eldest surviving son, Lionel of Clarence. This appointment bore significant fruit in
the years that followed, in 1366 a parliament was held at the town of Kilkenny in the Irish
midlands, in which a series of statutes were promulgated to separate the English from the
Irish in Ireland and protect the English parts of Ireland from Irish encroachments. The Statutes of Kilkenny, as they became known,
would serve to insulate the English of Ireland from Irish cultural interference in the decades
that followed, for instance, the statutes prohibited intermarriage between the Irish
and English and put measures in place to prevent the English of Ireland, from adopting Irish
cultural and political customs. These measures substantially arrested any
potential decline of English power in Ireland during the mid-fourteenth century and in one
shape or another, formed a major foundational basis of the English lordship of Ireland through
to the early sixteenth century. While the 1360s was a relatively placid period
of Edward’s reign, the last decade in which he reigned, the 1370s, would bring with it
fresh challenges, yet, any assessment of Edward III’s reign and his legacy, must acknowledge
that the king was not the central figure in the governance of the realm during the last
seven or eight years of his reign. We first find references to Edward’s health
failing in 1369, when he was fifty-seven years of age, he would live on for a further eight
years, but there are clear indications that the king was suffering an increasing number
of afflictions, both physical and mental, as the 1370s wore on. As with so many instances of illness in medieval
monarchs, we cannot be entirely sure what Edward was actually suffering from during
his last years, although it seems that the most serious of his maladies might have been caused by a series of
strokes which he experienced, in the last eight or so years of his life. These afflictions certainly limited Edward’s
role in the governance of his realms, but he still played a part, though by the 1370s
the day to day functions of government were increasingly carried out by his sons and extended
family, nevertheless some significant events can be tied to Edward, even in his final years. Paramount here was the resumption of the war
in France, peace had lasted for the better part of a decade since the settlement of 1360,
but this was becoming more and more tenuous as the years went by. Charles V had succeeded his father Jean II
as King of France in May 1364, the son was a more aggressive figure, who in the years
that followed, attempted to re-establish the strength of the French monarchy after the
bruising it had taken during the 1340s and 1350s. For instance, he entered into a rapprochement
with Charles of Navarre, the small kingdom on the southern border of France, but more
conspicuously the French King re-asserted the suzerainty of the French monarchy over
the duchy of Brittany. But the spark for renewed conflict with England
came, when Charles exploited internal unrest within the duchy of Aquitaine in 1369, to
demand that the Black Prince appear before him. When the heir to the English throne declined
to do so, Charles V declared the duchy of Aquitaine forfeit, in an instant reigniting
the dormant Hundred Years War. In response, in the summer of 1369, Edward
resumed his claim to the throne of France, which he had agreed to surrender in 1360,
consequently, the war was rejoined just as Edward’s health was beginning to deteriorate
at the end of the 1360s. This new chapter in the conflict between England
and France, was a fundamentally different affair to those of the 1340s and 1350s. For one thing, Edward would not lead an invasion
of France himself and the execution of the military campaigns was to be largely carried
out by Edward’s sons, the Black Prince and John of Gaunt, notably in this regard Edward
had intended to lead an expedition to France himself, when the conflict first broke out
in 1369, but he had to abandon his plans for this and it was eventually John who commanded
this army when it crossed the Channel. Moreover, in this new phase of the war, the
conflict between England and France became increasingly mixed up with a series of civil
wars and inter-state conflicts in Spain involving the two major powers there, the kingdoms of
Castile and Aragon. It is perhaps a reflection on how much the
victories of the 1340s and 1350s had been dependant on the dynamic leadership and brilliant
general-ship of Edward III, that in this latest phase of the war, England floundered without
the old king’s direct involvement. Much of the duchy of Aquitaine was overrun in the early 1370s, in part
because the Castilians, with whom the French had allied, managed to
defeat the English at sea off La Rochelle in south-western France in June 1372, this
defeat limited the degree to which the English territories on the continent could be resupplied
from England. A major campaign was undertaken in 1373, in
an attempt to overturn the defeats which English arms had suffered between 1369 and 1372, this
great chevauchée or raid was led by John of Gaunt and proceeded from Calais south,
through eastern France and then west to Bordeaux. Although it left much destruction in its wake,
it was a strategic failure and failed in its main goal of reimposing English authority
in Brittany. As a result, by the mid-1370s, without Edward’s
leadership to draw upon, the English position in France was much depleted and was largely
confined to Calais in the north and the coastal regions of Gascony, including the town of
Bordeaux. It was with English fortunes at this low ebb,
that Pope Gregory XI offered to broker a peace between the belligerents in 1374, the resulting
treaty, known as the Treaty of Bruges, was agreed on the 27th of June 1375, it allowed
England time to regroup, but was unpopular at home, in large part because the peace had
seen the English position in the north of France weakened. Yet it would not last long, the issue of the
sovereignty of the duchy of Aquitaine was not resolved by this latest treaty and in
the months ahead, this became a cause for fresh unrest. The English wanted Aquitaine to be freed entirely
from French sovereignty, a move which would ensure that the kings of England would never
have to pay homage to the monarchs of France again. While Charles V was somewhat understandably
reluctant to effectively abandon any claim he had on the duchy, war would quickly resume
again around this issue and several others in 1377, but when it did it would be the task
of the government of Edward’s successor to oversee it. While the last years of Edward’s reign saw
some reverses in France, on the home front a number of domestic crises were navigated
with admirable skill, these largely concerned the issue of financing a fresh period of war
on the continent and in 1371 and again in 1373, parliaments were called in order to
obtain a loan and subsidy from the lords and gentry of England, in both instances, Edward
had to make several concessions to the political nation in order to attain the requisite financing,
notably by replacing a number of his senior ministers who were churchmen with lay officials. Yet resentment was building about the kingdom’s
finances throughout the decade, which came to a head in 1376, in a parliament convened
just one year before Edward’s death, known to history as ‘the Good Parliament’, this
latest assembly was called to provide further financing for the crown. When it met in April 1376, however, it took
advantage of the opportunity to lay forth a series of accumulated grievances, particularly
with several of Edward’s advisors. John of Gaunt also became a target of the
parliament, especially so during the summer of 1376, when the Black Prince died from dysentery
on the 8th of June. A relatively amicable series of solutions were eventually worked out,
whereby the counsellors who had offended the political nation were
dismissed and some further reforms implemented, consequently, the end of Edward’s life saw
the English parliament functioning as a means of redress for the English political community,
in a manner which would break down in later times. That this was avoided and with it, England
spared any form of revolt during Edward’s long reign, is a testament to the stability
of his reign on the domestic front, despite the regular strains of financing extended
wars in France and Scotland. However, that stability was fracturing, it
would have been apparent to the assembled parliamentarians and nobles in London in 1376,
that the king’s health was deteriorating sharply, at the age of sixty-four and after
nearly a half a century on the English throne, in late September he became seriously ill
from a large abscess, days later, he was making some final amendments to his will in preparation
for his impending death, but it did not come, rather the old monarch rallied in the weeks
that followed. However, early in February 1377, the abscess
burst, as a result his movements were highly encumbered for the remaining months of his
life. When he died at Shene Palace, where Richmond
Palace would subsequently be built, near London on the 21st of June 1377, it was almost certainly
from another stroke, he was sixty-four years of age, he died having achieved so much in
his lifetime, in a long and influential reign as England’s monarch. The most significant chronicler of Edward’s
reign and the first half of the Hundred Years War, Jean Froissart, wrote stirringly of Edward’s
death and funeral in his Chronicles, an event Froissart lived through himself: “On 21 June 1377, the gallant and noble
King Edward III departed this life, to the deep distress of the whole realm of England,
for he had been a good king for them. His like had not been seen since the days
of King Arthur, who once had also been King of England, which in his time was called Great
Britain. So King Edward was embalmed and placed with
great pomp and reverence on a bier borne by twenty-four knights dressed in black, his
three sons and the Duke of Brittany and the Earl of March walking behind him, and carried
thus at a slow march through the city of London, the face uncovered. To witness and hear the grief of the people,
their sobs and screams and lamentations on that day, would have rendered anyone’s heart.” It was a fitting last journey for one of England’s
greatest kings. Edward was succeeded by his grandson, Richard,
the son of the Black Prince, just ten years old at the time of his accession, Richard
II would rule until he was usurped by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, in 1399, Richard’s
reign would be characterised by military reverses and mass social unrest within England, the
most significant being the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, his reliance, like his great-grandfather,
Edward II, on a cohort of favourites, aroused widespread discontent throughout the Plantagenet
realms and foreshadowed the Wars of the Roses of the fifteenth century, consequently Edward
III’s reign appears all the more remarkable in retrospect, for having been an oasis of
stability in the midst of the chaos that otherwise characterised England’s politics, throughout
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There is little doubting that Edward was one
of England’s most substantial and successful monarchs ever, in the nineteenth century a
generation of historians began to vilify the king and questioned whether his reign could
be considered a success. However, this view is problematic, as the
writers of the Victorian Era attempted to impose their own value systems on the appraisal
of Edward, instead of assessing the king on his own terms as a Late Medieval monarch. For a king who was born and lived in warfare,
the moral concerns of later generations would have made little sense, indeed imposing moral
judgments on the actions of people who lived hundreds of years ago is always problematic. More recently, historians such as Ian Mortimer
and William Ormrod have successfully restored Edward III’s reputation. While there is no denying that Edward’s
last years saw some setbacks, particularly in France, he was at this time very ill and
power had largely devolved to his sons, when we disregard this latter period, there is
no doubting the success of Edward’s reign. Under his rule, England reached the peak of
its power during the medieval period, at points between the 1330s and 1360s Edward was not
just the ruler of England, Wales and much of Ireland, but was able to impose his authority
fairly thoroughly on Scotland and large sections of northern and western France, some of the
territorial gains were either permanent, as in the case of Berwick on the Anglo-Scottish
border, or long-lasting, as in the case of the town of Calais in northern France. Moreover, the Hundred Years
War which he initiated, was a key component in the eventual formation of England and France into modern nation ‘states’,
owing to the manner in which, it drew on their administrative and financial resources and
fostered a fledgling sense of patriotism through national endeavour. Indeed, when Edward sent requests for men
and money around his dominions to fund his campaigns in France, he was effectively commanding
his local officials to come up with better ways of taxing the country and exploiting
its resources. This is the very basis of the modern nation
state, one which is expertly placed to exploit the resources available to it to the maximum
extent possible in the name of government. Much of this territorial expansion was achieved
on the back of both Edward’s outstanding abilities as a general and the military revolution
which he oversaw, during his rule the English longbow made England the military superpower
of its day, at Halidon Hill, Crécy, Neville’s Cross, Poitiers and several other battles,
English armies consistently managed to defeat French and Scottish armies,
which were substantially numerically superior to those commanded by Edward and his nobles, moreover, an English
army was quite possibly the first to utilise field canon in all of Europe at Crécy in
1346, nor was Edward’s military prowess confined to land, as at Sluys in 1340, Edward
demonstrated how effective the English longbow could be, even at sea. Given all this, there is little doubting that
Edward III should be viewed as one of the great commanders of English and British military
history, a figure who stands alongside John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, whose
command of England’s forces during the War of the Spanish Succession in the early eighteenth
century, catapulted England to the rank of major powers in Europe, or perhaps even Arthur
Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, whose successful prosecution of the Peninsular War
in Portugal and Spain, which took place between 1807 and 1814, became the bane of Napoleon’s
dominance of Europe, while Wellington was also central to Bonaparte’s final defeat
at Waterloo in 1815. Certainly, Edward III’s legacy as a military
commander probably surpasses his grandfather, Edward I. While he may not have been able to convert
his military victories as successfully into political victories, there is little doubting
Edward III was a more skilled commander on the field of battle. But Edward’s legacy should not just be measured
through assessing his prowess on the battlefield. In the late 1340s, he established the Order
of the Garter, England’s highest chivalric order to this day and in doing so, contributed
to England being considered the most chivalrous kingdom in western Europe at the height of
the Middle Ages. As a further statement to the world of his
rule, he also re-edified and expanded Windsor Castle as a symbol of English royal power. Another lasting achievement was seen in the late 1340s and early 1350s,
when Edward successfully steered England through the crisis wrought
by the arrival of the bubonic plague in Europe, the Black Death was the greatest crisis faced
by Europe during the Late Middle Ages, perhaps as much as a third of England’s population
died within the space of half a decade, but rather than succumbing psychologically to
the onslaught of illness and death which ravaged England in the late 1340s, Edward guided the
country through this period by stabilising the economy through the passage of the Statute
of Labourers, moreover, in strengthening the office of the Justice of the Peace, in order
to effectively implement the Statute on the local level in England, Edward’s government
made a lasting contribution to English local administration, one which was subsequently
exported to Ireland, North America, India and Australia in later centuries. Yet in many other ways, Edward’s reign and
its success was about long-term nation building. Parliament became more important during his
reign and he began to use many of the emblems which came to symbolise England itself, notably
carrying the cross of St George into battle. But perhaps Edward’s greatest legacy was
in the reorientation of the courts and government to favour Middle English as the language of
government and officialdom in England, as a result, in the centuries that followed,
when England and then Britain began settling colonies elsewhere all over the world, it
was English which was spread globally as the language of England and Britain. There is no doubting the importance of Edward III to all these key
developments of the fourteenth century, making him perhaps England’s greatest
king. What do you think of King Edward III? Was he England’s greatest ever king and
if so is he unjustly forgotten about today? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in
the meantime, thank you very much for watching. The man known to history as Henry of Monmouth
and King Henry V of England was born on the 16th of September 1386, at Monmouth Castle
in Wales, near the border with England. He was the eldest son of Henry of Bolingbroke,
who became King Henry IV of England in 1399 when Henry of Monmouth was only thirteen years
old. His mother was Mary of Bohun who came from
an old, aristocratic family with extensive land holdings in East Anglia and other parts
of England. Mary and Henry of Bolingbroke were married
on the 5th of February, 1381, at Rochford Hall in Essex. Because she was only eleven years old at the
time of their marriage, she remained with her mother for another four years. In 1385, Henry and Mary began to live together. It proved a good match, one based on mutual
affection and a shared fondness for fine books and music. She gave birth to six children in eight years:
Henry in 1386, Thomas in 1387, John in 1389, Humphrey in 1390, Blanche in 1392, and Philippa
in 1394. Mary died prematurely in Peterborough Castle
giving birth to their last daughter and was buried at the Church of St. Mary de Castro
in Leicester. As a young man, Bolingbroke had proven himself
to be a true cultured warrior of royal blood. He was well-educated and could read and write
English, French, and Latin and loved music and books. He excelled in jousting, participated in a
crusade to Lithuania, went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and had learned from his father,
John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, how to navigate the sometimes-dangerous waters
of court life. Since his father was Edward III's third son,
his entire life was overshadowed by the question of the right to inherit the throne. He had been told as a young child that if
the current King Richard II had no heirs, he stood to inherit the throne. Because of the threat the Lancastrian family
posed to the autocratic and insecure Richard, both Bolingbroke and his first son, the future
King Henry V, became pawns in a power struggle. After being exiled by the king in 1398 and
his father's lands being confiscated after John of Gaunt died in 1399, Bolingbroke had
to decide whether to remain in exile or reclaim his ancestral lands. When he arrived back in England in midsummer
of 1399, thousands welcomed him with open arms and this wave of support propelled him
to depose Richard II and accept the throne. Some felt he usurped it. Such legal niceties aside, his reign proved
a never-ending challenge due to the constant military threats from Wales, Scotland, and
France and the numerous internal plots to depose him. Additionally, his inability to raise funds
to combat these threats only made the situation worse. Finally, he was stricken with a mysterious
illness in 1406 that slowly weakened him during the last years of his reign. Yet, during those later years, the overall
situation improved as he and his advisors began to regain control over the kingdom's
finances and both internal and external threats. This laid the groundwork for his son, Henry
of Monmouth, to inherit a throne that rested on a more solid foundation. However, the question of his legitimate right
to that throne remained. Henry of Monmouth entered the world at a time
of political power struggles, not only within royal dynasties of England and France, but
also within the Catholic Church. These clashes included one of the longest
periods of conflict between France and England, known to us as the Hundred Years War, which
erupted in 1337 and had been fought intermittently ever since. The roots of the conflict lay in the question
of the right of English kings to control not only their ancestral lands in France, including
the provinces of Normandy, Brittany, Gascony, Anjou, and Aquitaine, but also to the French
throne itself. For instance, the kings of England had held
the duchy of Normandy in northern France from the Norman Conquest of 1066 through to the
loss of this territory by King John I to the French in the early thirteenth century. During the Hundred Years War English kings
fought to reclaim these territories only to be repelled again and again by French forces. At the time of Henry of Monmouth's birth,
all that remained under English control was Gascony and a small sliver of land around
the port city of Calais in the north-east of France. Increasingly, as large land holdings became
consolidated under one ruler leading to the birth of nation-states, that lacked the outlet
of military conquest, extended royal family members turned on themselves, as happened
with the Richard II Lancastrian feud that clouded so much of Monmouth's young life. However, this feud paled in comparison to
the in-fighting within the Valois royal house of France. There the king of France, Charles VI, suffered
from intermittent insanity and royal family members vied to fill this power vacuum. As a result of this a French civil war would
begin in 1407 when John, Duke of Burgundy, also known as John the Fearless, assassinated
his uncle Louis, Duke of Orleans. This would have major consequences for Henry
in his later years as king of England. There were numerous other issues which obtained
in England during the late fourteenth century which would lead to problems for Henry when
he became king of the country years later. Many of these centred on religious affairs. In England in the 1370s a church reformer
by the name of John Wycliffe had begun demanding reforms and greater transparency within the
church through the eradication of corrupt practices such as nepotism and simony, while
the doctrine of the church as promulgated from Rome was also being called into question. The Lollards, as Wycliffe’s followers became
known after his death in 1384, were a major group within the English church throughout
the 1390s and 1400s and Henry would have to engage with them in years to come as a form
of hereticism within the English Church. In addition to this issue there were growing
problems around the financing of the English government and the country more widely. These too would have a significant bearing
on Henry in his adult years. Henry of Monmouth grew up in his family's
Lancastrian lands surrounded by his extended family and their retainers. Henry learned much from these highly educated
and culturally sophisticated people. He not only followed his father in learning
to speak and write French, Latin, and English, he also absorbed his parent's love of music
which included learning how to play the harp and sing. He became one of the first kings of England
to regularly write his correspondence in English. Furthermore, he received intensive training
in rhetoric and logic in line with the new form of humanist education which was just
beginning to become popular in Western Europe as the Italian Renaissance entered its most
substantial period. By age eight, his education shifted to the military arts where he
became an expert equestrian, jouster, combat fighter, and military strategist. But, in 1398, at age twelve, the young Henry
found his world turned upside down when King Richard exiled his father from England and
took him Henry himself hostage in order to ensure his father’s further good behavior. The taking of hostages in this way was a common
medieval practice to control the behavior of people. But, generally speaking, Richard is believed
to have treated young Henry well. Disorienting events evolved quickly for Henry
when his father returned to England as Henry’s father took advantage of the dislike of Richard’s
reign within the political community of England to depose Richard and have himself crowned
as King Henry IV of England, the first usurpation of the English crown which had occurred in
well over 200 years. On the day of his father's coronation on the
13th of October 1399 Henry participated in the coronation ceremony. He had the honor to carry the Sword of Justice
and soon after this the young Henry became not only the Prince of Wales, but also Duke
of Cornwall, Earl of Chester, Duke of Aquitaine, and Duke of Lancaster. It was through these estates that the young
Henry received income to fund his household and it was his responsibility to oversee them. In addition, while he was only thirteen years
of age at this time, his father increasingly handed him significant responsibilities. This was seen in the case of the rebellion
of Owen Glyndwr, a Welsh prince who had initiated a revolt against the English crown in 1400. This would drag on throughout Henry IV’s
reign, with the king having much the worse of the conflict between 1400 and 1406. The King decided in 1406, when his son was
just nineteen years of age, to place him directly in charge of the suppression of this rebellion
in the crown’s western territories. It can be said that the man Henry of Monmouth
became was forged during his time in Wales. He learned a myriad of lessons he would use
throughout his life. One of the most important was the question
of fiscal management. Henry’s father’s reign was blighted by
issues around fiscal mismanagement and the young Prince of Wales began to understand
from an early age that the way to succeed as king was to ensure that the exchequer had
more money coming in than out of it. This became extremely apparent in Wales during
the mid-1400s when young Henry’s forces had difficulties in terms of their supplies
and activities owing to an insufficient flow of money from London. Consequently Henry found himself writing on
several occasions during these years to his father begging for more money. He learned that military skill was only one
component of becoming a good warrior; the other was having money to finance military
campaigns. Because of these money troubles, as well as
other political tensions, Henry’s mentor, Sir Henry Percy, a powerful lord from the
north of England who is generally known as Hotspur, grew so frustrated that he, along
with other members of his family and the political nation, rebelled against King Henry IV. The younger Henry had the unenviable position
of having to fight directly against the very man who had trained him as a military leader
once the rebellion broke out. On the 21st of July, 1403, as part of the
Northern Rebellion of Hotspur, King Henry IV and the young Prince Henry , along with
their supporters, fought one of the bloodiest battles in England's history, the battle of
Shrewsbury. It proved an important victory for the king
and ended the lives of Hotspur and other key members of the aristocracy. Henry played a key role during this battle. He also demonstrated profound courage after
an arrow pierced his face just below his right eye and penetrated six inches into his skull. Most men would have collapsed following this
incident, but Henry kept fighting. Afterwards, an English surgeon, John Bradmore,
devised a way to not only extract the arrowhead from his skull, but also used a method whereby
he stuffed wine and probes into the wound to facilitate the healing process. This kept any infection in the wound to a
minimum, a major medical feat in an age before antibiotics. Nevertheless, while it had been hard won through
an injury of this kind, Shrewsbury had taught young Henry the value of loyalty and he learned
quickly how to effectively foster loyalty toward himself as the prince of wales and
later as the King of England. In addition, he, like his father, clung to
family and used their skills to help him govern rather than relying on characters such as
Hotspur who would rebel if the situation appeared propitious to do so. In fact Henry's family provided him not only
with three brothers of immense talent, but also his Beaufort uncles and the extended
Lancastrian family and retainers. He would never have achieved all of the things
which we will see he did during his brief reign without their efforts. Although Henry and his father had managed
to put down one segment of the mass rebellions which had broken out across their dominions
with victory at the Battle of Shrewsbury, the wider struggle was not over. The revolt of Owain Glyndwr was still a major
problem in Wales and the western marches of England. It was here that Prince Henry focused his
efforts from the mid-1400s onwards, while his father focused on quelling the remainder
of the revolt in the north of England, notably by executing the Archbishop of York, Richard
Scrope, for his role in the Hotspur Rebellion. In March 1405 Henry defeated Glyndwr in a
clash at Grosmont and managed to capture one of the Welsh prince’s sons. This was quickly followed by another victory
at Usk in May 1405, the first major victory for English arms over the Welsh in a pitched
battle since the war began. From this point onwards the conflict turned
in the English crown’s favour. In 1407, Henry laid siege to Aberystwyth,
which fell a year later. Even the French, who had allied themselves
with the Welsh, pulled back, realizing the tide was turning. In 1408, Henry turned to the Welsh stronghold,
Harlech. It proved a decisive encounter because not
only was Glendower there, but also the remains of his family and one of
his key English supporters, Edmund Mortimer, who was the rival to the Lancastrian claim to the throne of England. By 1409, Harlech had fallen and Mortimer had
died during the siege. His wife and daughters died in captivity in
London afterwards and his sons were already imprisoned. Glendower and one of his other sons fled into
the mountains and was rarely ever heard from again. Through this experience, Henry became a person
who could galvanize the king's men. He also developed novel approaches to solve
old problems. For example, the hit and run method of his
father that was used to control rebellion with limited funds clearly did not work. Henry chose instead to use the resources he
had to retake key fortresses and hold them, then pushed forward in a new wave of capture and control, slowly and
systematically constricting the enemy and its resources. It proved decidedly effective, and he gained
respect of others in his father's court. Overall Wales provided the theatre in which
Prince Henry came of age as a military commander and leader in his youth. By the time the war in Wales was coming to
an inexorable end the crown prince was playing an ever more significant role in the governance
of England. His father, King Henry IV, had been struck
by a mysterious illness in 1405, one which became gradually more debilitating in the
years that followed, with the king often suffering from seizures and periods when he was effectively
bed-ridden. As his health declined,
more and more responsibility was gradually given to the Prince of Wales. Young Henry attended his first meeting of
the king's council in December 1406 and would participate in these conferencess and successive
parliaments from that time forward. Also starting around this time, Henry IV's
chancellor, Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, began to play a more substantial
role in government affairs. He was particularly concerned
to begin systematically addressing the financial shortfalls of the crown after years of financial mismanagement
by Henry’s father and the onerous burden of fighting multiple wars on different fronts. Arundel looked to other untapped resources
in order to acquire greater revenue for the crown. Under Arundel and Prince Henry the government
began looking to use the extended royal family to address many of the problems confronted
by the crown. Thus, Henry's brother, Thomas, was sent to
Ireland. Although he was only 12 years of age, his
presence there with royal advisors provided a clear symbol of the rejuvenation of royal
authority across the Irish Sea. Similarly, Henry’s third brother, John, was sent north to assist
in stifling the rebellions on the Scottish borderlands towards the end
of Henry IV's reign.John proved to be not only an excellent soldier
but a creative government administrator. It would be these people, the Beauforts, his
brothers, and key Lancastrian retainers to whom Henry V would turn to during his reign
and even after his death to help him achieve his goals. As the years went by and Henry IV’s illnesses
showed no signs of improving, but rather continued to get worse, Henry was more and more presenting
himself as a king-in-waiting. This was mirrored in his growing control over
the government. For instance, Arundel was effectively forced
out of his position within the government in 1409 and he and others were replaced by
the prince’s supporters. The prince’s government, in essence, ruled
England for much of the remaining years of Henry IV’s reign. Their major efforts focused on reforming the
crown’s finances. Henry went after annuities to cut expenses,
which his father always avoided because he thought it betrayed the trust of loyal supporters
who were in financial distress. Henry also began to address the situation
in France, where a civil war had effectively broken out as a consequence of Charles VI’s
increasing bouts of madness and psychological incapacity. Henry decided to support the claim of John
the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy, to try to seize power from Charles. Henry viewed this as advantageous, both because
civil unrest in France was always advantageous to England and because of the possibility
that Henry would marry one of John's daughters. As such, by the late 1400s Prince Henry was
effectively running the English government. This effective usurpation of his position
as king did not always sit well with Henry IV himself and in 1411, during one of his
periodic bouts of partial recovery from his health issues, he moved to reclaim control
of the government and to remove his son and his followers from power. In November of that year he suddenly reappeared
on the political stage, playing a central role in the parliament which was underway. There were many reasons for this, but one
of the most obvious was the differing attitude of father and son towards royal annuities. These were payments made annually by the crown
to prominent subjects, effectively to reward them for their loyalty. The cost of them had been huge in the 1400s
and contributed to the financial problems of the government. The prince had accordingly decided to begin
cutting them back drastically in the late 1400s, but his father disagreed with this
approach. He felt his son's approach was well-meaning,
but naïve, and would only serve to alienate the crown’s supporters and unleash a new
wave of rebellions. Henry also did not find young Henry's choice
in a French ally a good one. King Henry knew the players in the French
court personally. He had stayed at the court during jousting
tournaments as a youth and paid a visit on his return trip after his travels to the Holy
Land. He had already taken the mark of the French
court and backed the supporters of King Charles VI. He did not think it sensible to support the
Burgundians, who were led by John the Fearless. As such he believed young Henry had backed
the wrong side in the civil war in France. As a result of these issues, King Henry entered
parliament on the 30th of November 1411, and calmly stated that he would no longer tolerate what he referred to
as"novelties" in the government of the country. By this he meant the attitudes towards French
policy, the annuities and other measures, but he was also referring to growing rumours
that he should abdicate the throne in favour of his son. Henry made it wholly clear that this was not
going to happen.Instead he asked those who had served in his son and those who had served
in his government to come forward, at which point he politely thanked them for their service
and dismissed them. It took time for them to understand what had
just happened and when the realization hit, young Henry was furious. This action created extreme tensions within
their father-son relationship. It did not help that the
king reinstated Archbishop Arundel as Chancellor and placed Henry's brother Thomas as head of the king's council. Following Prince Henry’s removal from the
head of the government his father changed track on a number of policies, notably towards
France. In May 1412, the Treaty of Bourges was sealed. It acknowledged Henry IV in possession of
the Duchy of Aquitaine in the west of France in exchange for England providing military
support for the actions of the French king against the Burgundians. It was a stunning reversal of young Henry's
plan. To make things even more tense between Henry
and his brother Thomas, King Henry sent Thomas to Gascony to bolster the provisions specified
in the treaty. For all intents and purposes, his father had
shut Henry out of government and then completely reversed his French policy, among other matters. Henry eventually decided he had no option
but to relent. After all, nobody knew in the early 1410s
if his father would make a full recovery from his illnesses. If he did he might well rule for another twenty
or thirty years. Henry could not afford to be locked out of
the political decision-making of the realm he would inherit one day for that long, Thus,
after much soul-searching and worry, on the 29th of July, 1412, he entered his father's
chamber and knelt before him. Henry begged forgiveness. Then he handed his father his dagger and said,
"My lord and father, my life is not so dear to me that I would live one day that I should
be in your displeasure…I forgive you my death." King Henry immediately tossed away the dagger,
embraced his son, and cried. The reconciliation, however, was short-lived,
not because the two quickly quarreled again, but because Henry IV’s ill health resumed
again within weeks. Early in 1413 he became seriously ill and
was moved to Lambeth Palace across the River Thames from Westminster to try to recover. He did and as his condition
continued to deteriorate he was moved about a month later to Westminster Abbey. There he died in the "Jerusalem Chamber" in
the abbot's quarters on the 20th of March, 1413. In spite of their differences, Prince Henry
had reconciled with his father before he died and received his blessing to inherit the throne. The funeral service was not held until June
to give Thomas time to return from Gascony in western France. Then King Henry IV was finally laid to rest
on the 18th of June, 1413, in Trinity Chapel at Canterbury Cathedral. Although Henry may have experienced some youthful
exuberance at the prospect of becoming King of England in his own right, the reality that
he was about to be king changed him. As one story goes, on the night his father
died, Henry left his family and headed towards St. Benet's Chapel. He visited a hermit there by the name of William
Alnwick. Henry stayed up all night talking with the
hermit about morality and his fear of potential conflict among the various nobles, since his
father's hold on the throne had always been precarious. This episode is indicative of how his ascent
to the kingship at 26 years of age changed Henry substantially. Rather than being an ambitious Prince who
wanted to assert himself in the political realm, he now had the burden
of full responsibility for his subjects placed upon him. Thus it was that Henry was crowned king of
England on the 9th of April, 1413, at Westminster Abbey. The unusual spring blizzard that day made
people wonder what it portended. Many saw it as a good omen that the new king
would cleanse away the instability of the recent past and bring on a new age of moral
kingship. This bolstered Henry's almost messianic mission
to demonstrate divine approval of the Lancastrian family to rule over England and also of the
crown’s rightful claim to the French throne which his great-grandfather had first pressed
three-quarters of a century earlier. From the first days of his reign, Henry approached
his task with purpose and energy. He quickly began addressing
a number of outstanding issues remaining from his father's reign. For instance, he freed Edmund Mortimer and
his brother Roger, who had claimed to be Richard II's true heirs and had posed a political
risk in the 1400s . Edmund in particular had been the focus of a conspiracy to dethrone
Henry’s father and place Mortimer on the throne back in 1405. The Mortimers had been under guard ever since. Henry not only freed them but made them both
Knights of the Bath and returned their family estates to them. He then freed all of the Scottish prisoners,
except the young King James I of Scotland, who had been captured by English pirates as
he sailed to France in 1406 and had been held hostage ever since. He would be kept in England until well into
the 1420s. Henry also reached out to other children whose
parents had displeased the king. Edward, Duke of York, had his title restored and his brother Richard
was made Duke of Cambridge. He even freed Hotspur's son, also named Henry
Percy, who would eventually have his family's estates returned to him as well. Finally, he ordered Richard II's body disinterred
from his burial place in King's Langley Priory Church in Hertfordshire and had him reburied
at Westminster Abbey next to his first wife, Anne of Bohemia, as he would have wished. The import of all of this was clear. It was a new reign and the disunity and civil
discord which had mired his father’s years as king were over. It was time for England to unite behind a
new young monarch and revitalize the kingdom. One further outstanding issue which Henry
had to contend with immediately was that of the Lollards. As we have seen, these had emerged during
the reign of Richard II, but continued to pose a problem to the religious unity of England
long after the death of their leader, John Wycliffe, in 1384. There had been various efforts to muzzle these
dissenters under Henry IV, notably through the issuing of a statute, entitled De Heretico
Comburendo,which effectively proscribed the Lollards, while prominent Lollards such as
William Sawtrey and John Badby had been burned at the stake for refusing to recant their
heretical beliefs. As king, Henry found himself again confronted
with trying to get a heretic to recant. In this case it was an old friend of his,
Sir John Oldcastle, a longstanding ally of Henry and a trusted soldier during the Welsh
conflict. Yet, he was an unabashed Lollard who was brought
before Archbishop Arundel in September 1413 and declared a heretic. Henry intervened and gave Oldcastle a period of forty days in which to
reflect on his conscience and recant his heretical beliefs. This did not have the desired effect. Instead, Oldcastle escaped from the Tower
of London. He then hatched a plot to kill the king, but
the plot was exposed. Some of Oldcastle's supporters were killed
or captured, but he managed to escape and remain at large until 1417 when he met his
fate and was hanged and burned to death. It was a bitter pill to swallow for Henry,
but as God's instrument on Earth he had no choice. The Great Papal Schism also intruded on Henry's
kingship. Beginning in the early fourteenth century
a run of seven successive Popes had established themselves at Avignon in France, rather than
residing at the Vatican in Rome. Then, from the mid-1370s, there had been two
Popes at once in Europe, one residing at Avignon and the other at Rome, but with both claiming
to be the rightful head of the Roman Catholic Church. Efforts had been intermittently made to end
this Papal Schism over the years, notably through a political and ecclesiastical council
convened at the Italian city of Pisa in 1409. When this failed, the King of Hungary and
Croatia and King of the Romans, King Sigismund, who later became the Holy Roman emperor, pressured
the newly elected pope John XXIII in 1413 to call for a council of prelates and government
officials from all over Europe to meet in the German city of Constance in November 1414
to resolve the impasse. By Henry's calculations, in sending diplomats
to this meeting he could achieve two key things: first, he could prove his credentials as a
pious king loyal to church and God by helping end the Great Schism; and secondly it was
an opportunity to build a relationship with one of the most powerful men in Europe, King
Sigismund, and gain his support against the French. Ultimately these efforts
proved largely successful, as the Council of Constance sat for four years until 1418, at the end of which the Great
Schism was brought to an end and Pope Martin V was elected to rule over a reunited church. In addition, the teachings of John Wycliffe
and the actions of the Lollards in England, as well as several heretical groups such as
the Hussites in Bohemia, were condemned at the Council of Constance in 1415, providing
Henry with the Papal justification he needed to initiate a further series of crackdowns
on the Lollards at home. From the beginning of his reign, Henry began
planning for what he perceived to be the most important aspect of his duties as King of
England: to regain his birthright in France. The foundations of the Hundred Years War lay
largely in the succession question plaguing France. By the early fourteenth-century, France no
longer had a direct royal line to the French throne. The three key claimants included the king
of Navarre, who could claim the throne through his marriage to Jeanne, the daughter of Louis
X; Philippe de Valois, cousin to Charles IV and nephew to Philippe IV; and Edward III
of England, who was the grandson of Philippe IV through his mother who was Philippe's daughter
Isabelle. The title of king was given to Philippe de
Valois. By the 1330s, Edward III decided he wanted
to take what he felt was rightfully his and thus went to war with the French in 1337 to
impose the claim of the English crown to also hold the French crown. Edward, Henry’s great-grandfather, won stunning
victories at Crécy in 1346 and Poitiers in 1356. At the last battle, King John of France was
taken prisoner and ransomed for the enormous sum of three million gold coins. Yet rather than press his luck and demand
the French throne for himself, Edward III decided to negotiate with the French. The resulting Treaty of Brétigny of 1360
gave Edward full control over Guyenne, Gascony, Poitou, Limousin, the port city of Calais,
and other lands in southwestern France. In exchange for these he had to renounce his
rights to Normandy, Anjou, and Maine. Those that followed as king of France did
not hold to these terms and much was lost over the intervening years
due to French aggression and English royal ineptitude, leaving England with only the significant Gascony region in
western France and the port city of Calais in the north-east of the country. Henry determined that he would follow his
great-grandfather's playbook but would not settle for just control over these rich lands. He intended to demand the French crown as his birthright and felt
that the recent destructive struggles which had occurred in France as
a result of the mental instability of King Charles VI made the time propitious for him
to press these claims. The first order of business to set the ball
rolling towards this goal was to follow proper medieval protocol and negotiate with French officials to try to come
to some form of settlement. Neither side entered these negotiations in
good faith. For the French, their focus was on their own
infighting and each side tried to gain Henry's support for their cause. Henry used this as a wedge to help propel
negotiations in his favor. The French arrogantly believed that England
was as weak as it had been under Richard II and Henry IV from its own internal problems
and would never be able to bring the war to France in the same way that Edward III had
been able to over a half a century earlier. Henry, for his part, had no intentions of
caving in to their demands, but he played along. During the summer of 1414, for example, Henry's
diplomats presented an offer: he would renounce his claims to the French throne if was given
much of the traditional lands his forebears and his father had held in northern and western
France in the twelfth century, along with additional territories in Flanders and Brittany. In addition, he requested the hand of Charles
VI's daughter Katherine along with a dowry of two million crowns. The French lamely offered a dowry of 600,000
crowns along with Aquitaine, which of course the English turned down. Negotiations continued like this for months. Meanwhile, Henry was gradually initiating
his plans for an invasion of France. From the very moment he became King of England
Henry had begun overseeing the strengthening of the English army and navy with the goal
of intervening in France. Unlike his father, Henry was not, with the
exception of the unrest provoked by Sir John Oldcastle, plagued by a wave of rebellions
at the outset of his reign. As such he was free to begin diverting resources
towards a resumption of the Hundred Years War in France. First, he ordered the building of both a strong
land army to operate on the continent and a navy to transport this army across the English Channel and to protect key
ports for the disembarking of troops and to ensure strong resupply and
communication channels. He then had his officials foster a national
industry to create tens of thousands of arrows, lances, armor, and even cannons. In tandem, he spent much of 1414 and 1415
building alliances with key European players such as requesting ships from Flanders. He negotiated a truce with Spanish traders,
who liked to raid English merchant ships and disrupt trade in the English Channel and a
similar truce with Brittany. But Henry’s greatest success was in reaching
an agreement with John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy, that he would not come to Charles
VI’s aid when Henry invaded France. In addition to these efforts, he continued
to support King Sigismund's work at the Council of Constance which nominally gained him support
among the German principalities. While making these logistical and diplomatic
preparations, Henry also ensured that England and Wales would be secure while he absented
himself in France. To do this he ordered extensive repairs and
renovations to be carried out of existing castles and strongholds and the construction
of new fortifications along the coasts, especially the southern ports, and along the Welsh and
Scottish borderlands. He also refused to release King James I of
Scotland, using his captivity to guarantee peace with the Scots and ensure that they
would not ally with the French once the war resumed. All of this took money and Henry not only
used traditional means of support such as rents from royal estates and court fees and
fines, but also aggressively milked trade subsidies and duties to bring in extra revenue. While he reviewed his father's sacred cow,
annuities, he only continued them if he could gain something in return from the recipients. Otherwise, he pulled that support. He also requested donations or loans from
supporters who generously supplied the bulk of his resources. Like any modern fundraising effort, Henry's
team worked the people of England for these contributions in such a way that just about
everyone in England felt that they had a critical role to play in the war effort. This helped to build staunch support for the
king and his goals that would last long after Henry died. What is not often discussed by historians
is the fact that Henry used the crown jewels and other treasures not only as collateral
for these loans, but also pawned some of these materials, including the royal crown. Although many people, both
modern and contemporary, were critical of the poor money management of Henry IV, his son incurred a huge debt
just for this first campaign to France. The crisis for money would only grow as Henry
pushed deeper into France to claim the French throne. Many of the crown's treasures were never returned
to the royal house because it took so long for the next generation to pay off his war
debts. Despite the severity of these fundraising
measures, they were doubtlessly effective. By 1415 Henry felt he was ready to go to France. Yet God wanted Henry to wait, or so he thought. He had planned to leave in early summer, but
the delay of the arrival of French envoys to continue negotiations postponed his departure. Once they had left, he mustered the troops
and was ready to sail on the first of August, only to be informed that some key players,
such as Richard, Earl of Cambridge, Lord Henry Scrope, Sir Thomas Grey,
and Sir Robert Umphraville were plotting to kill the king and put Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, on the throne. Mortimer, who had played along with the plotters,
told the king. Of course, Henry could not leave this conspiracy,
which is known to posterity as the Southampton Plot, unaddressed. The guilty parties were rounded up and Grey
and Scrope were tried with Thomas, Henry's brother, presiding over the trials. Both were found guilty and quickly executed. Henry then did something surprising. He immediately ordered the confiscation and
sale of Scrope's property. It was an illegal act, but the underlying
motivation could have been his desperate need for money. This done Henry completed his will, made his
brother John, Duke of Bedford, his lieutenant in England, and headed for France on what
would become one of the most infamous military campaigns in English and European history. On the 11th of August, 1415, Henry finally
boarded his flag ship, the Trinity Royal, and sailed to France. Of course, the French had known for quite
some time that an invasion was likely. However, based upon past performance they
did not have much concern about what would be heading their way. Between the bouts of insanity of their king,
Charles VI, and the in-fighting among royal family members, the most significant question
became who would lead the defence of the country against the invaders. Nominally, Charles d'Albret, a career soldier,
was made Constable of France and Jean Le Maigre, also known as Marshal Boucicaut, one of France's
greatest military fighters, was appointed Captain-General. More importantly, would the heir apparent,
the dauphin Louis, lead the army? For the French, Henry's 1415 assault would
prove a perfect storm, which led to a political and military disaster. Henry had planned to attack Harfleur in the
north of France first, because of its strategic location near the mouth of the river Seine. He first stopped at Chef de Caux on the 13th
of August as a cautionary measure. There appeared to be no resistance. Even so, he ordered no one to leave the ships
until a search party scouted the region, including the situation at Harfleur. The message which arrived back was that it
was safe to go ahead. They moved to Harfleur and began to disembark,
which took three days. Salt marshes, an estuary, and strong walls
protected the town of Harfleur. Once settled, Henry ordered his brother Thomas
to move his forces around to the other side of the town to camp on the hillside overlooking
the region. Having surrounded the town, Henry followed
medieval military procedure rooted in the rules set down in the Book of Deuteronomy,
Verse 10, to talk with the town's leaders and offer them the choice to choose peace
over bloodshed. They rejected the English calls for peace. Thus, the siege of Harfleur began with heavy
bombardment and efforts made to cut off all supplies and communications into or out of
the town. As the siege dragged on for weeks, the constant
bombardment and the beginnings of starvation made the siege difficult for the town's people. To make matters worse, starting late in the
second week or early in the third week of the siege, dysentery began to impact on the
forces of both sides. The town's people prayed for relief and even
managed to get letters out requesting help from the French forces. But, by the third week of September, after
a brief truce to permit one last official attempt to call for help, it had become clear
to those in Harfleur that no one was coming to relieve them. They were on their own. On the 23rd of September, Henry and his forces
finally entered the town of Harfleur. He headed straight to the church of St. Michael
and prayed, grateful for his victory. The young king also took the opportunity to
reiterate to his troops their code of conduct for military operations in France. Churches and religious buildings were not
to be pillaged. Clergy and women were not to be harmed, unless they were clearly hostile,
and rape was prohibited. Non-combatants within the English armed forces
were similarly required to follow military rules including obeying all orders from military
officers. All foraging expeditions had to be authorized
and no buildings were to be pillaged or burned unless explicit commands to that effect had
been received. Rules about taking of hostages proved strict
as well. Henry's intent for all of these rules was
to build trust among the French people. He wanted them to see that he cared for his
people as their true king and the new ruler of France. But there were also stringent expectations
of his new subjects. The people of Harfleur, for instance, were
given an ultimatum. Anyone who swore allegiance to him could remain
and help rebuild the town. Those wealthy citizens who refused to swear
loyalty would be ransomed, while all poor, sick, women, and children were permitted to
take all they could carry and then were escorted towards the French army. At the same time all those within the English
military who were sick or injured were sent back to England including Henry's brother
Thomas who had fallen ill with dysentery. On the 5th of October1415, Henry held a military
council to determine what his next move would be. Many of his advisors wanted to return home,
having scored a substantial success in conquering Harfleur. Yet, Henry believed God wanted him to continue,
so on the 8th of October the English army broke camp at Harfleur and headed for Calais. Henry left Thomas Beaufort, Earl of Dorset,
at Harfleur to hold the town with about one hundred soldiers and nine hundred archers,
along with support personnel. He also ordered the English fleet to patrol
the coastline and the estuary of the River Seine. Henry had suffered losses. Historians debate how many, but his forces
had been depleted. The best guess is Henry left England with
roughly 12,000 fighting men, plus support personnel. After Harfleur, he had roughly 10,000 fighters
left. Having then left about 1200 men to hold Harfleur,
he was returning to Calais with a total force of not much more than 9,000, along with support
personnel. Henry's actions followed Edward III's playbook. His goal was to cross the Somme River at an
old Roman ford near Blanchetaque. The French, knowing that history, did everything
they could to stop him from crossing. They destroyed this ford and smashed other
bridges and causeways all down the river forcing Henry deeper into French territory and away
from his goal of Calais. Henry also had the challenge of maintaining
discipline, especially after food supplies began to run low. While some villages along the way submitted
to Henry and offered food, others did not, accompanied by a few skirmishes. Then luck finally came their way. At Nesle, one of the villagers told them about
an unguarded ford. Henry finally had a way to cross the Somme,
which they did on the 19th of October near Bethencourt. From here the French seemed to herd the English
into their chosen location for battle. Yet it would all prove a disaster for the
French. On the night of the 24th of October Henry
V and his English forces settled in for the night outside of the village of Maisoncelles. The French spread out near the town of Tramecourt
and began sending appeals out to the local nobility and gentry to send whatever military
support they could. The following day one of the most significant
battles in English military history would be fought. It was named for a small town near the French
forces: Agincourt. The battle would finally be joined between
the English and French the following day, the 25th of October 1415, after days of the
two sides shadowing each other. Strangely, the French selected a battlefield
that had been plowed and had grain sowed in it. It was about a mile in length with woods on
either side. And rather than provide room for the vast
numbers of French, of which there were around 12,000 troops, the shape of the field would
force them into a tight squeeze before meeting the English. Fortuitously for Henry, it rained during the
night turning the field into a plain of sticky mud. Early the next morning, Henry performed his
devotionals, ordered the archers to spike the field with stakes as a defense against
a cavalry charge, and formed the men up into three groups called battles. They would move as one, with Henry commanding
the center battle dressed to attract the attention of the enemy. The French also formed up, but controversy
continued to reign over who was the true leader. Nominally, the dauphin Louis commanded. Heralds were sent to a convocation before
the battle so formal medieval niceties could be adhered to. And then, they waited, neither side wanting
to start the battle. Finally, Henry had enough. He gave the command to begin, startling the
French with a cloud of arrows that filled the sky. The French responded with an ill-prepared
cavalry charge, but since the English held up just past the narrowest part of the field,
they were channeled into the stakes and another hailstorm of arrows. The sticky mud made quick maneuvers impossible
and this, combined with the French being confined to a narrow area and the devastating impact
of wave after wave of arrows unleashed by the English longbows, was what would make
Agincourt such a spectacular victory. In the period that followed terrified Frenchmen
and horses tried to flee only to be trampled by the next onslaught of soldiers, cavalry,
and English arrows. Bodies piled up making it hard to move. Then the French began to see how numbers can
be a disadvantage when hand-to-hand combat started. They were so thick that they could not move
to swing their swords. Slipping and sliding in the mud only exacerbated
the situation. Hundreds died in the melee or were crushed. At one point, Henry's brother Humphrey was
injured and fell to the ground. Henry leapt in and covered his brother against
his assailant until he could be dragged away to safety. After hours of fighting, there was a pause
to permit the French to regroup after the English had demolished two of their battles. The hostilities had not ended, or had they? Henry realized that the French had more men
ready to charge in, but would they use them? He assumed it was only a matter of time. In this moment, Henry did something that not
only violated the medieval rules of war, but his own rules of conduct set forth for his
army. In the medieval world, unarmed prisoners,
especially nobles who could be ransomed, were not to be killed. However, Henry lacked the men to watch these
prisoners and feared they might join the fight, making it a two-pronged battle. So, he gave the ignoble order to massacre
all of the prisoners. Despite this precaution, or perhaps because
of it, the renewed charge which he feared did not happen. There was one final French cavalry charge
with the English archers responding with a cloud of arrows. Then, realizing further engagement would almost
certainly only lead to more carnage, the French withdrew from the field. Only hours before Henry and his army faced
certain defeat, but with military skill, the technological superiority of the English longbow,
and more than a little luck in terms of the positioning of the battle, an astonishing
victory had been won by Henry over the French. The battle of Agincourt soon became the stuff
of legend. For the French, this was an unmitigated disaster
with up to seven thousand troops and auxiliaries dead and injured. Accusations of blame flew at anyone and anything
to try to explain how this could have happened. During the backbiting, John the Fearless tried to take advantage of the
weakened French government and made an effort to seize Paris. For the English, they gathered their injured
and made a slow three-day journey to Calais. The wounded were sent to England immediately,
but Henry remained in Calais until the 16th of November 1415. Thus it was not until the 23rd of November
that he made his triumphant parade through London, cheered on by joyous citizens. By that time Henry was already planning his
next foray into France. The victory at Agincourt and the disarray
which it had created across France had opened up the possibility of an English conquest
of Paris itself and that Edward III’s dream of uniting the kingdoms of England and France
under one monarch could finally be achieved by his great-grandson. However, Henry was unable to follow up the
campaign of 1415 with a crushing blow in 1416. First, he had to deal with the presence of
Genovese ships in the English Channel who were allied with France and were determined
to block English supply lines between England and Calais and Harfleur. Then Henry's return to France was delayed
by the arrival of King Sigismund to England on the 3rd of May, 1416 to negotiate for support
of his efforts at the Council of Constance. In England, Henry received him warmly and
treated him to the best of England. He also made Sigismund a Knight of the Garter. Then on the 15th of August 1416, they agreed
the Treaty of Canterbury, a mutually beneficial trade and military agreement. Sigismund subsequently failed to uphold up
his end of this, but what the treaty did do was lend further legitimacy to Henry's claim
to the French throne, as under the terms of the Treaty Sigismund declared his support. To build on this diplomatic success, Henry
reaffirmed support from other quarters including the Castilians. He even travelled to Calais to negotiate with
John the Fearless to gain his support for his claim to the French throne. Henry also addressed the financial situation
in England in order to fund his military needs. With all of this undertaken he then finally
returned to France in August 1417. Having landed at Torques he began his renewed
efforts by moving to take Caen in the north of the country. This siege went in similar fashion as Harfleur
with the town surrendering on the 20th of September 1417. Soon after, the towns of Bayeux and Lisieux
surrendered and over the next few weeks additional towns capitulated to Henry. Throughout late 1417 and early 1418 he began
solidifying his control over northern France, with his brother Humphrey moving to seize
the western side of Normandy in February 1418. Yet the port city of Cherbourg refused to
fall and it took a five month siege to finally defeat its defenders. Finally, that summer, on the 29th of July,
Henry began his siege of Rouen, the capital of Normandy. It was a long, deadly affair. In December, in desperation,
the Rouen townspeople, expelled their starving poor including old men, women, and children. Henry refused to show mercy by feeding them
declaring, "I did not put them there" and many died. Rouen opened its gates in defeat on the 19th
of January, 1419. Henry had successfully conquered Normandy,
the duchy which his ancestors had once come from to conquer England in the mid-eleventh
century. Perhaps his dream of fulfilling Edward III’s
goal of conquering France was not as fantastical an ambition as many might have believed. Concern was certainly growing amongst the
French about Henry's successes. Thus, a meeting was called for May 1419 in
Melun where the French would meet with Henry and his emissaries. Both King Charles VI and John the Fearless
attended. It was the first time Henry met the woman
he had sought to be his bride, Katherine. Henry now reiterated his desire to have her
hand in marriage, thus tying his line to that of the French monarchy, and also that he would
hold all of the lands promised under the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny which Edward III
had concluded over a half a century earlier. This would effectively have restored England
to possession of much of northern and western France. The only concession Henry would offer was
that he might renounce his right to the French crown if he received everything else. John the Fearless remained silent during these
negotiations and then secretly decided to betray his agreement with Henry by allying
himself with the dauphin Charles, the future King Charles VII. Thus, while both sides had now made their
negotiating position clear, little tangible was achieved by the meeting at Melun. Henry's response was swift. On the 29th of July he sent some of his army to attack Pontoise, John
the Fearless's headquarters. On the 3rd of August, the army of Henry's
brother Thomas had reached St. Denis, near Paris, and continued to move forward, threatening
Paris itself. While this was going on, a meeting was set
between the dauphin and John. In a rare decisive moment, the dauphin's servants
murdered John. This event changed the political dynamics
considerably. On the 27th of September, Henry met with the
king of France and his supporters only. Henry demanded the French throne and Katherine
without a dowry. He insisted that it would be ruled as two
separate kingdoms, but their children would inherit the French throne by birthright. He would permit Charles VI to remain on the
throne until his death. Stunningly, the French agreed. Consequently, on the 21st of May 1420 the
Treaty of Troyes was officially sealed making Henry regent of France. On the 2nd of June 1420 he then married Katherine
of France at Troyes in a simple wedding. It seemed that Henry had finally conquered
France over 80 years after his great-grandfather had initiated the Hundred Years War in an
effort to do so. He must have felt that the task was largely
complete when he entered Paris on the 1st of December 1420 for the first time in triumph. He remained there to celebrate Christmas. Yet, all was not well. In France, Henry still had some mopping up
to do because a few cities refused to surrender, and the dauphin Charles continued to foment
trouble. In England, people had grown tired of the
war and its expense. It was time to return to England to introduce
his new bride. He left his brother Thomas as his lieutenant
in France. He made his way back to the coast and sailed
to England, arriving in Dover on the 2nd of February, 1421. Although Henry had been gone for three years,
the kingdom had been in the capable hands of Bishop Henry Beaufort and then the Bishop
of Durham, Thomas Langley. Three weeks after their arrival, Katherine
was crowned queen of England at Westminster Abbey. They then set out on a grand tour to show
Katherine England. The tour also served as a fundraiser for his
military needs in France. Yet as Henry soon discovered, it was proving
more and more difficult to continue raising large financial subsidies in England, the
same problem which had eventually thwarted his great-grandfather in his efforts to conquer
France. Fundraising proved harder than before. Then on the 21st of March, 1421, Henry received
shocking news. Thomas, as his acting lieutenant in France,
had engaged the dauphin Charles at the battle of Vieil-Baugé. Overly eager to claim a stunning victory of
his own, Thomas had foolishly raced into battle without properly placing his troops in formation. He was killed, several English officers were
taken prisoner and a formidable victory was won by the dauphin and the French. This victory bolstered the confidence of the
dauphin and proved that the English were not invincible. For Henry, it was a disastrous reversal. However, he did not return immediately to
France as Katherine was pregnant. Eventually, on the 9th of June 1421, Henry
sailed from Dover for France. There things declined even further. The Duke of Brittany had signed a treaty with
the dauphin, while the young Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless's son, was also beginning
to have second thoughts about his alliance with the English. Once in France, Henry set to work. He first addressed the situation at Dreux,
which capitulated after about four weeks. He then headed to Chartres to address the
siege there. Upon his arrival, the dauphin pulled back,
ending the siege, and he retreated to Tours. Henry returned to Paris and attacked sites
still loyal to the dauphin nearby. He began his siege on Meaux and Marché in
October. The weather was miserable. Dysentery and fever ravaged the troops. Morale was low. The only good news Henry received was the
announcement of the birth of his son in December. He was christened Henry, like his father and
grandfather. The town of Meaux fell in March 1422 and Marché
in May. Compiègne surrendered soon after. As had been the case since 1415, Henry’s
personal presence and military leadership in France brough victory after victory. Despite these victories all was not well. Henry was clearly ill during his latest campaign
on the continent. As with so many other royal illnesses of the
time, it is difficult to know precisely what the malady was, but it seems likely that he
was suffering from dysentery. The situation was serious enough by the spring
of 1422 that Queen Katherine left England to be with the king, arriving to France in
May. There she witnessed the further decline of
her husband. On the 26th of August 1422 the situation was
so drastic that Henry reviewed his will and added a codicil to address the care of his
son and heir, the infant Henry, who was still short of his first birthday. He would soon be king as King Henry VI of
England, for his father died in France at Chateau de Vincennes on the 31st of August
1422. Henry's body was taken through
France in commemoration and then sent to England. He was buried at Westminster Abbey on the
7th of November, 1422. Following Henry’s death a regency government
was established to rule England on behalf of his infant son. This included figures such as Bishop Henry
Beaufort, the Duke of Exeter and Chancellor Thomas Langley, while Henry’s widow, Queen
Katherine, would also play a prominent role over the next several decades as a fierce
advocate for her son. But there was trouble ahead. A regency government could never sustain the
kind of military campaigning which Henry V had been able to in the 1410s and early 1420s
in France. Moreover, just weeks after Henry’s own death,
the dauphin Charles succeeded to the throne of France as King Charles VII. In the years that followed, as England suffered
from a weak minority government, France was strengthened by Charles’s effective kingship
and the appearance of Joan of Arc as a heroine of the French side in the war in the late
1420s. Then, when Henry VI finally came of age, he
proved to be mentally unstable. Thus, England faced major political crises
from the 1440s onwards. All of this saw the English war effort collapse
in France. In 1451 the city of Bordeaux, the capital
of the English presence in Gascony, fell to Charles VII’s armies and following the Battle
of Castillon in 1453 England was expelled from all its territories in France other than
the town of Calais and its hinterland. While this would remain in English hands until
the 1550s, 1453 is typically viewed as marking the end of the Hundred Years War. Moreover, as Henry VI’s mental collapse
worsened in the 1450s England itself was plunged into civil war, the famed Wars of the Roses,
for the next thirty years. Henry V is one of England’s most lionized
kings. Much of that reputation rests on the spectacular
English victory at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and the fact that English arms and
political power in France peaked in the years that followed. There is no doubting that Henry was a dynamic
king and an effective military campaigner, and that this allowed him to succeed in this
way. But, other issues need to be taken into account
in any appraisal of his short reign. If Henry succeeded in this way in France it
was to a large extent owing to the French being massively divided owing to the psychological
frailty of their long-reigning king, Charles VI. It was owing to Charles’s incapacity as
king and the civil war which it provoked in France in the 1400s that Henry was able to
succeed so spectacularly there between 1415 and 1422. When the tables were reversed thereafter the
war flipped in France’s favour again. What is perhaps most striking is that Henry
faced the same issues which his great-grandfather, Edward III, had, namely the inability of the
English government to pay for a sustained war against France. Had he lived longer, it seems likely that
Henry would have succeeded where the regency government for his son failed. In this sense, Henry’s legacy largely rests
on his premature death. What do you think of Henry V? Does his victory at Agincourt make him England's
greatest warrior king or was his victory against the French a carbon copy of the tactics used
by Edward III and the Black Prince? Please let us know in the comment section
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching. The man known to history as King George III
of Great Britain and Ireland was born on the 4th of June 1738 in Norfolk House in St James’s
Square in the city of Westminster in London. His father was Frederick, the eldest son of
King George II who had ruled England since 1727. The House of Hanover, from which Frederick
was descended, had come to rule Britain in 1714, having previously only ruled as Dukes
and Prince-electors of Brunswick-Lüneburg, also known as the Electorate of Hanover, in
northern Germany. George was then effectively a member of a
German family which had fairly recently come to rule Britain. At the time of his son’s birth, Frederick
was the sitting Prince of Wales and heir apparent to the Kingdom. George’s mother was Augusta
of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. She was also descended from a prominent German
noble family and had married Frederick in a dynastic union in 1736. The marriage had immediately resulted in children. A girl, named Augusta after her mother, was
born in 1737 and a year later George appeared, immediately becoming second in line to the
throne of Great Britain. Young George was the first member of the House
of Hanover who would go on to become king, who was actually born in England. Both George I and George II, the first two
Hanoverian monarchs, were born in Hanover itself, as was George’s own father. Both his parents spoke German as their native
tongue. The family was part of a German royal dynasty
which had inherited the British throne after Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs
died with no children in 1714. An Act of Settlement in 1701, seeking to ensure
a Protestant succession, selected the Hanoverians, who could trace their family back to the daughter
of King James I, the first monarch of both England and Scotland, who reigned between
1603 and 1625. As such George would be the first member of
the family to have a strong English background, having been both born in London and raised
in England. George was brought up speaking both German
and English, however there are mixed reports about his schooling. Some were worried that he was intellectually
limited, but as time went by George also learned to speak French, became a keen musician and
developed interests in astronomy, clocks, painting, reading and playing chess. Perhaps he would not become a good fit for
the type of philosopher king which the great Greek thinker Plato had defined as the ideal
ruler of a state, but George would nevertheless prove to be a relatively astute and cultivated
king one day. Little did anyone know at the time of his
birth, but young George’s accession to the throne of Great Britain would occur far more
quickly than expected. In March of 1751 George’s father, Frederick,
died at Leicester House in London at just 44 years of age. At the time
it was believed that the Prince, who was a keen cricketer, had died from a burst lung
abscess which had occurred as a result of a blow from a cricket ball, however the cause
of death is now believed to have been a pulmonary embolism, a blockage of one of the arteries
in his lungs. Whatever the cause of death, the implications
were now clear. Suddenly his twelve year old son had become
the heir apparent to George II, who in 1751 was already 67, a ripe old age for a British
monarch at that time. Nevertheless, the aging king continued to
live long enough for young Prince George to pass through his teenage years and reach young
manhood before he became king. It was not until October 1760, by which time
he was blind in one eye and partially deaf, that old King George died. He was succeeded by his 22 year old grandson,
who became King George III. And he would rule as king of Great Britain
for the next sixty years, during the course of which time, Europe and the world would
experience changes unlike anything that had preceded them in human history. George faced a number of initial challenges. The first was on the international scene. When he became king, Britain was mired in
a major war against France, with its combatants fighting in Europe and as far afield as North
America, the Caribbean and India, where the two powers were rivals for colonial supremacy. This Seven Years War had broken out in 1756
and had soon resulted in Britain allying with powers such as Prussia and Portugal, while
France found allies in Austria and Spain, lending an international dimension to the
conflict. However, by the time of George’s accession
in late 1760, British fortunes were on the ascendant and peace was quickly secured in
1763 on favourable terms for Britain which acquired New France, the future Canada, and
France’s trading posts along the Indian coastline. However, France would remain Britain’s foremost
rival for European hegemony throughout George’s long life. In tandem to the war, the second issue confronting
George was more personal. He needed a wife to secure the succession. George had been smitten by Lady Sarah Lennox
in the late 1750s, but the marriage was not suitable from a dynastic perspective and George
was convinced by his family to marry Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in September
1761. The couple met for the first time on their
wedding day, but despite the inauspicious beginnings the marriage proved very happy. George and Charlotte had 15 children during
their long lives together, and he was never unfaithful. Beyond these initial concerns as king, George’s
position as ruler of Britain was strong at the time of his accession. In the mid-eighteenth century the country
was beginning to benefit enormously from a range of developments which would catapult
the country to become the world’s foremost military, economic and political power by
the nineteenth century. During the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries England had subsumed Scotland and Ireland, although religious divisions in Ireland
remained a problem. Moreover, following a series of civil wars
in the seventeenth century England had emerged with a very strong political system where
power was held between the monarchy, parliament and nobility, unlike in countries such as
France and Russia where absolutist monarchs still held all the power, and where a weak
king or queen could result in prolonged periods of instability. Additionally, the British navy had emerged
as the foremost in the world during the eighteenth century. Finally, modern capitalism and proto-industry
had emerged in England and the Low Countries during the seventeenth century and London
was emerging as a global capital of finance and trade, at the heart of a growing British
Empire, which held possessions in North America, the Caribbean and India. And so, one thing was clear, George would
not rule over a weak nation. What Britain did have, however, was a divided
parliament. Unlike in most European countries at the time
where domestic political tensions generally existed between the monarchy and aristocracy
on one side, and the gentry and the bourgeois merchant and professional classes on the other,
wanting more political power, in England the power of the monarchy and nobility had already
been considerably reduced during the civil wars of the seventeenth century. As a result, parliament had emerged as the
main organ of government in England, although the king and nobility were still very influential. But England had also been one of the first
countries in the world where political parties representing differing societal viewpoints
emerged and this created considerable political problems at times during George’s reign. In eighteenth-century Britain, these included
the Whigs, the forerunners of the modern-day Liberals, and the Tories, the predecessors
of the British Conservative Party. Generally the Whigs tended to seek a stronger
parliament which benefited the merchant class in Britain, while the Tories
were a more conservative party, comprised of many
nobles, and was generally, though not always, the party more favourable
to the monarchy. This duel between the Whigs and the Tories
would shape how George III involved himself in Britain’s politics. As early the 1760s George’s role in parliament
was clearly felt. In 1762 a new Tory government came to power
headed by John Stuart, third earl of Bute, a prominent Scottish lord and family friend
of the royals. It was even rumoured that
Bute was in a relationship with George’s widowed mother and there was consternation within the Whig establishment
that this early sign of George’s willingness to intervene in parliamentary affairs might
signal that the new king wished to exercise greater power than his grandfather. As such, much of Britain’s domestic politics
in the 1760s was unstable, as the Whigs won a majority in parliament in the 1760s but
a government cabinet could not be found which would last for long, until such time as William
Pitt the Elder agreed to form a cabinet in 1766. Pitt was one of a handful of politicians who
were central to running British state affairs during George’s reign and who must be mentioned
in any consideration of the era. He dominated state affairs for much of the
1760s, before the Tory peer, Lord North, served as prime minister between 1770 and 1782. Finally, Pitt the Elder’s son and namesake,
William Pitt the Younger, dominated British politics in the 1780s and 1790s. These three men are critical to the assessment
of George’s long kingship. Pitt’s heyday, however, it must be said,
had passed by the late 1760s. His career had peaked during the late 1750s
in the final years of George II’s reign and the early 1760s, just as George III was
settling into being addressed as the king. It was Pitt’s passionate belief in Britain’s
imperial destiny which had led him to invest so much in the Seven Years War against France,
during which he served as Prime Minister of Great Britain. The instability of the 1760s was less grand
and Pitt suffered from increasingly poor health himself. Thus, in 1768 he tendered his resignation,
citing the continued influence of the Earl of Bute and the king’s meddling in parliament
as his motives for walking away. Consequently, George, who was having family
problems at the time relating to what he perceived as improper conduct amongst his siblings,
settled on a more pliable candidate in the shape of Frederick North, Lord North. It would be a fateful appointment and North’s
tenure of the office of Prime Minister over the next twelve years, and George’s steady
backing of him, have been controversial ever since. This is above all because North’s ascendancy
occurred at the same time as the outbreak of major unrest within Britain’s colonies
in North America and the eventual outbreak of a War of Independence there. Ultimately, although he ruled as king for
sixty years, George III has become most famous for the rebellion which began in the British
colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America during the 1770s and which eventually
resulted in the United States declaring their independence from Britain. British involvement in the region can be traced
all the way back to the early seventeenth century. In 1607 the first permanent colony was settled
at Jamestown in Virginia. After a stuttering start by the 1620s it became
a secure plantation based on tobacco and cotton farming. Further to the north the first British settlers
arrived in New England in 1620 and ten years later new arrivals fleeing religious persecution
in England began settling the town of Boston. In the decades that followed these two colonies
expanded outwards into new settlements at Rhode Island and Connecticut in the case of
New England, and the Carolinas in the case of Virginia. Additional colonies were settled at Baltimore
in what became the state of Maryland, and a Quaker colony under their leader, William
Penn, was set up in what became Pennsylvania. With the conquest of the Dutch colony of New
Holland and the renaming of New Amsterdam as New York, the British had secured virtually
all the land from New England south to Georgia by the end of the seventeenth century. Yet the Thirteen Colonies,
as they were increasingly referred to by the time of George III’s
reign, were also increasingly difficult to rule over. At the heart of the matter was the lack of
representation afforded to the American colonies in British political affairs. The Thirteen Colonies had been settled by
British people who believed that if they paid taxes to the crown and to the British government,
just as people in London, Bristol and Manchester in England did, then they
should have representation in parliament commensurate with paying their taxes. To compound the problem the American colonies
had become more and more wealthy in the course of the eighteenth century as proto-industry
flourished in cities like Philadelphia and Boston and large taxes were generated by the
slave plantations of sugar, cotton and tobacco in the southern colonies. As the government in London sought to acquire
greater control over these rich economies, local powers were stripped away from the colonies
and large taxes such as the Stamp Act of 1765 were imposed. The latter tax saw resistance movements being
organised within the colonies against what was deemed to be British overreach. Trouble was brewing and it would soon boil
over and lead to war. The 1770s would eventually see the colonial
communities of the American colonies rebel against British rule. By this time there were approximately 2.5
million people living in the Thirteen Colonies, as opposed to 8 million in England. This gives a sense of how large the tax base
of the colonies was to the British exchequer. The Stamp Act had already seen outbreaks of
violence against government officials in the late 1760s, but these were eclipsed in 1773
when North’s government in Britain passed the Tea Act. This was intended to facilitate the British
East India Company, which had huge stockpiles of tea in its warehouses in London, in selling
its products in the American colonies, where the market was generally dominated by smuggled
tea, rather than tea which was imported through legal channels and on which taxes would have
to be paid following the legislation of the 1760s. The colonial community perceived this as a
further act of provocation. Tensions flared, most famously in the city
of Boston where on the 16th of December 1773 political protestors attacked ships of the
British East India Company and dumped large consignments of tea into Boston Harbour. A British customs’ officer was also tarred
and feathered by the rioters. It was a sign of how severe tensions had become. As news reached England of what had become
known as the Boston Tea Party, George and the government of Lord North responded by
passing the Boston Port Act in March 1774 which closed the port of Boston to all ships,
even those operating legally, thus punishing the inhabitants of the town financially for
their transgressions. But the incident had initiated a sequence
of events which could not now easily be stopped. In reaction to the government’s response, in North America the Colonies
now sent representatives to a newly formed parliament of their own. The First Continental Congress met at Philadelphia
in the autumn of 1774 and sent a petition to George directly calling for a repeal of
the acts which had been issued by North’s government in London in response to events
in Boston. But this message had barely arrived in England
and a response formulated and returned before tensions were spilling over into direct military
conflict between supporters of the Continental Congress and British troops stationed in North
America. The first acts of the American Revolutionary
War or the American War of Independence are typically understood to have played out at
the Battles of Lexington and Concord on the 19th of April 1775 near Massachusetts Bay. Eight further years of war would follow.
George’s role in fomenting the political crisis which led to the unrest in the Colonies
and then deepening it in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party has been a subject of
immense debate over the years. His reputation has generally fared poorly
as a result, but the issue is very much a partisan one of the time. In America, the king was derided from the
very inception of the war by individuals who wanted to drum up support for the revolutionary
struggle. In a pamphlet which the political theorist,
Thomas Paine, wrote in 1775 and published in the first days of 1776, entitled Common
Sense, he argued in favour of the Colonies acquiring independence from Great Britain. In it Paine referred to George as ‘the royal
brute’. The Declaration of Independence which followed
later in 1776, largely from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, conspiratorially and baselessly
suggested that George had a plan to enslave his American subjects. Both documents are not exactly obscure. If the sales of Common Sense are measured
proportionate to the actual population of the Thirteen Colonies in 1776 then Paine’s
pamphlet is the best-selling book in American history, while the Declaration of Independence
is one of the most significant and widely cited political statements ever written. It is hard to imagine how any one individual’s
reputation could suffer more than by being impugned in these documents. The reality, though, of George III’s role
in initiating the revolutionary war in America is more complex. When he ascended to the throne in 1760 he
inherited an already declining situation there, where the colonial community was disgruntled
with the cost in manpower and resources which they had to pay for the Seven Years War against
France. Conversely, George maintained a temperate
stance throughout much of the mid-1770s while the crisis was escalating. In a speech to parliament in England in October
1775 he stated his belief that much of the colonial community might have wished to remain
loyal to the British government and that he believed the unrest to be the actions of a
violent minority. Living in a time when governments did not
have the information available to them which modern-day administrations do, this was a
reasonable belief, one which was added to by the fact that it took weeks to communicate
accurate information back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean. More strikingly, in September 1775 George
claimed of his own response to the outbreak of the war that he had been quote: “anxious
to prevent, if it had been possible, the effusion of the blood of my subjects”. George would make mistakes in relation to
managing the American crisis, but he was no simple tyrant acting to augment his own royal
power. Whatever George’s role in creating the conflict,
the result was inevitable by 1776. By that time the Second Continental Congress
had ordered one of its leading members, George Washington, a veteran of the British war in
the 1750s, to form a new Continental Army to fight an all-out war of independence against
British rule. Then on the 4th of July 1776 the Congress
in Philadelphia issued the Declaration of Independence in which British rule of the
Thirteen Colonies was renounced. Even so, at this early stage there were hopes
in England that a quick settlement could be reached by appealing to more moderate elements
amongst the colonial community, however such beliefs were undermined
quickly when the Continental Army succeeded in taking Boston, before a British counter-attack led to the seizure
of New York City in 1777. These exchanges in New England and south towards
New York culminated in October 1777 when a numerically superior revolutionary army led
by Benedict Arnold overcame a smaller force of British, Canadian and German troops led
by General John Burgoyne at the Battle of Saratoga in New York State. Thousands of British troops were captured
and as the war now expanded France allied with the Continental Congress against Britain
early in 1778.
The war which followed dragged on for another three years. Like the Seven Years War which had preceded
it nearly twenty years earlier, it took on an international dimension with French and
then Spanish entry on the side of the American revolutionaries and fighting occurring as
far west as Louisiana and north into Canada. However, the main theatre remained the Thirteen
Colonies. By the early 1780s much of this focused on
the Chesapeake region where Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis had been entrusted by the
king and Lord North’s government with overseeing military activities in the Carolinas and Virginia,
where it was believed the general population was more inclined to loyalty to the British
crown and government. This tactic ultimately failed and after Cornwallis
made his last stand at the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781 the British military campaign
in the Colonies and the war was effectively over. Two years later, in 1783,
members of the Continental Congress and George III’s government agreed the Treaty of Paris in the French capital,
whereby Great Britain acknowledged the existence of an independent United States of America
and the border between the new nation and Britain’s territories in what would one
day become Canada were established. While the outcome of the American Revolutionary
War was a bitter blow to George, one which he frequently mentioned in later years, his
reign was otherwise one of profound growth and expansion of the British Empire. British victory over France in the Seven Years
War in 1763 left Britain as the dominant colonial power in New France and in India. Thus, even before the United States was lost,
Canada had been acquired. In India only small pockets of land were held
on the coastline by the early 1760s, but in a series of incredible conquests over the
next three decades much of the sub-continent around Bengal and Calicut and then further
inland towards Delhi was brought under British rule by colonial adventurers such as Sir Robert
Clive. Elsewhere, the British Royal Navy became the
major power on the world’s seas. By the 1770s this extended to being able to
defend British settlements as far away as the Falklands Islands in the South Atlantic. Then, in a series of voyages which he made
in the 1760s and 1770s, Captain James Cook discovered many of the Pacific Islands such
as Hawaii, before charting the coast of much of Australia. As a result, beginning with the First Fleet
in 1787, Britain began sending settlers to New South Wales in the first acts of what
would become British colonisation of Australia and New Zealand. Thus, George’s reign was the first during
which the maxim that the sun never set on the British Empire became substantially true. While the expansion of Britain’s empire
and its increasing dominance of the world’s seas might have reflected well on George’s
reign, there was nevertheless a growing problem at home, and more specifically with the king
himself. George was a deeply religious person and a
devoted family man, who also had a healthy lifestyle, being abstemious in his diet and
exercising regularly. Yet as early as the 1760s there were reports
of him acting in a slightly peculiar fashion at times, often becoming highly agitated and
talking in an incessant fashion in ways which seemed out of character to those who knew
him in a personal or professional capacity. Now the mid-1780s would see him act in ways
which for the first time led both George himself and many individuals in government to question
whether the king could actually be trusted to rule. His malady, which has been euphemistically
referred to as ‘The Madness of King George III’ might possibly have been brought about
by porphyria, a disease of the liver which can lead to mental illnesses when toxins build
up in the system. Reports that George had purple urine at times
would seem to substantiate this diagnosis. But others have suggested
alternative psychological disorders, the most recent being that George had several bouts of increasingly severe and
finally chronic mania. We will almost certainly never know for certain
what caused George’s alleged ‘madness’. What is clear, though, is that in 1788 the
king entered into a period of sustained ill health which for the first time resulted in
a genuine crisis within the British state. This was a largely unprecedented situation
in Britain at that time. George would often talk incessantly for hours,
write sentences which ran to hundreds of words and in his worst moments he was confused,
unsteady on his feet, foamed at the mouth and was occasionally violent. A trip to Cheltenham Spa relieved his symptoms
somewhat, but there were plans already being considered at this early stage for George’s
son, namesake and heir, the future King George IV, to head a regency government if his father
remained incapacitated. In the end recourse to this drastic solution
was not needed in the late 1780s, as George appeared to recover his health almost fully
over the space of some months, but concerns remained and in the end George would enter
a period of final illness in the early nineteenth century from which he would never recover. All of that, however, lay ahead, and in the
late 1780s further war loomed. The end of the American Revolutionary War
did not bring an end to periods of prolonged warfare for Britain during George’s long
sixty year reign. In fact just a few short years after the end
of the conflict with the Thirteen Colonies fresh political strife within the country
which had proved the stalwart ally of the colonials, France, brought renewed upheaval. In 1789 a popular revolt began in France against
the absolutist rule of King Louis XVI. Within weeks of calling a parliament the king
lost control of the situation and eventually the government was taken over by the French
parliament in the summer of 1789. By the end of that year the king and queen
were effectively being detained in Paris. The French Revolution would soon become more
radical and eventually a republic was declared in 1792 followed by the execution of Louis
and his queen, Marie Antoinette, an act which George denounced as the work of savages. Worried by these radical new developments
in France, the European powers, led by Britain and Austria, were soon at war with France in what would become known
as the French Revolutionary Wars. In one shape or another, the conflict would
drag on between Britain and France for the next 23 years. George’s government would be dominated on
the political stage, throughout the period of the French Revolutionary Wars by William
Pitt the Younger. Born in 1759, Pitt was the son of William
Pitt the Elder who had played such a prominent role in the government of Great Britain during
the last days of George II’s reign and the first decade of George III’s own reign. He steered a middle-of-the-road course in
politics, often being described as being both an ‘independent Whig’ and then a ‘new
Tory’. Based on his abilities as
an excellent administrator, and to some extent the reputation of his father preceding him, Pitt was asked to become Prime
Minister in 1783 shortly after Lord North’s long government had ended. when he was just 24 years of age. He would serve as head of George’s government
for the next eighteen years. Throughout this period he remained stalwart
in his opposition to the French in defence of British interests and worked to increase
efficiencies within Great Britain and reform the government in order to improve the taxation
base to fund what eventually turned into nearly a quarter of a century of war with the French. Nearly all agreed that Pitt was a figure who
did not act in his own interest, applied himself with quiet brilliance and was one of Britain’s
greatest statesmen. In placing his faith in him for nearly twenty
years George made a wise decision after his questionable support for Lord North during
the previous period.
The initial struggles with France are known as the French Revolutionary Wars to distinguish
them from the later wars with what would become the French Empire. There were two major parts to this early conflict. The War of the First Coalition broke out in
1792 when France went to war with an alliance of Austria and Prussia, who were then joined
by Great Britain and the Dutch Republic and then a number of smaller powers such as Spain,
Portugal and Naples. This war would last for five years, during
which time, France’s internal politics were highly turbulent, but during which it also
won immense victories on the battlefield owing to the use of the levée en masse, a form of national military
conscription which drastically increased the Republic’s fighting abilities. When the war largely ended in 1797 the French
had conquered the Low Countries from Austria and the Dutch Republic, the rump of which
was formed into what was known as the Batavian Republic. The French had also conquered much of western
Germany, leaving them in possession of everything on the west bank of the River Rhine. Advances had also been made in northern Italy
where a brilliant young general from the island of Corsica named Napoleon Bonaparte had won
several major victories against the Austrians. The War of the First Coalition was considered
to have ended in 1797 when most of France’s major enemies, including Austria and Prussia,
had made separate peace agreements with the French. However, the British did not and fought on,
while for his part George would never consider any peace with France as anything other than
a temporary measure until the Republic and what followed it was defeated. Thus, Britain was the driving force behind
the formation of a new coalition in 1798 and the outbreak of the War of the Second Coalition
that year. They were joined in this by Austria, the Ottoman
Empire, Naples and Portugal and briefly other powers such as Russia and the United States. It began with a spectacular, but ultimately
unsuccessful invasion of Egypt by a French army led by Bonaparte. Several years of fighting followed thereafter
until 1802, during which France’s internal politics was again shifting dramatically,
with the Republic drifting increasingly to a military dictatorship, one where power was
gradually centralised in Bonaparte’s hands as First Consul of the country. When the war ended in 1802 France was not
only confirmed in its possession of western Germany, but it had increased its hold on
Italy with the conquest of Tuscany. Europe now enjoyed a period of peace for just
over one year. As a result of his ascendancy and having confirmed
France as the new predominant power on the continent Bonaparte was able to move to bring
the French Republic to an end in 1804 and had himself proclaimed as Emperor Napoleon
I of France. Henceforth he, rather than the French Republic,
was perceived as the enemy by George and the British. It was in the midst of the French Revolutionary
Wars that George as king and Pitt as prime minister had to deal with the greatest internal
threat to Britain and Ireland that had been seen since the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland
of 1745 and that would be seen again until the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence
in 1919. It occurred in Ireland. While Scotland and Wales had been generally
reconciled to English-political dominance of Britain between the fifteenth and eighteenth
centuries, Ireland had remained a problem, one which was largely, though not exclusively,
manifested in the continuing adherence of the majority of the population there to Roman
Catholicism. Several rebellions there between the 1590s
and 1690s had seen the island nearly lost, but a series of brutally repressive Penal
Laws issued by the Protestant dominated Irish parliament, aimed against Catholics and Scottish
Presbyterians there had crushed political opposition for much of the eighteenth century,
though agrarian violence and unrest was rife at times between the 1760s and the 1780s. The war with France now provided an opportunity
for a more concerted revolt there. And in 1798 such a rebellion was launched
by the Society of United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group which had support from
France. The rebellion of 1798 saw risings from within
Ireland at Wexford in the south-east as well as other sites. A French expeditionary force then landed in
the west, in county Mayo, however a larger second French force was prevented from landing
in Ulster in the north by the Royal Navy. This proved crucial and in the two weeks that
followed some 30,000 British troops and thousands more irregular militia troops succeeded in
suppressing the rebellion before Ireland could be turned into a launching pad for the French
to attack Britain. It was a close shave and one which the British
government was determined not to repeat. Thus, a resolution was quickly made in the
aftermath of the rebellion that Irish discontent would be appeased by repealing the Penal laws
there, including the right of Catholics to sit in parliament. However, in tandem it was determined that
in order to avoid Irish Catholics forming a majority in the Irish parliament, it would
be dispensed with entirely. In January 1801 an Act of Union was passed
whereby the Irish parliament was ended. Henceforth MPs from Ireland
would sit at Westminster where the Catholic vote would be rendered powerless. George was granted the new title of King of
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, having declined an offer to be thereafter
known as the Emperor of the British Isles. An Irish parliament would not be convened
again for over a century. Thus, the 1798 rebellion and the Act of Union
which followed it quietened the Irish Question for several generations. George and the British Parliament needed the
Irish Question at least temporarily solved in order to shore the country up against further
French encroachments. After a brief period of peace in 1802 and
early 1803 the War of the Third Coalition began when Britain declared war on France
in May 1803. They were soon allied with Austria, Russia,
Naples, Sicily and Sweden in what was the strongest coalition France had yet faced,
but even so Napoleon carried all before him, culminating in a crushing victory against
Austria and Russia at the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805. As the third coalition broke up in 1806 France
had now added Naples to its possessions and effectively broken Austrian control over much
of Germany. A further swift war followed within months,
during which Napoleon resoundingly defeated Prussia and seized half of its territory,
out of much of which the Duchy of Warsaw, a Polish client-state of France, was formed. Finally, with Napoleon’s decision in 1808
to install his brother Joseph as King of Spain, a country which had been allied with France,
but which at times had shown wavering loyalty, Napoleon Bonaparte was effectively ruler of
an empire which stretched across Western Europe east through Central Europe as far as the
borders with Tsarist Russia. In 1809 Bonaparte’s iron tight control over
Europe was made clear when an Austrian attempt to resist French control of Central Europe
was quickly defeated. His only perennial enemy remained George’s
Great Britain. However, there were cracks in Napoleon’s
dominance of the continent. Britain was unquestionably the foremost naval
power in the world and the destruction of much of France’s fleet at the Battle of
Trafalgar off the coast of Spain in 1805 had ensured that a land invasion of Britain could
not now be undertaken by the French. Moreover, efforts by Napoleon from late 1806
to bring the British to their knees by imposing a massive blockade on trade between Great
Britain and continental Europe proved largely ineffective. Indeed the so-called ‘Continental System’
succeeded only in souring relations between Napoleon and Emperor Alexander I of Russia,
as Russia remained the backdoor for British trade with the continent. These developments, combined with a front
being opened by the British against France in Spain in 1807, one which would cost Napoleon
dearly in troops and resources in the years that followed, ensured that Britain kept the
fight against the French alive in what would ultimately prove to be the last years that
George was lucid enough to rule as king in his own right. It would be unfair to suggest that George’s
reign was characterised simply by the wars which Britain fought during it. While it is understandable to take that view,
given that during the four decades between 1776 and 1815 Britain was nearly constantly
involved in major conflicts with the United States and France, George’s reign and his
kingship must be viewed as having contributed much more besides. For instance, this was the period in which
the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, eventually changing the face of the entire
world beyond recognition. Just four years after George’s accession
the ‘Spinning Jenny’, a multi-spindle spinning machine, was invented in Blackburn. Soon textile factories containing these new
mass production devices were appearing across northern England and they were soon to be
powered by engines. Additionally, while coal and other fuels such
as charcoal had been used in increasing amounts in England since the sixteenth century to
power proto-industrial activities such as iron production, from the 1780s they were
being used to power steam engines which had been refined in a design James Watt introduced
in 1781. Meanwhile, new, more efficient ploughs and
land drainage methods, as well as better farming practices such as crop and field rotation and selective breeding of
livestock saw agricultural output expand considerably across Britain
and because of his strong interest in agricultural innovation, George gained the nickname ‘Farmer
George.’ It was not simply that Britain was becoming
a centre of economic activity at this time. The innovation which was being seen in the
textile industry, agriculture and smelting practices extended to all manner of things
including medicine, mechanics and engineering. For George, who had an interest in astronomy
and clocks, things like this were of personal value and ones which the royal family actively
patronised throughout his reign. An instructive example of this was seen in
the case of vaccines. In the 1790s a British physician by the name
of Edward Jenner began working on ways to inoculate people against smallpox, an appalling
virus which killed and disfigured its many victims, of which there were 400,000 every
year in eighteenth-century Europe. Jenner pioneered a method of preventing the
worst effects of it by purposefully infecting people with a small amount of cowpox, a related
though much weaker virus from which people quickly recovered, with the advantage of immunity
from the more deadly smallpox. His innovation was the first effective European
vaccine against a major disease such as smallpox. Jenner was soon being supported by the king
and in particular his wife, Queen Charlotte, and several of the royal children were inoculated
using Jenner’s methods. George also provided financial and political
support for Jenner to popularise and spread his ideas in the months that followed. In this way George was a great supporter of
the medical revolution of modern times. The years of war with France also saw increasing
calls for an abolition of the slave trade in Britain. During the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries over ten million Africans were forced onto boats in western Africa and transported
to the Americas where they were used as slave labour, primarily in the sugar plantations
of the Caribbean and in Portuguese and Spanish controlled South America. Several hundred thousand of them had been
brought to the American colonies to work the tobacco and cotton plantations in Virginia,
the Carolinas and Georgia in particular, while the British had also transported large numbers
of slaves to their sugar colonies in Barbados and other British-held colonies in the Caribbean. But the slave trade had always had a considerable
number of opponents in America and Britain, even as it enriched port towns such as Liverpool. Many of these abolitionists originated from
within religious groups such as the Quakers, who subsequently led efforts to abolish the
slave trade in the eighteenth century. As a pious Christian, George favoured abolitionism
and in the 1750s he is on record as saying that slavery was indefensible and entirely
unethical. He would often support moves towards abolishing
the slave trade during his reign. The Abolitionist movement gained momentum
throughout George’s reign. In 1772, what was known as Somersett’s Case
was heard before the King’s Bench in London to adjudicate on the case of a fugitive slave
in Jamaica who had previously lived in England. The trial concluded that there was no legal
basis for slavery under English common law. With this legal precedent established Abolitionist
groups led by figures such as William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp and Hannah More began building
public pressure to bring about an end to the slave trade. This was compounded in 1777 when Vermont,
a state which had opted not to join the United States in the first years following independence,
abolished slavery, while in 1794 the French revolutionary government abolished slavery
throughout its overseas territories, following which, the French colony of Saint Dominique
in the Caribbean emerged as the first former colony ruled by former slaves. When the northern states in the US, such as
Massachusetts and New York, abolished slavery in their jurisdictions in the 1800s the argument
in favour of abolishing the slave trade in Britain became overwhelming and finally in
1807 the Slave Trade Act was signed into law by George. It was a victory for a monarch who had called
the institution ‘repugnant’, however the 1807 Act only prohibited the transport of
slaves from Africa on British ships. The Abolitionists would have to wait until
1833 for the Slavery Abolition Act to effectively prohibit the entire institution of slavery
throughout the British Empire. George III also made a significant contribution
to the cultural and intellectual life of Great Britain and England in particular. The British Museum had been created in 1753
during the later years of his grandfather’s reign and George was committed to adding to
the library which is the forerunner of the British Library of today. Therefore George assembled what, by one estimation
was deemed to be “one of the finest libraries ever created by one man.” He was advised in the process by such literary
luminaries as Samuel Johnson. This personal collection consisted of 65,250
volumes, as well as approximately 19,000 tracts and pamphlets, and the largest collection
of British maps and charts ever assembled up to that point. The scope of the collections was vast, with
a particular focus on history. Particularly noteworthy works included copies
of William Caxton’s edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a Gutenberg
Bible, and four copies of William Shakespeare’s First Folio of collected works. Following his death, in honour of his earlier
stated wishes, George’s incredible personal library was offered to the nation and was
finally accepted into the British Museum as the King’s Library. Today the glass see-through tower which houses
George’s vast collection makes up the central display which dominates the impressive foyer
of the British Library in London. George was also a significant patron and collector
of art, as well as being a competent architectural draughtsman himself. In 1762 he purchased a large collection of
Italian works from Joseph Smith, the British consul in Venice at the time, and these works
were brought to Buckingham House in London. George also commissioned portraits and other
original works from some of the most famous artists of the day, notably
by Thomas Gainsborough, regarded by some as the greatest British artist of the second half of the eighteenth century
and one who painted several portraits of the royal family. Further artists whom he and the royal family
patronised during his reign include Allan Ramsay and Sir Thomas Lawrence. George also played a significant role in ensuring
that the Royal Academy of Arts was established in 1768, providing it with vital initial funds
and accommodation at Old Somerset House and other locations in its early days. Although he was often
perceived as being interfering in the art world, there is no doubt that George was an enlightened and generous benefactor
of both learning and artistic work in Great Britain during the second half of the eighteenth
century, and the British Enlightenment owed much to him. The war with France continued to trundle on
through the late 18th Century. Napoleon remained firmly in control of much
of Europe, but the British were beginning to cause the French major trouble in the Iberian
Peninsula where an invasion was launched in 1807. Under the command of Arthur Wellesley, who became the first Duke of
Wellington, the Peninsular War became known as the Spanish Ulcer, such
was its drain on French resources. Then in 1812 Napoleon launched an ill-judged
invasion of Tsarist Russia where his armies were largely destroyed in the harsh Russian
winter. It was the beginning of the end and during
the course of 1813 and 1814 the Russians and then the Prussians and Austrians began rolling
back all of Bonaparte’s conquests of the previous fifteen years across Eastern and
Central Europe. Yet George would not be in an appropriate
state of mind by the mid-1810s to be able to celebrate the victory after over twenty
years of war with the French. In the late 1700s his relationship with his
son and heir, the Prince of Wales, the future George IV, had deteriorated, compounded by
rumours that the Princess of Wales had given birth to an illegitimate child several years
earlier. A commission of investigation determined that
the rumours were false, but did remark that Princess Caroline’s general conduct in recent years had encouraged such
unfavourable allegations. This, compounded by charges in parliament
in 1809 that the king’s favourite son, the Duke of York, had been guilty of selling military commissions, along with a
serious health development for his youngest and favourite daughter, the
Princess Amelia, was the context in which George’s mental health yet again deteriorated. Then in 1810, Amelia’s health worsened further
and another son was involved in a scandal involving a valet of his being found dead. Just weeks later, George entered his final
bout of madness. It would last ten years. His last public appearance was at Windsor
Castle on the 25th of October 1810 where his golden jubilee was marked. Yet what should have been a celebration of
George’s fiftieth year on the throne was overshadowed by the fact that Amelia was at
death’s door, and would die only a week later, and the king was clearly not okay,
appearing manic and flustered. Rumours circulated that his former symptoms
had returned at their most severe level, since the crisis of 1788, and now they were worse
than ever. Living in an age when little was known about
what caused such psychological illnesses and with virtually no effective treatments available,
George was confined to a strait-jacket within days. His care improved somewhat over time, but
George clearly could not continue to act as king. The royal family and the political nation
now needed to act in what was a relatively unprecedented crisis. When monarchs had become
psychologically incapacitated in past times, such as had happened with King Henry VI in the mid-fifteenth century, rivals
usually used the opportunity to initiate a civil war to press their own claim. That was out of the question by the early
nineteenth century. Instead, an act of parliament was passed on
the 7th of February 1811 whereby a regency government was established, with George’s
son and heir, the future George IV, acting as regent until such time as his father should
either recover or die. And the king’s care was entrusted to his
wife, Queen Charlotte, and a small council headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, to
ensure that George’s person would not become a political football for competing interests
within the regency government. A speedy recovery was initially hoped for, as many attributed this
latest bout of psychological ill health to the king’s concerns for Amelia,
however as the weeks went by it was clear that George’s condition was actually deteriorating
rather than improving. Consequently, during the last ten years of
his reign the king played no role in public life, such that the 1810s are typically referred
to as the Regency Period. Though George III cannot be said to have been
King of Great Britain during the Regency Period, these years did bring closure to the political
events which had dominated his reign in the 1790s and 1800s. Napoleon was finally defeated after his disastrous
invasion of Russia in 1812 by the Sixth Coalition which had been assembled in the spring of
1813. When an army of nearly 200,000 men under his
command were defeated by a largely Russian, Austrian and Prussian army of over 360,000
troops at Leipzig in Germany in mid-October 1813, it was clear that Napoleon Bonaparte’s
days were numbered. France was invaded in 1814 and he was forced
to abdicate, and despite a brief re-seizure of power in France the following year, after
defeat at the famous Battle of Waterloo in June 1815 Napoleon was exiled to the Atlantic
island of St Helena where he died in 1821. At the Congress of Vienna which brought the
Napoleonic Wars to an end, the French monarchy was restored. Britain’s main allies on the continent,
Austria, Prussia and Russia, gained lands in Italy, Germany and Poland, but Britain’s
gains came in the form of colonies, notably the Cape Colony in South Africa which the
British had conquered from France’s Dutch ally during the war, Ceylon, now Sri Lanka
off the coast of India, and Malta, which had also been occupied by the British during the
course of the war. Sadly, the last nine or so years of King George
III’s life were spent in a twilight world, one in which he was almost completely unaware
of what was happening around him. To compound matters the king, who was already
approaching his mid-seventies at the onset of his final illness in 1810, suffered from
deteriorating physical health as well. His eyesight declined until he eventually
became blind and he was also very hard of hearing as the months and years went by. Those who loved him tried to provide him with
good care, but no medical treatment was available for his condition at the time, and it was
believed that the best course of action was to try to reduce the stimuli that would exacerbate
his conditions. This included restricting visitors, and George
spent his last years largely alone, having conversations with individuals from his past
who were long dead. Ever a musician, he continued, despite his
increasing deafness, to try to play some music on a harpsichord which had once been owned
by the great composer George Frideric Handel, whom he had been a prominent patron of. George III died at Windsor on the 29th of
January 1820 and was buried at St George’s Chapel over two weeks later. At the time he was the longest serving monarch
England or Great Britain had ever seen. Great Britain continued to flourish in the
aftermath of George’s long reign. Following his father’s death in 1820 his
son finally ascended as king in his own right as George IV, though it was George III’s
granddaughter, Victoria, who became synonymous with nineteenth century Britain and the empire
at the height of its global power. Her reign would last longer even than that
of her grandfather, beginning in 1837 and ending in 1901. During the Victorian period the British Empire
stretched from Australia and New Zealand, through India, much of Africa, Britain and
Ireland and west to Canada and the Caribbean. The British economy was the largest in the
world for much of the Victorian age and the country’s navy guaranteed the nation was
the strongest military power globally as well. Before America became the policeman of the
world in the twentieth century, Britain occupied that role in the nineteenth century, and presided
over a period where the European powers avoided an all-out conflict between the end of the
Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the outbreak of the First World War a century later. Much of the seeds of Britain’s status as
a superpower and the Pax Britannica, the great peace which it oversaw were sewn during George
III’s reign.
George III quickly became one of the most controversial monarchs in British history. Many of these interpretations were very negative. For liberals he was a monarch who interfered
too much with parliament; for Catholics his actions in Ireland were deemed duplicitous;
and for Americans, George soon became the tyrannous oppressor of the Colonies. These views persisted for decades and several
prominent Victorian historians suggested that George intruded too much into the politics
of the country, while as late as 1937 it was even suggested that he had attempted “to
foist a dictatorship on Britain.” All of these views are partisan and skewed. The problems in the relationship with the
American Colonies existed well before George became king and thereafter their conflict
was largely with the British Parliament. The Irish Question dated in one form or another
back to the Late Middle Ages and George can hardly be blamed for following the example
which had been provided by Scotland a century earlier of abating some of Ireland’s problems
by getting rid of its parliament. Finally, the suggestion that George III was
an autocratic king in an age which included King Louis XVI of France and Emperor Alexander
I of Russia is fanciful. George was not a tyrant and his reputation
has accordingly been revised in recent times to present him more favourably, most recently
in a biography by Andrew Roberts. Part of the reason why George’s reign is
so striking and why he has been judged so differently by different people and generations
was that his reign covered a period of such immense change. He succeeded in 1760 at a time when Watt’s
steam-engine, Jenner’s vaccine and the telegraph were unheard of and the US Declaration of
Independence and the French Revolution were political events which lay ahead. All of these things either happened or were
invented during George’s time as king and it was just a few years after he passed away
that slavery was fully abolished throughout the British Empire and the first steam-powered
commercial train-line began operating between Stockport and Darlington. So momentous was the period George III led
Great Britain through, that historians generally concur that in 1760 the world was in a period
called the ‘early modern’ era, but by the time George died it had definitively crossed
the threshold into full ‘modernity’. George III might not have been a perfect king,
but in the face of a great degree of personal adversity he managed to act as Britain’s
head of state with many substantial successes during a period which by any stretch of the
imagination presented considerable challenges. Perhaps he is best remembered as that; a man
who did a decent job under trying circumstances. What do you think of King George III? Was he really a tyrant, or
has he been misinterpreted unfairly as being one, when in fact he led Britain through some of its most significant
years? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching. The man known to history as King George V
was born on the 3rd of June 1865 at Marlborough House in Westminster, London. His father was Albert Edward, Prince of Wales,
the eldest son of Queen Victoria of Britain, ruler of the British Empire since her accession
in 1837. As her eldest male child Albert Edward was
the heir presumptive to the throne, though George’s father frequently clashed with
the queen as a result of the perception of him as a frivolous, unruly royal heir. George’s mother was Alexandra of Denmark, a scion of the royal house of
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg who had married Albert Edward in 1863. George was not their first child. In January 1864, just months after their wedding,
Prince Albert Victor had been born, making him the second in line to the throne. When George was born the next year he became
the third in line to the throne, after his father and his slightly older brother. In addition, Albert Edward and Alexandra had
four further children, three daughters named Louise, Victoria and Maud, and a son called
Alexander John who was born prematurely in 1871 and who died just 24 hours later. As a child of the royal family, George was
largely raised by a series of nannies and various household staff across the royal palaces at Windsor, Westminster,
Sandringham and elsewhere. This was typical of the age and George would
have had protracted periods of little contact with his parents. He and his elder brother Albert were of a
close enough age that they were educated together. Their primary tutor from 1871 onwards, charged
with overseeing their education, though not handling it exclusively, was John Neale Dalton,
a Church of England clergyman who had previously served as a private chaplain to George’s
grandmother, Queen Victoria. Indeed, it was the queen who recommended Dalton,
believing that the boys’ father was neglecting their education. He provided them with a varied curriculum
over the next decade, much of it focused on Protestant texts such as The Book of Common
Prayer, but also the Greek and Roman classics, the humanities being prized above the sciences
in the late Victorian educational curriculum. George was not an especially gifted student,
but he was doubtlessly the more able of the pair, Albert being prone to laziness and an
obtuse attitude towards their tutor. Conversely, George and Dalton would develop
a rapport which developed into a life-long acquaintance. When George was just twelve years of age,
his father decided that he and Albert would benefit from joining the British Navy and
exploring the world. They were enrolled in the Royal Navy in 1877
and, in 1879, after some initial seafaring training, the two young princes were sent
off, with Dalton as their tutor in toe, on board the HMS Bacchante, a newly-built corvette
of the Royal Navy. The ship was one of a new class of torpedo
carriage ships and Queen Victoria was much concerned that her two grandsons would be lost at sea, but their father,
a stern disciplinarian, stated that they needed to see the world. To convince his mother of the sturdiness of
the vessel the Bacchante was ordered to sail into a gale-force storm near Britain in 1879. When it emerged unscathed Victoria agreed
to let her two grandsons embark on the journey. The two boys and Dalton spent the next three
years voyaging on the Bacchante, which had been tasked with patrolling the world’s sea lanes at a time when
the Royal Navy effectively policed the world’s oceans. In total they travelled over 40,000 miles,
visiting the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, South America, South Africa, China, Japan
and Australia. In Japan they were amongst the first British
royals to have direct experience of the rapid modernisation of Japanese society in recent
years. They also met Emperor Meiji while there in
1881. The boys were even present in South Africa
for some of the First Boer War. Accounts of their adventures were later collected
together and published in 1886 as The Cruise of Her Majesty’s Ship Bacchante, 1879 to
82. Life at sea seems to have suited George and
following his return to England it was determined that he would continue on as a commander in
the Royal Navy, whereas Albert, as the second in line to the throne, was sent off to Trinity
College, Cambridge to continue the education he had apparently had little taste for under
Dalton’s tutelage. Conversely, George was sent to Malta, where
his uncle, Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second eldest son, was serving as a senior
figure of the British Mediterranean Fleet, becoming a Vice-Admiral in
1882 and Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet in 1886. Under his uncle George continued his training
as a naval commander throughout the mid-1880s. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, George
had reached an age and level of experience that resulted in him being made a commander
of several ships in the Royal Navy. One was the HMS Thrush, a Redbreast-class
gunboat which he took command of in 1890 during a tour of the Western Atlantic, largely operating
between Nova Scotia in north-eastern Canada and the British colony of Bermuda further
to the south near the Caribbean. Shortly thereafter he was placed in charge
of the newly commissioned HMS Melampus, an Apollo-class cruiser which he was given command
of in 1891, but it would be his last active command, as events in Britain in the early
1890s would change the future course of his life. George lived through his childhood and early
adult years in the expectation that his father would succeed his aging grandmother one day
as king, and then, after a presumably shorter reign than Victoria, Albert Edward would himself
die and be succeeded by George’s elder brother, Albert Victor. It was assumed that George would not become
king, but many people might have wished that he was second in line. His elder brother, Albert, was a problematic
heir, with questions having been repeatedly raised about his sexuality at a time when
homosexuality was still illegal in Britain and would have created problems had it become
known that the second in line to the throne was gay. In 1889 his name was raised by the Metropolitan
Police in London following an investigation into a male brothel on Cleveland Street in
the city, though his involvement here was never conclusively proven. There were also questions about Albert’s
psychological well-being, issues which have led to outlandish claims that Albert could
have been the infamous Jack the Ripper. Yet in the early 1890s he seemed to be destined
to become king one day and there was even talk of his being appointed as Viceroy of
Ireland. But mother nature had other plans. Between 1889 and 1892 a pandemic known as
the Russian or Asiatic Flu swept westwards from Asia into Europe. Albert fell prey to it and died on the 14th
of January 1892 just shy of his 28th birthday. Now, all of a sudden, George became second
in line to the throne. Provided he did not die before his father
he would one day become King of Britain and Emperor of India. Albert’s premature death also had a significant
bearing on George’s personal life. At the time that he fell ill in December 1891
Albert had been scheduled to marry Mary of Teck, the daughter of Count
Francis von Hohenstein, Duke of Teck, one of the most senior figures in the German aristocracy. Although George had grown close to his cousin,
Princess Marie of Edinburgh, who herself would one day become Queen of Romania, the decision
of who he should marry was now largely taken out of his hands and it was decided that he
should marry Mary of Teck, his older brother’s intended bride. The pair were wed at St James’s Palace on
the 6th of July 1893 in what by all accounts became a relatively happy union despite its
arranged nature. Children soon followed, with Edward born a
year later in the summer of 1894, Albert late in 1895, Mary in 1897, Henry in 1900, George
in 1902 and John in 1905. All except John, who unfortunately developed
severe epilepsy and passed away in 1919 when he was just thirteen years old, would live
long lives. As parents, George and Mary were not easy
to define. George was a very strict disciplinarian, like
his own father. This was not unusual by the standards of the
late nineteenth century, but George appears to have instilled significant fear in his
children, while he and Mary have also been otherwise criticised for failing to notice
that a string of nannies that cared for the children in their earlier years were often
emotionally and physically abusive towards them. However, on some occasions their children
expressed affection for their parents in their later years and when George and Mary had to
undertake a world tour for eight months in 1901 they were said to be deeply upset at
being separated from the children for such an extended period of time. Overall, it was a complicated relationship
between the pair and their children. George had become Duke of York in 1892 following
the death of his older brother, a title which had been borne for centuries by many figures
who were second in line to the throne of England and then Britain. His new position meant that he had to quit
active service with the Royal Navy of any kind which might endanger his well-being. As such, following his marriage to Mary in
1893 much of their roles as Duke and Duchess were ceremonial and designed to expose the
British people as much as possible to the man who would one day, perhaps many years
from then, rule Britain and its empire. Thus, social engagements and photo opportunities
became the order of the day, though unlike his father George was not an avid party-goer
and generally preferred a quiet life at York Cottage in Sandringham to hobnobbing with
British high society. Some of his formal duties involved travel
overseas, notably when George joined his parents to attend the funeral of their cousin, Tsar
Alexander III of Russia, in St Petersburg in 1894. There he spent considerable time in the presence
of his cousin, the new Tsar Nicholas II, whose rule would become entangled in many ways with
George’s years later. George’s time as Duke of York eventually
came to an end in January 1901 following the death of his grandmother, Queen Victoria,
after a reign of 63 and a half years. With her passing, which signalled the end
of an age in British and indeed European history, George’s father, Albert Edward succeeded
as King Edward VII of Britain and Emperor of India. He was already 59 years of age at the time
of his accession and his health was deteriorating owing to a chronic smoking habit and years
of excess of all kinds. He would spend much of his relatively brief
reign dealing with bronchitis, as well as a form of skin cancer which attacked his nose,
and even memory loss. It was consequently expected that George,
who had become the Prince of Wales and heir designate in 1901, would succeed his father
before too long. Nevertheless, Edward survived throughout the
1900s as George and Mary took on a string of ever growing responsibilities, notably
a world tour in 1901 in which they visited the furthest flung reaches of the British
Empire. There were several important aspects to this,
notably his opening of the first session of the Australian Commonwealth Parliament and
a visit to South Africa during the Second Boer War. Further visits to India and other parts of
the empire followed in the course of the 1900s. Thus, by the time George’s father died on
the 6th of May 1910, the subjects of the empire as well as Britain itself were familiar with
the man who now ascended as their new king. He was 44 years of age at the time. George’s coronation as King George V of
Britain and Emperor of India, along with the coronation of his wife Mary as Queen consort,
took place at Westminster Abbey in London on the 22nd of June 1911. It was attended by an enormous number of the
royal families and monarchs of Europe, including, for instance, members of the German imperial
family, numerous other German princes and princesses, representatives of the Tsar of
Bulgaria, the Romanian royal family, the Archduke Karl of Austria representing Emperor Franz
Joseph and even the Crown Prince of the Ottoman Empire as a stand-in for the Sultan. Within a few years many of these imperial
and royal houses would be shattered by the impact of the First World War and although
few could have even guessed at it in the summer of 1911 this would be one of the last times
when the many royal lines of old Europe would congregate in one place for such an event. In tandem the Festival of Empire was held
at the Crystal Palace in London to celebrate George’s coronation. At this the Crystal Palace, which had first
been built to house the first Great Exposition in 1851, became home to a myriad array of
scenes designed to showcase the might of the British Empire at its height. In all 300 buildings replicating elements
of other buildings from across the empire were reconstructed inside the Crystal Palace. But, even as the coronation plans were underway
there was a political crisis also raging in Britain, one which involved the new king in
a surprising departure from the general belief by the early twentieth century that the monarch’s
role was simply to rubber-stamp what parliament decided upon. At the heart of the matter was the People’s
Budget which the Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, had first attempted
to introduce in April 1909. The budget was very progressive for its time,
with Lloyd George stating that it was effectively a wartime budget, with the enemy being poverty
and squalor in Britain’s working class and industrial communities. As such it proposed large tax increases to
pay for a revolutionary system of welfare measures and investment in public services. Much of this was political, with the Liberals
believing that the best way to stall the rise of the Labour Party, who were perceived as
dangerous radicals in the 1900s, was to introduce the welfare reforms which
would prevent traditional Liberal voters from switching to Labour. Yet the People’s Budget provoked a furious
response and the Conservative-dominated House of Lords refused to ratify the passage of
the budget. Traditionally the Lords was
seen as a rubber-stamping body, one which was not supposed to block legislation which had passed through parliament
and so the impasse over the People’s Budget had provoked a constitutional crisis in the
last months of the reign of Edward VII. By the time George ascended the throne, the
budget had been allowed to pass through the Lords without a vote, ending the immediate
crisis, but the new king was immediately faced with calls for constitutional reform of the
House of Lords to ensure a development like this never occurred again. Within days of his accession George was being
petitioned by the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith about various methods of constitutional
reform which would prevent another impasse of the kind which had recently been seen. This was particularly necessary as British
parliamentary politics in the early 1910s was balanced on a knife-edge, with the Ulster
Unionists and the Irish Parliamentary Party often holding the balance of power between
the Liberals and the Conservatives. One proposal which was floated was that George
would agree to the creation of a large number of new Liberal peers who would turn the political
balance in the House of Lords in favour of the Liberals and their allies. George was not entirely favourable to the
idea of politicising the creation of noble titles in this way and in
any event the Conservatives were more inclined to make concessions when they learned of this plan. As a result, a compromise was reached in the
shape of the Parliament Act of 1911. The Act contained two provisions. Firstly, it stated that the House of Lords
could not veto bills relating to the budget and other financial issues henceforth once
they had passed through the House of Commons, while in return the Conservatives received
an unofficial promise that their majority in the House of Lords would not be overcome
by packing it with newly created Liberal peers. George gave his assent to the Act in August
1911 in what is one of the most significant reforms of the constitutional relationship
of the upper and lower houses of parliament to each other in modern British history. Whatever government was going to control the
political realm in Britain, one of their primary problems, whether Conservative, Liberal or
socialist, was going to be Ireland. Ireland had long been a thorn in the side
of the empire. As England had expanded its political control
across the Atlantic Archipelago in the late medieval and early modern periods it had managed
to bring Wales and Scotland under British control to a large extent and unite these
disparate realms under a unified, Protestant British state. But Ireland had always been problematic. Successive waves of conquest and colonisation
between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries had succeeded in creating an English, Protestant
landholding class here, but the bulk of the population remained Irish and Roman Catholic
and broadly opposed to British rule, a problem compounded by the existence of a Scottish,
Presbyterian majority in the north of the island who in turn were opposed to the Catholics
further to the south. By George’s time politicians in England
were determined to bring about some solution to the endless unrest in Ireland by granting
some form of self-determination to the island and if needs be by separating the northern
counties from the southern ones. But the political environment was highly fractious
there by the early 1910s. As a consequence the decision was taken that
George should quickly visit Ireland following his accession, the better to reinforce the
ties between the monarchy and the crown’s subjects in Ireland. George and Mary arrived to Dun Laoghaire near
Dublin, a port which was then called Kingstown, on the 8th of July 1911, just over two weeks
after his coronation in London. The entourage was considerable and eight carriages
were needed to bring the king and queen to Dublin Castle where they resided while in
Ireland. Visits to the Phoenix Park on the western
outskirts of the city and Leopardstown race track followed, as well as more charitable
endeavours such as a visit to the Coombe hospital in Dublin. Much effort was made to shroud the royal visit
in a celebratory atmosphere, but there were tensions brewing underneath. Many of Dublin Corporation’s politicians
were nationalists and socialists who favoured complete independence for Ireland from Britain
and refused to participate in the events around the royal visit, while the king and queen’s
visit to Cork, the republican-dominated city in the south of the country, was undertaken
in a very tense atmosphere where it was clear the new monarch was not welcome. This aside, George and Mary’s route through
Dublin was often lined by people cheering them and when he left Ireland five days later
the king might well have imagined that with the right policies the island could still
be reconciled to British rule. He would learn in time that this was certainly
not the case. Ireland and all other parts of the empire
were drawn increasingly towards conflict in the first years of George’s reign. For some time Europe’s great powers had
been increasingly antagonistic towards one another. The Empire of Austria-Hungary, for example,
were rivals of the Russian Empire for control over the Balkans where the Ottoman Empire,
the dominant regional power for many centuries, was in terminal decline. The French Republic had old grievances against
the German Empire from the conquest of its eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine during
the Franco-Prussian War at the start of the 1870s. And Britain had its own growing rivalry with
Germany, the newly emergent continental power. Yet few saw a war of the kind which erupted
in the summer of 1914 coming. In the end it was a regional crisis caused by the assassination of the
heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Ferdinand, by a Serb nationalist,
in the streets of Sarajevo which cast the continent into war. By the start of August the British, French
and Russians were at war with the Germans, Austrians and Turks. As monarch, it fell to George to oversee the
council which decided that Britain would declare war on Germany in response to developments
across the continent. He referred to these events in his diary later
that day as a, quote, “terrible catastrophe,” but like many others he was naively of the
view that the First World War would be a quick affair. Instead it dragged on for over four years
of bloody trench warfare in northern France and elsewhere. The monarchy was somewhat compromised by the
outbreak of the war owing to the close relations which existed between Europe’s major royal
families by the early twentieth century. Nearly all of the royal houses were intermarried
and George, Wilhelm II, the Kaiser of Germany, and Nicholas II, the Tsar of Russia, were
all first cousins. Moreover, the king’s paternal grandfather,
Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert, had been Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a
prominent German royal line. George and his family members still bore this
title in 1914. Additionally, his wife Mary, although she
had been born in England, was the daughter of Count Francis von Hohenstein, the Duke
of Teck within the German aristocracy. All of this created the rather embarrassing
impression when the war broke out that the royal family were more German than English
when their bloodlines were examined. And certain sections of the British press
hammered away at this point endlessly. Thus, in July 1917, George caved to public
pressure and issued a royal proclamation which changed the name of the royal house from the
House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor, a place long associated with the
royal family owing to the construction of Windsor Castle as a royal residence all the
way back in the days of William the Conqueror in the eleventh century, who ironically enough
was a continental foreigner who conquered England. Beyond the concerns over the connections between
the royal family and Germany, George and his family had a significant role to play in the
conflict. Hundreds of members of the Royal Household
and Staff were enlisted in the war effort. For instance, the woodcutters from the Windsor
Castle estate were sent to France as trench sappers. George himself first visited the trenches
of north-west France in November 1914, the first of five such visits during the war,
while Queen Mary joined him in 1917. Back in Britain, the king and queen spent
much of the mid-1910s visiting hospitals, nurses’ stations and clearing houses to
meet with wounded and discharged soldiers and sailors. George’s two eldest sons, Edward and Albert,
were also old enough to be involved in the armed forces during the war. Edward served in France and was awarded the
Military Cross, while Albert served in the Royal Navy and was mentioned in dispatches
for his role in the Battle of Jutland in 1916, the foremost naval engagement of the war between
the British and the German navies. While care was taken to ensure that the heir
and his younger brother were not placed at the coalface of the conflict, the fact that
the king’s sons were on active duty during the war aided in cementing the idea that the
war was everyone’s conflict, not just the lot of the average conscript. One of George’s visits to France was to
acknowledge the intensification of the conflict there. For two years the Germans had been pressing
towards Paris from Belgium and for two years the French and British, along with extensive
detachments of Commonwealth soldiers from Canada, South Africa, India, Australia and
elsewhere had pushed back. Then in the summer of 1916 the British and
French launched the Somme Offensive against the German lines. The first day of the offensive, the 1st of July 1916, led to the
greatest number of casualties experienced by the British army in history
in one day. Over 19,000 soldiers were killed and a further
38,000 were wounded or otherwise rendered unable to fight. Plans were quickly put in place for George
to cross to France and on the 10th of August 1916, with the fighting still raging, he visited
troops at Ypres and proceeded further down the British lines along the Somme. Curiously, he also met with General Henry
Rawlinson, the commander of the British Second Army, with whom the king conversed about the
news of efforts within the military to have General Douglas Haig, the commander of the
British forces in France, replaced. Yet this never materialised. Haig remained in overall control of the British
Expeditionary Force, while the slaughter at the Somme continued, eventually resulting
in the deaths of approximately 300,000 troops. Yet the stalemate in the war was not broken and two more years of trench
warfare in north-eastern France would follow. While there was no change in military leadership
in 1916, there was a change in the government back home in Britain. At the outset of the war in 1914 the Liberal
Party, led by Herbert Asquith as Prime Minister, had a tenuous hold on power in Britain. To gain increased political stability during
wartime, a unity government was formed with the Conservatives being granted numerous important
ministries and the Labour Party, which was still viewed as a dangerous socialist movement
by many in Britain, even being invited to join the government. However, by late 1916 Asquith’s coalition
was increasingly unpopular at home and facing growing opposition over its prosecution of
the war, notably the costliness in lives and resources of the Somme Offensive, which had
promised much and delivered little. He was eventually ousted from power in December
1916 when the Secretary of State for War, David Lloyd George, formed a new unity coalition
and became Prime Minister. By the early twentieth century the king had
little say in these matters and accepted Lloyd George as the new Prime Minister, but it would
be a tense relationship between the pair at times in the years that followed, with the
conservative George often at loggerheads with the radical Welsh Prime Minister over policy
in France, Ireland and elsewhere. Moreover, recent studies have revealed the
extent to which George involved himself in the politics of the British army in France
and how this often saw him and Lloyd George intriguing against each other, as Lloyd George
was convinced Haig should not be continued as the head of the British forces in France
and instead sought to strengthen the position of the French general and Supreme Allied Commander
in France, Ferdinand Foch, at Haig’s expense. Such actions aside, both George and Lloyd
George’s efforts to intervene in the military handling of the war were both rendered largely
null and void when the United States joined the war on the side of Britain and France
in April 1917, thus making German defeat in the long-run an all-but certainty. Lloyd George and the king also clashed over another problematic matter
which arose internationally in 1917. This concerned events in
Russia, where a revolution had been initiated to overthrow the government of George’s cousin, Tsar Nicholas II, in
February. This was a relatively conservative revolution
at first and there was the possibility of the Russian royal family being able to abscond
from Russia and seek asylum elsewhere in Europe. At first George was anxious to offer Nicholas
the option of resettling, at least temporarily, in Britain. But Lloyd George was vehemently opposed, believing
that the presence of the Russian imperial family in Britain could act as a lightning
rod for socialist and revolutionary elements within Britain who were looking at Russia
and considering whether an overthrow of the political system in Britain might also be
possible, while there were also concerns that the presence of the deposed Tsar in England
could entangle Britain in Russia’s domestic politics at a time when
Russia was still theoretically its ally in the war, although admittedly Russian resistance to the German advance all along
the Eastern Front was collapsing in the spring and summer of 1917. In the end the king came to agree with Lloyd
George’s viewpoint, although the British secret services nevertheless prepared a plan
for how to rescue Nicholas and his family from Russia, one which was never put into
action. In the end a more radical second revolution
struck Russia in October 1917, bringing the Bolshevik Communists to power. The Tsar and his family were murdered on the
orders of the new government in Russia in the summer of 1918. The final years of the war also witnessed
an intensification of the Suffragist Movement in Britain. The Suffragettes had been campaigning for
a decade and a half in Britain in order for women to be given the right to vote in political
elections, a right which was still denied women and indeed many men if they did not
meet certain qualifying criteria. The Suffragists had effectively engaged in
a campaign of political pressure and limited violence over the years to fight for their
cause. Indeed George had been present at the Epsom
Derby on the 4th of June 1913 when a Suffragette, Emily Davison, ran out in front of the racing
horses and attempted to catch hold of the king’s own contender in the race, Anmer. The horse struck Davison as she attempted
to grab the reigns and she died from her injuries four days later, becoming a Suffragette martyr
in the process. For his part George had been more concerned
for the horse and jockey in the aftermath of the incident, though in his defence he
did not know the full extent of Davison’s condition at the time. Now, nearly five years later, the king found himself giving the royal
assent to the Representation of the People Act in February 1918, a bill
which gave women of 30 years and over the right to vote, while also extending the male
franchise to nearly eight million poorer Britons. The Act was a sign of how the First World
War and the contribution of the British people to the war effort forced
the political establishment to accelerate much needed political reforms such as those the Suffragettes had campaigned
for over many years. The Representation of the People Act was passed
as the stalemate in the war on the continent was coming to an end. With the United States having joined the fight
on the side of Britain and France and with the economies of Germany and Austria-Hungary
beginning to collapse under the pressure of four years of war, the strategic situation
changed in the summer and autumn of 1918. It was over by November 1918, not owing to
complete military victory, but because the governments in both Berlin and Vienna had
fallen to domestic revolutions. Lloyd George led the British delegation to
France in the summer of 1919 which negotiated the terms of the post-war settlement. The resulting Treaty of Versailles with Germany
forced the German government to accept the blame for causing the war, stripped the country
of all its colonies and a sizeable proportion of its territory in Europe and imposed huge
war reparations payments on the German people for decades to come. It was a punitive peace settlement, one which
was matched by the hubris which the British and French governments displayed in carving
up the Middle East and the defeated nations’ African colonies between them. Lloyd George sent a letter to the king on
the 5th of August 1919 informing him that he believed the treaty was, quote, “worthy
of the heroism and endurance displayed by your Majesty’s forces by sea, land and air,
and by all classes of Your Majesty’s subjects who worked at home during the five years of
grievous struggle.” And there was a great degree of truth to the
Prime Minister’s letter, but nevertheless the treaty had sown into it the seeds of another
war many years later. The cessation of the conflict in November
1918 did not bring any respite to Europe. Indeed the next five years were even deadlier
for the continent. This was partly owing to the collapse of the
old political order and numerous revolutions and civil wars in countries like Russia, Germany
and Turkey. Yet much of it was also owing to disease outbreaks
at a time when the continent’s people were weakened owing to years of rationing and want. The disease which swept across Europe in 1918
and into 1919 is known as the Spanish Flu, even though it originated in the United States. By early 1920 it had infected over half a
billion people and is estimated to have killed somewhere between 20 and 50 million people,
though reliable statistics for Asia and Africa are not available. The royal family was not immune to it and
indeed such were the ravages of disease outbreaks on the Windsors in recent decades, notably
the death of George’s older brother, Albert Victor, in 1892, that they were anxious to
avoid contagion. Consequently, the royal court fled from London,
but by then it was too late for the king to avoid the Spanish Flu. Just two months after it first surfaced in
the US, George was struck by it in May 1918. He made a full recovery, though, something
which cannot be said of many others. The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, also
contracted it and nearly died. While the Spanish Flu had largely passed the
king and his immediate family by in 1918, the revolutions which followed the end of
the First World War would have a more enduring impact. These sprung up all across the continent,
generally in the countries which were defeated during the war such as Germany, the Ottoman
Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the latter of which was fragmenting into several
smaller states by the time the armistice was declared in November 1918. However, it was not confined to these and
some of the revolutions elsewhere impacted directly on the monarchy. Such was the case with the 11th September
1922 Revolution which occurred in Greece as a spill-over from the Turkish Revolution. Here senior officers within the Greek army
and navy initiated a coup against the reigning government of King Constantine, George V’s
cousin. He was quickly replaced by his son who became
George II of Greece, but not without a severe backlash against the royals in the Mediterranean
nation. Such was the danger implicit in this that
George V had to send ships of the Royal Navy to the Mediterranean nation to rescue his
cousins, Prince Andrew and Princess Alice, the paternal grandparents of the present king
of Britain, Charles III, from Greece. More broadly George was sceptical about the
revolutions which subsumed Europe at this time, viewing most as dangerously revolutionary
and socialist, developments which George as a conservative British monarch was deeply
opposed to. One of these revolutions was closer to home
than all others. While Britain itself avoided conflict in the
aftermath of the war, it could not prevent unrest across the Irish Sea in Ireland. In the decade since George had visited the
country, just days after his coronation in England, Ireland’s political problems had
mounted. At the outset of the war in 1914 the Irish
Parliamentary Party, the country’s largest single political party at Westminster, had
made an agreement with the government in England. It would convince Irish men to sign up to
the war effort and head for the trenches of France and in return the British government
would grant Home Rule to Ireland, whereby an Irish parliament would be established in
Dublin, one which would rule many aspects of Ireland, albeit still as part of the British
Empire. However, the war years saw this consensus
fall apart. On Easter week in 1916 a coalition of nationalist
revolutionaries had led a botched military revolt against British rule, seizing large
parts of Dublin. This was soon crushed, but in its aftermath
support for the Irish Parliamentary Party collapsed and was replaced with support for
a new political movement, Sinn Fein. These won a landslide in nearly all the Irish
constituencies outside of Ulster in the 1918 general election and promptly refused to take
their seats in Westminster, instead convening their own parliament in Dublin. It was the beginning of the
Irish War of Independence. The War of Independence was fought in Ireland
between 1919 and 1921. It was a bitter, bloody affair with the Irish
engaging in guerrilla warfare and the British government relying on army irregulars called
the Black and Tans to fight the conflict. The latter were soon engaging in acts of atrocity
and heavy-handed violence against the civilian population. For his part, while he was opposed to Irish independence, George was
appalled by the escalating violence in Ireland and the tactics being
employed by the Black and Tans. He censured Lloyd George on several occasions
for what was occurring and was a major driving force within England in finding a solution
to the conflict. In the summer of 1921, a part of that solution
was dividing Ireland so that the Scottish Presbyterians in the northern counties could
have their own country that would remain closely tied to Britain. Six counties there were partitioned from the
south in May 1921, bringing Northern Ireland into existence. George visited Belfast in June to address
the opening sitting of the new, Unionist-dominated parliament there. His speech is believed today to have been
significant in preventing a war between the Unionists of the north and the Republicans
of the south in the months that followed. Instead, a truce was agreed with the Republicans
a few weeks later and the south of Ireland was effectively granted partial independence
from Britain, while the north remained part of the empire, although a bitter civil war
was fought in the south over the terms of independence between 1922 and 1923 and the country remained tied to
Britain in some particulars until the mid-1930s. George’s role in establishing the peace
in the early 1920s was quite substantial. Ireland was not the only issue confronting
Britain’s empire in the 1920s. The number of nations which had formed part
of the empire, but which were now largely autonomous, nations like South Africa, Australia
and New Zealand, had been growing for some time. But the constitutional arrangement for these
‘Dominions’ was still largely unclear. Were they still part of the empire, wholly
autonomous or partially subject to Britain in terms of their foreign policy and certain
trade matters? These issues came to a head at the Imperial
Conference held in London in 1926, which was presided over by George and chaired by the
former Prime Minister between 1902 and 1905, Arthur Balfour. Here an agreement was reached that the ‘Dominions’
constituted a ‘Commonwealth of Nations’ which were each equal to each other in their
common allegiance to the crown. Thus, under the terms of what has become known as the Balfour Declaration
the growing independence of Britain’s former colonies was acknowledged,
but a new Commonwealth centred on the monarchy and the rule of George V as head of state
of the Commonwealth was put down in law. Five years later the Statute of Westminster of 1931 would grant further
legislative independence to the Commonwealth nations. While these measures largely resolved the
issues inherent in the status of the Dominions, there was still a major policy issue in the
1920s concerning the core element of Britain’s Empire: India or the British Raj, as the great
conglomeration of territory covering not just India but also modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh. George was emperor of India and indeed had
visited Delhi in 1911 where he became the only British ruler of India to attend a Delhi
Durbar or Court to be proclaimed as Emperor in person. Yet despite his efforts to make himself physically
present in India on occasion, George faced growing calls for Indian independence throughout
his reign, particularly the non-violent opposition led by Mahatma Gandhi. The responses during George’s reign were
two bills, the Government of India Act of 1919 and the Government of India Act of 1935. Both sought to ensure British control of India
for some time to come by offering moderate Indian nationalists a range of concessions,
while also trying to take account of the varied religious and social tapestry that was the
Raj. None of it was enough, though, and while George
was not the last British Emperor of India, it was largely during his
reign that the Independence Movement gained sufficient traction to lead to independence in the mid-1940s. George’s attitudes towards domestic British
politics in the 1920s were a delicate balancing act between his role as a figurehead within
the government and his own rather conservative political views. He, like many others in Britain, was wary
of the emergence of the Labour Party as a major political movement. It created some dismay then for the king and large sections of the British
political establishment when the general election of December 1923
resulted in a hung parliament, neither Stanley Baldwin’s Conservatives, Herbert Asquith’s
Liberals nor Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour securing a majority. In the days that followed it emerged that
the only government which was feasible was a minority Labour administration which would
be supported on a case by case basis by the Liberals. Thus, MacDonald became Prime Minister and
Labour formed a government for the first time. There were genuine concerns at the time that
George, whose constitutional roles involved officially appointing new governments, would
try to block the formation of the new Labour regime. Yet he didn’t. Whatever his personal politics might have
been, George knew that he was not supposed to intervene publicly in the politics of the
day. Yet there is also evidence that George’s
personal politics might have been shifting at this time. The minority government soon collapsed and
the Conservatives returned to power in late 1924, yet when a general strike broke out
across the UK in 1926 over pay and working conditions in Britain’s mines and other
sectors of the economy, it was George who urged a moderate approach on the Conservative
Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, stating that Baldwin needed to put himself in the shoes
of the average working man when negotiating with the strike managers. While Britain’s politics were difficult
in the mid-1920s any issues encountered were tempered by the fact that the global economy
was booming during these years. Yet all this came to an end in the autumn
of 1929 with the Wall Street Crash and the ensuing Great Depression. At the time of the Wall Street Crash MacDonald
had just led Labour back into government in remarkably bad timing. His administration faced a huge crisis, with
over 1.5 million people out of work across Britain by the start of the spring of 1930,
a situation which deteriorated further over the next year and a half as the value of the
pound sterling and its ties to the Gold Standard looked increasingly precarious. By August 1931 it was impossible for MacDonald
to get any budgets or policies through and so George urged the Labour leader to call
an election and form a government of national unity. It was wise advice. A National Government, containing Labour,
Conservative and Liberal ministers was formed in October 1931 and the British political
establishment worked together to move through the crisis created by the Great Depression,
whereas other nations ended up with increasingly fractious and extreme politics. George also facilitated the MacDonald governments
to manage the economic crisis in other ways. The civil list, which was effectively a list
of individuals to whom the British government paid money in the form of honorary pensions,
as well as royal subventions, was drastically reduced in 1931 and the king and the royal
family decided not to accept an annual payment of £50,000 due to them in recognition of
the economic situation. That money was sent back into the exchequer
and used for welfare payments and to help create jobs during the crisis. These and other measures ensured that George
was an increasingly popular monarch by the early 1930s. This was perhaps at odds with his own personality. By nature he was a rather diminutive, retiring figure, one whose favoured
pastimes were stamp-collecting and hunting. Back in 1893 George had been made honorary
vice-president of the Royal Philatelic Society, the most significant stamp-collecting society
in the world. George served in that role until he became
king and his contributions to the Society’s collection were considerable. For instance, in 1904 he purchased a rare
Mauritius two pence blue stamp for £1,450, a record for a single stamp purchase at that
time. George ultimately contributed significantly
to the Royal Philatelic Collection, which is valued at approximately £100 million today. Elsewhere, George became the first monarch
to take advantage of the new mass communications medium of radio to reach out to his subjects. On Christmas day 1932 he became the first
king or queen to address the entire nation in this way. George had resisted the idea of doing so for
many years, believing radio was for entertainment rather than an extension of the political
realm, but in the 1930s, as the crisis deepened across the country and other politicians such
as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the then governor of New York, began using radio to communicate
with their constituents, George relented and gave the first Royal Christmas Speech in 1932. The king’s speech was scripted by Rudyard
Kipling, the great author of Kim and The Jungle Book, whose knowledge of the British Empire
and British India in particular qualified him for writing a speech which was broadcast
to all of George’s subjects, not just in Britain, but in the Raj and the Commonwealth
nations as well. The speech sought to offer some comfort in
the context of the tumultuous years Britons and citizens of the empire alike had just
lived through: “It may be that our future may lay upon us more than one stern test. Our past will have taught us how to meet it
unshaken. For the present, the work to which we are
all equally bound is to arrive at a reasoned tranquillity within our borders; to regain
prosperity without self-seeking; and to carry with us those whom the burden of past years
has disheartened or overborne.” George’s speech was a major success and
the tradition has continued almost interrupted ever since. While Britain ultimately managed to pull itself
out of the Great Depression in the mid-1930s via the mainstream political parties forming
a unity government and acting in unison with each other, the same was not true for other
nations. In Germany in particular the massive economic
crisis provided the basis for the rise of extremist politics and ultimately the ascent
to power early in 1933 of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. George was wary of the rise of the German
fascists from the beginning, as were many within the political establishment in Britain,
but few had as prescient a view of what might occur as did the king. In a meeting with the German ambassador to
Britain, Leopold von Hoesch, in 1934 the king expressed concern about the jingoistic rhetoric
emanating from Berlin, where the Nazis were already making noises about remilitarising
in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles and their desire to build a Greater Germany
by reclaiming the territory they had lost in 1918 and much more besides in Central and
Eastern Europe. Von Hoesch, who was a career diplomat and
not a Nazi ideologue, did not necessarily disagree. The following year a more aggressive Nazi
programme of remilitarisation was commenced with, but George would not live to see the
war between Britain and Germany which so concerned him in his last years. George V suffered for much of his adult life
from respiratory problems, a hereditary condition in the family which was exacerbated by his
chain smoking. By the time he was in his late fifties, in the 1920s, he was suffering
from severe bronchitis, and his ability to travel extensively was
limited, though doctors did recommend a visit to the Mediterranean in 1925 hoping that the
warmer climate would lead to an improvement in his condition. It didn’t and further suggestions that he should do the same in later
years were vociferously rejected by George. Instead he accepted a certain level of ill
health which only continued to get worse as he entered his sixties, leaving London and
the royal palaces in the Home Counties only to spend time in the seaside resort of Bognor
in Sussex. Into the 1930s things only got worse and by
the middle of the decade his respiratory problems had deteriorated to incorporate several other
ailments, including breathing problems, a lack of energy, regular colds and blood issues. It was clear that he did not have long left
to live. George’s imminent death was complicated
to a very great extent by his relationship with his eldest son and heir. Edward, Prince of Wales,
had always been problematic. He did not display a strong character and George was reluctant to pass
too many responsibilities to him even as his own health deteriorated
from the mid-1920s onwards. Most worrying was Edward’s love life. He had not married and produced an heir, but
engaged in a string of short-lived romances. And when one finally seemed to stick in the
mid-1930s it was highly problematic. The subject of Edward’s attentions was Wallis
Simpson, an American divorcee who was still married to her second husband, Ernest Aldrich
Simpson, an American with extensive business affairs in Britain. Edward and Wallis had entered into an affair in the mid-1930s, but it
was considered unacceptable to the Conservative Party leader, Stanley
Baldwin, and viewed with great dubiousness by George V who repeatedly advised his son
to end the liaison and marry a more acceptable woman, one who would not have been divorced
and was British or European. The issues inherent in Edward and Wallis’s
affair were still hanging over the succession as George’s health declined dramatically
in the course of 1935. By the summer of 1935 the king was regularly
receiving oxygen in order to continue breathing properly. Things got worse in the months that followed
and on the 15th of January 1936 he retreated to his bed at Sandringham House in Norfolk
outside London. He spent the next five days here, with his
situation deteriorating precipitously. By the 18th he was slipping in and out of
consciousness and was in a confused state whenever he pulled himself back to the point
of being able to converse with those surrounding his death bed. It was clear that he was suffering by this
point and his royal physician, Bertrand Edward Dawson, was faced with a difficult decision. At approximately 11pm on the night of the
20th of January 1936 he effectively decided to speed along the king’s death, administering
a large dose of morphine and cocaine sometime afterwards. Nothing could have been done to save the king’s
life and the decision most likely spared George several further days of agony, though Dawson’s
decision has been controversial ever since owing to the fact that he did not consult
with George’s family before taking this action. Subsequent events are well-known. A protracted royal funeral followed, with
George eventually being laid to rest at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on the
28th of January. Edward succeeded his father as King Edward
VIII of Britain. However, he was steadfast in his determination
to marry Wallis Simpson, who was now in the process of finalising her second divorce from
Ernest Simpson. This created a major problem. The Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, and other
members of the royal family including Edward’s younger brother, Albert, were convinced that
the British public would not stand for their king marrying a multiple divorcee from America,
while it would clearly emerge in the process that the new king had begun seeing Wallis
while she was still married. A constitutional crisis brewed in the months
that followed as Edward refused to budge from his position. When he was eventually
confronted by the government and the royal family, he agreed to abdicate the throne and married Simpson. His younger brother Albert succeeded the childless
Edward in December 1936, taking the regnal name George VI. Thus, less than twelve months after George
V’s death the Abdication Crisis resulted in his younger son succeeding his older son. George V was in many ways one of Britain’s
least well-known monarchs, despite spending a quarter of a century on the throne. Perhaps this was because his reign was largely
book-ended by the even lengthier and more substantial reigns of his grandmother, Queen
Victoria, who ruled for much of the nineteenth century, and his granddaughter, Elizabeth
II, whose reign marked the transition from the post-war period through to the twenty-first
century. Compared with these, George’s period on
the throne seems misleadingly brief and static. Moreover, today he is broadly overshadowed
in the public imagination by other political figures of his time, notably David Lloyd George,
who dominated the country’s politics during the First World War, and then the rise of
Winston Churchill during the interwar period. Furthermore, George was a modest character
who preferred stamp collecting and spending time with family to courting controversy. A man whose interests lay in stamps cannot
hope to vie with the Russian civil war and the rise of the Nazis in the pages of history
books detailing the interwar period of European history. Finally, George’s lengthy reign was in many
ways overshadowed immediately by the short, controversial reign of his elder son and the
Abdication Crisis. Yet to suggest that because George’s reign
was in many ways rather banal for its time that it was without merit would be to do it
and the man a disservice. George provided simple, uncontroversial leadership
as King of Britain during a tumultuous period of British and European history. From the outset he was a man who disliked
violence and wished to see the First World War ended as quickly as possible. In the aftermath of it he
approached the revolutions which Europe was inundated with in the late 1910s as something which needed to be overcome
while maintaining a conservative political landscape. And in the 1920s and 1930s he largely stayed
out of the way and let the politicians get on with dealing with a changing Britain and
a troublesome Europe, which was effectively the role of the monarch by this time. George was hard-working, dutiful and moderate. In many ways he set the template for the modern
monarchy, one which was followed in all major specifics by his son, King George VI, and
his granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II. As such, while George V was in some ways an
unremarkable monarch, he was also widely admired and liked by the British people by the time
his considerable reign came to an end in the mid-1930s. What do you think of King George V? Was he one of Britain’s most under-appreciated
monarchs? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching. The man known to history as King George VI
of Britain was born as Albert Frederick Arthur George on the 14th of December 1895 at York
Cottage on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, England. His father was Prince George, Duke of York,
a grandson of Queen Victoria, who at the time of Albert’s birth was nearing the end of
her sixth decade on the throne of Britain. She was also the first Empress of India and
ruled the vast British overseas empire, on which it was said the sun never set. Until shortly before Albert’s birth, Prince
George had been out of the direct line of succession to the throne. Once Victoria died, George’s father, Albert,
Prince of Wales, would become king. But it had been assumed until the early 1890s
that George’s older brother, Albert Victor, as Victoria’s eldest male heir, would ascend
to the throne in due course. However, Albert Victor died prematurely in
1892, ensuring that the future George VI’s father became second in line to the throne
from 1892 onwards. Thus, Albert was born in 1895 into a household
which would someday most likely constitute Britain’s immediate royal family with his
father as king and his mother as queen consort. However, Albert was not his father’s heir. An older brother, Edward, had been born in
the summer of 1894, a year and a half before Albert and Edward was third in line to the
throne. Consequently, from the moment he was born
in the winter of 1895, Albert was the fourth in line to the throne of Britain, though he
would only succeed to that position should something ever happen to displace his older
brother Edward. As we shall see, something did occur. Albert’s mother was Mary of Teck, a member
of the German royal house of Teck which held extensive estates in the unified German Empire. Albert was her and George’s second child
after Edward. Four more children would follow, Mary in 1897,
Henry in 1900, George in 1902 and John in 1905, though John suffered from severe epilepsy
from which he would die in 1919 when only 13 years of age. Albert, who quickly became known to his family
as ‘Bertie’, the same name given to his grandfather, was baptised at St Mary Magdalene
Church in Sandringham just a few weeks after he was born. Thereafter he was largely reared in a separate
household to his parents, an entirely normal practice amongst the royal families of Europe
in the nineteenth century. This continued through his early childhood
years, during which Albert, Edward and their growing brood of siblings were chaperoned
between royal palaces and cottages, taught by tutors in the standard subjects of the
Victorian educational curriculum, which in those days still involved learning Latin and
had a strong focus on the classics of ancient Greek and Roman literature. Albert’s parents were distant figures, who
some historians and observers have since deemed to have been neglectful. This is too harsh an assessment and if they
seemed to be cold parents it was in line with the conventions of the time. Albert’s father was also a strict disciplinarian. It was perhaps on account of the traumatic
elements of his youth that he began to suffer from a stutter in his younger years, one which
would continue to plague him into adulthood, though as we will see, he largely triumphed
over it in his thirties, well before he became king. When he was just 14 years old, Albert was
sent to the Royal Naval College at Osborne on the Isle of Wight, a training school for
royals and sons of the British aristocracy to train as officer cadets. This followed a well-established tradition
and Albert’s father had also been sent to join the British Royal Navy when he was barely
a teenager. Albert, it must be said, was not a great student
of any kind. He came bottom of his class in the cadets’
final exam at Osborne, while he was physically not predisposed to seafaring, having suffered
from stomach issues as a youth. His confidence was also low in his younger
years, in part owing to his stutter and also because of having been forced to learn to
write with his right hand, even though he was left-handed. Although it seems nonsensical to the modern
mind, this was a common feature of schooling in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. It was also while he was at Osborne that his
grandfather, King Edward VII, died. With this his father ascended the throne as
King George V and Albert’s older brother Edward became the Prince of Wales and heir
to the throne. Albert was now second in line to the throne,
though something unexpected would need to befall Edward for him to ever become king. Meanwhile, in the early 1910s he continued
to progress through the Royal Navy, joining the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth after
his sojourn at Osborne and then taking in several training tours in 1912 and 1913, voyages
which saw him traversing much of the Atlantic in the Caribbean and off the seaboard of North
America. In late 1913 he was finally posted to the
HMS Collingwood as a midshipman. Albert was still struggling to find his sea
legs, an occupational hazard for a mariner, as diplomatic tensions were building in Europe
in 1914. For decades the continent’s great powers
had been engaged in ongoing rivalries for regional power in Europe and for possession
of colonies overseas in Africa and southern Asia. Russia and Britain, for instance, had been
rivals for a time in Central Asia where they both had interests in countries like Afghanistan. The French and the Italians both had interests
in North Africa and the Horn of Africa. Since the 1890s Germany, which had emerged
as a major power on the continent following unification in 1871, began trying to build
its own overseas empire. Armed alliances had even developed, with Britain,
France and Russia forming the Triple Entente and Germany having a long-standing alliance
with the Empire of Austria-Hungary. Yet despite these rivalries, a major conflict
had been avoided for many years. As a result, when diplomatic tensions began
brewing between Austria-Hungary, Russia and Serbia in the Balkans in July 1914 many believed
that this crisis, like many before it, would pass quickly. It did not, and in the final days of July tensions escalated rapidly,
leading to a succession of declarations of war. By early August nearly every country in Europe
had committed to one side or another as Britain, France and Russia went to war with Germany,
Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The First World War had commenced. In the early stages of it, Albert was fighting
another kind of conflict, one with his appendix. In late August a medical evaluation determined
that he needed to have his operated upon and when his ship made port in the Scottish city
of Aberdeen it was removed. After a sufficient period
of rest and convalescence he returned to service on
board the HMS Collingwood. The ship spent most of the war stationed in
the North Sea patrolling the vast waters between Britain north to Iceland and east towards
Norway. While Britain was the pre-eminent naval power
of the day and had been so for two centuries, the Germans had spent an enormous amount of
money building a sizeable navy in the ten or so years leading up to the war. Accordingly there was an expectation that
major naval engagements would occur in the North Atlantic before long, but in the end
the war at sea was very limited by comparison with the carnage occurring in the trenches
of the Western Front in France. Therefore Albert spent much of late 1914,
all of 1915 and into early 1916 on board the Collingwood undertaking gunnery drills and
patrols in the waters north of Scotland, but seeing little active engagement with the enemy. Albert was present for the largest naval clash
between Britain and Germany during the war. The Battle of Jutland took place over the
course of the 31st of May and the 1st of June 1916 in the waters off the coast of western
Denmark and north-western Germany as both sides sought to score a tactical breakthrough
at sea which might turn the course of the war. The British had the greater number of ships,
with just over 150 vessels, 28 of them being the Dreadnought battleships, the foremost
military vessel of the day, supplemented by nearly eighty destroyer class ships. The German armada was just under a hundred
ships, with just 16 Dreadnoughts. Over 60% of its vessels were torpedo boats
and the German attack would rely on these scoring a number of hits before they ran out
of torpedoes in order for the Germans to emerge out of the clash victorious. In the ensuing naval melee Albert served as
a junior officer aboard the HMS Collingwood. He performed well during the battle and was
mentioned as such in the dispatches, but the battle was a mixed affair overall. As the British and German fleets engaged with
each other across a large stretch of sea, the Germans ultimately scored more hits, sinking
14 ships while only losing 11, while the British also lost a disproportionately higher number
of destroyers and larger battleships and over twice as many mariners. As such, the Germans statistically won the
Battle of Jutland, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, one in which the Germans lost vital naval
resources. In its aftermath Berlin decided to prioritise
submarine warfare and there would be no second major naval clash of this kind again during
the First World War. Albert would spend much of the war away from
active service, in large part owing to renewed ill health. Early in 1917 he began suffering from a duodenal
ulcer and he would eventually have to have this operated on early that winter. When he returned to duty it was as part of
the burgeoning RAF, the Royal Air Force, which was formed on the 1st of April 1918 as the
first independent air force operated by any nation anywhere in the world, a sign of how
air warfare had become a central component of military conflict in the course of the
war, where at its outset planes had been used almost exclusively for reconnaissance missions. As a result of this decision, Albert became
the first member of the British royal family to hold a pilot’s licence, while in October
1918 he would fly over the English Channel after being posted to France. The newly created RAF only had a limited role
to play in the war in the end, though. By the summer of 1918 the trajectory of the
war was clear. The entry of the United States into the conflict
on the side of Britain and France the previous year had brought an insurmountable amount of resources to bear against
Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans. In the end, before victory was won on the
field of battle, political unrest across Central Europe brought about the collapse of the German
and Austro-Hungarian empires, bringing the war to an end in November 1918. In the aftermath of the war Bertie returned
to land and civilian life. He began studying at Cambridge University
in the autumn of 1919. He was 23 years of age commencing his time
in college, but this was not unusual in the post-war years when many freshman students
were young men heading towards their mid-twenties who had spent their late teens and early twenties
in the trenches in France. He began attending Trinity College there alongside
his brother, Prince Henry, who was four years his junior. Albert chose to study history primarily and
was tutored by Reginald Laurence, the editor of the Cambridge Modern History and an expert
on both ecclesiastical history and the French Revolution, though the most substantial scholar
to teach Albert at this time was Dennis Robertson, an economic historian and close colleague
of John Maynard Keynes, the founder of the Keynesian economic theory. At Cambridge Louis Greig, who Albert had none
since his days at Osborne a decade earlier, was employed as Bertie’s equerry or royal
assistant. They developed a keen friendship over their
shared interest in tennis and the pair would later play together at the Championships at
Wimbledon. Albert’s time at Cambridge, though, was
cut short after just three terms as he was increasingly drawn into becoming a working
royal in the early 1920s, spending much of his time from 1920 onwards visiting industrial
factories and mines across England as the monarchy sought to establish closer ties to
the working classes in Britain at a time when radical socialism was on the front foot across
Europe. Because he was the second son of the king
and at a time when premature death was beginning to decline dramatically, it was expected in
the 1910s and 1920s that Albert would never be King of Britain. Therefore he was given something of a free
hand to choose his own marriage partner, a relatively novel development for a monarch’s
child. Had he been born in the nineteenth century,
for instance, a marriage to a daughter of one of Europe’s royal households would most
likely have been arranged. Nevertheless, when Albert began an affair in 1919 with Sheila Chisholm
it aroused consternation in the royal establishment. This Australian ‘it-girl’ of the 1910s
was already married to Francis St Clair-Erskine, Lord Loughborough. Bertie met Sheila after his older brother
Edward began seeing Chisholm’s best friend, Freda Dudley Ward. The relationship dragged on for almost a year
before King George, exasperated by the situation instructed Bertie to leave this, quote, “already
married Australian”. Albert was not happy with doing so, but obeyed
his father’s command. His brother’s unwillingness to abide by
a similar injunction from the king over a decade later would have striking consequences
for both Edward and Albert in the long run. In the shorter term Albert was compensated
for ending his affair with Lady Loughborough by being invested with the title of Duke of
York in 1920, one of the most historically significant peerages in British history and
one which had been vacant since his father abandoned the title upon becoming king in
1910. Bertie’s attentions were soon drawn elsewhere
in his quest for a marriage partner. Shortly after ending his relationship with Lady Loughborough, he met
Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at an engagement. They had known each other as children, but
had not crossed paths in several years. By the time they met again Elizabeth was just
entering her twenties and Albert, by then in his mid-twenties, was evidently smitten. He proposed in 1921, but Elizabeth turned
down his offer, fearful that entering the royal family and the public gaze that came
with it would result in her being stifled and unable to express her true self in years
to come. Bertie, though, would not take no for an answer
and was determined to woo her. A second marriage proposal came following
Albert’s sister Mary’s wedding to the heir to the Viscount Lascelles in February 1922, at which Elizabeth
had acted as a bridesmaid. She again said no, but further months of courtship
evidently swayed her and in January 1923, despite her reservations about entering the
royal establishment, she said yes to Albert on his third time of asking. The wedding was swiftly organised and the
couple were married at Westminster Abbey in London on the 26th of April 1923. Thereafter they proceeded on their honeymoon,
at the start of which Elizabeth contracted whooping cough in what she later called a
thoroughly unromantic development. Despite this inauspicious beginning, the marriage
was to be a notably happy one by the standards of many royal unions and Albert and Elizabeth
had a genuine affection for one another. It was in many ways the first modern royal
marriage in British history. While the honeymoon might have been interrupted
by a bout of whooping cough, there was inevitably a longer diplomatic tour to be undertaken
by the couple following their marriage. It was typical for newlywed senior royals
at this time to tour the British Empire so that in an age before television the people
of India, Canada and many other parts of Britain’s dominions could have an opportunity to see
the new member of the royal family. This commenced with a visit to Northern Ireland
in July 1924, no doubt in an effort to reassure the Unionist community there of crown support
for their continued presence within the United Kingdom following the establishment of the
Irish Free State on the rest of the island during the early 1920s. A tour of Britain’s colonies in Africa followed,
taking in Kenya, Uganda and Sudan, as well as Aden in the south of the Arabian Peninsula,
though the Duke and Duchess of York avoided Egypt where the British Governor-General,
Sir Lee Stack, had just been assassinated on the streets of Cairo in November 1924. They returned to England for a time thereafter
in order for Elizabeth to give birth to their first child in 1926, a daughter named Elizabeth
after her mother. She was the first of their two children, with
another girl named Margaret following in 1930. As soon as Elizabeth was born in 1926 and
her mother had recovered, the Duke and Duchess resumed their tour of Britain’s overseas
colonies. In 1927 they headed west across the Atlantic. They first visited Jamaica, where Albert notably
played a doubles tennis match alongside Bertrand Clark, an all-round sporting figure who had
competed internationally in golf, tennis and cricket. In 1924 Clark had become the first black athlete
to compete at the Wimbledon tennis Championships in London, a tournament which Albert had himself
competed at in 1926, partnering his friend and mentor Louis Greig, the Scottish naval surgeon who had served as
his equerry at Cambridge, in the men’s doubles event. Admittedly they were soundly beaten in the
first round but Albert remains the only British royal to have competed at the Championships,
having done so when the Championships were still an amateur event. Albert’s decision to play alongside Clark
in Jamaica the following year was seen as an inclusive decision which embraced the wider
Jamaican population. It was probably simply more in line with Albert’s
personality that he innocently decided to play a game of tennis and wasn’t considering
the political overtones of doing so at all. Thereafter, he and Elizabeth proceeded onwards
to the Pacific Ocean, visiting Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, before returning to Britain
after taking in many of the empire’s countries in the mid-1920s. While in Australia Albert oversaw the formal
opening of the newly built Parliament House in the capital city, Canberra. He delivered a speech during this event, one
which was well delivered. This would not have been possible just a year
or two earlier. Bertie’s stutter had not retreated with
the passage of the years and by the mid-1920s had become a problem. When he had given the closing speech at the
British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in October 1925, the ceremony had been an endurance test
for both Albert and his listeners, with the Duke struggling to deliver his lines. In its aftermath he determined to do something
to confront the stutter which had plagued him since his youth. Thus, although the acclaimed film The King’s
Speech, depicts Albert as having employed him much later in the lead up to and opening
stages of the Second World War, it was actually in 1926 that Bertie first began working with
Lionel Logue, an Australian former stage actor turned speech and language therapist. Logue’s methods were unusual by the standards
of the 1920s and he was considered a quack by many in the medical community, but his
regimen of daily vocal exercises and conscious relaxing of the throat muscles proved enormously
successful in Albert’s case. Already when he had opened the Parliament
House in Canberra in 1927 the Duke’s speech was much improved and his voice did not falter
on that occasion. He continued to work with Logue intermittently
over the next twenty years and in 1937, at the time of his coronation, he honoured the
Australian by making him a Member of the Royal Victorian Order, with promotion to the rank
of Commander in 1944. More broadly, Albert grew into himself in
the 1920s. He was a changed man following his marriage
and after becoming a father and unlike his own father and grandfather his parenting style
was a warm, modern one, rather than being a cold, distant presence in his daughters’
lives. The family originally lived at White Lodge
in Richmond Park in London, but they moved to a more modest home in Piccadilly in 1926. During these years the Duke and Duchess became
known for their philanthropy. Bertie, for instance, founded the Industrial
Welfare Society through which he met with trade unionists and other leaders of industrial
workers to try to gain a greater understanding of the material existences of Britain’s
workers and how their lot could be improved at a time when industrial communities in much
of England and Scotland still suffered from striking deprivation. Bertie became known as ‘the Foreman’ to
his family, such was his interest in labour issues. He also established the Duke of York’s Camps
through which boys from working class communities and public schools competed in a wide range
of events. These were a forerunner of the Duke of Edinburgh
Awards latterly established by his son-in-law. Albert took a great personal interest in them
and attended the camps every year in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s except for
1934 when he was ill. In the late 1920s and early 1930s Albert and
Elizabeth must surely have believed that their lives would continue on the same trajectory
as they had been on since their marriage. They would continue to play prominent roles
in representing the royal family as Duke and Duchess of York, but the assumption was there
that Bertie’s older brother Edward would eventually marry, become king, produce an
heir and the royal line would continue through his family. However, by the early 1930s it was imperative
for Edward to marry at some point, as he neared his fortieth year. It was worrying for both the king and the
government to discover in the course of the mid-1930s that Edward’s attentions had actually
landed on Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee who had come to England following her marriage
in 1928 to Ernest Aldrich Simpson, an American businessman with extensive dealings in England. Edward and she had first met in 1932 and gradually
entered into an extra-marital affair. By 1935 when King George
sanctioned the Metropolitan Police Special Branch to begin monitoring Simpson’s movements, the relationship between
her and the heir to the throne had become a matter of considerable concern to the royal
family and the Conservative Party Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, when he entered government
that summer. Although news of the affair had not become
public knowledge at that time, it was widely believed that if it did it would become a
cause of major scandal, both because Simpson was a divorcee at a time when divorce still
carried considerable social stigma and also because Edward and she were romantically involved
while Wallis was still married to her second husband. The affair would soon change the course of
Albert’s life. Albert’s father, King George V, died on
the 20th of January 1936, in large part owing to a lung condition exacerbated by lifelong
chain smoking, underlying medical conditions and habits which were shared by his sons and
which plagued their later lives as well. He had been considerably ill since the mid-1920s,
but by 1935 matters were very poor indeed. In his final months he had expressed his hopes
that if Edward continued with his relationship with Simpson that they would not have children
and that the way would soon be clear for Albert to succeed to the throne one day. That would come sooner rather than later. Although Edward immediately ascended to the
throne as King Edward VIII following his father’s death in January 1936, there were discussions
taking place immediately within Baldwin’s government about what course should be followed
if Edward insisted on marrying Simpson. As Edward did not have any children, Albert
was necessarily part of these discussions from their inception, as he was next in line
to the throne. It was clear that if Edward were forced to
abdicate, Albert would almost certainly succeed him, although there were
rumours in the mid-to-late 1930s that the government was considering the possibility of one of Albert’s two younger
brothers, Prince Henry and Prince George, as possible candidates to succeed Edward if
the crisis deepened. George, it was held at the time, was viewed
in particular as a possible king, as he and his wife, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark,
had become parents to a son, Prince Edward, in October 1935 and thus he would have a male
heir already if he became king. However, there is no evidence to suggest that
the idea of Henry or George succeeding Edward was ever seriously entertained by Baldwin’s
government and the plan from the very start of the Abdication Crisis was for Albert to
succeed his brother if Edward ended up renouncing his throne. Edward’s coronation was planned for the
12th of May 1937. He would not remain as king for long enough
for it to be held though. The first months of his reign saw a growing
standoff with Baldwin concerning his relationship with Wallis Simpson. Edward was seemingly determined to marry her
and for her part Wallis was taking steps to divorce her second husband in advance of marrying
Edward. She had informed friends that she expected
to be crowned as queen the day that Edward was crowned as king. This would not be the case. Baldwin was utterly opposed to Edward’s
proposed marriage and in the autumn of 1936 began liaising extensively with the wider
royal family, particularly Bertie, who was reluctantly acclimatising himself to the reality
of succeeding his brother within a matter of weeks, a development which he had no desire
to see occurring. News of the affair eventually broke and it
was made known to the nation in the newspapers on the 2nd of December 1936. Thereafter, despite efforts by some senior
members of parliament such as Winston Churchill to support Edward’s right to marry whom
he pleased, it became abundantly clear that parliament sided with Baldwin’s approach. Pressured into making a swift decision, Edward agreed to abdicate rather
than end his relationship with Simpson. He did so on the 11th of December, upon which
Albert succeeded as King of Britain and Emperor of India, taking the regnal name George VI
in honour of his father. He was a reluctant king and later revealed
that when he had to visit his mother and tell her the news of the abdication and his assumption
of the throne, he wept. George rose to the position of king well. His style of rule was modest and undramatic,
in stark contrast to the controversy and drama which had surrounded Edward as Prince of Wales
and during his brief time as king. Over the next fifteen or so years he would
fulfil the role of monarch and its constitutional remit very well, rarely exceeding the role
which the monarchy was largely confined to by the middle of the twentieth century, which
was to represent the royal establishment well and act in a ceremonial capacity. Nevertheless, this was still an important
function, particularly so when Britain entered a period of extreme hardship from the autumn
of 1939 onwards. Moreover, George’s modest and unassuming
personality was a good foil to the larger than life character of Winston Churchill as
Prime Minister when war would come just a few years into his reign. Politically George was conservative in his
views, but not staunchly so and was well-suited to overseeing the gradual modernisation of
the country both socially and culturally. George had come to power at a time when the
political map of Europe was in flux. Following the end of the First World War in
1918, the continent had experienced five years of brutal revolutions and civil wars in regions
like Russia, Turkey, Poland, Ireland and Germany. But eventually in 1923 and 1924 the chaos
subsided and several years of major economic growth and prosperity had followed. This was checked by the Wall Street Crash
in the autumn of 1929 and the Great Depression which followed. As renewed political turmoil arose across
Europe many countries turned to more extreme politics. In Central Europe, in particular, far-right
nationalist and fascist parties had emerged to claim power in countries like Austria,
Hungary and above all Germany where the Nazis led by Adolf Hitler seized power early in
1933. Conversely, Eastern Europe was dominated by
the totalitarian Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin. Those few countries which retained a democratic
governmental system were threatened by the vying forces of fascism and communism and
shortly before George succeeded to the throne a bitter civil war had broken out in Spain
between these left and right-wing political forces. The task before Britain in the first years
of George’s reign was to navigate this difficult political environment, preventing the rise
of both the British Union of Fascists under Oswald Mosley and excessive social unrest
wrought by the political left. And George’s task in acting as head of state
at this time was not helped by Edward and Wallis’s decision to undertake an unofficial
tour of Nazi Germany in the autumn of 1937, one in which Edward clearly displayed his
appreciation of German National Socialism. When George became king, Britain was at a
crossroads in terms of how to approach the German threat. It could begin rearming rapidly in order to
deter Germany from further aggression or try to appease Hitler and the Nazis by granting
them concessions, principally in the shape of reversals of some of the more punitive
aspects of the Treaty of Versailles which had brought the First World War to an end. George was in many ways a favourer of appeasement,
but the principle architect of this approach was Neville Chamberlain who succeeded Baldwin
in May 1937 when he stood down as Prime Minister. Chamberlain continued a policy of slow rearmament,
while also allowing Germany to re-emerge as the major power in Central Europe. Thus, few objections were raised when the
Anschluss, the union of Germany and Austria into a Greater Germany, was undertaken by
the Nazis in March 1938 in direct violation of the peace treaties which had brought the
war to an end. George supported Chamberlain in this approach,
but in doing so he was actually following the constitutional remit of the monarchy by
the 1930s, which was to support the government of the day and its decisions, regardless of
whether or not those same policies ran contrary to the monarch’s own views. In one instance, and a particularly significant
one at that, George did directly associate himself with Chamberlain’s policy. Following the annexation of Austria in the
spring of 1938 the Nazis had turned their attention to the Sudetenland, the German-speaking
region of western Czechoslovakia, making claims to this territory. Eventually a diplomatic conference was convened
to be held in Munich in September 1938. In the lead up to it George offered to write
directly to Hitler to try to appeal to him as one ex-serviceman to another to try to
prevent war. This was well-intended, though considerably
naïve in retrospect. When Chamberlain reached an agreement with
Hitler at Munich to allow Germany to annex the Sudetenland in return for a promise of
no further aggressive actions or claims on its neighbours’ territory, George sent him
a message requesting him to visit Buckingham Palace immediately on his return to England
so that the king could express his immense congratulations on what he perceived to be
a major diplomatic victory. The appearance of the monarch and the Prime
Minister on the balcony of Buckingham Palace together when Chamberlain arrived in England
was a striking statement about their combined belief in the success of appeasement. But they would soon realise how misguided
their faith in the agreement reached at Munich was. In the summer of 1939, despite the troubled
political headwinds in Europe, George and Elizabeth headed across the Atlantic Ocean
and visited the United States. The tour of the US was
undertaken on the invitation of Present Franklin D. Roosevelt. Occurring between the 7th and 12th of June,
it has a significance as being the first time that a British monarch had ever visited the
country. No British monarch had agreed to do so since
the US, which had been born out of Britain’s colonies in North America, had declared its
independence in 1776 and even prior to this no monarch had visited the colonies since
their establishment in the early seventeenth century. The tour took in much of the East Coast, with
visits to Washington D.C. and New York as well as Mount Vernon, the
home of George Washington in Virginia. The state visit was an important one in making
the British royals visible to the American public and was conceived of by Roosevelt as
a way of generating support in the US for providing aid to Britain in the event of war
breaking out. It was a shrewd diplomatic move, one which
did not see US sentiment in favour of intervening in the Second World War when it initially
broke out, but which helped Roosevelt to persuade Congress to provide financial and material
support to Britain in the early stages of the war. Close ties between Britain and the US would
soon be needed, as Chamberlain’s efforts at appeasement were proven to have been in
vain by the time George and Elizabeth toured the US in the summer of 1939. No sooner had the dust settled on the Munich
Agreement and the Sudetenland been annexed into a greater Germany, than Hitler and the
other senior members of the Nazi regime began turning their attentions towards further land
grabs. The winter of 1938 was relatively calm, but
the following March the Munich accords were torn up as German troops entered Czechoslovakia and occupied the country
which became a protectorate of Nazi Germany. Just days later the city of Memel on the Baltic
Sea coast was annexed after being threatened with an aerial bombardment by the German foreign
minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. By now Britain and France had begun to accelerate
the speed of their rearmament in preparation for the inevitable conflict, but they were
far behind where they needed to be. The Nazis were aware of this and consequently
accelerated their own march to war. In the summer of 1939 their attentions turned
to Poland, making diplomatic claims to Polish territory which Germany had been forced to
cede in 1919 as part of the Treaty of Versailles which brought the First World War to an end. Finally, in late August 1939 a false flag
operation was run to make Poland seem like the aggressor in Eastern Europe. On the 1st of September 1939 Germany declared
war on its eastern neighbour and invaded Poland. Two days later, in response to this aggression,
Britain and France went to war with the Nazis. The Second World War had commenced. As the King of Britain and Emperor of India
the task fell to George on the 3rd of September 1939 to address the nation upon Britain’s
declaration of war on Germany earlier that day. At 6pm that evening he delivered his speech,
broadcast over the radio. While Winston Churchill’s addresses to the
nation during the war usually garner greater attention, George’s on Britain’s entry
into the war was also galvanising. In it he stated, “In this grave hour, perhaps
the most fateful in our history, I send to all my peoples, both at home and over seas,
this message with the same depth of feeling for each one of you as if I were able to cross
your threshold and speak to you myself. For the second time in the lives of most of
us we are at war. Over and over again we have tried to find
a peaceful way out of the differences between ourselves and those who are now our enemies. But it has been in vain…If one and all be
resolutely faithful today, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, with God’s
help we shall prevail.” George’s maiden speech to the nation during
the conflict was delivered without any trace of the stutter which had plagued him for much
of his youth. Although the award-winning film The King’s
Speech contains many aspects of George’s story which are historically accurate, his
challenges concerning his stutter were primarily faced and overcome with the assistance of
Lionel Logue in the mid-to-late 1920s, though George did periodically consult with Logue
over the years including during the Second World War. Nevertheless, the film is inaccurate in suggesting
that the king only began to confront his stutter in the period immediately before the war. With the onset of the war there was a growing
problem in the heart of government. Neville Chamberlain remained as Prime Minister
and retained the support of the bulk of the Conservative Party. However, there was a rebellious faction amongst the Tories and many in Britain
felt that Chamberlain’s position was untenable
given that he had championed the policy of appeasing Germany after he became Prime Minister in 1937. Matters came to a head in early May 1940 during
the so-called Norway Debate in the House of Commons, which began concerning British efforts
to open a front in Northern Norway following the country’s occupation by the Nazis, but
which soon morphed into a wider debate on Chamberlain’s management of the war. It became clear that he could not remain on
as Prime Minister, but there was a debate as to who should succeed him, with some favouring
Winston Churchill, a long-standing Conservative critic of the Nazis and appeasement and others
supporting the candidature of Lord Halifax, an ally of Chamberlain’s who was not entirely
opposed to negotiating peace terms with Germany. George was initially in support of Halifax,
holding a grudge against Churchill over his support for Edward and opposition to George
becoming king back in the early winter of 1936. However, as events unfolded in the early summer
of 1940 it became clear that Churchill was the candidate who could command cross-party
support in parliament and on the 10th of May 1940 George asked Churchill to form a new
government. The case was urgent, as the Germans had invaded
Belgium and the Netherlands that morning heading towards France. A cross-party coalition government conceived
on the widest basis was soon established. Though he opposed Churchill’s ascent as
Prime Minister initially, once he occupied 10 Downing Street, the relationship between
George and Winston became one of the closest between any British monarch and Prime Minister
in modern history. The exigencies of the war ensured that they
had to meet regularly and they soon bonded over their common interest in the Navy, Churchill
having served as First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War while George was
at sea in the North Atlantic. Things grew from there. By the late autumn of 1940 their formal meetings
had been replaced by informal lunches between king and prime minister every Tuesday, ones
which would often last for several hours and in which Churchill related the actions of
government, while George explained what he felt the mood of the nation was based on his
extensive meetings with the public, which were taking place on an almost daily basis. We know of the considerable friendship which
developed between the pair in the course of the war owing to George having recorded them
regularly in his diary. It was not always smooth sailing, notably
in the spring of 1944 when Churchill had to convince the king that he could not take part
in the D-Day landings, not even on board the warships at the rear once the beachheads had
been secured, but generally the relationship was a successful one, in large part because
Churchill encouraged George, a naturally shy and retiring man, that he had a considerable
public role to play in the war. He made him feel useful. A sign of their affinity for one another would
be seen many years later, when Churchill was delivered the news of George’s passing at
10 Downing Street, he was said to have laid aside his papers and stated, “Bad news,
the worst”, and descended into a deep gloom for several days. George’s close relationship with Churchill
was in many ways forged in the dark days of the autumn of 1940. Following the Nazi invasion and rapid conquest
of the Low Countries and France in the summer of 1940 the Blitz, a bombing campaign of Britain
initiated by the Nazis, combined with a naval blockade of Britain in the North Atlantic,
commenced. The Blitz began on the 7th of September with
the goal of bringing Britain to negotiate peace terms without the Nazis having to launch
a land invasion of Britain. London was the prime target from the beginning,
but George and Elizabeth took the decision to remain in the capital. It was a hazardous decision. Over 1,000 people alone were killed in the
city on the first night of the bombing campaign and on the 13th of September the king and
queen were very nearly killed when several bombs landed on Buckingham Palace. More broadly, the royal family underwent the
same rationing that was imposed on the entire British public during the war years and the
sense of shared struggle galvanised the nation and won George and Elizabeth the admiration
of the British people even as the Blitz dragged on for eight long months through to May 1941. By the time it ended over 40,000 British civilians
were killed and two million homes had been damaged or destroyed, the majority of the
damage being inflicted on London. The worst of the Blitz and the naval blockade
ended in the spring of 1941. This was entirely owing to the general drift
of the conflict. Between the summer of 1940 after the swift
fall of France, Britain and the North Atlantic became the crucible of the war. The king needed to be visible during this,
Britain’s darkest hour in the conflict. However, from the summer of 1941 onwards the
focus of matters shifted as Hitler and the Nazis abandoned their designs on forcing Britain
to surrender and instead turned their attentions eastwards to the Soviet Union, undertaking
the largest land invasion in military history. Thereafter the Eastern Front became the focus
of the war in Europe, while after the entry of the United States into the conflict in
December 1941 Britain, the US and the Commonwealth nations turned their attentions to gaining
victory in the North Africa campaign against the Italians and the German expeditionary
force which had been dispatched there. They finally emerged victorious in the spring
of 1943, after which a Southern Front was opened in Italy by the Western Allies. Twelve months later, in the summer of 1944,
a Western Front was established with the D-Day landings and the invasion of France. From that point onwards, the course of the
war and the result seemed destined to be one of Allied victory. In September 1940, in the aftermath of the
evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in northern France earlier that
summer, and the commencement of the Blitz and the Battle of the North Atlantic, George
championed the creation of two new awards which would be bestowed by the crown. The George Cross and the George Medal were
both created in September 1940. Unlike the Victoria Cross, which had been
established during the long reign of George’s great-grandmother, and other military honours,
the George Cross and George Medal were to be awarded to anyone who was deemed to have
conducted themselves with gallantry and bravery, be they civilians or soldiers. In the context of the Blitz, when ordinary
Londoners, and in particular fire-fighters and police, were effectively the front line
soldiers in the war against Germany, such awards were deemed necessary by the king. The George Cross would become the civilian
equivalent of the Victoria Cross, the highest military award of its kind. In announcing the creation of the new honour,
the king stated that, quote, “I have decided to create, at once, a new mark of honour for
men and women in all walks of civilian life. I propose to give my name to this new distinction,
which will consist of the George Cross, which will rank next to the Victoria Cross, and
the George Medal for wider distribution.” It was to be awarded for “acts of the greatest
heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger.” Over the course of the war George would personally
present the awards to dozens of soldiers and civilians. Those who were honoured included the likes
of Stuart Archer, a bomb-diffusing expert who had diffused over 200 bombs that had landed
undetonated in England by September 1941. John Bridge was another medal of the Cross
for his role in defusing dozens of bombs which landed in urban centres across England. The George Medal was granted in similar cases,
often to members of the Commonwealth nations. For instance, Margaret Irene Anderson, an
Australian staff nurse on board the Empire Star, was awarded the Medal for her gallantry
during the evacuation of Singapore in the face of the Japanese onslaught in 1942. Back home, Charity Bick was awarded the George
Medal by the king. She had lied about her age at just 14 in order
to be accepted into the Air Raid Precautions unit in 1939. During an air raid on West Bromwich by the
Germans the following August she delivered messages on her bicycle to a nearby RAF control
room and helped her father put out an incendiary bomb that fell on the roof of a shop. In awarding these honours to individuals like
Archer, Bridge, Anderson and Bick, George galvanised public sentiment to continue the
struggle against Germany during the dark days of late 1940 and early 1941 when Britain stood
largely alone against the Nazi threat. George and Elizabeth contributed to the war
cause in other ways. From 1940 onwards the king and the queen consort
were regular visitors to hospitals and various fronts in England and further afield. From the summer of 1940 onwards they regularly
visited sites of extensive bombing raids to console the victims’ relatives and to meet
the wounded. Often these duties were divided up, with George
heading for military bases and Elizabeth touring London’s hospitals and those in the other
major cities. One might look at these as merely symbolic
gestures, but symbolic gestures at a time of civilian endurance were what was needed
at the time and the king and queen earned plaudits for their very visible public presence
throughout the Blitz and the remainder of the war. As the focus of the conflict shifted away
from Britain in 1941 and the Western Allies began taking the offensive on several fronts,
George often left England, heading to the front lines in North Africa and the island
fortress of Malta in 1943 and visiting France, the Low Countries and Italy in 1944 after
the Southern and Western Fronts had been opened. By 1944 the war was entering its final stages
as Germany found itself being advanced on from the east by the Soviets and from the
south and west by the Western Allies. George did not play an entirely silent role
in these affairs. He made some contributions towards Allied
strategy, notably in 1943 when he proposed that the Allies should forego opening a new
front in France in favour of pushing resources into the Southern Front in Italy, a strategy
which Churchill was considerably in favour of and sent along to the military chiefs of
staff. In the end, though, George saw the logic of
opening a front in northern France and on the evening of the D-Day landings he delivered
a rousing broadcast in which he recalled the grim position Britain had been in four years
earlier, before stating that, quote, “once more a supreme test has to be faced. This time, the challenge is not to fight to
survive but to fight to win the final victory for the good cause.” That eventual victory would take another eleven
months to secure, but in the end as Soviet troops closed on central Berlin and British,
American, Canadian and other Allied soldiers fanned out across Germany, Hitler killed himself
and the Nazis surrendered on the 8th of May 1945. That VE or Victory in Europe Day, George and
the rest of the royal family appeared on the balconies of Buckingham Palace to celebrate
with the British public the end of the near six year long struggle. With victory in the war George’s role shifted
from being Britain’s war leader to overseeing the rapid dismantling of its empire. Promises had been made during the war to many
interested parties concerning increased autonomy as the reward for helping Britain in its struggle
against Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. In particular, the Cripps Mission of 1942
to India had promised the Indian National Congress leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi that
India would be allowed to hold elections and have greater self-determination in the aftermath
of the conflict if it committed fully to aiding Britain in its hour of need. Now the debt fell due. In 1947 India was granted its independence
and the British Raj was divided up, so that the Muslim-majority areas in the north-west
and north-east became the new state of Pakistan, though the province of East Bengal would later
become the independent nation of Bangladesh. George briefly remained as Emperor of India
even after independence, but the title was abolished entirely in 1948, though India and
Pakistan would remain as members of the British Commonwealth. Thus, in the second half of the 1940s, George
was overseeing the first steps of the post-war transition from the Empire to Commonwealth,
including the 1949 London Declaration which was pursuant from India’s declaration of
itself as a republic and the removal of George as head of state of that Commonwealth nation. George was cautiously in favour of this move,
provided India remained a Commonwealth nation, though the episode did see the Republic of
Ireland leave the Commonwealth entirely. The further dismantling of Britain’s empire
would gather pace in the 1950s, particularly from 1957 onwards when the
first wave of decolonisation spread across Africa. By the mid-1960s Britain would relinquish
much of its control of its territories in regions like Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Rhodesia,
many of which new nations in turn became members of the Commonwealth. But George would not live to see this. His health was deteriorating already in the
late 1940s, though he was only just after entering his fifties. Like his father before him, his lifelong chain
smoking had taken its toll on his health, as had the stresses of the war years. Moreover, by the late 1940s he was suffering
from several circulatory problems including Buerger’s Disease, which leads to clotting
of small and medium arteries and which is also exacerbated by smoking. By 1949 matters were serious and a planned
tour of some of the Commonwealth nations had to be cancelled, while for a time it was feared
that George would have to have one of his legs amputated. Unsurprisingly, by this time his eldest daughter
and the heir presumptive to the throne, Elizabeth, who was only 23 years of age, was carrying
out more and more royal duties by the end of the decade. Matters did not improve into the 1950s. In 1951 George had to have
his left lung surgically removed after he developed lung cancer. He was limited in his physical movements from
that point onwards, although the king attempted to remain active, insisting on accompanying
his daughter and her husband, Prince Philip, to London Airport on the 31st of January 1952
when they left for a tour of much of the empire. It was the last time he would see his daughter
and heir. George died in his sleep a week later on the
6th of February 1952 from a coronary thrombosis at Sandringham where he was born. He was just 56 years of age. Owing to his premature death, Elizabeth succeeded
to the throne of Britain at just 25 years of age and as she lived to be 96 years herself
her reign would be the longest in British history. News of George’s death was released immediately
and the mechanisms for the holding of a state funeral were put in place. His body lay in state at Westminster from
the 11th of February onwards so that the British public could pay their respects to the wartime
king. His funeral was held on the 15th like those
of so many British monarchs at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. Afterwards his remains were interred in the
royal vault, though they only remained here until 1969, at which time George was reinterred
in the George VI Memorial Chapel. His remains lie there today with those of
his wife, Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, who lived until 2002, outliving her husband by
half a century, and those of his daughter, the recently deceased Queen Elizabeth II and
her husband the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. George VI led Britain through one of the most
consequential periods in world history and arguably the most significant in Britain’s
long imperial story. For much of 1940 and 1941 the country was
the only major power standing against Nazi Germany and the fascist threat. In that dark moment the country needed leadership. It is generally understood to have come from
Winston Churchill, but there was also George and Elizabeth as his queen consort who acted
as figureheads in the struggle against the Blitz and the blockade of Britain by Germany. He rose extremely well to that occasion. Moreover, it came from a man who was never
supposed to become king, his older brother’s love life and to a certain extent his difficult
personality having combined to ensure that his reign was a short one and Edward had to
abdicate in favour of George in December 1936. When he did become King of Britain, George
cannot be said to have been a philosopher king or a particularly forceful personality,
but he offered a steady hand and humility at the helm of state which was fitting for
the time period in which he became monarch. Overcoming his own personal limitations, he
won the respect of the British people throughout the war, developed a close relationship with
Churchill and managed the transition from empire to commonwealth well in the aftermath
of the conflict. Tragically, his physical decline ensured that
his reign was cut short and that his last years were spent in considerable pain. He should be remembered as a modest and humble,
but effective king. What do you think of King George VI? Was it a good thing that he became King of
England and that Edward abdicated the throne in 1936? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
