The Middle Ages

This section covers medieval Britain — roughly the period after the Norman Conquest — including wars with Wales, Scotland, Ireland and France, the Black Death, the origins of Parliament and common law, the growth of a national English identity, and the Wars of the Roses.

War at Home and Abroad

English kings fought Welsh, Scottish and Irish noblemen for control of their lands. In Wales, King Edward I's 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan annexed Wales to the Crown of England, backed by huge castles like Conwy and Caernarvon. By the mid-15th century the last Welsh rebellions had been defeated and English laws and language introduced.

In Scotland the English were less successful — in 1314 Robert the Bruce defeated the English at the Battle of Bannockburn, and Scotland remained unconquered. In Ireland, the English gradually built settlements, eventually ruling an area around Dublin known as the Pale, while other Irish lords accepted the English king's authority.

English kings also fought abroad: many knights joined the Crusades, and England fought France in the Hundred Years War (which actually lasted 116 years). At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, King Henry V's outnumbered army defeated the French. The English left France in the 1450s.

The Black Death

Under the Norman feudal system, the king granted land to lords in exchange for military support; most peasants were serfs working their lord's land in exchange for a small plot of their own. In the north of Scotland and in Ireland, land was owned by clans.

In 1348, the Black Death (probably a form of plague) killed around a third of the population of England, Scotland and Wales — one of the worst disasters in British history. With a smaller population, labour became scarce, peasants demanded higher wages, new social classes emerged (including the gentry), and towns grew as people left the countryside. In Ireland the disease killed many in the Pale, temporarily shrinking English-controlled territory.

Legal and Political Changes

In 1215, King John's noblemen forced him to agree to the Magna Carta — a charter establishing that even the king was subject to the law, protecting the nobility's rights and limiting the king's power to tax or legislate without consultation.

English parliaments developed from the king's council of advisers, eventually splitting into two houses: the House of Lords (nobility, landowners, bishops) and the House of Commons (knights and wealthy townspeople, though only a small part of the population could vote). Scotland developed a similar Parliament with three "Estates" — lords, commons and clergy.

A Distinct Identity

After the Conquest, Norman French and Anglo-Saxon gradually combined into one English language — words like "park" and "beauty" come from French, "apple," "cow" and "summer" from Anglo-Saxon. By 1400, English was the preferred language of the royal court and Parliament, and official documents were written in it.

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written before 1400, was one of the first books printed in England, by William Caxton. In Scotland, many continued to speak Gaelic, and the Scots language developed, producing poets such as John Barbour.

This was also an age of great building: castles for defence, and cathedrals such as Lincoln Cathedral, often featuring stained glass — the glass at York Minster is a famous example. England was an important trading nation, exporting wool, and attracted skilled workers from abroad, including weavers from France and glass manufacturers from Italy.

The Wars of the Roses

In 1455, civil war broke out over who should be king of England — the House of Lancaster (symbol: red rose) against the House of York (symbol: white rose). The wars ended at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where Richard III of York was killed. Henry Tudor of Lancaster became King Henry VII, married Elizabeth of York, and united the two houses — founding the House of Tudor, symbolised by a red rose with a white rose inside it.

Check That You Understand

• The wars that took place in the Middle Ages
• How Parliament began to develop
• The way that land ownership worked
• The effects of the Black Death
• The development of English language and culture
• The Wars of the Roses and the founding of the House of Tudor