The Real Story Behind The Biggest Icons Of The Dark Ages | Fact or Fiction | Chronicle

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] anyone who's ever read the detective story knows that appearances can be deceptive just over 700 years ago this innocent piece of land was witness to a brutal murder that changed the course of Scottish history forever in May 1297 the sheriff of lanaq Sir William hasselrig was hacked to death here by Young Scottish Patriot his name William Wallace or as we've come to know him Braveheart Wallace was a legend a national hero but I've come here to try to find The Man Behind The Legend [Music] if you've ever watched the movie Braveheart forget it it's a great piece of entertainment but not an accurate guide I've come to Central Scotland to find the truth about Wallace underneath schools and factories and housing Estates lies a trail of blood but whether it leads to a hero or a villain depends on where you come from Wallace was the first Scottish champion in the vicious Wars of independence from England he's a Scottish icon to this day but he was certainly no saint [Music] Wallace with a freedom fighter part of excellence and was there for his country when his country needed them he is accused of getting choirs of naked Englishmen and women to sing for him this was this was particularly Dreadful he was an underdog a second son of an unimportant Knight and yet he had something in him which people responded to he must have been an extraordinary man we should never have heard of William Wallace and we might not have done except for an accident of History when Wallace was born there was no war with England Scotland was prosperous life was good then disaster struck 1286 was stormy the Scottish King Alexander III had been carousing the function in Edinburgh Castle late at night and probably the worst the wear he ignored his courtier's advice and insisted on returning home to Kinghorn on the other side of the further fourth he just married a beautiful French princess half his age in driving rain and Pitch Darkness he set off along the coastal path for his marriage bed [Music] but whether it was a midlife crisis or a noble desire to perform his kingly duties it was the death of him [Music] somewhere along the way it's been lost him and his horse stumbled and fell later on he was found here with his neck broken 600 years later the victorians put up this Monument to Mark the event it says without a hint of irony that it was erected on the sex and scenery of his death seldom as libido proved so costly [Music] yeah Oceanside Scotland was thrown into crisis powerful rival factions took to arms and the country slid towards Civil War without a leader it was going to be chaos a king is going to have to be chosen and Theory God Jesus Kings but in this case there's going to have to be some sort of Earthly intervention it couldn't happen within Scotland because that would imply the Scottish inability of superior to the king it's got to be a great International figure and Edward the first Scotland's nearest neighbor great reputation in Europe he's the man to do it they'd asked the wrong man Edward the first was a ruthless expansionist he'd already annexed Wales and Ireland the crisis gave him the chance to bring Scotland into his Empire under the pretext of preventing Civil War Edward took control of Scotland at Norm Castle he made the Scottish Nobles acknowledge Him as their feudal Overlord the medieval equivalent of Mafia Doms acknowledging a supreme boss it meant that when John baliel was named King he was Edward's puppet the Wilder Scottish Nobles caved in the Common People remained defiant resistance leaders emerged from nowhere throughout Scotland there were spontaneous attacks on the hated occupying forces it's about this time the tales of a fierce young Scot called William Wallace began to circulate history hit is like Netflix just for history fans with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history just for you with familiar faces such as Dan Jones and Dr Eleanor janega we've got hundreds of documentaries covering the greatest figures and events of medieval history we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and Chronicle fans get 50 percent off their first three months just be sure to use the code Chronicle that's one typical stuff five English soldiers turn up and demand his catch and Wallace says You must be joking but offers them half anyway and one of the English soldiers is so Furious that Amir jock should give in cheek he draws his sword and lunges at Wallace Wallace immediately parries with his fishing pole snatches the man's sword and locks his head off then he kills two of the other soldiers before the others escape who was this Wallace everyone was asking we still don't know what he looked like these pictures are from much more recent times the only Clues we have to his appearance are the accounts which tell of an arrow scar on his neck but a general agreement that he was enormous perhaps six foot six or more he was also much younger than this about 26. where had he come from well a Scottish chronicler called Blind Harry tells us that the diwalis family which means they were originally from Wales settled in eldersley just south of Glasgow on the flimsiest of evidence the good old victorians did what they do best and erected a monument but now archeology has backed up tradition [Music] so what would have been on this side when Wallace was alive well this is the seat where Wallace first saw the light of day and there would have been our fortification here there was an archaeological dig done in in 1998 there's a hedge that runs right around the site here and it shows the outline of the original wooden Palace said that we'd have surrounded the Fortified property when you said fortified property what would it have looked like there would have been a whole house of some sort either made of Timber or stone uh surrounded by a wooden Palisade and this path that we're actually walking on at this moment actually is on the site of the ditch as I say there was a dig done here in 98 which I saw in and the ditch still actually exists it's carved out of solid Stone and it's right under this path and which we're walking right now so what does that mean about Bruce's family about bullis's family um middle class I would say you were looking at it and I saw a modern term you would say middle class upper middle class perhaps so in 1270 it would have look something like this on the raised ground was the northeastern corner of a fortified Hamlet run by the Wallace family they were minor Nobles descended from the Norman aristocracy and although they would have thought of themselves as Scottish they would probably still have spoken French within the family but here's the weird thing the only record of Wallace's youth tells us that he was taught by monks and was going to be a priest it's possible because the church was a traditional option for minor nobility without land to inherit but the only physical evidence we have suggests Wallace was embarked on a Les Pious career [Music] we know from the seal that that was discovered a few years ago that has a ball in the middle of it that Wallace probably saw himself first and foremost as an Archer now that probably didn't mean he was a soldier necessarily it may have been a bit on the poaching side of things on the on the hunting of of deer um but yeah here he would have had to make his his own way he wouldn't have any lands given to him and I don't think there's any evidence in fact it's pretty clear he didn't have any lands himself so he's he's got to make his own way it's likely then that Wallace was a bit of a tear away who came good when history gave him a Cause [Music] first had his hooks into Scotland he never gave up in 1296 after repeated humiliations his puppet King John baliel rebelled Scots assembled an army and raided Northern England it was just the excuse Edward was looking for he marched North [Music] this is Barrick on Tweed today it's in England of course but seven centuries ago it was one of the most important and prosperous towns in Scotland as Edward moved forth spoiling for a fight with the rebellious Scots the people of Berwick gave him the perfect opportunity for one some English merchants had been murdered here and their goods pillaged by the locals Edward decided to make an example of them foreign English chroniclers at the time Edward Unleashed thousands of trained killers on an unsuspecting band of lightly armed civilians resistance it's a building called the red Tower and some Belgian Merchants hold up their firing arrows and they killed Edward's cousin So eventually he personally ordered their deaths by having them burnt alive [Music] foreign but it wasn't just Edward who wanted blood soon the cry rang out from the whole Army Havoc Havoc which means plunder plunder is where we get our word Havoc from it would have been Mayhem the men would have been automatically killed the women raped first the Chronicles say the slaughter lasted three days and only stopped when Edward saw one of his men hacking a woman to death she was actually in the process of giving birth they say that half the population of Beric was slaughtered and that the river Tweed ran red as the bodies piled in the massacre at Berwick was just the beginning Edward crushed the Scottish Army shut up John baliel in the Tower of London and took the stone of Destiny the symbol of Scottish kingship back to Westminster where it remained for 700 years seemed like total capitulation [Music] The Story Goes that when Edward was leaving Scotland he turned to the Earl he was about to put in charge and said to him vombered in other words the guy who gets rid of [ __ ] is doing a really good job Edward thought that he got rid of the problem of Scotland he thought that by Conquering the Nobles he was Conquering the people but he was wrong William Wallace was about to make very clear and for the first that thought he'd taught the Scots a lesson but the slaughter of Berwick had exactly the opposite effect all over the country spontaneous opposition broke out then in 1297 William Wallace burst onto the scene but according to the Chronicles it wasn't the public atrocities at Varick that brought him into the Limelight but a private Grudge here at Lanark [Music] the Chronicles tell the story of how Wallace fell in love he saw a maiden at Mass here in saint kentagon's church and was instantly smitten she was Marion braidfoot from nearby lamington [Music] The Story Goes that Wallace carried on a clandestine love affair and eventually married Marion for the English Sheriff of Lanark William hesselrig also had his eye on Wallace's girl [Music] when Wallace got into a skirmish with Hessel Rick's men before they could arrest him Marion helped him Escape into the hills revenge and full of lustful hate hesselrig had Marion killed [Music] hearing of the slaughter Wallace returned under cover of Darkness to wreak his revenge [Music] hardly anything left of Lanark Castle today Lanark thistle Bowling Club occupies the site of hesselrig's stronghold rig wouldn't have expected Wallace to return but he did in May 1297 he and his men probably slipped into town in ones and twos and then joined up ready for their Revenge the attack was Swift and terrible Wallace went straight to the sheriff's house surprising him in his bed one blow of his enormous sword went straight through the Sheriff's skull down to his collarbone death would have been instantaneous but a young follower made sure by stabbing the inert body three times then the Scottish Raiders went on the Rampage killing the English at will sparing only women and Priests foreign the killing of hasselrig is the first documented reference we have of Wallace but the Love Story May well be fiction after all Wallace was an outlaw and the sheriff was the local judge maybe Wallace simply killed him to avoid prosecution for some other crime it could be that he was already beyond the law that he was a kind of an outlaw if he'd been poaching you may even Beyond being Beyond Scott's law and and maybe he was someone on the wrong side of the tracks who who sort of made good because war broke out [Music] and because of his success Legends stick to wallace-like glue he's an Archer and he kills the local sheriff now at that time stories of other fugitive no women like Robin Hood were hugely popular we know that Wallace's made Marion only appears in later versions of the story maybe the chroniclers wanted to turn Wallace into a Scottish version of Robin Hood and so they gave Wallace his Maid Marion too while we're on the subject of myths and legends this is probably a good time to admit that Wallace was never called Braveheart that's the name that belonged to that other Scottish hero Robert the Bruce after he died when his Brave heart was put into a casket and carried into battle sorry Wallace's slaying of the sheriff of Lanark made his reputation people started flocking to his cause the outlaw band became a militia and then an army and at its head a nobody from eldersley well that's it that's the key to it isn't it it's the personality of Wallace I mean he must have been an extraordinary man we should never have heard of William Wallace and we wouldn't have done if it wasn't for this war he obviously had leadership quality but I think he also had that single-mindedness that Devotion to a cause one cause which in this case was Scottish independence that meant that he would you know there was no other way for him and I think he's just one of these Extraordinary People in in history that do extraordinary things by their own personality not by the situation that they found themselves in but Wallace wasn't alone in the highlands a young nobleman called Andrew Murray had been fighting an equally successful Guerrilla campaign when Wallace joined forces with Murray the Rebellion became a revolution the English had to act Edward the first who was away fighting in France ordered a formidable army North to sort out the rebels barring their way to the highlands was the mighty River Fort Wallace and Murray decided to take the English on at the Crossing Point its name was to Echo in history [Music] 1297 the bridge held the key to the strongholds in the highlands graphically demonstrated by this 13th century map if the English were going to take Scotland they had no choice but to cross Wallace and Murray decided that a battle at Sterling Bridge was their best chance of defeating the mighty English army but it wasn't this Stirling Bridge amazingly the exact location of Wallace's greatest Triumph was a mystery until recently nobody could find the foundations of the original Bridge find them and you find the Battleground then amateur archaeologists decided to test a local tradition that the bridge lay Upstream from today's with some homegrown technology I don't understand how you ever managed to see those pillars under this one they're pretty murky isn't it well it is pretty murky but there are times of the year when the fresh water is coming down in Japan sea um we used an old method that the barrelfish have used which was to um make a bucket out of wood with a glass bottom and they could see that the the freshwater mussels on the bed of the river and if you'd like to have a look over the side this is this this is it this is a high tech isn't it oh it is it is it is but it's it's very effective and on a sunny day um if you put your head right and exclude the lights around the edge it's uh you can get a marvelous version of the riverbed so I should be able to see one of the piers down here somewhere yes yes I've got it I think this is it yep ah very effective a simple solution to a problem like grueling isn't it it's uh not very easy to use but River Vision Mark II I should tighten this you might make a fortune yes I never thought of that the ancient Town seal from Wallace's time shows a flat wooden platform on top of eight stone Piers everyone had been looking for a bridge that went straight across the river but you don't need eight Piers for a straight Bridge what they discovered was that the piers went across the river diagonally no one knows why but it means that the number of Piers fits perfectly for a bridge that looks something like this this narrow structure was a key part of Wallace's plans [Music] Scott had positioned themselves on The High Ground on the north side of the river in 1297 this is what Wallace might have seen he and his lightly armed foot soldiers would have had a clear picture of the task that faced them looking South to the river they could see the English as they prepared for battle in the shadow of Sterling Castle can't say that the English had brought a thousand Cavalry and 50 000 infantry to face the Spears and Dirks of the rebels they outnumbered numbered by as much as ten to one Wallace's men knew it was make or break the English army at that time was regarded as a mightiest fighting machine in Christendom Wallace must have been a dynamic leader to have instilled than his men the belief that they could win not just against Superior numbers but against much more Superior almonds horses weaponry even money when it comes down to and even although they were outnumbered Wallace used the land of Scotland itself to hell ground leaving an area of Boggy ground between the English and the Scots crossed by a single raised Causeway that followed the same course as the road does today the bridge and this narrow road caused a bottleneck the logistics of getting the sheer numbers onto the field of battle would have made for a scene like the start of the London Marathon it made some of the English Knights nervous but as the Nobles discussed tactics the tithe Rose making the Marshland even boggier delays and indecision were to prove fatal three times the English started across the bridge and three times they drew back Dominican Friars were sent across to offer Wallace peace terms but the message came back we have not come for peace but to avenge our country the upstart was spoiling for a fight and the English were happy to oblige Wallace and Murray couldn't believe their luck the enemy was about to fall into their trap [Music] the narrow bridge could only take two horses at a time as the heavily armored mounted Knights rode off the causeway to form a battle line the ground became too boggy for an effective charge the English were probably expecting the Scots to wait till they'd all processed across the bridge and lined up nicely that was the etiquette of chivalry but Wallace and Murray weren't like that they were Street Fighters engaged in a last-ditch attempt to save their country they waited until just the right amount of Englishmen had crossed enough to fight and enough to kill and then Wallace gave a single blast of his horn the Scots rushed out from their stronghold on The High Ground Beyond where that white Bungalow is they attacked on both flanks and they cut off the English Retreat back to the bridge with no room to form up and completely unable to maneuver the English was stuck the Scots slashed to the hand spoons of their horses and stabbed at their underbellies and as the horses fell the English was deadly it was [ __ ] [Music] the Chronicles report 5 000 English dead the victory was Against All Odds native cunning and spirit had defeated numbers money and Equipment the English retreated in disarray day Sterling bridge is symbolic of an unbreakable sense of national pride whatever the southern neighbors may do and on the very Turf where Wallace's men splashed through the mud to bring down the English Cavalry a new generation of Warriors struggle for Pride and Glory position [Music] make up speaker less than that there is a sense of of History here I mean I believe it because I'm also the history teacher as well as the rugby coach but I sense and I think the boys feel too that this is a an ancient place it's surprising when you tell the story of the battle you can hear the pin drop because there's a sense of Pride as a sense of achievement that you can sense but among the pupils ah sure they you know you lose the atmosphere a bit later but for that moment there are just there's something in them that we just feel hey yeah we did this here William Wallace was a national hero but he was now on his own his partner Andrew Murray had been one of the handful of Scottish casualties nevertheless the Scottish Tales were up Wallace decided to take the battle to the English the next time they saw the avenging Scott it was going to be on their own turf [Music] what was William Wallace really like well to the Scots he was the hero of Sterling Bridge 27 year old Victor of the hated English with his partner Andrew Murray dead Wallace got all the glory and that success makes the real man harder to find the ballads and myths started almost at once Scottish Chronicles are more celebrations of a legend than objective histories I think there are various reasons why Wallace is a legend Wallace represents Scottish national resistance in a most extraordinary way I mean this this was a man who absolutely turned the tide the English seemed to seem to have dealt with Scotland in 1296 the Scottish nobility had capitulated um John baliel the king had miserably abdicated um and you know this nobody arose and Scotland rose with him and you know that that is a tremendous achievement there's no doubt to that but anyone who's ever watched the football match with rival fans knows there are always two ways of looking at any incident the English hated Wallace to them he was a terrorist who've broken the chivalrous rules of war in football terms he'd taken the penalty before the keeper was ready [Applause] and what happened next seems to confirm that Wallace had a much darker side buoyed with his success at Sterling Wallace swept into Northern England it was time for the Scots to vent their Fury the English Chronicles are full of stories of Wallace's savagery he put monasteries to the torch and laughed as monks were drowned in front of him he slaughtered women and burnt schools with the school children inside rape torture and atrocity marked his progress through the borders he shocked an age hardened to brutality stories evoke contemporary parallels English accused Wallace quite explicitly of effectively ethnic cleansing that his intention was to get rid of everyone that spoke English from the north England [Music] just realized there was a problem they said he tried to prevent the excesses of his men defending priests at the altar on the other hand they made no bones about his hatred of all the English foreign [Music] or a war criminal Wallace monument is the great Victorian expression of his legendary status it dominates the landscape of Wallace's great Triumph at Sterling Braveheart fans and Scots from all over the world including the south Florida branch of the Stuart Clan come to pay homage but even here there's a grim recognition that there was little room for compromise in medieval warfare and the state of Providence executioners would then put this through the back or the front of the head and that is your cranial Spike if you knew Wallace is a person it probably wasn't the sort of guy you would like to get on the wrong side of it was probably terrifying there was probably enough a lot of people in Scotland But I either feared them or hated them at the time we see him as a national hero and we see him differently but Wallace is one major inherent strength was a killed Englishman wherever and whenever he found them that is that was his job and that's what he did not to be confused with your dispatching dagger which has two sharp edges one to the left and one to the right essentially Wallace was a man of his day wounded out of her Misery by impinging there's no doubt that he was a very bloody violent man living in a violent age and uh he's stood No Nonsense at all from enemies and which of them as soon as look at them but at the same time here's a man that was a leader people he was an underdog a second son of an unimportant Knight and yet he had something in him which people responded to and he led them he had a vision he was true to his King he was fighting for John Belial um he had loyalty he had a sense of purpose a sense of achievement he had a brain that could think of strategy no I think there are many good aspects of Wallace's personality and character which you can focus on but we try to sort of um say that those days are gone now when we want to slaughter the English on his return from his campaign of Terror along the English borders Wallace was knighted possibly by Robert the Bruce then Sir William Wallace was made guardian of Scotland in the absence of the king he'd been given absolute power Wallace knew the English weren't beaten he began preparations at once for the defense of the realm he put a gibbet in every major town to deal with backsliders another sign of his ruthlessness perhaps or just a desperate recognition of the scale of the expected English response [Music] pretty soon the king realized that if he wanted a job done properly he was going to have to do it himself next time Wallace met the English army it would be led by King Edward the English wouldn't be fooled by another surprise attack so to prepare for a clash with the heavily armored English Cavalry Wallace invented a battlefield tactic called the children the outnumbered ranks of infantry would form an enormous circle of Spears so that the charging Knights would be met by a deadly giant Hedgehog as a massive English army Advanced from the South Wallace retreated burning fields and crops as he went his plan was to use a scorched Earth policy to break the English lines of supply [Music] it nearly worked as the English army lumbered on getting hungrier there was no sign of the enemy then at Edinburgh a scout reported that Wallace was just 20 miles away in Falkirk ready to pounce if the English retreated Edward ordered a forced March at dawn on the 23rd of July 1298 the English luck changed tell us that as the English army was advancing up the fourth they saw a flash of armor up here on the hill it was Wallace spying on his enemy but by the time an advanced guard had raced up here he was gone instead down there in front of the town of Falkirk they could see the entire Scottish Army preparing at last for battle [Music] no one knows why Wallace chose to stand and fight the English were almost out of food and ready to retreat perhaps he thought he might be overtaken and preferred to choose the Battleground or perhaps Sterling had made him overconfident either way the Battle of Falkirk was to be crucial and yet incredibly no one sure where it took place the scraps of information we have from the Chronicles just refer to a hilly area overlooking boggy ground and the Watercourse it could have been the town's Center side where the park is today the rise just beyond the supermarket the Farmland under calendar Woods or here the mum real site near the main Edinburgh fall Kirk Road whatever the location we know the story of the day Wallace and his men arranged up on The High Ground with four large circles of spearmen and in between them he had his short Bowman on behind his cavalrymen ready to charge I've brought you to the ring he said to his men now dance as best you can [Music] [Music] the English said wave after wave of Cavalry across the boggy ground up the slope and onto the waiting Scottish Spears but then two things happened that changed the course of the day and the future of Wallace's reputation firstly the Scots nobility who made up their Cavalry suddenly upped and left and secondly the English brought on their new secret weapon the longbow [Music] foreign [Music] range was deadly some thought it went against the rules of War as horrific in its time as Nepal as effective as a machine gun Wallace escaped with his life ten thousand of his men didn't [Music] to be fair to Wallace he had planned a strategy around what the English normally do which is a major Cavalry chart and that's why you've got the symptoms of this Hedgehog of Spears and he had trained his men well on this and they've been practicing for quite a while but what he couldn't have foreseen really was that Edward would deploy The Archers uh in the way that he did and this is the beginning of of the rise of the English Arctic to such a preeminent position in the Hundred Years War against France in The Next Century they're going to win win battles and poor old Wallace got was on the receiving end of that he had planned it's just that technology took over for people who know the movie it may come as a shock to know that full Kirk wasn't the end for Wallace he was to carry his fight on for seven more years before his horrific betrayal and death [Music] Falkirk was annihilation [Music] Wallace escaped with his life but a reputation in tatters his loyal foot soldiers had been slaughtered by English Bowman and if blind Harry's to be believed his Cavalry had simply deserted him Sir John Graham was one of the few Nobles who stayed at Wallace's side his remains lie in full Kirk graveyard one of only three marked Graves from ten thousand dead fight the English it also fought the threat from his own nobility uh possibly because of his low-born status or low Bond compared to the the great arrows of Scotland who were jealous of Wallace's sudden high standard in the community [Music] what are you gonna do you stay there and die are you gonna go away and live to fight again I mean it's all pretty easy for us 700 years over to say oh it's a Dreadful thing I don't think the Scottish Cavalry could win that battle under no no they couldn't have done it um so I think they very wisely said let's go regroup try and think again so you don't think the Cavalry betrayed no I don't I think they've very sensibly saw the way things were going um I mean what could they what there's nothing they could have done what they're going to do right down that Hill into the Cavalry and be and be completely massacred we've got to remember Wallace himself survived the battle of Falkirk unlike a lot of the men in this shelter demoted from his role as guardian of Scotland and with his troops decimated it seems Wallace returned to the land he knew best hiding out in the forests of Selkirk while he regrouped Edward the first had battered the Scots into military submission when Wallace re-emerges it isn't as a soldier but as a diplomat while he was Guardian Wallace had been used to playing on the international stage while so much else has been lost incredibly we have one of Wallace's own letters he was writing to the merchants of Lubeck in Germany basically saying that Scotland was open for business now in the wake of military disaster it seems Wallace took the political initiative against the hated Edward another letter which has since been lost shows that Wallace made Journeys to the king of France and to the pope to try and win political support it was the equivalent of an appeal to the United Nations at the time it was a unilateral action not backed by The Nobles who were trying to appease Edward while they Consolidated their position so do you think that in his later years Wallace would have been a bit of a political Loose Cannon like Edward Heath or Arthur Scarborough I think this island is exactly the way to describe Wallace although he does when he comes back from the continent in 1303 he does join with the rest of the Scottish nobility he's one of the leaders of the Scottish Army and that's that's quite interesting he's one of many um but when Scots decide when John Coleman of bad knock has the saw Guardian at that period that Scotland has had enough and that perhaps they should submit to Edward whether they thought this was only a temporary measure or not Wallace could not would not um submit he's not the only one but he's the main one um and and I think most of the Scottish nobility and the Scottish people it's not just the inability a lot of the Scottish people had had enough as well um they would have thought shut up but Wallace wouldn't shut up he fought on in the way he knew best as an outlaw while everyone else including Robert the Bruce went with the flow Wallace kept one step ahead of the law he went straight to the top of Edward's most wanted list [Music] thank you the shocking thing was when the end came that it wasn't an Englishman that captured Wallace he was actually betrayed by a Scott who was an English P but an awful lot of the problems in Scotland down the century were succinctly summed up by Robert buns who said we had bought and sold for English gold in 1305 Wallace was finally betrayed to the English by this time most of Scotland's nobles were back under Edward's rule again and one of his tests of their loyalty was whether or not they were prepared to try to capture Wallace but eventually the Betrayal wasn't just political it was personal the man chosen to close the Trap around him was the John men teeth a particular friend of Wallace's who was Godfather to his two children they surprised Wallace here at Rob Royston just outside Glasgow there was a struggle eventually Wallace was subdued and dragged South of the Border to avoid any possibility of rescue [Music] 17 bruising days later he arrived in London on the 23rd of August Wallace was brought before the king's bench at the Royal Palace of Westminster this was once the largest freestanding building in Europe in 1305 it was the intimidating setting for a show trial Wallace stood silent facing his accusers as charge after charge was read out he only spoke once when accused of treason against Edward he shouted out that he could never have committed treason as he had never given his loyalty to anyone but the rightful King of Scotland [Music] but in the end the odds were stacked against Wallace the trial was more about humiliation than Justice as he stood on this spot the sentence for treason was declared Wallace was to be hung drawn and quartered [Music] [Applause] going on [Music] strip naked and with his feet tied to the Tails of two horses he was dragged through the city of London his head banged against the cobbles the London crowd pelted him with filth miraculously when he arrived here he was still conscious in those days this was known as smooth field it was just outside the city walls today we noticed Smithfield the size of the famous London meat market and here just around the back of some baths hospital they butchered William Wallace now in Wallace's case of course in in his hanging he'd be dangling there suffocating going purple in the face eyes starting out of his head bloodshot struggling arms and legs ejectating he'd probably be incontinent of urine and feces stall now this required great skill on the part of the Executioner because he's got to cut him down while he's still conscious drawn it's slash open your belly with a knife pull out your guts pick up his knife and crudely giveaway toss the guts onto the fire if he was still the slightest bit alive he might smell his own intestines burning [Music] and then pack the body open the coffee probably using your legs take out the heart cut it out show it to the crowds now the heart would still be beating Wallace by now would be brain days crowds wouldn't know this they'd see the heart beating because the Heart Will Go On after brain death will go on beating for several minutes I've seen after half an hour well-known phenomenon Wallace's head was displayed on London Bridge the four parts of his dismembered body were sent to Berwick Edinburgh Aberdeen and Sterling the scene of his greatest Triumph to warn the Scots and that should have been that at 35 Wallace had died a failure his reputation as a military genius had been smashed after just nine months then for the next seven years he'd been powerless to stop Scotland falling under Edward's rule but like many Heroes who die young his death sealed his immortality it's Wallace's Legacy that's his lasting achievement Wallace's execution inspired Robert the Bruce to take on his mantle nine years later Bruce invoked Wallace's spirit before the decisive battle of Bannockburn established the Independence that Wallace had so long fought forth almost five centuries later Robert Burns who was brought up in the same forests where Wallace used to hide out was inspired by Bruce's tribute he wrote Scott swear hey it's become Wallace's Anthem a symbol of what he represents [Music] [Music] with the foundation stone of the Wallace monument in Sterling was led 70 or 80 000 people turned out in the day to see it so it meant something to people even back in the days when Scotland was seen as North Britain and any time that Scotland's future has been called into question Wallace's Shadow is there a lesser man might have simply given up but Wallace went on trying admittedly not very successfully but he remained absolutely consistent to that that Scottish cause and I think therefore it's hardly surprising that this man has become a symbol of Scottish nationalism in an utterly justifiable way he is crucial to the Scottish psyche and to to how the Scots have felt about themselves and he is this symbol of unadulterated Scotland it's a very magical symbol I have to say um I sometimes wondered what we women really feel about Wallace um but but he's he's very important as being somebody that we can look up to with no trace of having had any talk with England but as a man of the people Wallace came to represent personal freedom as well as Scottish independence [Music] this is the Wallace Stone of Falkirk where Wallace is said to have abide on the English miners in Scotland used to be bondsmen 200 years ago the local miners released from their serfdom started a tradition which lasts to this day of marching here in the name of Wallace to affirm their status as free men [Music] I came to Scotland in search of a national hero but the man I found was much more complex and ambiguous than the well-known legendary character with his deeds of Daring Do of course Wallace was a man of his time he was a brutal man in a brutal age but his absolute insistence that no man or group should be able to dominate any other against their wishes makes him for me not just a Scottish hero but a universal one standing on the exact location of one of the most famous deaths of all time a death that marked the end of the best known battle in British history towards dusk on the 14th of October 1066 an unknown Archer fired an arrow into the air from somewhere beyond those ruins by chance it came down straight into the eye of King Harold of England simple twist of fate changed our country forever as a result a horde of Normans led by William the Conqueror marched in and removed a whole way of life it's William's propaganda machine ensured that all we ever get to hear about Harold is that he was the loser at the Battle of Hastings but there's a hidden history a tragic story of love violence Intrigue and Cold Hard Cash this is the real story of the last great Anglo-Saxon King [Music] tracking down the facts of Harold's hidden history means embarking on a quest across the length and the breadth of the bridge and over to the continent only by making this journey can we see how the events of his life conspired to set him on a countdown to the last fatal moment it started here this is bosom on the south coast today it's a picturesque little pleasure Harbor a thousand years ago it was a hub port for the Saxon territory of Wessex sometime around 10 20 Harold was born and brought up here the Saxon Church where he would have gone to mass still stands we don't know when exactly he was born the chroniclers thought all you needed to know about the young Harold was his second name godwinson his father was the most powerful Lord in the land Earl Godwin of Wessex Godwin had risen from the lowest ranks of the Saxon aristocracy and was a tenacious political fighter he needed to be these were turbulent times a Stone Church like this was also used as a military building for centuries the tower had been used to watch out for Viking Raiders coming up the solent but when Harold was a boy the Danish empire under King Knute had taken over the English kingship Edward the anglo-saxonaire had fled to Normandy [Music] oh God we had survived the Takeover marrying a Danish woman and giving his three oldest Sons Scandinavian names Swain Harold fantastic yes our English hero was in fact half-biking [Music] in turn 42 Harold appears in the Chronicles in his own right in his early twenties he got his first taste of power when the Danish Empire ended and the ancient English Royal Line was restored Edward who's known as the Confessor returned a Triumph from Exile in Normandy but with Edward came change for the first time he created a permanent base for the English Monarchy here on the banks of the Thames just outside London at Westminster but Edward was a new boy and a stranger in his own country he may have come from a long line stretching right back to Alfred the Great but he'd been brought up in Normandy he needed the support of the Saxon Earls and in particular of Godwin who ran Wessex [Music] daughter Harold's sister then cemented the alliance by giving Harold's old brother Swain an earldom in the Midlands and appointing Harold as Earl of East Anglia and made the godwins the most powerful family in the land foreign blonde bearded and now with wealth influence and his own retinue of personal troops Harold and his family were loyal to the king they served for long periods with the Navy protecting the English Coast from raids Edward felt no obligation in return like any new boss Edward wanted his own people so he started bringing in Norman Nobles and giving them pockets of land he also began replacing English clerics with Norman Churchman these were people who wanted religious reform but also had a political agenda and the most dangerous of these was the new Archbishop of Canterbury Robert of zumiege it was set by a chronicler that Robert Zumiez had such a hold over Edward the Confessor he could point to a crow and say that Crow is white and Edward would agree with him this guy was a schemer and a politician and I believe that he was the prime mover and trying to bad mouth Godwin and Harold and all the rest of the family in the eyes of Edward the Confessor because there was so much mileage in us if you could get rid of this most powerful family you could leave the way open for the succession to the Duke of Norman but this isn't just a political story it's a personal one too Harold's career may have been kick-started because his father was so powerful but his downfall was because of his family as well his whole story is a dynastic tragedy and the course of the nation's history was changed because his family fell apart [Music] the source of tension was Harold's sister Edward's marriage had failed to produce an heir and in those days the woman was always to blame [Music] Edward couldn't annul the marriage because the Earl Godwin and his sons were still so powerful but the lack of an heir created external pressure on the Family they might have survived if their internal stability hadn't been threatened by the behavior of Harold's Maverick elder brother Swain was a typical rich kid gone wrong he was a bully and a Hellraiser he was exiled in 1046 to Denmark for keeping a non-prisoner as a sex slave and all his lands were divided between Harold and his cousin Bjorn but in Exile he behaved so badly that eventually Denmark had him thrown out again so three years later he turned up in England begging Edward for forgiveness understandably Harold was indignant all this time he'd been doing his duty serving his King as a naval Commander why should he now have to give back his lands to an aristocratic wastel supported by his cousin for the first time Harold stood up to his father the tea was beginning to crumble one side stood Godwin and Swain on the other Harold his brothers and cousin godwins were no longer invincible [Music] Swain was to sail from Possum within three days or pay with his life the rest of the godwins was 70 miles along the coast the matter seemed settled by the king's decision as they waited in the shadow of the old Roman Fort here at pevensey Swain turned up on Horseback for one last appeal to his family to help get him reinstated somehow or other he managed to persuade his cousin Bjorn to speak on his behalf to the king Bjorn set off a bosom with Swain and just three attendants sway was a psychopath with a grudge we don't know what went wrong but at bottom Swain had Beyond tied up and bundled onto his boat killed his cousin in Cold Blood and dumped him in an unmarked grave gone too far Sailors of the royal fleets declared him a knee thing the Viking word for someone who's completely Beyond The Pale even Swain's own ships deserted him he was forced to flee to England's enemies in Flanders [Music] despite of this Universal condemnation Earl Godwin lobbied for Swain's return in 1051 he used his remaining shreds of influence to pressure Edward into allowing the murderer back his return caused tension and resentment among other Nobles who had to give back land [Music] Goodwin had other families as Rivals within England and Edward and he personally didn't like each other that seems fairly clear and so there's a lot more personal animosity rivalries within the Kingdom at the back of all that feuding Godwin had isolated themselves Edward encouraged by Robert of Juniors had the chance to reshuffle England's power base in his favor he went in for the kill Edward said a trap for a Godwin he brought his brother-in-law Eustis over from Malloy on the pretext of an official visit at Dover Eustis and his Heavenly armed men orchestrated a puff raw and turned into a full-scale riot with decks on Ollie Dover was Godwin's territory Edward gave the order for him to make an example of the town Godwin was faced with the choice of burning looting and pillaging in his own Homeland or disobeying the king he chose rebellion and rallied his sons to try to persuade the king to change his mind at an emergency Summit but Edward had the support of the other Barons and when he refused to give the Godwin safe conduct to the meeting they were forced to flee from the country [Music] and when families [Music] had underestimated the effects of this shift in the balance of English Power the rest of the elves realized that if the king could oust the most powerful family in the land no one was safe messages of support started crossing the channel s later the godwins sailed back into London [Music] board here at southwark on the South Bank of the Thames Edward faced them across the river in those days there weren't any Bridges so the bishop of Winchester stigant ferried back and forth negotiating a humiliating climb down to the king [Music] the Godwin's lands were restored and many of Edward's Norman cronies were forced out including the scheming Archbishop it was victory Robert extreme knew the game was up and he fled immediately out of London before they came back to the court and he killed several people on the streets before he left this is the kind of chargement we're dealing with here then within six months for Swain and then Earl Godwin died leaving Harold as the new Earl of Wessex Harold and Edward could now start with a clean slate but the crisis of 1051 was to continue to hold when he fled England Robert of Juniors had snatched Harold's youngest brother and a nephew as hostages he handed them over to his new master William Duke of Normandy the two young relatives languishing in a foreign dungeon were a time bomb that would eventually lead to Harold's death foreign godwinson had survived Exile and crisis to become the most powerful Earl in the Kingdom as Edward the confessor's right-hand man he commanded the Army he was about to face his first challenge the Welsh was threatening to invade England [Music] the Border country of Hereford had always been vulnerable to attack [Music] when Edward had brought Norman Nobles to England his motives were partly strategic over on the continent the Normans had come up with the technology of the modern Bailey castle and an easily defended stronghold from which a Lord and his men could dash out to give battle or Retreat from an invading Force without giving ground the perfect answer to Welsh race the northern castillans brought their technology with them this is one in U.S Harold in herefordshire it actually became one of Harold's personal possessions most people around here aren't even aware that it was a castle it's known locally as the mound but it's actually of a classic modern Bailey design they'd have flattened all the area around here got all the Earth put it over there where the trees are and then they would have protected this inner Mound with a wooden Palisade and also protected the outer ring around here with another Palisade so it would have been virtually impregnable and if you look over there you can see what a superb position it was in in order to stop the Welsh from raiding in the Golden Valley below but King Edward had entrusted this key territory to a relative known as Ralph the timid the Welsh swept over the Border brushing Ralph's forces aside overrunning Hereford and burning the Minster there was only one man to deal with the crisis Harold the Welsh campaign proved Harold's worth as a politician as well as a soldier if you go to Hereford today you can still see Harold's Legacy in the layout of the old city he negotiated a deal giving land in return for a withdrawal from Hereford he then said about strengthening the town building moats and City walls the restored walls surrounding the razor wire of Tesco's marked the course of Harold's defenses but Griffith the Welsh leader continued to cause trouble on the board so at Christmas 1062 Harold decided to solve the Welsh problem once and for all Wales was Afghanistan for England it was really dodgy place to get into because the English had heavier armed troops who could get bogged down in there and get picked off in ambushes Harold came up with a radical solution the Saxon equivalent of a Commando unit he decided the way to sort out Griffin was to make a lightning raid right into the heart of his territory he first of all marched with lightning speed past Hereford and on to the West against Griffith's own castle I think one of the significant thing about Harold in Wales is it absolutely says that here was somebody who was an innovator of military tactics somebody who knew that things had to change and you would adapt to circumstances [Music] when Griffith escaped Harold launched a second phase his brother tastic continued raiding by land while Harold sailed round the coast to destroy strongholds the Welsh thought were protected by the mountains in the end the demoralized Welsh signaled their submission by sending Harold ahead of their leader Harold was proving invaluable to King Edward and he reaped the rewards of his position his role as Earl of Wessex gave him a state throughout Southern England it's Welsh success gave him land on the border as well [Music] he was the equivalent of a multi-millionaire and he lived a life he loved the sport of Hawking which had the same sort of cachet as Polo does today he was famous for taking a hawk everywhere he went and had Europe's finest collection of books on the subject foreign Century man of means was expected to have a suitable wife and Harold was no exception Edith swan neck was noted for her beauty what was unusual for the time is that they also had a genuine relationship which lasted till Harold died as far as we can see Harold had one of the real relationships of medieval history they were probably as we don't know about but certainly we know that Harold and Edith swan neck were a very happy if you like a certain love affair [Music] in other matters Harold followed the customs of the age rich men had a duty to fund religious institutions founding a church or Abbey enhanced your Earthly reputation and bought Credit in the afterlife King Edward for instance was spending a fortune on an Abbey near his new base of Westminster Harold picked a project to rival the Kings he believed he'd been cured of some kind of paralysis when he prayed at The Shrine of the Holy Cross at Waltham in Essex it was here that he built Waltham Abbey which gave its name to the town today's church is half the size of the Abbey in its Heyday Harold lavished money on the project bringing back highly prized relics from trips to the continent and providing costly fixtures such as a gold and marble altar gospel books with silver covers and a famous vestment embroidered with eight kilos of gold thread [Music] but just when it seemed that Harold had it all he made the worst mistake of his life foreign [Music] Chronicles tell us that in 1064 Harold set off across the channel from bosom on a diplomatic mission to Normandy the facts of the visit have been obscured by histories written after the Norman Conquest in order to justify William the conqueror's invasion they say that Harold was sent by King Edward to reaffirm a promise of William could a king of England after Edward's Death but this is Norman's spin finding Harold's real reasons for saving the world involves a bit of detective the official Norman version is this in 1051 King Edward promises William of Normandy the Throne of England and in 1064 King Edward sends Harold over to confirm that promise but what this official version conveniently forgets is that between these two dates in 1056 King Edward also sent Harold over to Hungary on a long costly mission in order to bring back a distant relative who he'd earmarked to succeed him and this young man was still sitting around in the English Court the official version just doesn't wash it seems much more likely that Harold went over to France on his own account on a courageous Rescue Mission the hostages were the reason for Harold actually making his journey to Normandy there was no reason to select an outsider a foreigner as king one who probably would not have been accepted by an English nobility when Robert of jumia had fled back to the continent with Harold's relatives he'd encouraged William of Normandy to believe that he'd been promised the English Throne by Edward 12 years later Harold goes on what he thinks is a straightforward mission to negotiate the release of his brother and nephew but he doesn't know about the promise to William he wasn't aware of the fact that William was ambitious to take control of England and was therefore waiting to exploit any opportunity to do so Harold basically walked into a trap to find what happened next you have to come here to Bayer in Normandy to see a document made within a decade of Harold's visit this is where Harold's history starts to be told not just in Chronicles written down by monks but in the first comic strip ever the buyer tapestry it's an extraordinary piece of work if you've only seen reproductions you haven't got any idea of its scale or the detail of the embroidery it's 17 meters long it was originally commissioned to be hung in the Nave at the Cathedral here in Baier and who made it English seamstresses at Canterbury the tapestry shows that things went wrong for Harold from the start he was blown off course made a force Landing up the coast and was taken captive by the local Baron the man who came to the rescue was William Duke of Normandy Harold was safe but his bargaining power was destroyed he now owed his life to the man who was to be his downfall at Hastings Harold was out of a frying pan blazing Inferno [Music] in the year 1064 Harold godwinson set out on a mission to rescue his brother and cousin who'd been given us hostages to William Duke of Normandy but his stay soon turned into something much more complicated and Sinister half honored guest half prisoner he was now a member of Williams Entourage and was reluctantly dragged round the ducal strongholds like this one at Cole between William and Harold they now began a subtle political game of cat and mouse [Music] powerful English show virtual prisoner unless she wanted something Harold knew that he was part of a wider political agenda hatched by a man who'd forged a reputation as one of the Hard Men of Europe his father died when William was a boy on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and he spent his formative years fleeing across Normandy with various tutors and uncles to to actually keep alive so by the time he got to 1820 and actually had rule of Normandy he would have been quite a tough a tough person he he had formed himself in a way that that he broke no opposition William had established a fearsome military Empire the Norman's weren't French at all were descended from Vikings when Harold joined William on a campaign against the Duke of Brittany it gave him a chance to assess Norman tactics and prove his own work as a warrior the Norms were actually very impressed by Harold Williams force was crossing the river Kohinoor which flows into the Seymour sandwich shell on the borders of Normandy and Brittany and suddenly Harold noticed that some of the knights were sinking in the quicksand and quick as a flash he wrapped his arms round the chest of one of them yanked him to safety then went back in and rescued a second one [Music] Harold's reward was being knighted by William a double-edged sword that involved pledging obedience to his new Lord William's agenda was beginning to unfold then came the Bodywork William brought Harold onto the cathedral here in Bayer demanded that Harold take a solemn oath sworn on sacred relics to support William's claim to the throne of England Harold was under duress and swore with the 11th century equivalent of crossed fingers breaking an oath was monumental mental and as far as William was concerned Harold was bound by it I'll swirl the oath but in the full realization that that was the only way he would Escape but knowing that he had no intention of actually supporting it later on Harold returned home knowing that his perjury would come back to haunt him but even as he returned there was trouble again from within his own family Harold's next brother down tostic was Earl of northumbria governing the whole of the north of England the region was wild and uncivilized but it did have advantages the northumbrians paid half as much taxes anywhere else in England fantastic made the fatal error of trying to put this right with a tax hike Harold and his brother would have known Lady Godiva but unlike us who only remember that she rode through Coventry in the nude they would have remembered her famous ride as a tax protest to try to persuade her husband the Earl of Mercia to reduce the burden on his oppressed people tostig might have been well advised to follow Godiva's example but he didn't in one Fell Swoop he doubled northumbria's taxes the king agreed but the people of northumbria didn't on the 3rd of October 1065 local Noble stormed positive hole in York polluting his Armory and killing his men they marched South demanding a change of government ironically they wanted Lady Godiva's grandson instead the rebels had got as far as Oxford when Edward put his top man on the case to negotiate what Harold heard presented him with a dilemma the choice was a civil war that would fatally weaken England leaving her open to attack from William of Normandy or abandoning his own brother Harold chose country over family and recommended that Edward give the northumbrians the leader they wanted tostig was outraged he went into Exile thou in Revenge on a brother who become his arch enemy foreign [Music] never saw the consecration of Westminster Abbey the nobility who'd gathered for the grand opening were to witness a far more important drama [Music] Edward had fallen sick on Christmas day he swiftly deteriorated and died on the 4th of January on his deathbed he altered the succession in favor of Harold the existing Heir was too young easy meat for William of Normandy the English nobles were on hand to approve the dying King's wish on the 6th of January the new Abbey witnessed two events Edward's funeral and the enthronement of King Harold of England Harold godmanson was the only man whom you could elect as king if you were in your right mind in England in 1066 long before Edward died they were expecting an invasion from Norway a possible Invasion from Denmark and certainly an invasion from Normandy as soon as the old King died by the time news of Edward's Death reached the continent Harold's accession was a threat accompli William didn't take it well he was out in the woods hunting when a messenger brought him news that Harold his sworn man had taken the crown for his own they say he went straight home without a word and sat for hours with his head buried in his cloak Earl stood with his forward against a pillar trying to cool the rage Within then when he'd recovered enough to speak Council of War [Music] this is Steve Schumer on the mouth of the river div in Normandy and here 950 years ago Williams started to build an immense Fleet of 700 warships and transports in order to invade England [Music] drill scale chopped down around 60 000 trees and employed about eight thousand men but more than that has poured structure to raise the cash and feed and water the workers would have involved everyone in Normandy when William awoke from his rage no one was left untouched [Music] the church at dev has a list of all the Nobles who sailed with women but initially he had trouble recruiting many thought a campaign against the powerful English was suicide persuade them was religion William managed to persuade the Pope that his invasion was a crusade against an English king who broke Oaths and an Archbishop who hadn't been properly appointed by the church the pope gave his Blessing and allowed William to wear one of the perjured relics into battle s fell into line [Music] Harold called out the English reserve and stationed them along the south coast all summer they waited while adverse winds prevented Williams Armada from sailing eventually Harold disbanded the troops so they could go and get on with the Harvest as soon as he did so it came an invasion but not from the south Harold's brother toasty was out for Revenge plastic had already had one disaster a solo attempt but now he joined his meager force of 12 ships to the mighty Fleet of the giant Viking Harold hardrada hadrada had built up a reputation right across Europe as a enormous he brought with him seven and a half thousand battle Half Men they sailed up the Ooze before going on to take your [Music] King Harold's response was Swift and fearless decided on the same sort of lightning strike that had paid off against the Welsh he headed north arranging for troops to meet him as he went forced marching 25 miles a day it was a tremendous logistical feat he had to March 190 miles up the great North Road which was little more than a car track on the 24th he reached the outskirts of York the unsuspecting Invaders were waiting at the Crossing of the river Derwent at Stamford Bridge they were miles from their ships because it was hot many had abandoned their armor [Music] foreign the town's folk flung out in the city Gates and Harold's forces marched right through not into Stamford Bridge miles Beyond Harold arrived on the horizon the Invaders saw the Saxon weapons glittering like a field of broken ice the Norwegians were caught on the Hop quickly they moved back to the far side of the bridge to give themselves the chance of forming a decent defensive formation The Story Goes that the entire Saxon Advance was held up by one fearsome Viking who held the bridge single-handedly killing 45 men until a crafty English spearsman waded out into the river and thrust upwards into the unprotected area underneath his chain mail then the English swarmed across the bridge and battled proper was joined in the old Warrior tradition two Shield walls hacking at each other until a breach was made the front line would bend down then the next line are like this and then the next thing so you've got a whole built up wall of shields into locking to the principal weapons still always the sword which can be used to strike over the shield wall either cutting or thrusting they would also use SWAT Squad and that's where you would get the famous two-handed ass hopefully punch a hole in the enemy Shield wall and then they could deploy back again inside their Shield wall the battle was fierce bloody and Final survivors sailed off in just 24 of their original 300 ships 60 years later the piles of Bones from the rotting corpses were still a local landmark Harrelson won an extraordinary Victory against one of the most renowned Warriors of the age ever the Diplomat he allowed the remnants of the defeated Norwegian Army to leave in peace provided they promised never ever to return true to their word and Harold hardrada's incursion was the last great Viking assault on Britain in other circumstances it would have ranked alongside Trafalgar or the Battle of Britain [Music] but the celebrations were short-lived devastating news arrived from the south coast there he was feasting with his men having fought off the most terrible threat to England and then news comes that this guy from Normandy has landed his pevency so it's like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire you're almost there win the next battle and you not only have England secure but you are the greatest King that ever ruled so Harold rallied his weary troops and headed south to meet his destiny [Music] [Applause] three days later William of Normandy landed at Heaven seat 250 miles from the south Harold and another Mountain tomorrow William swiftly decided that the pevensy marshlands were indefensible he moved to the hilly country near Hastings the next day Hughes reached him of Harold's great victory not wanting to make the same mistake as I'd rather William decided to dig in near his ships and ravaged the nearby Countryside the buyer tapestry gives the first ever portrait of the effects of the war on civilians her mother and child flee as refugees from their burning home [Music] Harold's determination and stamina were awesome he left much of his tired Northern force behind and set off with his core professionals on the return Journey South it's likely that William knew Harold hardrada was setting out for the north of England and although accounts will tell us that the winds didn't allow them to sail from Normandy when they wanted to in actual fact they didn't sail until September and that was a long time to wait for the winds it's likely that William chose to wait knowing that there would be an attack from the North and then he knew already that the troops would have been weakened Harold rendezvoused with what reinforcements he could muster at a local Landmark known as The hori Apple Tree the next day would change its name forever to battle [Music] Harold only had to survive the battle to leave William without reinforcements or Escape he took up the perfect defensive position on this hill The Abbey was built later specifically to Mark the Spot Harold had chosen his ground well he lined his men up for about 200 meters in each Direction this wall was built to Echo that formation Shield wall four five even six men thick the king in his Knights Road to the battle but when they got here they got off and took their place in the wall along with everyone else how probably used what was the most suitable the most appropriate technology for Hastings he was defending a hill he was shutting off the road to London he was essentially a defensive action at nine o'clock in the morning the battle started with the blast of trumpets as the Normans struggle up the hill in their full armor they could hear the din of the Saxon shouting and beating their Shields with their weapons in the middle of them is King Harold his Battle Cry of Holy Cross [Music] first Williams infantry then his Cavalry broke against the Shield wall like waves against the jetty but the Saxons didn't budge in fact it was the Normans who broke first the sudden Panic by the men of Brittany on Williams Left Flank spread throughout the entire Army wood had got round but William had been killed a retreat started and threatened to become a route first time that Harold's wall broke and followed the Norms down the hill arguably they they thought the Normans were defeated in arguably the Normans were defeated at that point it was perhaps Harold's mistake that he didn't commit all of his forces on that first Retreat down the hill but it was only William's horse that had been killed realizing the problem he lifted his helmet so that his man could see that he was still alive he rallied them and they regrouped they cut off the pursuing Saxons who formed a small defensive Circle over there but slowly they were hacked to pieces [Music] because the horses were able to turn quickly and come back onto those men and wipe them out maybe William then saw the advantage of this because time and again William used it that afternoon and late into that evening they would ride up to the shield wall and then feign going away and they would be partying and then turn quickly and come back onto the enemy and little by little cut down the Saxons [Music] in the 11th century battles used to go on for two hours at most but here they were still fighting after nine and a half hours and Harold was so close just another half hour and he would have won because if Knight had fallen then only he had the possibility for reinforcements the next day but the tide was turning as the Saxons retreated the Norman Cavalry got a purchase on the flat ground at the top of the hill but the real key to the battle is given by all those tiny little archers Who start to appear in the bottom margins of the tapestry at this point [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] was critically wounded in the eye the Saxon calls was lost the arrow didn't kill him we know that this is Harold with the arrow in his eye his name's printed overhead but other accounts tell of Cavalry riding in to finish him off seems that this whole scene is a story this is Harold so is this and if you think that the falling figure having his leg cut doesn't have an arrow look again the stitching's been removed sometime in the last 900 years you can see the holes where the arrow once was Harold's body was the Chronicles say his head was cut off all of his right leg and half of his left anything of value was stripped from the corpses who were left naked to rot or in the case of the wealthy to be rescued for burial the next day this whole area was covered with hacked and dismembered corpses stripped of their armor by bounty hunters it was impossible to tell which one was Harold's until Edith swan neck searching among the bodies found him here she identified him according to the chroniclers by certain marks on his body presumably the intimate knowledge of a lifetime's love Harold's mother offered his weight in gold for the corpse a final proof of the Godwin's wealth but William refused the last thing he wanted was a Saxon cult building up around Harold shrine the earliest accounts say that William buried Harold by the sea but later tradition says that his body was taken to his own great Foundation of Waltham Abbey [Music] became the accepted burial place of the last Anglo-Saxon King [Music] but now new evidence has emerged to challenge that tradition a historian in bosom held's own home has made a vital connection between the 11th century records and a local archaeological discovery [Music] the people of bosom had always known that King knute's daughter was buried in their Parish church right here but then in the 1950s when some heating was being put in they discovered another important tomb next to it here well they opened up the tomb naturally and they thought it had been vandalized quite frankly and there was no head and there was the right leg missing entirely and two-thirds of the left leg was not there either but in the tapestry there's only the one leg being hacked you're talking about the head missing and the other leg there were two accounts that came out one by the bishop of amio which described the injuries sustained by the body that came out in about 1067 about only a year after the conquest and there he gives exactly that description the head was cut off one leg was run away and the tapestry completes the picture with the other leg being cut off hence just a mutilated body and then whenever partier also really confirms that he said he was very well Seashore and what do we have here the seaside bosom became William's personal estate after [Music] here he could make sure that the grave didn't act as a focus of political discontent while he set about the business of wiping out the Saxon aristocracy introducing a new culture and a new language and blackening the name of the defeated Saxon King I think that this country should erect a splendid Monument to Harold this was a man who defended England against overwhelming odds and who went down heroically surrounded by his house cars fighting to the last man around their King he was not a quitter and we should celebrate him and we should celebrate his englishness and the achievement of 500 years of native English civilization which stood for so much in medieval Europe which had such a civilizing effect and all of that is what Harold stands for he stands for Old English Valor really I've been all over the country looking for the real Harold and what I've found hasn't been a loser but a charismatic leader who hadn't been for a twist of fate might well have ended up as a national hero in the same mold as Elizabeth the first or Nelson or Churchill but the arrow found its Mark and the battle was lost and in a way England lost something too because although there's no doubt that the subsequent blend of Norman and Saxon culture has given us a great richness and vitality it also gave us a new aristocratic Elite who spoke a different language and were completely cut off from the people who they were ruling and a thousand years later that social Gulf is still taking a long time to bridge I'm walking down what used to be the great North Road the medieval version of the M1 and this was one of the most difficult and dangerous stretches because it was banded country Sherwood Forest now there can't be many characters from history who can immediately identify just by saying a place name but already I'm absolutely confident that all of you will realize this is going to be a program about Robin Hood foreign knows his story he's one of the most famous people in history but what was he really like did he actually exist I'm going to try and establish whether the most celebrated Outlaw of all time was just a comic book character or a flesh of blood historical figure [Music] I've always had a fascination with Robin so this is something of a personal Quest we all feel we know the famous Outlaw but he comes in a host of shapes and sizes pictures of him we've all had since childhood may be a long way from the real truth in the dictionary of national biography Robin Hood is the only figure who didn't exist he certainly robbed from the rich but he never got around to giving to the poor a thousand men could not find an outlaw if he didn't want to be found in the Sherwood Forest it's called mate Marion and her merry men stories we all know from TV and the movies so who'd have thought it Robin Hood and his team of Mastermind finalists but what we think of as traditional isn't our modern Robin story is the product of centuries of change and evolution the robin we know today is Robin of Loxley who returns from the Crusades to find his land of being stolen by evil Prince John and his henchmen the Sheriff of Nottingham he flees to the green wood and fights on with his merry men stealing from the rich to give to the poor you two Go Round by the far bank and we'll meet up at the log Bridge right he marries his sweetheart Maid Marion and gets his lands back only when King Richard the lionheart returns from the Holy Land it's a great story but a red herring as far as tracking down a real Robin goes if we want a flesh and blood Robin then we're gonna have to look for the original Robin stories in the earliest versions the earliest Robin's stories were ballads handed down by Word of Mouth we know they were around in 1377 by investigating these Original Stories we should be able to find evidence of Robin's real identity [Music] this earliest fiction is just as exciting as our modern versions but it doesn't offer any clues about how Robin became an outlaw the tale opens abruptly at his camp [Music] Robin's there with only three of The Usual Suspects Little John will Scarlett and much The Miller's son they're preparing a meal Robin's hungry but he won't eat until he has a guest he sends his men off to lion weight by the great North Road and catch a fellow Diner [Music] they don't have to wait long before they way lay a threadbare night of course it's a racket Robin offers the 90s hospitality and then once he's eaten tells him he's got to pay for his meal but it emerges the night's penniless his son has killed a man in order to pay a heavy fine the knights taken on a vast loan from the monks at St Mary's in York unless he repays the debt tomorrow he stands to lose everything he owns [Music] because the night's been honest Robin sends him on his way with 400 pounds to pay the debt trusting that the Virgin Mary will pay him back on top of that he gives the Knight a new set of clothes and a good horse and sends little John to accompany him to York as a valley when you read The Ballad you start to notice that it's very different from the version we know today Robin here isn't a nobleman he and the Outlaws are Yeoman low-horned Freeman but most obvious is the setting it's not Sherwood Forest this is where the poem set in the forests traditionally known as barnsdale in South Yorkshire yes Robin Hood was a Yorkshire people perhaps will be surprised that Robin holds a yorkshireman but it depends on the background historians have known this for a good few years the problem is that other owl class perhaps live in down round Nottingham in Sherwood Forest their stories will be Amalgamated with the original ballads which do come from this area and the fact that Nottingham is a much better known place than wendridge are barnsdale which most people to be frank have never heard of outside the area would help the Nottingham connection the ballad's very specific about the area this track is the remnant of the great North Road as it dipped down into barnsdale to cross the river went at went Bridge today the A1 bypasses went Bridge half a mile to the East and it's where the viaduct is now that the merry men laid their ambush this is the spot where Little John and will Scala lie and wait for the night in the poem Robin sends them to sale to spy on went Bridge you can see just beyond those white buildings the roads snaking down into wentbridge from the other side of the valley the writer knew this place he knew it was the perfect Lookout Point it may surprise some people to hear the Robin Hood Stories coming from here and not from Sherwood but six centuries ago it wouldn't have raised an eyebrow the phrase Robin Hood in barnsdale stood was a legal saying meaning that something was a well-established fact and a couple of miles down the A1 from when Bridge there's further proof of yorkshire's claims this is Robin Hood's well near skellbrook or rather it's the cover that the 18th century architect vambra designed for it the landmark's been moved to make way for the Dual carriageway but for centuries people have stopped here to celebrate Robin Hood this is the earliest known place name that's associated with Robin Hood but over the next three centuries the name starts cropping up all over the place Robin Hood's Bay near Whitby Robin Hood's bats in Cumbria Robin Hood's walk in Richmond Surrey practically everywhere except Sherwood the first name there there's an appearance of the year 1700. thank you for jumping on the bandwagon at least four centuries after the event so we've got Tales set in barnsdale not Sherwood Robin's not a dispossessed nobleman but a low-born yorkshireman what else do these Original Stories tell us about him to Little John can he say tomorrow I must do Yorktown to Saint Mary's the Abbot and monks of Saint Mary's Abbey in York are hoping that the night will fail to show up their Loan Sharks the knights only got until sunset to repay his vast debt after that they can claim all his property and land [Music] but in the nick of time the night arrives expecting him to be empty-handed the Abbot shows him no respect and leaves him leeling like a servant he gets a shock when the night hands over the full 400 pounds of his debt it seems as though everything's square but there's a Twist back in the Greenwood Robin sends his men out of a carbon copy of their first ambush lo and behold this time their dinner guest is none other than the monk from Saint Mary's [Music] the night the monk pleads poverty 800 pounds with him the knights told the truth and was helped the monk lied and lost everything justice prevails and Robin doubles his money but there's no mention of giving to the poor our heroes are just a bunch of Highway robbers [Music] can you imagine any auctionman rubbing the rich to give to the poor he almost certainly robbed the rich and kept it that was a product of a much later version the robin of the ballad is a bit of a thug in one poem he kills a man puts the head on his bow staff and mutilates the face the original Robin Hood is a pretty vicious character but then again in the Middle Ages when people were being entertained by the early ballads and stories of Robin Hood they would expect to find a vicious character as their hero because in those days everyone was used to living a pretty hard life so just because somebody went around lopping people's heads off stealing from people as long as he went around killing the people they didn't like it didn't really matter how he did it but why does Robin pick on men of the cloth in particular so Mary's really exists it's here in York but don't be fooled by these romantic ruins it was more than just a religious institution York was the second most powerful political Center in the country and the monks who ran Abbeys like these were politicians and captains of industry as well as being in charge of the spiritual welfare of the country the app is of northern England controlled the World Trade the money was supposed to be a means to an end supporting a life of prayer but wealth had led to sleaze [Music] in Robin's day religious communities were notorious for their greed lacks morals and hypocritical lifestyle conversely Robins portrayed as fair and truly religious he may be a criminal but his rough Justice restores True Values Robin mugged the monk from Saint Mary's a great cheer would have gone up this ordinary bloke Robin was striking a blow for justice and True Religion everyone knew the system was rotten only an outlaw would have dared to anything about it so far this original version of The Robin's stories has given us a good General picture of the sort of hard-bitten character we're looking for but we'll be getting more clues about his actual identity when he comes face to face with his arch enemy and a Sheriff of Nottingham [Music] to find the facts about the real Robin Hood we've been looking at the earliest fictional versions of his Legend these medieval Tales explode the myth of a penniless nobleman in Sherwood in favor of a much tougher out and out criminal based in Yorkshire but the stories in these ancient texts also contain evidence pointing us to a real Flesh and Blood historical Robin and his men are brilliant arches Sheriff of Nottingham organizes a competition to trap despite wearing their hoods the sheriff knows that whoever splits the wand to win must be an outlaw cried out of course he never succeeds The Outlaws always Escape in the nick of time it's chases fights escapes from prison and then the feud with the sheriff climaxes in a showdown [Music] Robin takes down his arch enemy with a single shot and Moves In for kill beheading the sheriff with his sword off [Music] robin beheld our company King [Music] next King Edward himself comes to sort out these rebels in the north with his men disguised as monks he deliberately gets captured in the forest but when he sees that Robin's a loyal subject he forgives The Outlaws and takes Robin into his service [Music] she leaves us [Music] the modern Robin store is set in the reign of Richard the lionheart the evidence and the ballads suggests this is all wrong the ballots say that Robin met an entirely different King Edward the comedy King now there have been eight King Edwards who've ruled Britain Through the Ages the first mention of the ballads is in the year 1377 so that rules all these Kings out because Edward IV didn't come to the throne until the 15th century so using this logic Robin must have been around between 1274 when Edward the first comes to the throne and 1377 when we get that first mention of the balance and there's another blindingly obvious piece of evidence that supports that dating it's the one thing more than any other that Robin Hood's famous for foreign [Music] Century that's when it's got to have permeated through the villages and through the towns and begun to become ingrained into our communities and become basically a common man's religion for sport enriched the lionheart's Reign the bow was a minority weapon there was no Cult of the longbowmen Edward the first second and third made the boa key part of their military strategy archery was compulsory for every able-bodied male and so being a great Archer was like being a football star today if you've got the eye and the strength and you could do the business with the bow you were really one of the best in the community robbing the crack Marksman could only be a product of this culture in the early 14th century and closer examination of the ballads leads us to an exact date historians have looked closely at the lives of the three Edwards who are potential candidates to be our comely King and they've come to the conclusion that only one of them could possibly have come face to face with an outlaw in this area in the year 1323 Edward II went on a tour of the north ending in Nottingham because of a political crisis that started here a pontefract castle pontefract in West Yorkshire was confusingly home to Thomas the Earl of Lancaster the cousin of Edward II the King was unpopular Lancaster decided to make his own bid for the throne he called up his men from Yorkshire and Lancashire to form an army but as they moved out of pontefract Edward ambushed them and crushed the rebel the Earl of Lancaster was tried and beheaded his followers were outlawed and fled for their lives to places like barnsdale oh lancastrian Revolt provides a plausible explanation as to why Robin and his men would have been Outlaws it also connects Robin to Nottingham through the villain of the police the period of the Revolt was the only time that the Sheriff of Nottingham was also responsible for Yorkshire he'd have been the king's right-hand man in fighting the rebels the Lancaster and Rebellion also explains another puzzle the poor Knight who Robin originally held up is a recurring character in the stories when the Outlaws are fleeing from the sheriff they run to his castle for protection the knight's name is Sir Richard of the league and this is where the ballad says he was from Lee in wiredale but this is Lancashire several days ride from barnsdale where Robin's based at first glance it seems pretty implausible to have a leading character from so far away but actually it makes perfect sense Plumpton and wiredale are linked with barnsdale through the land of Thomas Earl of Lancaster they formed a corridor right across the pennines allowing for easy communication between Rebels here and here a knight based in wiredale would have been brother in arms to a yeoman Outlaw in barnsdale the lancastrian Revolt is the only time and place where the ballads fit with political history when historians realized this they set about the task of finding a real Robin Hood from this period in the medieval archives today if you wanted to track me down you'd probably try looking in the telephone book and they're among all the Robinsons you'd be bound to come across a Tony but whether or not it was this Tony Robinson you'd be hard-pressed to know and in the early 14th century it would be even more difficult because the court roles and the church records of the Early Middle Ages weren't cataloged there were no indexes and no one was written down in alphabetical order nevertheless lo and behold when historians were looking for Robin in the early 14th century they found one in the court roles of the manor of Wakefield in the reign of Edward II living with his wife Matilda was a tenant called Robert Hood to most people that's well that's not Robin Hood that's a totally different name but it isn't Robin is a nickname for Robert for many years the name Robin was used instead of Robert just like for example Jack might be a nickname for the name John hence John F Kennedy is Jack Kennedy so this man is called Robin Hood let's suppose for a moment that this is the real man behind the robin of the balance Robert Hood was a Forester he's one of the lancastrian rebels who are outlawed after the Rebellion as a result he loses his property in Wakefield and the property was here Robert Wood's house was in big hill today it's the site of the bus station 102. our Robert Hood who lives somewhere under the number 49 stop disappears in 1322. we don't hear of him again but it's not quite the end of the story [Music] The Ballad says Robin was taken into the king's service but after 15 months he was so depressed that he left to return to his former life the record tells us that a year after the lancastrian Revolt there was still political unrest the king set off on a tour of the north offering an amnesty to The Outlaws some of whom he took into his own ranks enter our second candidate this is Robin Hood of valet de chamber a bodyguard who appears on the payroll at Edward II's Court in 1323 but the following year takes a lump sum of five Shillings because he can no longer work thank you when you compare the stories with the history the parallels are striking let's recap The Ballad tells us that the king forgave Robin Hood of his crimes that Robin went to work for him but he left the King's Service a year or so later because he felt Fed Up and depressed and the records tell us that this man Robert hood of Wakefield fought in the lancastrian revolt and disappeared but that shortly afterwards this man crops up Robin Hood a king's servant who worked for the king for about a year and then he too disappears could these two men be the same person our Robert hood of Wakefield was a Forester he'd have been well equipped for life as an outlaw in the forests of barnsdale at papalwick church in Sherwood there's a medieval forester's grave that gives us an idea of the essential Forest as kit there's a bow and arrow of course and this a sort of shoulder strap with a horn hanging from it is I have to tell you a baldrig but living out in the forests required more than this near the church I learned just how tough life on the Run could be at the cave known as Robin Hood stable I met a man who's made a point of surviving in the forest using only the tools of the Middle Ages what were the biggest problems the rain one night it rained very very heavily one night I resolved it by actually getting into an old tree and sleeping inside the oak tree not far from here what equipment have you got the basic equipment you have to carry your home on your bike really this is a flask because water is very hard to find this is a cup made from an ox horn a blanket for wrapping yourself up in at night an antler for digging a hole to go to the toilets in and toilet paper hangs on the trees and acts for making a woodland shelter and in here necessities and a few little luxuries some eating utensils some salt some flour just a basic kit in terms of weapons a u-bole simple u-bo in a hunting case these are hunting arrows a knife to eat with a knife to kill people with so you've got a hunting horn there it is it's very important to maintain Communications in the forest this was the Medieval equivalent of Robin Hood's mobile phone so might Robin Hood really have gone you could dry [Music] so disappointingly tuneless Outlaws and there's one more surprise in store if you're still clinging to the image of the merry men living out in the Greenwood they probably went home in Windsor this place is particularly inhospitable in bad weather you can imagine what it's like in January it would dice if you stayed out elvenar here in January and so they almost certainly went home so we have a plausible if surprising candidate for our real Robin Hood a yeoman yorkshireman living as Outlaw during the summer and sneaking back to his home with his wife Matilda here in Wakefield in the winter but every Outlaw needs his gang next we have to find the real merry men [Music] by matching the clues in the earliest stories of Robin Hood with historical records we found a candidate for the real Robin Hood Robin Hood who lived in Wakefield until 1322 when he fled to the forests of barnsdale can we also find real versions of the merry men who could have been in League with Robert of Wakefield here again the version of the story doesn't have the outlaw band we know today we have little John mentioned with Robin from the very beginning and then a few others much uh will Scarlet freitup comes in later and so in a lot of the early ballads you have Robin and a very small group which is very credible for Outboards real Outlaws it was usually the leader his younger brother a cousin and someone from the same Village who'd also got into trouble that's realistic and I I think it is perfectly possible that there may have been you know folk from Nottingham Yorkshire wherever else who had those names who were Outlaws so what evidence do we have about the Outlaw's real identity I was on this bridge first I intent across first could you carry that star for just to make yourself look like a bold fellow or do you know how to use it we all know little John as the giant who joins the merry men after fighting Robin on a bridge but in the earlier stories there's no fight and John plays a much more Central role [Music] there is no Merchant in many England so rich it's actually Little John who starts the whole Feud with the sheriff his relationship with Robin is much more democratic version Little John isn't afraid of telling Robin what to do [Music] McDonald's the tourist tradition about little John is that he's buried in half a sage in Derbyshire so people assume he came from there but the ballads say he comes from Holden Nest near Beverly and humberside and little John is just an alias his real name is Reynold Greenleaf I wish all of my name men call me Reynold green we've got records from 1318 and 1323 of John the little being charged with crimes in Wakefield and Beverly it could be that little John was already a criminal who joined Robin Hood of Wakefield in barnsdale after the lancastrian revolt as for the other Outlaws we don't have a record of much the Miller but there are some fascinating clues about will Scarlett's identity will Scarlet's an odd name because in the earliest texts he seems to have the name of scavelock or scafflock perhaps in a Northern form and scathlock seems to mean term lock Smasher he's a break and entry Merchant in some recent versions will Scarlet has got dressed in Scarlet you know he's very elaborate and I don't think that's what they had in mind [Music] there's evidence of a will scatlock at the right time and place who could have known Robin Hood of Wakefield milk from the very Saint Mary's in York that's mentioned in the ballot we don't know why but he was thrown out of The Abbey at the end of the 13th century if this rear wheel scatlock harbored a grudge against Mary's it would help explain why the Abbott ended up as a villain in the story then we come to some really disappointing news Robin Hood may have had a wife but it wasn't made Marion the early versions of the story don't have any love interest in them at all Marion comes into the tradition in a completely different way every year at Whitson in the Middle Ages the workers used to have processions and plays to celebrate the coming of summer we still have the remnants of this tradition preserved in Morris dance and Mama's Place Robin was one of the main characters in these Rebels which were riotous and disrupted I can see he likes food among the other characters and over time she became Robin's partner characters used to force revelers to give money for good causes which is where we eventually get the tradition of rubbing from the rich to give to the poor as Robin changed from Bandit to nobleman in Tudor times Marion was brought into the stories Marion appears in full form when Robin becomes gentrified when Robin is a lord yes of a lady and she appears in 1598-99 in Anthony Monday's play the downfall of Robert Robert Earl of Huntington and the second one the death of Robert Earl of Huntington but even here there's a link in the play she assumes the name Marion as an alias to conceal her real name Matilda interestingly Robert hood of Wakefield his wife Matilda is recorded as having fled with him into the forest to join him in the struggle now that is what made Marion is supposed to do in the popular Legend of Robin Hood so Robin Hood of wakefield's wife Matilda matches very much the Maid Marion profile Marion's a later Edition there's only one woman recorded in the early stories she was a nun and she'd be Robin's nemesis this is the three nuns Pub on the road between Huddersfield and dewsbury there's been a hostelary here for over 700 years it gets its name from the shenanigans that were rumored to be going on between the guests and three of the local nuns from nearby kirkley's Priory if the ballads are to be believed the guest house that would have once stood here would have been the last place that Robin ever saw before The Priory Gates closed behind him and he went unwittingly to his death [Music] after leaving the King's Service Robin lives on in the Greenwood for 22 years then unwittingly he goes to his cousin the prior s at kirkley's Priory to be bled for his health as they did in the Middle Ages [Music] well story gives no motive but this nun betrays Robin and leaves him to bleed to death her later story says that Robin fires one last arrow through the window and asks to be buried where it lands Christ have mercy on himself kirkley's Priory was dismantled by Henry VIII as part of his dissolution of the monasteries the only sign of the actual Priory today are the Odd Stone and bumps in the ground the guest house where Robin is said to have died still stands although there's no record of how Robert hood of Wakefield died it's possible that he was the person who was killed here kirkles is only 10 miles from Wakefield where Robert Hood lived and the relevant dates linked the original stories with historical fact the ballads tell us that Robin Hood was killed by a relative who ran the Priory here 22 years after leaving the King's Service dating from the time of Edward II's visit that would be about 1346 or 7. and the records tell us that in 1346 the prior is here was Elizabeth de Stanton none other than the cousin of Matilda Robert Hood's wife this is the room in which Robin is said to have died the spot marking his Graves up there but the business about the arrow can't be right it's 650 yards away and Uphill almost twice the Longbow range for a skilled Archer it's generally accepted that Robin being buried where his Arrow lands is a piece of poetic elaboration round the original simple story of his death the site of Robin's grave at Kirk Lee's has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries but if you expect a nice simple ending you're going to be disappointed searching for Robin hoods a bit like being the Sheriff of Nottingham the moment you think you've got him he slips through your clutches this is the site of Robin Hood's grave except it isn't the site's been moved at least three times and this is what Robin's gravestone looked like according to a sketch from the year 1665 but it disappeared and the replica was made and it was chipped to Pieces by 18th century Canal workers who thought that a little bit of Robin Hood's gravestone would cure their toothache [Music] when this site was excavated there was nothing but Earth which isn't surprising if the graves been moved to replace the missing grave slam there's a 19th century inscription in COD oldie English to establish the graves ancient credentials if we haven't found his last resting place we've built a coherent picture of a historical robin our man from Wakefield matches the clues given in the earliest sources the lancastrian Revolt gives him opportunity and motive There's real contemporary Outlaws from Yorkshire who could have been his merry men and Robin Hood was related in real life to characters mentioned in the ballads like the pryrus of Kurt Lee's but as with the grave the truth about Robin is complex and fragile there's always more to him than meets the eye just when we thought we'd found our Prime Suspect Robin Hood of Wakefield 250 miles to the South historians discovered another man who blew the whole thing wide open again and this man had never committed a crime in his life the earliest balance about Robin Hood had historical suspect Robert hood of Wakefield there seems to have ended up working for King Edward after the lancastrian Revolt of 1322 but in all the best detective stories the neatest of solutions can be upset by a single clue suddenly evidence turned up and pointed to an earlier [Music] in the Middle Ages it was the custom to be known by your father's name so if your dad was a yeoman called Robert or Robin Hood then you'd be called fitzrobert or Robertson or Hudson or Hudson or hood or of course Robinson but then out of the blue a historian discovered a man who lived in Sussex in the year 1296 called Gilbert Robin Hood this was an extremely rare surname and seemed to imply that the name was already known as some sort of nickname but then more and more people called Robin Hood or Robin Hood started to pop up but these weren't just random individuals we know that a very high proportion of them had at some time in their lives committed criminal acts there's even one case where the clerk of the court changed a man's surname from the pharaoh to Robin Hood because he was now lost later Robin Hood became a common criminal Alias this doesn't mean that any of these men are candidates for the real Robin it just proves people knew about him 50 years or more before Robert hood of Wakefield so where does that leave our Prime Suspect well it's still likely that he's the robin of the ballads but the ballads aren't about the original Robin historians then went scurrying off and came up with another Robin Hood in 1225. he was an outlaw who'd been fined 32 Shillings and six months of the Yorker sizes but there's no record of him doing anything like the robin of the stories randomly picking up Robin Hood Type names from the records didn't seem to be leading anywhere but there were Medieval figures that we know existed whose lives matched the famous story they just weren't called Robin the best example is a story that started with a dispute over the ownership of Whittington Castle here in Shropshire funnily enough in the reign of Richard the lionheart in 1197 it was inherited from his father by a man called Fork fitzwarren but a rival Lord with better contact with King John wanted Whittington 2 charges of treason would Trump tap and fitzwarren was outlawed for three years he operated a guerrilla campaign in the forests of the Welsh borders and the stories that grew up about him are eerily similar to those we associate with Robin Hood not only does Fitz Warren have a right-hand man called John he robs people by inviting them to supper and then getting them to pay he takes shelter with a local Knight and kills his sworn enemy in the forest but when the king comes to the forest in Disguise Fitz Warren Is Forgiven sound familiar could this man from Shropshire be a new Prime Suspect whose name got changed in the course of history it's really weird maybe there never ever was a real historical Robin Hood maybe the stories are just that a mishmash of old Legends but if that's the case why bother with inventing Robin Hood at all why not just stick with thoughtfits Warren and have all the stories about him or maybe there actually was a bloke in real life like our Robin Hood of York or our Robin Hood of Wakefield who had adventures and then a lot of fictional stuff was tacked onto them but there is a third possibility suppose both the fork Fitz Warren stories and the Robin Hood ballads are based on an earlier figure a hidden Robin Hood who we haven't yet discovered [Music] the modern Robin Hood story is set in the time of Richard the lionheart when Robin is also called Robin of Loxley because of the northern Connections in the ballads historians always assumed this meant the Loxley in Yorkshire but there's another Loxley here in Warwickshire near stratford-on-avon and here the trail leads us to the ancestor of one of the Norman Invaders who came over with William the Conqueror in 1193 the Lord of Loxley Manor was Robert fitzoda a descendant of Bishop odor of Bayer because Fitz meant an illegitimate descendant it was sometimes dropped leaving us with Robert oder effectively another Robert Hood in the time of Richard the lionheart he was thrown out of his manner Loxley Manor and for a while became an outlaw because there are records from that period saying that he is causing trouble in the surrounding woodlands and he was a robber for a while he was finally given his lands back when Richard the lionheart came back from the Crusades eventually and so he does match quite uh to some degree the actual historical Robin Hood from the point of view of the later Legend so out of the blue another candidate from a part of the country not usually associated with the Robin's stories but it gets even weirder the Robert oder connection comes from a relatively recent piece of research but there's evidence here in Loxley churchyard that it may have simply uncovered a tradition that was known before lying just to the north of the church they found a mysterious gravestone its design seemed to match the original kirkley's grave slab remember in 1665 the kirkley's stone had been sketched in Yorkshire and had then disappeared is this evidence that people were aware that Loxley was part of the story long before the historians foreign this is the gravestone it seems to me there's three possibilities either the whole thing is just a coincidence but that seems unlikely given how similar the original drawing is to what we've got here the pattern's the same and the dimensions are so similar or else this could be a copy of the original gravestone in Kirk please or else maybe just maybe this is the original kirkley's gravestones which was brought here by someone who believed that this was the real last resting place of Robin Hood we've got three historical candidates who together have helped to create the figure of Robin Hood there's Robin Hood of Wakefield the lancastrian rebel there's our historical non-robbins who've added their touches and there's Robert oder the original nobleman Robin Hood but there's another angle to the story for that we have to return to Sherwood Forest not the usual tourist Trail this time the clues lion Sutherland Minster thank you [Music] when the stone masons finished the cathedral in the Middle Ages they decided to leave an exhibition piece in the octagonal Chapter House the highest form of the stonemason's art was to carve leaves in stone that had the lightness and delicacy of Nature and interwoven into the fabric of this Christian meeting house is ancient Pagan Spirit of the greens so-called Green Man another name for the spirit of the green Robin Goodfellow could this Robin be the inspiration behind the Mythic hero of Sherwood Forest now this figure is not clearly associated with outlawry he's much more associated with nature because Robin in the original ballads always appears framed in the forest that's where he is and then he moves into action and he returns to the forest and if you want the original Robin Hood I think he is that figure you know Robin of the wood Robin in the hood it is perhaps this Pagan version of Robin that appeals most to us in the 21st century Robin Hood Type stories I think have been with us since probably the end of the last ice age about 35 000 years ago but they've been added to and taken away from since then Robin Hood that we know now here in Sherwood Forest is not the Robin Hood that we would have known if we were standing here in the 10th 11th or the 12th century he's Now cast as a preservation it's the conservationists look after the Greenwoods in those days it was nothing like that at all it was simply watch out for Bishops archbishers beat him up and whatever you do don't get caught by the sheriff and Nottingham [Music] I knew I was joining in a long tradition of telling stories about Robin but until I went to look for the real Robin I never fully appreciated just how much that tradition has evolved to suit the needs of the audience I think Robin Hood is in the process of becoming the secondary character in a feminist set of sagas starring Maid Marion that's well underway uh what will there be then Intergalactic Robin hoods will there perhaps be a gay Robin Hood I think it's quite likely that that will happen the Homer sociality of the legend will be interpreted in that way and one can see good reasons for that but I guess what's really nexo Robin it is lots of exposure [Music] I started my search by trying to find out whether Robin Hood was fact of fiction and the answer is he's both there's a whole host of Robin Hood's there's the mysterious man from Loxley the lancastrian Revolutionary the petty criminal the king's servant not to mention the countless medieval Outlaws who took on his name as an alias in order to try and protect their anonymity they all lived and breathed they were all fact but it took a fiction to make the story great a legend that could touch us more profoundly than the simple story of one human being ever could and whether that Legend is about the spirit of the Greenwood or the nature of being a hero of a struggle of the Common Man they all create for us a robin with Fair Brave heroic and just human enough for us to be able to believe that in a fairer world we too might be Robin Hood foreign

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 772,981

Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages, chronicle

Id: esfiXCqdbjw

Length: 145min 29sec (8729 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 28 2022