Fifty Things You Need To Know About British History. Hugh Williams
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Название: Fifty Things You Need To Know About British History
Автор: Hugh Williams
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007309504
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Towards the end of his reign, in 1085, William ordered a survey of his newly conquered kingdom and by the following year had received its first draft. ‘The Domesday Book’ is an extraordinarily detailed document about all the land lying south of the rivers Ribble and Tees, which at that time formed the border with Scotland. ‘No single hide nor a yard of land, nor indeed one ox nor one cow nor one pig … was left out’, according to one account of its compilation – an indication of what an exacting master William the Conqueror was. Everything he needed to know for the purpose of raising money, or controlling the population, was in there. Landholders, tenants, slaves, freemen, woodlands, rivers, meadows, ploughs, fish, cattle, churches and mills are all meticulously recorded. It is a unique document about the British state at a crucial point in its development: for William it must have represented a very satisfying inventory of conquest.
The battle marked the moment when Britain emerged from the Dark and Early Middle Ages into the Medieval Period.
William died in 1087 before the book was completed, but by that time far-seeing changes to the way the country was run had taken place. He confiscated land from its previous owners and redistributed it among his loyal aristocratic followers. Poaching deer was forbidden and punishable by mutilation and, later, death. The new landowners could now keep the poor at bay and under their control. The grant of land came with the obligation to raise soldiers for the King whenever necessary: the lord gave some of his property to knights who in return had to supply forty days of military service as required. William also carried out Church reforms, separating Church and lay courts and enforcing celibacy on the priesthood. These great changes created a feudal structure that would remain at the heart of British society throughout the Middle Ages. The country’s language changed too. The Normans spoke French and this began to permeate existing Anglo-Saxon.
Human beings tend to adapt. History is as much about evolution as it is about sudden, transforming events. The Battle of Hastings was a single episode of momentous significance. Without doubt it marked the moment when Britain emerged from the Dark and Early Middle Ages into the Medieval Period. The country was united and its systems of government and administration integrated into a single machine. But William the Conqueror used what he found: he retained, for instance, many features of the Anglo-Saxon legal system, albeit converted to suit Norman purposes. Like the Romans a thousand years before, or the German tribes who flooded across Britain in the wake of their departure; like the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes who fought each other and lived side by side in the centuries that followed, the Normans made sure that Britain gave to them at the same time as they gave to it. The success of the Norman Conquest lay in its flexibility as much as in its rigour.
The population of England in 1066 was about 1.5 million. The whole country collapsed before a Norman force of a few thousand men. For a thousand years it had suffered conquest and intrusion, an island which was as much a prison as a fortress. After 1066 things began to change. The people became increasingly integrated. They began to look outwards. Their island became their greatest protection and, unaware of the significance of what they were doing, they began to put together the first tiny pieces of a European nation.
Some examples of British food through the ages
Roman Britain: Dormice fattened in jars of nuts
Norman Britain: Suckling pigs’ trotters and ears in onion sauce
Tudor Britain: Roasted peacock served in its feathers, with a gilded beak
Eighteenth century: Udders stuffed with veal
Nineteenth century: Roasted ortolans (tiny songbirds), eaten whole
Second World War rationing: ‘Apricot’ flan, made from carrot, jam and mashed potato
The Dissolution of the Monasteries
Between 1536 and 1541 Henry VIII set about destroying the power of the Catholic Church in England by closing down its monasteries. The process was one of the most important acts of the English Reformation. It created the biggest social and political change in Britain since the Norman Conquest.
Thomas Cromwell was the epitome of Tudor success. He was born in Putney in about 1485, the son of a brewer and blacksmith, and rose to become the King’s Chief Minister and Earl of Essex. He was one of the new men of sixteenth-century Britain. In his youth he seems to have fallen out with his father and worked abroad, perhaps as a soldier for a while, visiting Venice, Florence and Antwerp. On his return he found work with Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, who may have recognised similar qualities as his own in his young employee because they came from similar social backgrounds: he himself was the son of a butcher from Ipswich. When Wolsey fell, Cromwell survived, and a few years later he became Secretary to Henry VIII, a position which made him the political architect of the King’s break with Rome. There is a famous Holbein portrait of Cromwell at the height of his career – a great bulk of power with a broad, fleshy face, his eyes narrowed and watchful. Tough, clever and cosmopolitan he was the man who drove through the administrative and ecclesiastical reforms that broke the power of the Church and strengthened the Tudor monarchy. They profoundly changed the future course of British history. They were, in their way, a revolution.
The court of Henry VIII must have been a bewildering place. The King himself was a man of virulent energy. He loved music and learning as well as physical pastimes such as hunting, tennis – and the pursuit of women. This energy was controllable while it was confined to the enhancement of his social life, but once it spilled over into the affairs of state it was violently disruptive. Henry was self-willed. He did not make nice distinctions between his own wishes and the wider policy of the state: as far as he was concerned they often amounted to the same thing. By the late 1520s he had decided that he needed to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon. She had failed to produce a son which he felt the Tudor dynasty would need if it were to survive and anyway he wanted to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn. He asked the Pope, Clement VII, to annul his marriage. The Pope refused, but his reasons were as much pragmatic as moral. He was under the control of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, whose mutinous troops had sacked Rome in 1527. Charles was Catherine of Aragon’s nephew and the Pope dared not offend him by granting Henry’s wish. Henry became impatient. He dismissed his Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, for failing to persuade the Pope of his requirements – Wolsey died before he could be brought to trial and almost certainly executed – and, under the influence of Thomas Cromwell and his newly appointed archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, began to organise a break with the Roman Catholic Church.
These events took place against a background of great religious change in Europe. The attack on the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church led by reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin had taken root and Protestantism was developing fast as a new, coherent form of religious worship. Henry’s attack on papal authority was seen in Britain as a natural part of this process, but it was not at this stage a Protestant movement: far from it. The ideas of Luther and his followers were increasing in popularity, but they were still a long way short of demolishing people’s belief in the Roman Catholic Church which had been at the centre of their lives for centuries. After he dismissed Cardinal Wolsey, Henry turned to Sir Thomas More to be his Lord Chancellor. More was a devout Catholic. He disapproved of Lutheran teachings which he regarded as heresy СКАЧАТЬ