Е.В. Воевода

АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК

Великобритания:история и культураGreat Britain: Culture across

History

Учебное пособиедля студентов II курса

факультета МЭО

МОСКОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ИНСТИТУТМЕЖДУНАРОДНЫХ ОТНОШЕНИЙ (УНИВЕРСИТЕТ) МИД РОССИИ

Кафедра английского языка № 2

Е.В. Воевода

АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК

Великобритания:история и культура

Great Britain: Culture across History

Учебное пособиедля студентов II курса

факультета МЭО

Издательство«МГИМО-Университет»

2009ББК 81.2Англ В63

В63 Воевода Е.В. Великобритания: история и культура = Great Britain: Culture across History : учеб. пособие по англ. яз. для студентов II курса фак-та МЭО / Е.В. Воевода. Моск. гос. ин-т междунар. отношений (ун-т) МИД России, каф. англ. яз. № 2. — М. : МГИМО-Университет, 2009. — 221 с. ISBN 978-5-9228-0540-7 Настоящее учебное пособие по страноведению Великобритании адресо-вано студентам факультета МЭО МГИМО(У) МИД России, обучающихся по программе II курса бакалавриата и изучающих английский язык как ос-новной иностранный. Пособие призвано расширить и углубить фоновые знания студентов экономического профиля в области истории и культуры страны изучаемого языка, освещая историко-экономические события, происшедшие на Британ-ских островах, зарождение и развитие английского языка и особенности английской культуры: литературы, музыки, архитектуры, живописи.

ББК 81.2Англ

ISBN 978-5-9228-0540-7 © Московский государственный институт международных отношений (университет) МИД России, 2009 © Воевода Е.В., 2009

CONTENTSPage

Предисловие.………………………………………………………… 4Методическая записка.…………………………………………….. 5SECTION 1 Britain in ancient times. England

in the Middle Ages...………………………….. 7CHAPTER 1. The British Isles before the Norman Conquest..…………………………………………….. 7CHAPTER 2. The Norman Conquest of Britain..…..... 35CHAPTER 3. England in the late Middle Ages..……. 54ASSIGNMENTS..…………………………………..... 74

SECTION 2 The English Renaissance.………………………….. 77CHAPTER 4. The Tudor age..………………........... 77CHAPTER 5. The development of drama and the theatre in Elizabethan England……………… 98

CHAPTER 6. Stuart England..……………………….. 113ASSIGNMENTS..…………………………………..... 130

SECTION 3 Britain in the New Age. Modern Britain.………… 132CHAPTER 7. Britain in the 18th century.…………..... 132CHAPTER 8. From Napoleonic wars to Victorian Britain.…………………………….... 150CHAPTER 9. Britain in the 20th century..………….. 167ASSIGNMENTS. …………………………………..... 189

GLOSSARY.………………………………………………………… 191CROSS-CULTURAL NOTES.……………………………………. 201Key to Tests ……………………………………………………….. 217References ……………………………………………………….. 218

ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ

Учебное пособие по страноведению Великобритании “Great Britain: Culture Across History” адресовано студентам II курса факультета МЭО (1 семестр), изучающих английский язык как основной иностранный (уровень B1) по следующим направлениям подготовки: «Экономика», «Международные финансы и кредит». «Коммерция». Пособие соответствует программе подготовки бакалавров по дисциплине «Иностранный язык» и применяется в лекционно-семинарском курсе в сочетании с мультимедийной программой «История и культура Великобритании» (авторы: Е.В. Воевода, Т.В. Сильченко, А.А. Артемов), разработанной в МГИМО.

Пособие состоит из трех блоков (Sections), включающих девять глав (Chapters). Каждая глава рассчитана на одну неделю изучения после прослушивания аудиторной лекции и работы с мультимедийной программой. Каждая глава завершается разделом «Знаете ли вы, что…?», предлагающим информацию, способству-ющую расширению кругозора студентов.

После изучения каждого блока предлагается тест на контроль усвоения фактического материала, который студенты могут проверить по ключу, вопросы для обсуждения на семинарских занятиях и темы для студенческих презентаций. В пособии также дается глоссарий и лингвострановедческий комментарий к каждой главе.

В соответствии с Законом Российской Федерации об автор-ском праве от 9 июля 1993 г. № 5351-1 при написании пособия использовались текстовые отрывки и карты из опубликованных работ, приведенных в разделе “References”, в качестве иллюстра-ций (в широком смысле) в объеме, оправданном поставленной целью пособия и методикой.

МЕТОДИЧЕСКАЯ ЗАПИСКА

В настоящее время профессиональные требования к владению иностранным языком для выпускника факультета международных экономических отношений не могут быть сведены лишь к овладению речевыми навыками в рамках языка специальности. Успешное сотрудничество с зарубежными партнерами предполагает знание и оперирование такими понятиями, которые отражают видение мира и национальную культуру представителя того или иного народа. Поэтому при обучении иностранным языкам необходимым элементом является обучение культурологическому аспекту.

Предлагаемая автором методика изучения страноведческого материала о стране изучаемого языка содействуют развитию компетентностей, связанных с коммуникацией, творческим и кри-тическим анализом, независимым мышлением и коллективным трудом в поликультурном контексте, когда творчество основыва-ется на сочетании традиционных знаний и навыков с современ-ными информационными технологиями.

Весь предлагаемый материал разбит на три крупных блока (Sections), каждый из которых включает аудиторную интерактив-ную лекцию, сопровождаемую мультимедийной программой. После прослушивания лекции студентам рекомендуется ознако-миться с более полной версией материала по теме в предлагаемом пособии, изучить лингвострановедческий комментарий и ознако-миться с незнакомыми словами в глоссарии.

Повторяемость лексики в каждом блоке, употребление новых лексических единиц в тексте, в лекциях, заданиях и тестах, при подготовке к семинарским занятиям и докладам способствует усвоению студентами богатого рецептивного словаря, что преду-смотрено кафедральной программой по английскому языку.

После каждых трех лекций проводятся два семинарских занятия, вопросы к которым даны в заданиях (assignments 1-3). Задания включают в себя образцы тестов по изученной тематике (с ключами), вопросы к семинарским занятиям и темы для презентаций. После первичного контроля (выполнения тестовых заданий) студенты переходят к составлению собственных сообще-ний по предложенной теме. Окончательный контроль усвоения материала осуществляется преподавателем в аудитории в форме

дискуссии, проверки устных докладов или письменных сообщений (в отдельных случаях) и студенческих коллективных презентациях.

Студенты делятся на «команды» (teams), включающие трех-четырех докладчиков и такое же количество оппонентов. Задача докладчиков – используя основной материал учебного пособия и дополнительно найденный материал по теме, так организовать его презентацию, чтобы она была интересна аудитории, чтобы в ней участвовали все три докладчика, чтобы она сопровождалась собственной мультимедийной программой в Power Point. Задача оппонентов – подготовить вопросы докладчикам с целью получе-ния дополнительной или уточняющей информации, если возможно – оспорить какие-то положения презентации, представив свои аргументы. Как и докладчики, оппоненты готовятся и выступают сообща, развивая умение работать в команде. Семинары позволяют глубже обсудить изучаемый материал, в том числе использовать информацию, самостоятельно найденную студентами.

Презентации, подготовленные студентами, – это новая и перспективная форма семинарской работы, развивающая навык социального общения.

Работа с пособием способствует развитию у студентов аналитической, коммуникативной, лингвострановедческой компе-тенций, являющихся профессионально значимыми для будущего экономиста-международника.

Автор

1. The Earliest Settlers

SECTION 1

Britain in ancient times. England in the Middle Ages.

The IberiansAbout 3 thousand years before our era the land we now call Britain was not separated from the continent by the English Channel and the North Sea.

The Thames was a tributary of the Rhine. The snow did not melt on the mountains of Wales, Cumberland and Yorkshire even in summer. It lay there for centuries and formed rivers of ice called glaciers, that slowly flowed into the valleys below, some reaching as far as the Thames. At the end of the ice age the climate became warmer and the ice caps melted, flooding the lower-lying land that now lies under the North Sea and the English Channel. Many parts of Europe, including the present-day British Isles, were inhabited by the people who came to be known as the Iberians. Some of their descendants are still found in the North of Spain, populating the Iberian peninsular. Although little is known about the Iberians of the Stone Age, it is understood that they were a small, dark, long-headed race that settled especially on the chalk downs radiating from Salisbury Plain. All that is known about them comes from archaeological findings – the remains of their dwellings, their skeletons as well as some stone tools and weapons. The Iberians knew the art of grinding and polishing stone.

On the downs and along the oldest historic roads, the Icknield Way and the Pilgrim’s Way, lie long barrows, the great earthenworks which were burial places and prove the existence of marked class

CHAPTER 1

The British Isles before the Norman Conquest

divisions. Other relics of the past are the stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury on Salisbury Plain. Avebury is the grandest site while Stonehenge is the best known. The name of the place comes from the Saxon word Stanhengist, or “hanging stones”. Stonehenge is fifteen hundred years older than the Egyptian pyramids. It is made of stone gates standing in groups of twos. Each vertical stone weighs fifty tons or more. The flat stones joining the gates weigh 7 tons. Nobody knows why that huge double circle was build, or how primitive people managed to move such heavy stones. Some researchers think that it was built by the ancient Druids who performed their rites in Stonehenge. Others believe that it was built by the sun-worshippers who came to this distant land from the Mediterranean when the Channel was a dry valley on the Continent. Stonehenge might also have been an enormous calendar. Its changing shadows probably indicated the cycle of the seasons and told the people when it was time to sow their crops.

People and crops have vanished, but the stones stand fast and stubbornly keep their secrets from us.

The CeltsThe period from the 6th to the 3rd century BC saw the migration of

the people called the Celts. They spread across Europe from the East to the West and occupied the territory of the present-day France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland and Great Britain. (See Map 1.) The Celtic tribes that crossed the Channel and landed on the British Isles were the Britons, the Scots, the Picts and the Gauls. The Britons populated the South, the Picts moved to the North, the Scots went to Ireland and the rest settled in between. Later, the Scots returned to the main island and in such numbers that the northern part of it got the name of Scotland. The history of the Picts and their struggle with the Scots was beautifully described by R.L. Stevenson in the ballad Heather Ale.

Map 1(From S.D. Zaitseva. Early Britain. Moscow, 1975.)

In reality, the Picts were not exterminated but assimilated with the Scots. As for the Iberians, some of them were slain in battle, others were driven westwards into the mountains of Wales, the rest assimilated with the Celts. The last wave of the Celts were the Belgic tribes which arrived about 100 BC and occupied the south-east of the main island.

The Celts are known from the Travelling Notes by Pytheus, a traveller from Massilia (now – Marseilles). He visited the British Isles in the 4th century BC. Later, Herodotus wrote that even in the 5th century BC Phoenicians came to the British Isles for tin, which was used for making bronze. The British Isles were then called the Tin Islands.

Another person whom we owe reminiscences about early Britain is Guy Julius Caesar. In 55 BC his troops first landed in Britain. According to Caesar’s “Commentaries on the Gallic War,” the Celts, against whom he fought, were tall and blue-eyed people. Men had long moustaches (but no beards) and wore shirts, knee-long trousers and striped or checked cloaks which they fastened with a pin. (Later, their Scottish descendants developed it into tartan.) Both men and women

were obsessed with the idea of cleanliness and neatness. As is known from reminiscences of the Romans, “neither man nor woman, however poor, was seen either ragged or dirty”.

Economically and socially the Celts were a tribal society made up of clans and tribes. The Celtic tribes were ruled by chiefs. The military leaders of the largest tribes were sometimes called kings. In wartime the Celts wore skins and painted their faces blue to make themselves look more fierce. They were armed with swords and spears and used war chariots in fighting. Women seem to have had extensive rights and independence and shared responsibility in defending their tribesmen. It is known that when the Romans invaded Britain, two of the largest tribes were ruled by women.

The Celts were pagans and their priests, the Druids, who were important members of the ruling class, preserved the tribal laws, religious teachings, history, medicine and other knowledge necessary in Celtic society. They worshipped in sacred places (on hills, by rivers, in groves of trees) and their rites sometimes included human sacrifice.

The Celts lived in villages and practised a primitive agriculture: they used light ploughs and grew their crops in small square fields. They knew the use of copper, tin, and iron, kept large herds of cattle and sheep which formed their chief wealth.

The Celts traded both inside and beyond Britain. On the Continent, the Celtic tribes of Britain carried on trade with Celtic Gaul. Trade was also an important political and social factor in relationship between tribes. Most trade was conducted by sea or river. It is no accident that the capitals of England and Scotland appeared on the river banks, in place of the old trade routes. The settlement on the Thames, which existed before London, was a major trade outpost eastwards to Europe.

The descendants of the ancient Celts live on the British Isles up to this day. They are the Welsh, the Scottish and the Irish. The Welsh language, which belongs to the Celtic group, is the oldest living language in Europe. In the Highlands of Scotland, as well as in the western parts of Ireland, there is still a strong influence of the Celtic language. Some words of the Celtic origin still exist in Modern English. Scholars believe that about a dozen common nouns are of the Celtic origin; among these are cradle, bannock, cart, down, loch (dial.), coomb (dial.), mattock. Most others are geographical names. These are the names of Celtic settlements which later grew into towns: London, Leeds and Kent which got its name after the name of a Celtic tribe. There are

several rivers in England which still bear Celtic names: Avon and Evan, Thames, Severn, Mersey, Derwent, Ouse, Exe, Esk, Usk. The Celtic word loch is still used in Scotland to denote a lake: Loch Ness, Loch Lomond.

Celtic borrowings in English

Modern English Celtic meaningAvon, Evan amhiun riverOuse, Exe, Esk, Usk uisge waterDundee, Dumbarton, Dunscore; the Downs

dunhill; bare, open highland

Kilbrook coill woodBatcombe, Duncombe comb deep valleyBen-Nevis, Ben-More bein mountain

For almost four centuries Britons were ruled by the Romans, who called their country Britanni or Britannia. It was the most westerly and northerly province of the Roman empire. The

Romans, led by Julius Caesar, came to the British Isles in BC 55 and a year later returned to the Continent as the Celtic opposition was strong. In BC 54 he returned with 25,000 men. The Romans crossed the Thames and stormed the Celtic capital of Cassivellaunus. Caesar then departed, taking hostages and securing a promise to pay tribute.

In the ninety years between the first two raids and the invasion of the Romans in AD 43, a thorough economic development in South-East Britain went on. Traders and colonists settled in large numbers and the growth of towns was so considerable that in AD 50, only seven years after the invasion of Claudius, Verulamium (now St. Albans) was granted the full status of a Roman town (municipium) with self-government and the rights of Roman citizenship for its inhabitants.

It would be wrong to assume that the Celts eagerly surrendered to the invaders. The hilly districts in the West were very difficult to subdue, and the Romans had to set up many camps in that part of the country and station their legions all over Britain to defend the province.

2. Roman Britain

The Celts fought fiercely against the Romans who never managed to become masters of the whole island. In AD 61-62 Queen Boadicea (Boadica) led her tribesmen against the Romans. Upon her husband’s death, she managed to raise an army which raided the occupied territories slaying the Romans and their supporters, burning down and ruining the Roman towns and nearly bringing an end to the Roman rule of Britain as such. It was only when she was captured by the Roman soldiers and took poison that peace was restored in the province. The Romans were also unable to conquer the Scottish Highlands, or Caledonia as they called it, thus the province of Britain covered only the southern part of the island. From time to time the Picts from the North managed to raid the Roman part of the island, burn their villages, and drive off their cattle and sheep. During the reign of the Emperor Hadrian a high wall was built in the North to defend the province from the raids of the Picts and the Scots. (See Map 2.) The wall, known as Hadrian’s Wall, stretches from the eastern to the western coast of the island. With its forts, built a mile apart one from another, the wall served as a stronghold in the North. At the same time, when the Northern Britons were not at war with the Romans, the wall turned into an improvised market place for either party.

In AD 139 – 42 the Emperor Antoninus Pius abandoned Hadrian’s Wall and constructed a new frontier defence system between the Forth and the Clyde – the Antonine Wall – but its use was short-lived and Hadrian’s Wall was again the main northern frontier by AD 164.

One of the greatest achievements of the Roman Empire was its system of roads, in Britain no less than elsewhere. When the legions arrived in Britain in the first century AD, their first task was to build a system of roads. Stone bridges were built across rivers. Roman roads were made of of stones, lime and gravel. They were vital not only for the speedy movement of troops and supplies from one strategic center to another, but also allowed the movement of agricultural products from farm to market.

Map 2(From S.D. Zaitseva. Early Britain. Moscow, 1975.)

Within a generation the British landscape changed considerably. London became the chief administrative centre. From it, roads spread out to all parts of the province. Some of the roads exist up to this day, for example Watling Street which stretched from Dover to London, then to Chester and into the mountains of Wales. Unlike the Celts, who lived in villages, the Romans were city-dwellers. The Roman army built legionary fortresses, forts, camps, and roads, and assisted with the construction of buildings in towns. The Romans built most towns to a standardized pattern of straight, parallel main streets that crossed at right angles. The forum (market place) formed the centre of each town. Shops and such public buildings as the basilica, baths, law-courts, and temple surrounded the forum. The paved streets had drainage systems, and fresh

water was piped to many buildings. Houses were built of wood or narrow bricks and had tiled roofs.

The chief towns were Colchester, Gloucester, York, Lincoln, Dover, Bath and London (or Londinium). It is common knowledge that London was founded by the Romans in place of an earlier settlement.

Roman towns fell into one of three main types: coloniae, municipia and civitates. The coloniae of Roman Britain were Colchester, Lincoln, Gloucester, York, and possibly London, and their inhabitants were Roman citizens. The only certain municipia was Verulamium (St. Albans), a self-governing community with certain legal privileges. The civitates, towns of non-citizens, included most of Britain’s administrative centres.

The Romans also brought their style of architecture to the countryside in the form of villas. Some very large early villas are known in Kent and in Sussex.

Both public buildings and private dwellings were decorated in imitation of the Roman style. Sculpture and wall painting were both novelties in Roman Britain. Statues or busts in bronze or marble were imported from Mediterranean workshops, but British sculptures soon learned their trade and produced attractive works of their own. Mosaic floors, found in towns and villas, were at first laid by imported craftsmen. But there is evidence that by the middle of the 2nd century a local firm was at work at Colchester and Verulamium, and in the 4th

century a number of local mosaic workshops can be recognized by their styles.

When Christianity gained popularity in the Empire, it also spread to the provinces and was established in Britain in the 300s. The first English martyr was St. Alban who died about 287.

In 306, Constantine the Great, the son of Constantine Chlora and Elene (Helen), the daughter of a British chief, became the Roman Emperor. He stopped the persecution of Christians and became a Christian himself. All Christian churches were centralised in Constantinople which was made the capital of the Empire. This religion came to be known as the Catholic Church. (‘catholic’ means ‘universal’.) Greek and Latin became the languages of the Church all over Europe including Britain.

Literary evidence suggests that Britons adopted Latinized names and that the elite spoke and wrote Latin. The largest number of Latin words was introduced as a result of the spread of Christianity: abbot,

altar, angel, creed, hymn, idol, organ, nun, pope, temple and many others. The traces of Latin are still found in modern English:

Latin borrowings in English

Modern English Latin meaningChester, Doncaster, Gloucester

castra camp

street, Stratford strata via a paved roadwall vallum a wall of fortificationsLincoln, Colchester colonia colonyDevonport portus port, havenNorwich, Woolwich vicus villageChepstow; Chapman caupo a small tradesmanpound (pondo) pondus (measure of) weightmile millia passum 1000 stepspiper pepper перецwine vinum виноbutter butyrum маслоcheese caseus сырpear pirum грушаmill molinum мельница

Despite the growth of towns and all the other essentials of civilization that came with the Roman conquest, the standards of living changed little. Britain was an agricultural province, dependent on small farms. Peasants still built round Celtic huts and worked in the fields in the same way. Despite the 400 years of Roman influence, Britain was still largely a Celtic society.

The conquest of Britain by the Roman Empire lasted up to the beginning of the 5th century. In 410 the Roman legions were called back to Rome, and those that stayed behind were to become the Romanized Celts (Britons) who faced the invasion of the barbarians – the Germanic tribes of Angles and Saxons.

The InvasionGermanic tribes had raided the British

shores long before the withdrawal of the Roman legions. But the 5th century became the age of

3. The Anglo-Saxon period

increased Germanic expansion and by the end of the century several West Germanic tribes had settled in Britain. The first invaders, in fact, came at the request of a British king who needed their assistance in a local war. The newcomers soon overran their hosts, and other Germanic tribes followed them in families and clans. At first they only came to plunder: drive off the cattle, seize the stores of corn and be off again to sea before the Celts could attack them. But as time went by they would come in larger numbers, and begin to conquer the country.

First came the Jutes, and then the Angles and the Saxons. (See Map 3.) The latter came from the territory lying between the Rhine and the Elbe rivers which was later called Saxony. The Jutes and the Angles came from the Jutland Peninsular. The beginning of the conquest was in 449 when the Jutes landed in Kent. Eventually, Britain held out longer than the other provinces of the Roman Empire.

Map 3(From David MacDowell. An Illustrated History of Britain, Longman.)

It was only at the beginning of the 7th century that the invaders managed to conquer the greater part of the land. The Angles settled down to the north of the Thames, the Saxons – to the south of the Thames, the Jutes spread in the extreme south-east – the Kent Peninsular and the Isle of White.

The pagan tribes did not spare their enemies. The Celtic historian Gildas described the Anglo-Saxon invasion as ‘the ruin of Britain’. The invaders lived in villages and soon destroyed or neglected the Roman roads, villas, baths and towns. London, which had been the main trading centre, saw its decline. The invaders killed or enslaved Britons, most of the British Christians were put to death, and others took refuge in the distant parts of the country where they lived as hermits or in groups of brethren.

After a century and a half of resistance, the Celts were driven off to Wales and Cornwall, as well as to the northern part of Scotland, where they later founded independent states and spoke their native language. The Anglo-Saxons called the northern part of the country weallas (Wales) meaning ‘the land of foreigners’ and the Celts were called welsh which meant ‘foreign’. The Celts of Ireland also remained independent. Some of the Celtic tribes crossed the Channel and settled down on the French coast giving it the name of Brittany.

Political and economic development The period covering the 5th – 11th centuries saw transition from the

tribal and slave-owning system to feudalism. By the beginning of the 7th century, 7 kingdoms had been formed

on the conquered territory which later came to be known as England. These were Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex (the lands of the South, West and East Saxons), Northumbria (the land that lay to the north of the river Humber, hence the name North-Humbrian), Mercia and East Anglia. (See Map 3.) The kingdoms were constantly at war for the supreme power in the country. At the beginning of the 7th century Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex dominated the other four kingdoms.

In the 8th century Mercia developed important diplomatic and commercial ties with the Continent. King Offa of Mercia became powerful enough to claim ‘kingship of English’. He managed to make a huge dyke along the border with Wales to protect his kingdom from the

Celtic raids. Parts of this earth wall still exists and is known as Offa’s Dyke. After Offa’s death, though, Mercia lost its supremacy.

Social changes in the Anglo-Saxon society took a long time to come. It is recognised that the Anglo-Saxons were far less civilized than the Romans, yet they had their own institutions. Anglo-Saxon kings were elected by the members of the Witan, the Council of Chieftains, and in their decisions were advised by the councillors, the great men of the kingdom. In return for the support of his subjects who paid taxes and gave him free labour and military service, the king granted them land and protection.

Originally, all Saxon men had been warriors. From the very beginning English society had military aristocracy, or thanes. The rest of the population were peasants who cultivated the land. The division of labour led to a class division: thanes got more land and privileges from the king, and became lords, while peasants took an inferior social position and finally turned into serfs.

The basic economic unit was the feudal manor which grew its own food and carried on some small industries to cover its needs. The lord of the manor administered justice and collected taxes. It was also his duty to protect the farm and its produce. The word ‘lord’ meant ‘loaf ward, or bread keeper’ and the word ‘lady’ meant ‘loaf kneader, or bread maker’.

In agriculture, the Anglo-Saxons introduced the heavy plough which made it possible to cultivate heavier soils. All the farmland of the village was divided into two fields. When one field was used for planting crops, the other was given a ‘rest’ for a year so as not to exhaust the land. After harvest time, both would be used as pasture land. That is known as the two-field system. The Saxon methods of farming remained largely the same for many centuries to come, until the 18 th

century.

Christianity in England

By the end of the 6th century England had become Christian due to the energy of the Christian missionaries from Ireland and the efforts of Pope Gregory who decided to spread his influence over England. The Roman mission headed by the monk Augustine (‘St. Augustine’s mission’) landed in Kent in 597 and built the first church in the capital town of Canterbury. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 601. Ever since that time, Canterbury has been the religious centre of major importance in Britain.

Later, Christianity spread over to Northumbria where there were still some traces of the influence of the first Celtic Christians. Soon the Roman Church prevailed over the Celtic Church. The Church established monasteries, or minsters (Yorkminster, Westminster), which became centres of learning and education. It was there that men could be educated and trained both for theological and civil studies. The unified organisation of the Church was an important factor in the centralisation of the country.

With the arrival of St. Augustine and his forty monks, England resumed direct contact with the life and thought of the Continent, especially its Mediterranean part. Benedict Biscop, founder of Jarrow monastery (Northumbria), on several occasions brought manuscripts from Rome, and his pupil, the Venerable Bede (?673-735), had access to all the sources of knowledge brought from continental Europe. Bede was a prominent religious and public figure of the period, who contributed to the development of English history and law. He is considered to be the first English historian. He is the author of Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) dated 731, which was the only book on Anglo-Saxon history of the time. It is the source of almost all information on the history of England before 731.

The Church enhanced the status of kings. At the time when the eldest son of a king did not automatically inherit the throne, it was the Witan that chose the next king. Evidently, it was important for the king to obtain the support of the Church and arrange for his chosen successor to be crowned at a Christian ceremony led by a bishop. If a bishop supported the king, royal power was hard to be questioned. In their turn, kings rendered support to the Church. The first baptised Anglo-Saxon king, Aethelberht I, recognized the right to church shelter in his Code of Laws in 600.

In a way, the Church contributed to the economic development of the country. Villages and towns that appeared around monasteries increased local trade. The monks and bishops who were invited to England, came from the biggest monasteries of the Frankish lands (France and Germany) which lay on Europe’s main trade routes. They used Latin, which spread in England as the official language of the church and official documents, and that encouraged closer contact with Continental countries. England exported cheese, hunting dogs, wool and

metal goods. It imported pepper, jewelry, wine, and wheel-made pottery.

The second wave of Christianity brought into the language such loan-words as arithmetic, mathematics, theatre, geography, school, paper, candle.

Anglo-Saxon cultureThe development of Anglo-Saxon culture is inseparable from the

development of Christianity in England. During the time of Pope Gregory there appeared a new form of

plainsong which came from Europe and was called Gregorian chant. Gregorian chant remained the musical symbol from the 6th to the 9th

centuries. In architecture, there developed a new style in church building.

One of the most completely preserved Saxon churches in England is St. Laurence in Bradford-on-Avon, built probably between the 7 th and the 10th centuries. With its thick walls, narrow rounded arches and small windows it represents typical Anglo-Saxon church architecture.

The monasteries of Northumbria possessed rich collections of manuscript books which were brightly illuminated, bound in gold and ornamented with precious stones. One of the best known manuscripts of the period is St. Luke’s Gospel made at the Northumbrian island of Lindisfarne in about 698.

The first Anglo-Saxon writers and poets imitated Latin books about the early Christians. Although it was customary to write in Latin, in the 7th century there appeared a poet who composed in English. Caedmon, a shepherd from Whitby, a famous abbey in Yorkshire, composed in English for mere want of learning. One of the few recorded pieces of Caedmon’s poetry is a nine-line hymn, an English fragment in Bede’s History. It may be considered as the first piece of Christian literature to appear in Anglo-Saxon England. The hymn is especially notable because, according to the Venerable Bede, it was divinely inspired. Much of Old English poetry was intended to be chanted or sung by scops, or bards. One night, at a feast, when each of the guests was asked to sing a song, Caedmon quietly stole out and lay down in the cow-shed, ashamed that he had no gift of singing. In his sleep he heard a voice telling him to stand up and sing the Song of Creation. Caedmon obeyed the mysterious voice and sang the verses he had never heard before. When he woke up, he returned to the guests and sang the song to

them. That made him so famous that Caedmon was invited to the abbey where he spent the rest of his life composing religious poetry. Almost all this poetry was composed without rhyme, in a characteristic line of four stressed syllables alternating with a number of unstressed ones.

Old English poetry was mainly restricted to three subjects: religious, heroic and lyrical. The greatest heroic poem of the Anglo-Saxon period was Beowulf, an epic poem written down in the 10th but dating back to the 7th or 8th century. It is valuable both from the linguistic and the artistic point of view. Beowulf is the oldest poem in Germanic literature. Although Beowulf is essentially a warrior’s story, it serves as a source of information about the customs and ways of the ancient Jutes, their society and their feasts and amusements.

The poem consists of several songs arranged in three chapters and numbers over 3,000 lines. It is based on the legends of Germanic tribes and describes the adventures and battles of legendary heroes who had lived long before the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain. The scene is set among the Jutes and the Danes. The poem describes the struggle of a Scandinavian hero, Beowulf, who destroyed the monster Grendel, Grendel’s evil mother and a fire-breathing dragon. The extraordinary artistry with which fragments of other Scandinavian sagas are incorporated in the poem and with which the plot is made symmetrical has only recently been fully recognised. Formation of the English language

As a result of the conquest, the Anglo-Saxons made up the majority of the population. Their religion and languages became predominant. The Jutes, the Saxons and the Angles were much alike in speech and customs. When the Angles and the Saxons migrated to the British Isles, their language was torn away from the continental Germanic dialects and started its own way of development. At first, the Germanic invaders spoke various dialects but gradually the dialect of the Angles of Mercia prevailed. They also intermixed with the surviving Celts and gradually merged into one people – the Anglo-Saxons as they were called by the Romans and the Celts. Already in the 8 th century they preferred to call themselves Angelcyn – Anglish/English people, and called the occupied territories Angelcynnes land – land of the Anglish/English people, which later transformed into England. The language they now spoke was called Anglish/English.

The 5th century marks the beginning of the history of the English language. The history of the English language can be divided into four periods:

Old English period (OE) – from the mid-5th to the late 11th century Middle English period (ME) – from the late 11th to the late-15th

century New English period (NE) – from the late 15th century up to the 21st

century, including Modern English period – from the 19th century and up to now.

Germanic tribes used runic writing – a specifically Germanic alphabet with runes carved in stone, bone or wood with vertical or slanted lines. The number of runes in different Old Germanic languages varied: from 16 or 24 runes on the Continent to 28 or 33 runes in Britain. Runes were never used in everyday writing. The word ‘rune’ itself originally meant ‘secret, mystery’ that is why the main function of runes was to make short inscriptions on objects, which was thought to give them some magic power. The number of objects with runic inscriptions in Old English is about forty: amulets, coins, weapons, rings, tombstones, fragments of crosses. The two best preserved records of Old English runic writing are the text on the Ruthwell Cross in the village of Ruthwell in Scotland, and Franks Casket – a whalebone box found in France, which was given as a gift to the British Museum by a British archeologist A.W. Franks.

Later, Christian missionaries introduced the Latin alphabet to which several runic letters were added to mark the sounds [Y] and [T].

These were the letters Þ and T as well as the letter G which in certain positions was pronounced as [g] or [j]: GeonG [jeong] – young, Grene [grene] – green. The OE verbs sittan, beran, teran, findan, sinGan are quite recognisable. The first English words written down with Latin letters were personal names and place names which were inserted into Latin texts.

The Germanic tribes were pagans who worshipped the Sun, the Moon and a whole number of gods. Their principal gods were those of later Norse mythology – Tiw, Woden, and Thor. They are remembered in the day-names Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday as well as a number of place-names (Tuesley, Wednesbury, Thursley) which were presumably cult centres. Even when converted to Christianity, the Saxons named one of the main church festivals, Easter, after their old dawn-goddess Eostre.

The origin of day namesDay names Germanic

god(dess)His / her status Roman /

Greek godsPlanets and

starsMonday – – – the MoonTuesday Tiw The god of war Mars / Ares –Wednesday Woden The god of

commerceMercury / Hermes

–

Thursday Thor / Thur The God of thunder

Jupiter / Zeus

–

Friday Frigg / Freya

Woden’s wife / the goddess of

prosperity

– –

Saturday – – – the SaturnSunday – – – the Sun

The Anglo-Saxon word-stock consisted mainly of words of the Germanic origin. Most of them have correlations in the Indo-European languages:

Words belonging to the Indo-European Family of languages

Latin Modern German

Old English Modern English

Russain

pater Vater fWder father (патриарх)mater Mutter modor mother матьfrater Bruder broTor brother брат

unus ein an one одинduo zwei tu, twa two дваtres, tria drei Þri, Þrie three триjunior jung GeonG young юныйnovus neu neowe new новыйdies Tag dWG day день

The invaders were engaged in farming and cattle-breeding. The names of Anglo-Saxon villages usually had the root ham meaning ‘home, house’ or ‘protected place’: Nottingham, Birmingham. The Saxon ton stood for ‘hedge’ or ‘a place surrounded with a hedge’, as in Brighton, Preston, Southampton. The Saxon for ‘fortress, town’ was burG or burh which we now see in Canterbury, Salisbury, Edinburgh; feld meant ‘open country, field’ and it is seen in the names of Sheffield, Chesterfield, Mansfield.

Danish raidsFrom the end of the 8th and then during the

9th and the 10th centuries Western Europe faced a new wave of barbarian attacks. (See Map 5.) The barbarians came from the North – Norway and

Denmark – and were called Northmen. In different countries they were also known as the Vikings, the Normans and the Danes. The word Viking, or pirate was used by their victims and referred equally to the invaders from Norway and Denmark. As Britain was mostly raided from Denmark, in British history the invaders came to be known as the Danes.

Map 5(From David MacDowell. An Illustrated History of Britain, Longman.)

4. The Danish Invasion of Britain

The expansion of the Scandinavians is a European phenomenon, of which the raids on England and Ireland made only one part. Although they mostly lived in tribes, they were not totally barbarians. They were involved in trade and had regular ties with the nations living to the west and south. Many adventurers must have heard stories about the fertile lands and the rich monasteries overseas which were easy to plunder. The Northmen were well-armed skilful warriors and sailors and could easily cross the sea in search of fortune. But although they were prepared to fight, they usually aimed not at fighting but at getting loot. At the time, Ireland was the chief gold producing country of Western Europe. Moreover, it had not been invaded either by the Romans or the Anglo-Saxons. Now it was one of the first countries to be raided by the Norwegians.

In 793 the Danes carried out their first raids on Britain. In the three successive years they devastated three of England’s most holy places – Lindisfarne, Jarrow and Iona – with the treasures their monasteries possessed. The earliest raids were for plunder only. Cattle was driven off, houses were burnt, monasteries plundered and people slain. Then the invaders would return home for the winter. But a big raid on Kent in

835 opened three decades in which attacks came almost yearly, and which ended with the arrival of an invading army. Thus began the fourth conquest of Britain.

The struggle of England against the Danish attacks lasted over 300 years. During that period of time over half of England was occupied by the invaders and then regained by the English again. The Danish raids were successful because the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had neither a regular army nor a fleet of ships in the North Sea to resist the invaders. Besides, there were few roads and fortresses as the Anglo-Saxons had destroyed them. Thus, even if a settlement resisted the Danes for some time, it took their messenger several weeks to reach the nearest king and bring help. Soon the Danes conquered Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia. London was raided in 842 and 851, and in 872 it fell to the invaders. Only Wessex was left to face the enemy. Historically, it was Wessex that became the centre of resistance to the Danes. King Alfred the Great

In 878 King Alfred, known in history as Alfred the Great (871-899), managed to win a decisive victory over the Danes and by the peace treaty England was divided into two parts: Wessex, ruled by Alfred, and the north-eastern part of England which was called Danelaw (Danelagh), under the rule of the Danish kings. (See Map 6.)

Map 6(From S.D. Zaitseva, Early Britain, Moscow, 1975.)

The old Roman road from London to Wales called Watling Street served as the boundary between Danelaw and Wessex; in the North it did not even reach Hadrian’s Wall. The invaders founded new villages and towns in the north of England, which were inhabited by a mixed population of the English and the Danes.

In the Danelaw, the Danes established a society of their own governed by the Danish law. Even when the Danelaw was christianized and brought under English rule, there remained certain peculiarities: land measurement, law and social differentiation.

In 886 King Alfred the Great began to win back Danish-occupied territory by capturing the former Mercian town of London. Four years later he introduced a permanent militia and army. Alfred the Great wasthe first English king to establish a regular army: all noblemen and free peasants were trained to fight. The only way of combating raids from the sea was to build ships. Alfred is said to have founded the English navy. He built ships, which were bigger than the Vikings’, carrying 60

oars or more. The places that could be easily attacked by the enemy were fortified. By the late 880s Wessex was covered with a network of roads and burghs, or public strongholds which could be described as planned fortified towns. The neighbouring landowners were responsible for maintainig the fortifications. In return, they were able to use the defences for their own purposes. The 33 fortified towns soon began to play an important part in the local rural economy.

King Alfred devoted the last ten years of his life to reviving literacy and learning in the country. He carried out his programme of education through court intellectuals and priests who were all obliged to know Latin. Alfred’s own contribution to this programme was one of his greatest achievements. He was the only English king before Henry VIII who wrote and translated books. King Alfred drew up a code of Anglo-Saxon laws and translated into English Bede’s Ecclesiastical History as well as the Bible. To him the English owe the famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which may be called the first prose in English literature. King Alfred died in Winchester, the capital of Wessex, in 901. He is the only king in English history called ‘the Great’.

End of the Danish ruleAt the end of the 10th century the Danish invasions were resumed.

The English tried to buy off the Vikings, and as a result, the Danes imposed on them a heavy tax called the Danegeld in 991. In that year alone, 10,000 pounds of silver were paid.

A new form of local government was introduced at about the same time. The country was divided into shires with one of the king’s local bailiffs (‘reeves’) in each shire appointed ‘shire-reeve’ or sheriff. The sheriff was responsible for collecting royal revenues, in the shire court he announced the king’s will to the local noblemen and took an active part in everyday business. Sheriffs belonged to the growing community of local nobility.

At the beginning of the 11th century the whole of England was conquered by the Danes. The Danish king Cnut, or Canute, became king of England, Denmark and Norway (1016-1035). Canute preserved many of the old Saxon laws collected by Alfred. He became a Christian and a protector of monasteries. Although Canute made England his residence, he often had to leave England for Denmark. Canute had to make English government function during his absence that is why he divided the kingdom into 4 earldoms: Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia. The king appointed an earl to rule an earldom. Gradually,

the earls became very powerful. They were both Danes and Anglo-Saxon noblemen. Supported by the Anglo-Saxon feudal lords, Canute reigned in England until he died.

Culture and language of the period The influence of the Danes on the development of English culture

and the language should not be underestimated. During the Danish invasion of England, the language underwent considerable changes. The Danes were of the same Germanic origin as the Anglo-Saxons themselves and came from the same part of the Continent. As the roots were the same in English and Danish and the languages assimilated, case endings were dropped and new grammar forms developed to show relations of words. The dropping of endings meant that the stress was changed, the sound and rhythm of the language became different. Many English words are of the Scandinavian origin:

English Scandinavianfellow feolaGa

husband husbondalaw laGu

wrong wrangto call kallato take taka

The Scandinavian borrowings in English are such adjectives as happy, low, loose, ill, ugly, weak; the nouns sister, sky, window, leg, wing, harbour. The names of Danish settlements often ended in –by or –toft/thorp(e) which meant ‘village, settlement’. Thus we have Derby, Grimsby, Whitby, Lowestoft, etc.

Old English was a synthetic language. It expressed relations between words and expressed other grammatical meanings with the help of suffixes, prefixes and interchanges in the root. The noun had the categories of number, gender (masculine, feminine, neutral), declension (ending in different letters), and case (Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative). Strong and weak verbs were conjugated in the Present and the Past. A future action was expressed by means of a Present tense. During the Danish invasion prepositions and pronouns were used more often than before.

`

The Danish dynasty ruled England up to 1042 when the English throne went to Edward the Confessor the eldest son of the Saxon king Aethelred and Emma of Normandy. He restored the

Saxon rule but boosted Norman influence in England. During the Danish rule Edward lived in Norman exile. When he

returned to England as king, he brought a large number of Norman monks and noblemen to whom he began to give the richest lands and high government positions. Edward did not only speak French himself but insisted on it being spoken at his court. During his reign there was a constant struggle between the Norman influence at court and the power of Saxon earls. Edward was unable to control the nobility, especially Earl Godwin, whose daughter was his wife. Edward himself was more interested in the Church than in state affairs and led a monastic life building churches. By the time he died, there was a church practically in every English village. King Edward also founded Westminster Abbey.

Upon the death of Edward the Confessor, the Saxon Witan was to decide who would get the English throne. One of the claimants was Harold, the son of Earl Godwin. The other was William, the Duke of Normandy.

DO YOU KNOW THAT Bath, the famous resort, was founded by the Romans. The first English non-runic texts written in Latin letters

were glosses, or translations of Latin religious texts written between the lines in Gospels.

The Danes introduced in England the use of chairs, benches and beds.

The game of chess was brought to England by the Danes. The first English uniform currency based on silver

pennies was introduced in 973.

?

5. Edward the Confessor

Origin of the Normans

In the 9th century, while the Danes were plundering England, another branch of Northmen, also related to the Danes, were raiding the northern

coast of France. They came to be called Normans, a variation of the word ‘Northmen’. The Danes settled down in the conquered part of England called the Danelaw. Likewise, the Normans settled down on the land conquered from the French king – a territory which is still called Normandy.

As time went by, the Danes mixed with the Anglo-Saxons, who were themselves of Germanic origin, and retained their Germanic language, customs and traditions. As for the Normans, they were now quite different from their Teutonic forefathers. They lived among the French who were a different people and spoke a different language – belonging to the Romance group. The Normans assimilated with the French population of the conquered territories, adopted their culture and a certain dialect of the French language. The establishment of the feudal system in France had been completed by the 11th century, and the Norman barons had come into possession of large tracts of land and a great number of serfs.

The Normans lived under the rule of the Duke of Normandy. In the 11th century, the Dukes of Normandy officially acknowledged the King of France as their overlord, but, like other dukes and counts of France, they had made themselves practically independent. They were as strong as the king himself, whose domain was smaller than the Duchy of Normandy. They coined their own money, made their own laws, held their own courts and built their own castles. As a well-trained cavalry, the Norman knights were the best in Europe. They were formidable fighters and would wage wars so as to seize new lands and serfs.

CHAPTER 2England in the early Middle Ages

1. Beginning of the Norman

invasion

Claimants to the English throneThe question who should follow Edward the Confessor as king

was one of the most important in English history. In the last ten years of his rule, King Edward heavily relied on his

brother-in-law, Harold Godwin. Being childless, the English monarch is believed to have named Harold as his successor. At the same time, it was known that Edward had promised the English crown to his grand-nephew William, the Duke of Normandy, in return for his support. Edward’s death started the struggle for the English throne. The third claimant for the English throne was King Harold Hardrada of Norway.

When the Witan, or council of wise men, chose Harold Godwin as King of England, William of Normandy began preparations for the war. He sent messengers far and wide to invite the knights of Europe to his army. William called upon all Christians in Europe to help him gain the rights to the English throne. He also gained the support of the Pope promising to strengthen the influence of Rome in England. Although no pay was offered, the army was raised quickly because William promised land.

Harold Godwin reigned for less than a year. In the summer of 1066 the Norwegians headed by Harold Hardrada invaded Northumbria and occupied York. Harold Godwin marched northwards and met Hardrada at Stamford Bridge where the Norwegians were defeated in a fierce battle on September 25. Three days later Duke William’s fleet, which had been delayed by bad weather, landed at Pevencey. On hearing the news, King Harold had to rush south 250 miles in nine days.

Battle of HastingsThe English and Norman armies met on October 14, 1066, in the

neighbourhood of Hastings. The Normans outnumbered the Anglo-Saxon forces and were superior in quality. The Normans used a skilful combination of heavy-armoured cavalry and archers. First, the archers would break up the ranks of the enemy, then followed a charging cavalry which decided the victory.

Map 7

The Anglo-Saxons had a small cavalry which was mainly Harold’s bodyguard. The English footmen usually fought in a mass standing close together, so as to form a wall of shields to protect themselves. The hastily gathered peasants were armed with pitchforks, axes or thick oak poles and could not hold out long against the well-armed and armoured Normans. Even the skilled Saxon archers did not pose danger to the Normans who wore armour, as there was little chance that many of them could be killed by Saxon arrows.

The battle lasted the whole day. Despite their tiredness after a long march, the English had the initial advantage, since they were fighting for their independence. But in the end the Normans’ discipline prevailed. Harold died fighting, cut down by a sword (not, as often said, struck by an arrow). Gradually the Saxon rows thinned and finally the Normans succeeded in breaking the line of defence. The battle was over. William ordered Harold to be buried with all the royal honours and then marched to London.

Harold’s death ended England’s 600 years of rule by Anglo-Saxon kings. The Witan proclaimed William king of England and on Christmas Day 1066 the Duke of Normandy was crowned as William I in the new church of Westminster Abbey. In history he is more often

referred to as William the Conqueror. He ruled England for 21 years, from 1066 to 1087.

Lands and vassalsAs a result of the Norman invasion, England

did not only receive a new royal family but also a new ruling class, a new culture and a new language. The victory at Hastings was only the beginning of

the Conquest. Despite the surrender of London and Winchester it took William and his barons over 5 years to subdue the whole of England. There were risings against Norman rule in every year from 1067 to 1070. William ruthlessly put down local revolts. His knights raided villages and towns, burning and slaying everything and everybody. After several risings in the North, the lands of Northumbria were raised to the ground. Every house or cottage between Durham and York was burnt down, people were massacred, crops were destroyed and cattle were driven off. It took Northumbria almost a century to recover.

William organised his English kingdom in accordance with the feudal system which was based on ownership of land. The Conqueror declared that all the lands of England belonged to him by right of conquest. One-seventh of the country was made the royal domain which consisted of 1420 estates. The monasteries were granted 1700 estates. The Anglo-Saxon landowners and clergy were turned out of their houses, estates and churches. More than 4,000 Saxon lords were replaced by a group of less than 200 Norman barons. By 1086 there were only two surviving English lords of any importance.

While all land was owned by the king, part of it was held by the king’s vassals, in return for services and goods. Those were the knights who had taken part in the Conquest, and the Anglo-Saxon lords who supported the Conqueror. The greater nobles gave part of their lands to lesser nobles and other “freemen”. Some freemen paid for the land by doing military service, while others paid rent. The noble kept “serfs” to work on his own land. They were not free to leave the estate, and were often little better than slaves.

The two basic feudal principles implied that every man had a lord, and every lord had land. On getting his estate, each Norman nobleman became the king’s vassal as he swore an oath of allegiance which said: “I become your man from this day forward, and to you shall I be true and faithful, and shall hold faith for the land I hold from you.” William

2. The Norman

Conquest

made both the great barons and their vassals swear allegiance to him directly. In 1086, at a gathering of knights in Salisbury, William made them all take a special oath to be true to him against his enemies. Thus, the European rule “my vassal’s vassal is not my vassal’ was broken in England. In other words, if a baron rebelled against the king, his immediate vassals were obliged to fight for the king.

The Domesday BookBy 1086 the Conqueror wanted to know exactly who owned which

piece of land, and how much it was worth. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says: “In 1086 William the Conqueror sent his men all over England, into every shire to find out what property every inhabitant of England possessed in land, or in cattle, and how much money this was worth.” He needed this information to know how much was produced and how much he

could ask in tax. That was the first registration and complete economic survey in England. Each manor was described according to value and resources. Every man who owned or rented land was questioned and threatened to be punished on doomsday if he did not answer the questions of the king’s men as to how much land there was; who owned it; how much it was worth; how many families, ploughs and sheep there were, etc. As a result of the registration, the majority of the population were registered as unfree peasants, or serfs. They made 79 per cent of the total population of England.

Domesday was one of the greatest administrative achievements of the Middle Ages. It assisted the royal exploitation of crown lands and feudal rights, and provided the new nobility with a formal record and confirmation of their lands thus putting a final seal on the Norman occupation.

The original copy of the Domesday Book, in several volumes, still exists, and provides an extraordinary amount of information about England at that period of time.

Castles

To further strengthen his power, William built 78 castles throughout the country. Ironically, the Normans used the labour of the conquered Anglo-Saxons to erect the fortresses which would be used to suppress the native population. The main purpose of the castle was to house the Norman cavalry which would find shelter inside in time of danger and from which they could start on their raids.

A Norman castle was often built on a hill or rock. First, the peasants would dig out a moat and make a drawbridge, and then use the removed soil to make the hill higher. Then they would build a wooden tower on top of the hill and surround it with a wooden wall, wide enough for archers to walk along. The outer wall was strengthened with towers built on each corner. Later the wooden structures were replaced by stone keeps. The castle usually dominated the nearest town, village or countryside.

Most of the castles were royal property. A baron could build a castle only if he was granted the king’s special permission. The first Norman stone castles were the Tower of London, the castle of Durham and Newcastle on the river Tyne. Some castles, such as Windsor Castle, are still used as residences.

Royal powerWilliam I began the rule of a dynasty of

Norman kings (1066-1154) and entailed the replacement of the Anglo-Saxon nobility with Normans, Bretons and Flemings, many of whom

retained lands in northern France. Instead of the Saxon Witan, William established the Curia Regis (1066) which existed until the end of the 13th century. It had the functions of government and king’s court in the early medieval times. Although William let the English keep their own courts and laws, the judges were Norman.

Another change introduced by William was the abolition of the earldoms of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex, which had been established by King Canute. Now the country was divided into counties which were ruled by sheriffs appointed by the king.

Between 1066 and 1144 England and Normandy were united under one king-duke. The result was the formation of a single cross-Channel political community. Since Normandy was a principality ruled by a duke who recognised the king of France as his overlord, this also meant that

3. England in the Middle

Ages

from now on English politics became part of French politics. The two countries shared not only a ruling dynasty, but also a single Anglo-Norman aristocracy. It lasted until 1204.

After his death in 1087, William I was succeeded by his sons and nephew (William II, Henry I, Stephen) and finally by his granddaughter’s husband Henry II of the House of Anjou also known as the Plantagenet. Royal power was strengthened and the Anglo-Norman kings acquired new territories both on the British Isles and on the Continent.

As duke of Normandy, duke of Aquitaine (by his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine), and count of Anjou Henry II had inherited lordship over the respective and neighbouring territories. In England, he managed to strengthen royal power and win back the northern English territories which had been occupied by Scotland. Henry II was king of an empire stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees, probably the most powerful ruler in Europe, who was richer than the emperor of the king of France. (He was the lord of Paris, Blois, Normandy, Flanders, Brittany, Burgundy, Champagne, Anjou, Aquitaine, Gascony and Toulouse on the Continent and of England and part of Ireland across the Channel.) The source of his wealth was in England, his wife’s homeland, but the heart of the empire lay in Anjou, the land of his fathers. Out the thirty-five years of his reign, Henry II spent twenty-one on the Continent. In England, he confiscated or ruined the castles built without royal authority and curbed the power of the nobles. He introduced trial by jury and established Anglo-Saxon common law as the law of England.

Church and StateDuring the reign of Henry II (1154-1189) there happened an event

which had a powerful effect on the history of English Church and social life in the country.

In order to strengthen monarchy, Henry II made his friend Thomas Becket first Chancellor and then Archbishop of Canterbury. Becket, a merchant’s son, was known to be a sinner and an ardent supporter of the king. But when Becket became Archbishop of Canterbury he got completely reformed. Within a few years he became one of the most respected priests in England. The greatest problem was that now he was trying to prove to Henry that royal power was inferior to God’s power and Papal power, and that was quite the opposite to what Henry had

expected him to do. The former friends turned into bitter enemies, and finally Becket had to flee to France. He visited Rome where he got the Pope’s blessing and several years later returned to England to continue strengthening the position of the Church. He landed in an unexpected place and avoided Henry’s men, who had been sent to kill him. Shortly afterwards, in 1171, Thomas Becket was killed in Canterbury Cathedral by the four barons sent by the king. The murder in the Cathedral shook the country. Henry had to admit that it was a political murder, an assassination. But Henry II had achieved his aim and royal power was strengthened. In two years’ time Becket’s tomb became a centre of pilgrimage, and in 1173 Thomas Becket was canonised.

One of the masterpieces of English literature, “The Canterbury Tales” written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century, is based on the stories told by a group of pilgrims travelling to the tomb of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Two outstanding figures in world literature of the 20th century, Jean Anouilh of France and T.S. Eliot of Britain, a Nobel Prize winner, wrote respectively “Thomas Becket” and “Murder in the Cathedral”. The central idea of each piece is the antagonism between friendship and duty, friendship and treachery for the sake of the state.

Henry II’s son Richard known as Richard the Lion Heart was one of England’s most popular kings, although he spent only six months of his reign in England. He was brave, cruel and generous, and inspired loyalty. With other Christian leaders Richard I headed the Third Crusade against Muslim rule in the Holy Land and secured Christian access to the holy places. Richard was a superb military leader and a fine troubadour-style lyric poet, but his wars on the Continent cost England a lot of money and weakened the crown which, during his absence, was usurped by his wicked brother John.

Magna Carta and the beginning of ParliamentAfter Richard’s death, when John became lawful king of England,

he lost Normandy and other territories in the wars against the king of France. His vassals came over to England to receive lands and titles. John began to give the lands and castles of the first Norman barons, who had come with the Conqueror, to the newcomers. Hatred for King John united the old barons, bishops and the Anglo-Saxons in their almost open struggle against the king. In the civil war which broke out, the barons worked out a programme which King John was finally forced to

sign and seal. Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, was signed on June 10, 1215. The document was a detailed statement of how the king’s government ought to work and what kind of relations there ought to be in a feudal state between the monarch and his vassals. Instead of paying their lords in services, some vassals paid them in money. Vassals were beginning to turn into tenants. Feudalism, the use of land in return for service, was weakening. But it took three hundred years more to get rid of feudalism.

Magna Carta was the first document to lay the basis for the British Constitution.

When the throne went to Henry III, he tried to centre all power in his hands. Several times he demanded money from the Great Council but the barons refused to grant money. The first attempt to curb the power of the king and his foreign advisers was made by Simon de Montfort, the leader of the lesser barons and the new merchant class and poorer clergy. In 1258 they took over the government and elected a council of nobles which de Montfort called parliament (from the French word “parler” - “to speak”). The nobles were supported by the towns, which wished to be free of Henry’s heavy taxes. In 1264 a civil war began and the incompetent king was defeated. In 1265 de Montfort became the virtual ruler of the country and called “two knights from every shire, two burgesses from every borough” to his parliament The first Parliament was quite a revolutionary body. It represented the interests of barons, the clergy and the new class of merchants.

During the reign of Henry III’s son, Edward I, it was granted by the king that no new taxes would be raised without the consent of Parliament. At the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th centuries, Parliament was divided into the Lords (the barons) and the Commons (the knights and the burgesses). The alliance between the merchants and the squires paved the way to the growth of parliamentary power. Edward I conquered Wales and made it a principality of England (1284), passed exclusively to the heir to the English throne (Prince of Wales; 1301).

The Norman period in the English language, which lasted from the 11th to the 15th century, is known as Middle English. The Conquest was not only a historical event, it was also the greatest single event in the history of the English language.

One of the most significant consequences of the Norman domination was the use of the French language in many spheres of English political, social and cultural life. But though the court and the barons spoke Norman-French and the clergy spoke and wrote Latin, the invasion of these two Romance languages could not subdue the popular tongue spoken by peasants and townsfolk all over England. The two main languages, French and English, intertwined and by the end of the 14th century made one language, which was used both in speech and in writing. English was bound to survive and win in this linguistic battle as it was the living language of the people in their native land, and part of their culture. At the same time, Norman-French was torn away from its roots and had to surrender, although it greatly influenced English.

Three hundred years after the Norman Conquest, in 1258, Henry III issued a “Proclamation” to the counsellors elected to sit in Parliament from all parts of England. It was written in three official languages: French, Latin and English. This was the first official document to be written in English. In 1349 it was ruled that schooling should be conducted in English and Latin. In 1362 Edward III gave his consent to an act of Parliament proclaiming that English should be used in the law courts because French had become “much unknown in the realm”. In the same year Parliament, for the first time, was opened with a speech in English.

But the three hundred years of French domination in many spheres of life affected the English language more than any other single foreign influence before or after. The impact of French upon the vocabulary can hardly be exaggerated: the numerous borrowings reflect the spheres of Norman influence on English life.

The phonetic structure of the language was, naturally, affected. It is, however, controversial whether it was only the French language that affected the grammatical structure of English. The need to bring together the language of the new lords of the land and the language of those who cultivated the land brought about considerable changes in the grammar of the Old English language. Endings began to give way to auxiliary verbs. Thus Middle English is known as the period of levelled

4. Language of the Norman

Period

endings, a transitional period from synthetic forms (with various endings) to analytical forms (the use of auxiliary verbs).

In its turn, the French language brought in a number of new suffixes and prefixes: -ance, -ence: ignorance, experience -ment: government, agreement -age: village, marriage -able: available, admirable dis-: disbelieve, disappear, distaste.

The suffixes gave an abstract meaning to the words and were also used to form new words from the English roots: unbearable, readable, etc.

It was during the Middle English period that the indefinite article a/an, stemming from the Old English numeral an (one), came into use. Spelling changed altogether. Instead of the Germanic runes Þ and T the Normans introduced the digraph th. The Old English u was changed into ou or ow as in hus>house, mus>mouse, cu>cow. It should be noted that at the time ou/ow was pronounced as [u:] and the diphthongs [ou]/[au] appeared later.

The Norman period enriched the English language with synonyms. Linguistic practice shows that words denoting the same object or the same idea cannot coexist in the same language, that is why there practically can be no full synonyms in a language. With the inflow of French words into the language, English retained the Anglo-Saxon words denoting things or concepts that the language had had before, and borrowed the French words which gave a new idea or a new shade of meaning. Thus the words ‘to eat, land, house’ come from Old English, but ‘to devour, territory, building’ come from French. The words describing feudal relations or related to the law courts and governing were borrowed from French: to command, to obey, baron, council, to accuse, court, crime, arms, guard, battle, victory, etc.

Even if both Anglo-Saxon and French words remained in the language, they were at least slightly different in meaning. This was illustrated by Walter Scott in Ivanhoe: a domestic animal in the charge of a Saxon serf was called by its Anglo-Saxon name, but when it was sent to the table of a Norman baron it changed it name into French. Thus the English language still has such pairs of words as ‘ox – beef’, ‘calf – veal’, ‘sheep – mutton’, ‘swine – pork’.

Some synonymous words are used in different styles. The English words usually give a homelier idea, while the French ones are mostly used in formal speech: ‘to give up – to abandon’, ‘to give in – to surrender’, ‘to come in – to enter’, ‘to begin – to commence’, ‘to go on – to continue’.

As a result, the stock of synonyms in English is larger than in any other European language, and the English word-stock is the largest in Europe.

The 11th-12th centuries was a period of significant changes in English culture due to the Norman Conquest and the influence of Norman culture on the English court and the nobility. It was a transitional

period from Old English and Anglo-Saxon literature of the conquered on the one hand, and the Norman French and continental French literature and the conquerors, on the other hand, to a new language and a new people, with their specific culture.

The 13th century in Britain witnessed an intellectual development which established Britain’s reputation as equal to the continental centres of learning. Central to this was the founding of the two great universities at Cambridge and Oxford.

First universitiesOriginally, the first universities in Europe appeared in Italy and

France. A fully developed university comprised four faculties: three superior faculties – Theology, Canon law, Medicine – and one inferior (primary) faculty of Art where music, grammar, geometry and logic were taught. University graduates were awarded with 3 degrees: Bachelor of Science, Master of Arts and Doctor. Towards the end of the 13th century there appeared colleges where other subjects were taught. It became a custom with students to go about from one great university to another, learning what they could from the most famous professors of the time.

Already at the end of the 11th century Oxford was a centre of learning. In the middle of the 12th century, after controversial debates at Paris University, a group of professors were expelled. They went over to England and in 1168 founded schools in Oxford which formed the first university. Students and scholars were attracted to to Oxford where they tried to recreate the style of learning they had experienced in Europe.

5. The development

of culture

However, the plague, which devastated whole towns, led to a temporary dispersion of the schools. In 1214 the university received a charter from the Pope, and by the end of the 13th century four colleges had been founded: University, Balliol, Merton and St. Edmund Hall. There were already 1500 students and the university was famous all over Europe.

Another university was founded in Cambridge. It is generally considered to date from 1209, when a group of students who had been driven out of Oxford by serious rioting came to Cambridge to continue their studies. Following a Papal Bull of 1318, Cambridge was declared a ‘studium generale’ or place of general education, which meant that degree holders could teach in any Christian country.

Unless a university student was a member of a religious house, it was necessary for him to provide for his own board and lodgings, and usually he would reside with a family in town. This caused certain problems: the young students, who were usually 14 or 15 years old, were often ill-disciplined and needed supervision and financial aid as the landlords often charged them more than other tenants. That led to the opening of colleges, with their hostels and the first student grants which were paid by benefactors and charity funds.

The nobles generally had no use for university education in the Middle Ages. It was the sons of the lower middle-class families who hoped to better their stations in life by getting an education. Most of the English writers and poets of the time had university education.

Literature of the 11th-13th centuriesThe Norman barons were followed to England by the churchmen,

scribes, minstrels, merchants and artisans. Each rank of society had its own literature. Monks wrote historical chronicles in Latin. Scholars in universities wrote about their experiments - also in Latin. Even religious satires were written in Latin. The aristocracy wrote their poetry in Norman-French. But the peasants and townspeople made up their songs and ballads in Anglo-Saxon.

The literature of the 11-12th centuries was represented by the romance, the ballad, the fable and the fabliau. The fable and the fabliau were typical literary forms of the townsfolk. Animal characters in fables mocked out human evils and conveyed a moral. Fabliaux were short funny stories about cunning crooks and unfaithful wives written as metrical tales.

The influence of continental literature was marked by the increasing popularity of French chivalric romances – a form already popular in France and Germany, which revolved around the love of a knight for a lady, with definite religious undertones. In southern France the lyric poets of the Middle Ages called ‘troubadours’ wrote dancing-songs called ‘ballads’ (stemming from the same root as ‘ballet’).

The most famous poet in the reign of Henry II was the Norman poet Wace. An educated person who had studied theology at Paris University, he was a clergyman, a secretary, a teacher, a writer and a poet. His chief works were two rhyming chronicles written in form of romance: Brut, or the Acts of the Britts and Rollo, or the Acts of the Normans.

Of great importance was the introduction into English of the Arthurian legend, first in 1140 by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Britons) and then by Wace who translated History of the Britons into French. Geoffrey of Monmouth had been brought up in Wales and lived close to the myth of King Arthur, the legendary Celtic chief.

Later, in the 13th -15th centuries there appeared a series of legends about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. The best-known legends are “Arthur and Merlin”, “Lancelot of the Lake”, “Percival of Wales”, “Sir Tristram” and others. In the 15th century Thomas Malory collected Arthurian stories and arranged them in twenty books.

Soon another powerful myth gained popularity, that of Robin Hood and his merry men, the outlaws who would not accept Norman rule but lived free in Sherwood Forest.

Norman kings, who were fond of hunting, turned vast territories into King’s Forest. (The word ‘forest’ comes from the Latin word ‘fores’ which means ‘out of doors’.) It was not a wood, though some parts of King’s Forest were wooded. King’s Forest was carefully guarded: peasants could neither make their living by hunting nor cut trees or shrubs nor pick firewood. Sheep and cattle that had the right to feed in the forest were branded with a special mark and their owners paid taxes. Unbranded animals, if caught, were made royal property. No goats were allowed in the forest as deer hated their smell and would not feed in the place where goats had walked. A man who killed a deer in the forest was either blinded, or had his fingers or arm cut off, or even put to death.

No wonder rebellious peasants, serfs and people who were driven to despair by hunger and need hunted in the forest, thus becoming outlaws.

Ballads describe Robin Hood, the famous legendary outlaw of the period as a strong, brave and skilful archer. Robin Hood was presumably a Saxon nobleman who had been ruined by the Normans. Together with his merry men (Little John – a gigantic manly fellow, brother Tuck – a stray friar and the others) they fought against Norman nobles and clergy and would appear wherever the poor were in need of help. Ballads about Robin Hood were composed and sung throughout the 12th and the 13th

centuries. Robin is supposed to have lived in the reign of King Henry II and his son Richard the Lion Heart. All through the ballads goes the idea of Robin waiting for Richard the Lion Heart to return. Then he would lay his bow at the king’s feet and subdue to the lawful king, whose wicked brother John had taken his place while Richard went crusading.

Art and architecture in Norman EnglandArt and architecture in the 12th century were especially influenced

by continental developments. In addition, crusaders returning from the Holy Lands brought back Byzantine influences. One of the four most unusual churches, the Round Church in Cambridge, is the oldest of the four surviving Norman churches built in 1130. The style was introduced by the returning crusaders in remembrance of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The production of illuminated manuscripts increased as new religious orders and monasteries were founded. The use of elaborate initials of these manuscripts was accompanied by a variety of depictions of events, monsters and people which became increasingly sophisticated as the century progressed, until this Romanesque illumination became Gothic. In architecture, the 12th and 13th centuries also experienced this transition, with the development of the early Gothic style. It was in this style that the original Westminster Abbey was constructed from 1245.

DO YOU KNOW THAT King Harold Godwin’s elder daughter Gytha married

Prince Waldemar of Novgorod, later King Waldemar of Kiev, and became Queen.

William the Conqueror, the illegitimate son of the Norman duke Robert the Devil, was also known as William the Bastard.

The Bayeux Tapestry (1067-1077), an embroided wall-hanging in coloured wool on linen, narrating the events leading up to the invasion of England by William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings in 1066, is believed to have been made by William’s wife Matilda and her ladies in waiting.

In 1940, when Britain was desperately fighting against fascist Germany, there circulated a rumour that King Arthur, who would never die, had come again to drive out the expected invader.

?

In England the period of the 14th and 15th

centuries is known as the period of war, plague and disorder. The country waged long and costly wars with France and the Low Countries on the Continent

as well as with Scotland and Wales within the British Isles. The period also saw the longest civil war in English history, the Wars of the Roses. Like nowhere else in Western Europe, the English regularly murdered their kings and the children of their kings. Famine, disease and plague dramatically reduced the population of the country by the beginning of the 15th century. Spiritual uncertainty led to the spread of heresy which swept the country. The oppression of peasants led to numerous revolts.

At the same time, the Continental wars gave Englishmen a sharper sense of national identity and the civil wars finally resulted in the establishment of an absolute monarchy. The peasants’ revolts led to the abolition of serfdom. Some heretical priests turned into famous poets.

The growing economic development of England turned it into one of the strongest European powers.

PopulationEnglish society was headed by the king and based upon

ownership of land. The richest landowner was the king who was followed by the landed nobility: dukes, earls

and knights who were no longer heavily armed horsemen but had turned into ‘gentlemen farmers’ or ‘landed gentry’.

King

LandownersLords

dukes earls knights Clergy

monasteries bishopsFreemen

CHAPTER 3England in the late Middle Ages

1. General characteristic of

the period

2. Society

Town Countryside merchants lawyersartisans workers

peasantsfarmworkers

Serfs

By the order of king Edward I all those with an income of 20 a year were made knights, even some of the yeomen farmers and formers esquires became part of the ‘landed gentry’. The word esquire was commonly used in written addresses. Vast lands belonged to the clergy – monasteries and bishops.

Freemen from towns could make a fortune through trade. A serf could become a freeman if he worked for seven years in a town craft guild. Merchants, lawyers and artisans were forming a new middle class. It was knights from the country and merchants from towns that formed the House of Commons in Parliament. The alliance between the landed gentry and merchants made Parliament more powerful.

Judicial power was exercised by the king’s courts as well as justices of the peace who were first appointed by King Edward III to deal with smaller crimes and offences. The JPs were usually less important lords of representatives of the landed gentry. Through the system of JPs, the landed gentry took the place of the nobility as the local authority. The JPs remained the only form of local government in rural areas until 1888. They still exist within the British judicial system.

By the end of the 13th century, England’s population reached its peak of about four million. As there was not enough cultivated land to ensure all peasant families with an adequate livelihood, low living standards and poor harvests led to poverty, disease and famine.

The Black DeathLonger lasting and more profound were the consequences of a

terrible disease called the ‘pestilence’. It was bubonic plague commonly known as the Black Death. The first attack occurred in southern England in 1348 and by the end of 1349 it had spread north to central Scotland. Two more outbreaks of plague fell on 1361 and 1369.

The disease was brought over to England from France in rat-infected ships. There was no escape from it: those affected died within 24 hours. By 1350, the Black Death reduced England’s population by about a third. About 1,000 villages were destroyed or depopulated.

With the reduction of labour available to cultivate the land, land owners were forced to offer wages instead of the old feudal traditions to keep their tenants. The remaining craftsmen and traders charged higher rates. All that brought the possibility of social change in the former strictly stratified society.

In 1351 Parliament passed a law called ‘The Labourers’ Statute’ which obliged any man or woman from 16 to 60 to work on the land if they had no income of their own. Those who disobeyed were executed. The law was the first attempt to control wages and prices by freezing wages and the prices of manufactured goods and by restricting the movement of labour. The peasants who survived the Black Death were forced by drastic measures to till the land of their lords for the same pay that had existed before the epidemic.

In 1377, 1378 and 1360 Parliament voted for the Poll Tax: it was a fixed four-penny tax paid for every member of the population (‘poll’ meant ‘head’). Both ‘The Labourers’ Statute’ and the Poll Tax were significant factors leading to the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt.

Peasants’ RevoltIn 1381 the impoverished peasants and townsmen revolted. Sixty

thousand people led by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw marched from Essex and Kent to London. They besieged the Tower of London where King Richard II and his court had found refuge. Central power was paralyzed. The rebels destroyed the Royal Courts, several prisons, killed the king’s men, beheaded the archbishop of Canterbury and nailed his head to the gates of the Tower. On June 14 the rebels met the king at Mile End, in the suburbs of London. Wat Tyler handed Richard their demands which later became known as the ‘Mile End Programme’. Richard, who was only 14 years of age at the time, met all their demands. He abolished the ‘Labourers’ Statute’ and serfdom. Part of the rebels left the place, bearing the king’s charters which granted them freedom. But the more radical part remained and continued the talks on the following day, in Smithfield. It was there, in Smithfield, that the leader of the revolt, Wat Tyler, was treacherously killed. The rebels were dispersed and punished. Over 100 of them were hanged. But as a result, serfdom was practically done away with by the end of the 14 th

century. It paved the way to a new social system.

Already between the 12th and the 14th centuries, new economic relations began to take shape within the feudal system. The peasants were superseded by the copy-holders, and ultimately, by the rent-paying tenants. The crafts became separated from agriculture,

and new social groups came into being: the poor townsmen (artisans and apprentices), the town middle class and the rich merchants, owners of workshops and money-lenders. The peasants who wished to get free from their masters migrated to towns. The village craftsmen travelled about the country looking for a greater market for their produce. They settled in the old towns and founded new ones near big monasteries, on the rivers and at cross-roads.

Agriculture and industry In the late Middle Ages, England’s wealth was its land. Farming

and cattle breeding were the main rural occupations. Corn and dairy goods were the main articles of agricultural produce.

England’s most important industry, textiles, was also based on the land, producing the finest wool in Europe. By 1300 the total number of sheep in England is thought to have been between 15 to 18 million.

As the demand for wool and cloth rose, Britain began to export woollen cloth produced by the first big enterprises – the manufactures. Landowners evicted peasants and enclosed their lands with ditches and fences, turning them into vast pastures. Later, Thomas More wrote about the sheep on pastures: ‘They become so great devourers and so wylde that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves’. (The phrase is often quoted in Russian as “овцы съели людей”.) In English history this policy is known as the policy of enclosures.

Other industries were less significant in creating wealth and employing labour, although tin-mining in Cornwall was internationally famous.

The new nobility, who traded in wool, merged with the rich burgesses to form a new class, the bourgeoisie, while the evicted landless farmers, poor artisans and monastic servants turned into farm laborers and wage workers or remained unemployed and joined the ranks of paupers, vagrants and highway robbers.

Wool trade

3 Economic development of England

Trade extended beyond the local boundaries. The burgesses (the future bourgeoisie) became rich through trading with Flanders, the present-day Belgium. The English shipped wool to Flanders where it was sold as raw material. Flanders had the busiest towns and ports in Europe and Flemish weavers produced the finest cloth. Flemish weavers were often invited to England to teach the English their trade. However, it was raw wool rather than finished cloth that remained the main article of export. All through the period Flanders remained England’s commercial rival.

As the European demand for wool stood high, and since no other country could match the high quality of English wool, English merchants could charge a price twice as high as in the home market. In his turn, the king taxed the export of wool as a means of increasing his own income. Wool trade was England’s most profitable business. A wool sack has remained in the House of Lords ever since that time as a symbol of England’s source of wealth.

European contactsLondon merchants derived great incomes from trade with

European countries, as London was one of the most important trading centres in Europe. It had commercial ties with the Mediterranean countries as well as the countries of Northern Europe. (See Map 8.) With the beginning of crusades the demand for oriental goods increased. Every year Venetian ships loaded with spices and silks sailed through the Straight of Gibraltar and up to the English Channel on their way to Flanders. But before they reached Flanders, they always called at ports on the southern coast of England. English merchants bought luxurious oriental goods and sold them again at a high profit. Particularly profitable was the trade in spices, which often cost their weight in gold.

As England traded with the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, an important sea route ran across the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Hull, Boston, Dover, Newcastle, Ipswich had long been important trade centres.

The merchants of the Hanseatic League as well as traders from the Baltic states and Flanders settled in London, Hull and other English ports. Closer contacts with the Continent meant more goods available for exchange. In the 14th century, the list of imports was considerably increased. From France England imported wines, salt and building stone for castles and churches; a greater quantity and variety

Map 8(From S.D. Zaitseva. Early Britain. Moscow, 1975.)

of cloths and spices was brought from the East. In its turn, England exported wool, tin, cattle and lead. At first, the bulk of the export trade was in the hands of the Venetian and Flemish merchants, but with the growth of trade at the beginning of the 14th century, more than half the trade fell into the hands of English merchants.

During the 14th century English merchants began to establish trading stations called ‘factories’ in different places in Europe. Often they replaced the old town guilds as powerful trading institutions. In 1363 a group of 26 English merchants who called themselves the Merchant Staplers, were granted the royal authority to export wool to the Continent through the French port of Calais. In return, they

4. Growth of towns

promised to lend money to English monarchs. The word ‘staple’ became an international term used by merchants to denote that certain goods could be sold only in particular places. Calais became the staple for English wool and defeated rival English factories in other foreign cities. The staple was a convenient arrangement for the established merchants, as it prevented competition and was a safe source of income for the Crown, which could tax exports more easily.

Free towns

The changes in the economic and social conditions were accompanied by the intermixture of people coming from different regions, the growth of

towns with a mixed population, and the strengthening of social ties between the various regions.

The growth of trade promoted the growth of towns. (See Map 9) London, the residence of the Norman kings, became the most populous town of England. Two centuries before, kings had realised that towns could become effective centres of royal authority and balance the power of the local nobility. As a result, many towns got ‘charters of freedom’ which freed them from feudal duties to the local lord. These charters, however, had to be paid for, but they were worth the money. Towns could then raise their own taxes on coming goods. They could also have their own courts, controlled by the town merchants, on condition that they paid an annual tax to the king. People who lived inside the town walls were practically free from feudal rule. It was the beginning of a middle class and a capitalist economy.

Map 9(From S.D. Zaitseva, Early Britain, Moscow, 1975.)

Guilds

In towns, the central role was played by guilds. These were brotherhoods of merchants or artisans. The word ‘guild’ came from the Saxon word ‘gildan’ which meant ‘to pay’, as members of guilds had to pay towards the cost of the brotherhood. The right to form a guild was sometimes included in a town’s charter of freedom. It was from the members of the guild that the town’s leaders were usually chosen. The guilds defended the rights of their members and saw to the high standards of the trade.

During the 14th century, as larger towns continued to grow, there appeared craft guilds: all members of each of the guilds belonged to the same trade or craft. The earliest craft guilds were those of weavers in London and Oxford. Each guild tried to protect its own trade interests. Members of the guilds had the right to produce, buy or sell their particular goods without paying special town taxes. But they also had to make sure their goods were of a certain quality, and had to keep to agreed prices so as not to undermine the trade of other members of the guild.

In London the development of craft guilds went further than elsewhere. The rich upper part of the craft community, the so-called livery companies, developed into large financial institutions. Today they pay an important role in the government of the City of London, and the yearly choice of the Lord Mayor of London.

Causes of the warThe 14th and 15th centuries were also marked by

the Hundred Years War which lasted from 1337 to 1453. The causes of the war were both political and

economic. Politically, King Edward III of England claimed the French throne and wanted to get back the English possessions in France which had already been lost. It was a good enough reason for starting a war. But there were far more important reasons. The king of France, who ceased Gascony and Burgundy, and the French feudal lords who wanted to better themselves by seizing the free towns of Flanders, deprived England of its traditional wool market. England could not afford the destruction of overseas trade. The threat to their trade with Flanders persuaded the English merchants that war against France was inevitable. In 1337 Edward III declared war on France.

5. The Hundred Years War

The beginning of the campaign was rather successful for England because of its military supremacy. Due to the newly invented cannons the English defeated the French army in several battles, the most important of which were the battles at Crecy in 1346 and at Poitiers in 1356. By 1360, the English had regained their lands on the Continent. But then the tide of war turned and the territories gained at the beginning of the war were lost in the next fifteen years. At the beginning of the 15th century, Henry V, who is remembered as the most heroic of English kings, undertook successful military campaigns in France. In 1415 he won the battle of Agincourt, in which the French outnumbered the English by more than three to one. In accordance with the Treaty of Troyes (1420), Henry V of England was recognized as heir to the French king. Moreover, Henry married the French king’s daughter Katherine of Valois. But Henry V never took the French throne as he died a few months before the French monarch. His nine-month-old son inherited the crowns of England and France.

Joan of Arc After Henry V’s death in 1422, Joan of Arc rallied the French and

had Charles II of France crowned as the lawful King of France. The English were gradually expelled from France, until only Calais remained in their possession.

Joan of Arc, or the Maid of Orleans, is the French national heroine. She claimed to hear voices urging her to help the dauphin, Charles II, to regain the French crown from the English. Joan convinced Charles of her mission, and led a large army to raise the siege of Orleans in 1429. Charles was crowned in Reims the same year. In 1430 Joan was captured by the Burgundians who sold her to the English. Joan was tried for heresy and sorcery by an ecclesiastical court at Rouen. She was condemned and burned at stake. King Charles II of France, who could have saved her, turned a blind eye on the trial and the execution. He was evidently frightened that he had been assisted by a witch. Joan’s condemnation was annulled in 1456 and she was canonized in the 20 th

century, in 1920. The feast is celebrated on May 30.

After the end of the Hundred Years War, the feudal lords and their hired armies came home from France, and life in England became more turbulent than ever. The baronial families at the king’s court,

6. Wars of the Roses

the House of York and the House of Lancaster started a series of wars fighting for possession of the throne. In the 19th century the novelist Walter Scott named them the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) after their emblems – the white rose, which was the emblem of the House of York, and the red rose, which symbolized the House of Lancaster. During the wars, more than sixty aristocratic families controlling England divided into the Yorkists and the Lancastrians. Many of them were related by marriage. Most noblemen still kept their private armies after returning from the war in France and subdued the local population into obeying them. Thus the struggle for the throne turned into a civil war.

King Henry VI, who was the founder of Eaton college (1440) and King’s College at Cambridge, was a scholarly man but suffered from insanity. Thus true power was in the hands of rival ministers of the Houses of York and Lancaster, notably Richard, Duke of York, and Edmund Beaufort, the Second Duke of Somerset, both descendants of Edward III.

The war began when Richard, Duke of York, claimed the protectorship of the crown after the mental breakdown of King Henry in 1454. In 1455 Richard defeated the King’s army at St. Albans, the first battle in the Wars of the Roses, and in 1460 claimed the throne to himself. As for Henry VI, he was murdered in the Tower in 1471.

After Richard’s death in battle, the throne went to his son Edward IV. When Edward IV died, his two young sons were put in the Tower by their uncle Richard who took the crown as Richard III. The two princes were never heard of again. Richard III was unpopular both with the Yorkists and the Lancastrians that is why when in 1485 Henry Tudor, a challenger with a very distant claim to royal blood landed in England with Breton soldiers to claim the throne, he was joined by many Lancastrians and Yorkists. Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth and was crowned king in the battlefield.

The Wars of the Roses lasted thirty years and ended with the establishment of a stronger royal power under Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty. In 1486 Henry VII married the daughter of Edward IV of the York house, thus uniting the rival houses. The wars demonstrated the danger of allowing powerful nobles to build up private armies. As a reminder of the war, today the floral symbol of England is the red Tudor rose.

Church and religionA popular discontent with the Catholic

church went side by side with the Lollard movement which opposed the traditional

doctrine of the English clergy. The word ‘lollard’ was probably derived from lollaer, ‘a mumbler of prayers’. It was a nickname given to the poorer priests who travelled from place to place propagating the ideas of John Wycliff, the only university intellectual in the history of medieval heresy and a forerunner of the English Reformation. Wycliff gained reputation and support among noblemen, courtiers and scholars for his criticism of the Church’s wealth and the unworthiness of too many of its clergy. His increasingly radical ideas led to his condemnation and withdrawal from Oxford. Wycliff was the first priest to deny the basic principle of the Roman Catholic Church – the miraculous change of things from one substance into another, particularly the conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. After Wycliff’s death, the Pope ordered his works to be destroyed, his body to be dug out and burnt, and the ashes to be thrown into the river.

Rebirth of English literatureOne of the most famous Lollard priests was William Langland

(1334-1400) who is remembered for his poem The Visions of William Concerning Piers the Ploughman (now known as Piers Plowman), a dream allegory popular in the Middle Ages. The poem deals with the vision of a peasant, Piers Ploughman, who describes the hard life of the common people. He explains that it is the peasant who works to keep the lord and the monks in comfort. The author stresses the idea that every person is obliged to work – be it a peasant, a lord or a priest. Every now and then the author suddenly darts from allegory to real history. The main characters of the poem are human qualities, such as Virtue, Truth and Greed. The written text of the poem is dated 1362. Before and during the revolt of 1381 the text of the poem was used in proclamations which easily spread among the peasants and townspeople.

Another follower of Wycliff was John Ball, one of the leaders of the peasants’ revolt. He is best remembered for his proclamations in which he used quotations from ‘Piers Ploughman’ and Wycliff’s works. He often ended his speeches with Wycliff’s famous words which then turned into a saying:

7. Pre-renaissance in England

When Adam delved and Eve spanwho was then the Gentleman?

Geoffrey ChaucerThe greatest writer of the 14th century was Geoffrey Chaucer

(1340-1400). Whereas his predecessor, Langland, expressed the thoughts of the peasants and Wycliff – the protest against the church, Chaucer was the writer of the new class, the bourgeoisie. He was not, however, the preacher of bourgeois ideology but just a writer of the world: he wrote about the things he saw, and described the people he met. Chaucer was the first to break away from medieval forms and paved the way to realism in literature.

Geoffrey Chaucer was supposedly born in 1340 in London, shortly after the Hundred Years War broke out. John Chaucer, his father, was a London vintner (a wine merchant). Very little is known about Chaucer’s early years. We do know, however, that his parents always lived in rented houses and gave their son some education. He is said to have gone to St. Paul’s school.

Although some researchers claim that he must have been educated at Oxford or Cambridge, no data can prove that. Most probably he had no university education.

His father, who had some connections with the court, hoped for a courtier’s career for his son. At the age of 16 or 17 Geoffrey was page to a lady at the court of Edward III. From an old account book we learn that Geoffrey Chaucer received several articles of clothing ‘of his lady’s gift’ and that now and then he was paid small sums of money ‘for necessaries’. Those facts indicate that he was a favourite with the royal family.

During the Hundred Years War, when he was about 20, Chaucer was in France serving as an esquire (an arms-bearer) to a knight. He was then taken prisoner by the French. When his friends raised money to ransom him, even Edward III contributed 16 pounds towards his ransom.

On his return to England, Chaucer passed into attendance on John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the fourth son of the king. It was there that he met a young lady named Phillipa who became his wife in 1366. At about the same time Chaucer started writing his first poems. It is

peculiar that he never wrote a single line of poetry to his young wife: probably, the marriage was not a romantic one.

At different periods of his life Chaucer was a student, a courtier, a soldier, a diplomat, a customs official and a Member of Parliament for Kent. He mixed freely with all sorts of people and in his works gave a true and vivid picture of contemporary England.

Chaucer’s earliest poems were written in imitation of French romances. He translated from French the famous allegorical poem of the 13th century, “The Romance of the Rose”. These years are usually described as the first, or the French period of Chaucer’s writings.

The second period is known as Italian. In the early 1370s Chaucer travelled much and lived a busy life. He made three trips to Italy where he acquainted himself with Italian literature. Italy made a deep impression on him. Italian literature opened to Chaucer a new world of art and taught him to appreciate the value of national literature. It was then that he wrote The Parliament of Birds, an allegorical poem satirizing Parliament, Troilus and Cressid, the first psychological novel in English, and The Legend of Good Women, a dream poem which describes nine famous women of twenty. The poem forms a bridge between the Italian period and the next, English period.

When Chaucer came back to England, he received the post of the Controller of the Customs for wool and hides in the port of London. He held this position for ten years and apparently had little time to write. Much of his work remained unfinished. But Chaucer’s fame as a poet was spreading although his writings were copied by hand and were very expensive. The court admired his graceful way of writing and his ability of being satirical without being unkind.

In the late 1370s Chaucer was appointed Knight for the shire of Kent, that is became a Member of Parliament representing Kent. Chaucer often had to travel from London to Kent and back and could observe the pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Travelling was dangerous at the time, and several times Chaucer was robbed of all the money that was in his possession. Later he described his experiences in The Canterbury Tales, the greatest work that brought him world fame.

However, his duties grew very tedious to the poet and several times he petitioned the king for permission to give up his post. Finally, the king granted him a pension. But when his patron John of Gaunt went to Spain, Chaucer lost his pension and became so poor that he even had

to borrow money for food. When the new king, Henry IV, came to the throne in 1399, the poet addressed him with the poem The Complaints of Chaucer to His Empty Purse. As a result, his old pension was given back to him and a new one granted. Chaucer died in 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey in London.

Chaucer’s greatest work, The Canterbury Tales, is a series of stories told by a number of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. In the Prologue Chaucer makes a rapid portrait of 30 men and women from all walks of life. Nearly all of them are described with such particularity that suggests the idea that Chaucer was drawing his portraits from individuals in real life.

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer sums up all types of stories that existed at the time: the Knight tells a romance, the Nun – a story of a saint, the Miller – a fabliau, the Priest tells a fable and so on. The Canterbury Tales is as popular in England as Decameron is on the Continent.

Chaucer did not only overshadow all his contemporary writers. He is rightly considered to be the greatest English writer before the age of Shakespeare.

In many modern manuals on the history of the English language and English literature, Chaucer is described as the founder of the English literary language. He wrote in a dialect which in the main coincided with that used in documents produced in London shortly before his time and for a long time after. Although he did not actually ‘create’ the literary language, as a poet of outstanding talent, he made better use of it than his contemporaries. He set up a pattern of literary language to be followed in the 14th and 15th centuries. Chaucer’s literary language based on the mixed dialect of London is known as classical Middle English. Chaucer’s poems were copied so many times that over 60 manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales have survived up to this day. His books were among the first to be printed in England, a hundred years after their composition. A hundred years later, William Caxton, the first English printer, called him ‘The wonderful father of our language.’

William Caxton

The 15th century saw an event of outstanding cultural significance in Europe. In 1438 Johannes Gutenberg printed in Germany the first European book

known as The Gutenberg Bible. The idea of printing quickly spread all over Europe. The first English printer was William Caxton.

Caxton was a farmer’s son born in Kent in 1422. At the age of 16 he went to London where he became an apprentice to a company of London merchants who traded in silk and woollen cloth. When his master left for Flanders, William followed him and spent over three decades of his life in Bruges. The boy quickly learned several European languages: French, Italian and German. He read a lot for pleasure and translated books from French into English. When his master died, he left most of his money to Caxton, who had become his partner by the time. During a visit to Cologne, William saw a printing press and learned the method of printing. In 1473 he bought a printing press of his own and in 1476 printed the first English book. It was Caxton’s own

translation of the ancient story of Troy. A few years later Caxton moved to London and set his printing press at Westminster. Later, he bought another printing press which was set up at Oxford. During the next 15 years Caxton printed 65 books, both in the original and in translation. One of the first books to be printed was

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In 1484 William Caxton printed Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Athur, the fullest record of the adventures of the knights of the Round Table.

Caxton made a great contribution to standardizing the English language. The concept of the norm had not existed before, it only appeared and was accepted as printed books spread all over England. The development of the printing technique promoted the spread of literacy and the literary norm.

The development of literacy and the English languageLate medieval literacy was not confined to the noble, clerical or

government classes. Some artisans, merchants, tailors, mariners could also read and write. Already in the 1470s, the rules and regulations of some craft guilds insisted on a recognized standard of literacy for their apprentices. The fact that wealthy laymen owned small libraries of poems, prophecies, chronicles and even recipes reflects their reading habits. Books were carefully listed in their wills.

The spread of literacy and the increased use of the English language were twin developments of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They reflected the feelings of patriotism and nationhood. The causes of

this quiet linguistic revolution were complex, but among them was patriotism generated by the long French war, the popularity of Lollardy, the lead given by the Crown and the nobility and the greater participation of the English speaking men in the affairs of Parliament. A further factor was the emergence in the 14th century of London as the settled capital of the kingdom, with York as another important administrative centre and Bristol as the second commercial centre. The regional dialect that was spoken in each of the three centres inevitably had to become comprehensible to the others. The dialect of London prevailed although it was greatly influenced by the Midlands dialect.

Music, theatre and artThe 15th century witnessed a new wave of Robin Hood ballads. It

was also the time of minstrels as English poetry was meant to be chanted and sung. The nobles were taught to play musical instruments, sing and dance. Even at a barber’s, an English lord or a knight might see a lute and take a few cords. Sometimes barbers invited musicians to attract more clients. Folk songs took the form of carols, or polyphonic songs. Polyphony greatly influenced the prominent English composer of the 15th century John Dunstable. The popularity and importance of music was so great that in the 16th century Oxford and Cambridge universities introduced the degrees of Doctor and Bachelor of Music.

Huge audiences were attracted by plays and performances of different kinds: mysteries and miracles, or plays about the miraculous things performed by saints. Another type of play was moralite where the characters were abstract ideas, such as Friendship, Death, Power, Kindness, Virtue, etc. These plays were performed in market squares and during town fairs. The performances were arranged and paid for by merchants and artisans. Already in the 15th century actors were professional.

In the 14th and 15th centuries the English art of portrait painting made a leap forward. The portraits acquired individual characters and features. The most famous work of art of the period is the portrait of Richard II painted in the 1390s. It shows a young man in royal attire whose face is not yet spoiled by power and passion. The portrait of Margaret Beaufort belonging to the second half of the 15th century, depicts a grieving young woman concentrated on her prayer.

The 14th and 15th centuries are known as the period of Pre-Renaissance in England.

DO YOU KNOW THAT When Richard I was taken prisoner, over half the price of

his ransom was paid in wool. Any book printed before 1501 is called an incunabula. The first English book was printed in Bruges, Flanders. Caxton was the first to introduce the use of the apostrophe

as a norm.

?

ASSIGNMENTS (1)

1. Review the material of Section 1 and do the following test. Check

yourself by the key at the end of the book.

Test 11. The Anglo-Saxon tribes were

a. the Angles; b. the Scots; c. the Britons; d. the Jutes.2. The Romans lived in

b. villages; b. towns3. The Tower of London was built by

a. the Normans; b. the Celts; c. the Romans.4. The English “chester” (as in Manchester) comes from the ___ word “castra”.

b. Latin; b. Saxon; c. Norman.5. The days of the week take their names from the names of ___ gods.

a. Germanic; b. Celtic; c. Roman.6. Christianity was brought to England ___ 1066.

b. before; b. after.7. The Venerable Bede wrote

a. the first Anglo-Saxon history; b. the first code of laws; c. the Bible in English.

8. “Beowulf” is a poem about the adventures of a ___ hero.a. Scandinavian; b. Anglo-Saxon; c. Celtic.

9. William the Conqueror won the battle atb. Waterloo; b. Hastings; c. Trafalgar.

10. The first registration of the population was held undera. the Romans; b. the Danes; c. the Normans.

11. The first English printer was _____ . a. Johannes Gutenberg; b. William Caxton; c. Geoffrey Chaucer

12. The process of evicting peasants and turning farmlands into pastures is known as the policy of _____ .

a. the open field; b. manufactures; c. enclosures2. Get ready to speak on the following topics:The first settlers on the British Isles. Stonehenge. The Celts on the British

Isles; traces of Celtic culture in present-day Britain.The Roman conquest of Britain. The impact of the conquest on the

development of culture on the British Isles; traces of Roman culture in present-day Britain.

The Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain. The origin of the English language. The impact of Christianity on the Anglo-Saxon culture. Anglo-Saxon literature (Caedmon, the Venerable Bede, Beowulf).

The Scandinavian invasion of Britain, its impact on the political and cultural life of the country (Danelaw, King Canute). The role of King Alfred the Great in the history of Britain.

Distinctive features of the language in the Old English period. Celtic, Latin and Scandinavian borrowings in the English language. The history of English place-names.

The Norman conquest of Britain, its impact on the political and cultural life of the country. The Domesday Book. The first universities. Magna Carta and the beginning of Parliament. Thomas Becket. English literature of the 11th-13th centuries (Robin Hood, King Arthur). Changes in the language.

The economic development of England in the 14th-15th centuries. The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381; the abolition of slavery. The Hundred Years War. The Wars of the Roses. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales. Changes in the language in the Middle English period. William Caxton.

III. Topics for presentations: The invasions of early Britain and their impact on the political,

economic and cultural development of the country.

The Norman Conquest and its impact on various spheres of life in England.

England’s economic growth in the 14th-15th centuries.