293-613: England in the Middle Ages concerns the history of England during the medieval period , from the end of the 5th century through to the start of the early modern period in 1485. When England emerged from the collapse of the Roman Empire , the economy was in tatters and many of the towns abandoned. After several centuries of Germanic immigration, new identities and cultures began to emerge, developing into kingdoms that competed for power. A rich artistic culture flourished under
586-411: A Saxon culture in the south, with local groups establishing regiones , small polities ruled over by powerful families and individuals. By the 7th century, some rulers, including those of Wessex , East Anglia , Essex , and Kent , had begun to term themselves kings, living in villae regales , royal centres, and collecting tribute from the surrounding regiones ; these kingdoms are often referred to as
879-457: A Crusade never actually left, often because the individual lacked sufficient funds to undertake the journey. Raising funds to travel typically involved crusaders selling or mortgaging their lands and possessions, which affected their families and, at times, considerably affected the economy as a whole. England had a diverse geography in the medieval period, from the Fenlands of East Anglia or
1172-453: A better standard of living than ever before, but the amount of work being done by women may have increased. Many other women travelled to the towns and cities, to the point where they outnumbered men in some settlements. There they worked with their husbands, or in a limited number of occupations, including spinning , making clothes, victualling and as servants. Some women became full-time ale brewers, until they were pushed out of business by
1465-545: A bid to regain these possessions. John's efforts to raise revenues, combined with his fractious relationships with many of the English barons, led to confrontation in 1215, an attempt to restore peace through the signing of Magna Carta , and finally the outbreak of the First Barons' War . John died having fought the rebel barons and their French backers to a stalemate, and royal power was re-established by barons loyal to
1758-911: A clear identity within English society, and professional groups with a distinct identity, such as lawyers, engaged in open fighting with others in cities such as London. The Jewish community played an important role in England throughout much of the period. The first Jews arrived in England in the aftermath of the Norman invasion, when William the Conqueror brought over wealthy members of the Rouen community in Normandy to settle in London. The Jewish community expanded out across England and provided essential money-lending and banking services that were otherwise banned by
2051-705: A colonial power. During the rule of the Stuarts, the English Civil War took place between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, which resulted in the execution of King Charles I (1649) and the establishment of a series of republican governments—first, a Parliamentary republic known as the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653), then a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell known as
2344-653: A concern. England became dominated by the Godwin family , who had taken advantage of the Danish killings to acquire huge wealth. When Edward died in 1066, Harold Godwinson claimed the throne, defeating his rival Norwegian claimant, Harald Hardrada , at the battle of Stamford Bridge . In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy , took advantage of the English succession crisis to begin the Norman Conquest . With an army of Norman followers and mercenaries, he defeated Harold at
2637-538: A consequence of inheritance arrangements, marriage settlements and church purchases. In the 11th century, the royal position worsened further, as the ealdormen rapidly built up huge new estates, making them collectively much more powerful than the king—this contributed to the political instability of the final Anglo-Saxon years. As time went by, the position of the churls deteriorated, as their rights were slowly eroded and their duties to their lords increased. The kingdom of Wessex, which eventually laid claim to England as
2930-517: A coup, led by Isabella's son Edward III , in 1330. Like his grandfather, Edward III took steps to restore royal power, but during the 1340s the Black Death arrived in England. The losses from the epidemic, and the recurring plagues that followed it, significantly affected events in England for many years to come. Meanwhile, Edward, under pressure from France in Aquitaine, made a challenge for
3223-421: A few families and still others lived on isolated farms spread over the countryside. There were also areas where the pattern was a mix of two or more of those systems. Unlike in the late Roman period, there was no sharp break between the legal status of the free peasant and the aristocrat, and it was possible for a free peasant's family to rise into the aristocracy over several generations through military service to
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#17327653832773516-474: A few forts become more and more intensively occupied, suggesting a degree of regional centralisation. Around this time the earliest mentions of Britain appear in the annals of history. The first historical mention of the region is from the Massaliote Periplus , a sailing manual for merchants thought to date to the 6th century BC, and Pytheas of Massilia wrote of his voyage of discovery to
3809-840: A full-scale invasion and annexation was inevitable. After Caesar's expeditions, the Romans began a serious and sustained attempt to conquer Britain in AD ;43, at the behest of Emperor Claudius . They landed in Kent with four legions and defeated two armies led by the kings of the Catuvellauni tribe, Caratacus and Togodumnus , in battles at the Medway and the Thames. Togodumnus was killed, and Caratacus fled to Wales. The Roman force, led by Aulus Plautius , waited for Claudius to come and lead
4102-601: A king to rule over them all. By the late sixth century, this arrangement had been replaced by a permanent monarchy, the Kingdom of the Lombards . The invasions brought new ethnic groups to Europe, although some regions received a larger influx of new peoples than others. In Gaul for instance, the invaders settled much more extensively in the north-east than in the south-west. Slavs settled in Central and Eastern Europe and
4395-463: A long shadow over English history. Henry I had required the leading barons, ecclesiastics and officials in Normandy and England, to take an oath to accept Matilda (also known as Empress Maud, Henry I's daughter) as his heir. England was far less than enthusiastic to accept an outsider, and a woman, as their ruler. There is some evidence that Henry was unsure of his own hopes and the oath to make Matilda his heir. Probably Henry hoped Matilda would have
4688-646: A mass Anglo-Saxon immigration from the European continent, affecting 50%–100% of the male gene pool in central England. This was based on the similarity of the DNA collected from small English towns to that found in Friesland . A 2003 study with samples coming from larger towns, found a large variance in amounts of continental "Germanic" ancestry in different parts of England. In the study, such markers typically ranged from 20% and 45% in southern England, with East Anglia,
4981-475: A number of victories, but he never penetrated further than Hertfordshire and could not establish a province. However, his invasions mark a turning-point in British history. Control of trade, the flow of resources and prestige goods, became ever more important to the elites of Southern Britain; Rome steadily became the biggest player in all their dealings, as the provider of great wealth and patronage. In retrospect,
5274-499: A pantheon of gods including Odin , Thor and Ullr , combined with a belief in a final, apocalyptic battle called Ragnarok . The Norse settlers in England were converted relatively quickly, assimilating their beliefs into Christianity in the decades following the occupation of York, which the Archbishop had survived. The process was largely complete by the early 10th century and enabled England's leading Churchmen to negotiate with
5567-567: A powerful lord. Roman city life and culture changed greatly in the early Middle Ages. Although Italian cities remained inhabited, they contracted significantly in size. Rome, for instance, shrank from a population of hundreds of thousands to around 30,000 by the end of the 6th century. Roman temples were converted into Christian churches and city walls remained in use. In Northern Europe, cities also shrank, while civic monuments and other public buildings were raided for building materials. The establishment of new kingdoms often meant some growth for
5860-466: A practical skill rather than a sign of elite status. In the 4th century, Jerome (d. 420) dreamed that God rebuked him for spending more time reading Cicero than the Bible . By the 6th century, Gregory of Tours (d. 594) had a similar dream, but instead of being chastised for reading Cicero, he was chastised for learning shorthand . By the late 6th century, the principal means of religious instruction in
6153-468: A result of intermarriage and cohabitation. By the end of the 12th century, and possibly as early as the 1150, contemporary commentators believed the two peoples to be blending, and the loss of the Duchy in 1204 reinforced this trend. The resulting society still prized wider French cultural values, however, and French remained the language of the court, business and international affairs, even if Parisians mocked
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#17327653832776446-740: A rising Wessex, and challenges from smaller kingdoms, kept Mercian power in check, and by the early 9th century the "Mercian Supremacy" was over. This period has been described as the Heptarchy , though this term has now fallen out of academic use. The term arose because the seven kingdoms of Northumbria , Mercia , Kent , East Anglia , Essex , Sussex and Wessex were the main polities of south Britain. Other small kingdoms were also politically important across this period: Hwicce , Magonsaete , Lindsey and Middle Anglia. The first recorded landing of Vikings took place in 787 in Dorsetshire , on
6739-468: A scarce workforce. Statute of Labourers 1351 was introduced to limit wages and to prevent the consumption of luxury goods by the lower classes, with prosecutions coming to take up most of the legal system's energy and time. A poll tax was introduced in 1377 that spread the costs of the war in France more widely across the whole population. The tensions spilled over into violence in the summer of 1381 in
7032-616: A shrine or a particular church, either to do penance for a perceived sin, or to seek relief from an illness or other condition. Some pilgrims travelled further, either to more distant sites within Britain or, in a few cases, onto the continent. During the Anglo-Saxon period, many shrines were built on former pagan sites which became popular pilgrimage destinations, while other pilgrims visited prominent monasteries and sites of learning. Senior nobles or kings would travel to Rome , which
7325-629: A single Hallstatt burial is known from Britain, and even here the evidence is inconclusive. On the whole, burials largely disappear across England, and the dead were disposed of in a way which is archaeologically invisible: excarnation is a widely cited possibility. Hillforts were known since the Late Bronze Age, but a huge number were constructed during 600–400 BC, particularly in the South, while after about 400 BC new forts were rarely built and many ceased to be regularly inhabited, while
7618-474: A small foothold in southern Spain. Justinian's reconquests have been criticised by historians for overextending his realm and setting the stage for the early Muslim conquests , but many of the difficulties faced by Justinian's successors were due not just to over-taxation to pay for his wars but to the essentially civilian nature of the empire, which made raising troops difficult. In the Eastern Empire
7911-494: A son and step aside as Queen Mother. Upon Henry's death, the Norman and English barons ignored Matilda's claim to the throne, and thus through a series of decisions, Stephen , Henry's favourite nephew, was welcomed by many in England and Normandy as their new king. Middle Ages In the history of Europe , the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to
8204-597: A standing law court in Westminster—an early Common Bench —and travelling judges conducting eyres around the country. King John extended the royal role in delivering justice, and the extent of appropriate royal intervention was one of the issues addressed in the Magna Carta of 1215. The emerging legal system reinvigorated the institution of serfdom in the 13th century by drawing an increasingly sharp distinction between freemen and villeins. Many tensions existed within
8497-492: A still more widespread dominance. His expansion aroused ill-feeling among the other kingdoms of Britain, and he defeated a combined Scottish-Viking army at the Battle of Brunanburh . However, the unification of England was not a certainty. Under Æthelstan's successors Edmund and Eadred the English kings repeatedly lost and regained control of Northumbria. Nevertheless, Edgar , who ruled the same expanse as Æthelstan, consolidated
8790-500: A system called hidage . The Anglo-Saxon kings built up a set of written laws, issued either as statutes or codes, but these laws were never written down in their entirety and were always supplemented by an extensive oral tradition of customary law. In the early part of the period local assemblies called moots were gathered to apply the laws to particular cases; in the 10th century these were replaced by hundred courts , serving local areas, and shire moots dealing with larger regions of
9083-426: A whole, evolved a centralised royal administration. One part of this was the king's council, the witenagemot , comprising the senior clergy, ealdormen , and some of the more important thegns ; the council met to advise the king on policy and legal issues. The royal household included officials, thegns and a secretariat of clergy which travelled with the king, conducting the affairs of government as it went. Under
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9376-721: Is known as the Old Stone Age, or Palaeolithic era . Archaeological evidence indicates that what was to become England was colonised by humans long before the rest of the British Isles because of its more hospitable climate between and during the various glacial periods of the distant past. This earliest evidence, from Happisburgh in Norfolk, includes the oldest hominid artefacts found in Britain, and points to dates of more than 800,000 RCYBP . These earliest inhabitants were hunter-gatherers . Low sea-levels meant that Britain
9669-620: Is no universally agreed upon end date. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Christopher Columbus 's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period. For Spain, dates commonly used are the death of King Ferdinand II in 1516,
9962-653: Is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history : classical civilisation or Antiquity , the Middle Ages and the Modern Period . The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or "middle season". In early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum , or "middle age", first recorded in 1604, and media saecula , or "middle centuries", first recorded in 1625. The adjective "medieval" (or sometimes "mediaeval" or "mediæval"), meaning pertaining to
10255-539: The fyrd , which were led by the local elites. In military technology, one of the main changes was the return of the crossbow , which had been known in Roman times and reappeared as a military weapon during the last part of the Early Middle Ages. Another change was the introduction of the stirrup, which increased the effectiveness of cavalry as shock troops. A technological advance that had implications beyond
10548-662: The Alans , Vandals , and Suevi crossed into Gaul ; over the next three years they spread across Gaul and in 409 crossed the Pyrenees Mountains into modern-day Spain. The Migration Period began, when various peoples, initially largely Germanic peoples , moved across Europe. The Franks , Alemanni , and the Burgundians all ended up in northern Gaul while the Angles , Saxons , and Jutes settled in Britain , and
10841-713: The Angevin Empire . Henry reasserted royal authority and rebuilt the royal finances, intervening to claim power in Ireland and promoting the Anglo-Norman colonisation of the country. Henry strengthened England's borders with Wales and Scotland, and used the country's wealth to fund a long-running war with his rivals in France, but arrangements for his succession once again proved problematic. Several revolts broke out, led by Henry's children who were eager to acquire power and lands, sometimes backed by France, Scotland and
11134-479: The Anglo-Saxons , producing epic poems such as Beowulf and sophisticated metalwork . The Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity in the 7th century, and a network of monasteries and convents were built across England. In the 8th and 9th centuries, England faced fierce Viking attacks, and the fighting lasted for many decades. Eventually, Wessex was established as the most powerful kingdom and promoted
11427-425: The Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066 and rapidly occupied the south of England. William used a network of castles to control the major centres of power, granting extensive lands to his main Norman followers and co-opting or eliminating the former Anglo-Saxon elite. Major revolts followed, which William suppressed before intervening in the north-east of England, establishing Norman control of York and devastating
11720-529: The Benedictine Rule for Western monasticism during the 6th century, detailing the administrative and spiritual responsibilities of a community of monks led by an abbot . Monks and monasteries had a deep effect on the religious and political life of the Early Middle Ages, in various cases acting as land trusts for powerful families, centres of propaganda and royal support in newly conquered regions, and bases for missions and proselytisation. They were
12013-745: The Britons or Celtic Britons were settled in England. The Celtic people of early England were the majority of the population, beside other smaller ethnic groups in Great Britain. They existed like this from the British Iron Age into the Middle Ages, when it was overtaken by Germanic Anglo-Saxons . After some time, the Celtic Britons diverged into the multiple distinct ethnic groups such as Welsh, Cornish and Breton, but they were still tied by language, religion and culture. They spoke
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12306-469: The Cistercians reached England, creating houses with a more austere interpretation of the monastic rules and building the great abbeys of Rievaulx and Fountains . By 1215, there were over 600 monastic communities in England, but new endowments slowed during the 13th century, creating long-term financial problems for many institutions. The Dominican and Franciscan friars arrived in England during
12599-531: The Desert Fathers of Egypt and Syria . Most European monasteries were of the type that focuses on community experience of the spiritual life, called cenobitism , which was pioneered by Pachomius (d. 348) in the 4th century. Monastic ideals spread from Egypt to Western Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries through hagiographical literature such as the Life of Anthony . Benedict of Nursia (d. 547) wrote
12892-576: The Domesday Book , produced in 1086. Changes in other areas soon began to be felt. The method of government after the conquest can be described as a feudal system , in that the new nobles held their lands on behalf of the king; in return for promising to provide military support and taking an oath of allegiance, called homage , they were granted lands termed a fief or an honour . Major nobles in turn granted lands to smaller landowners in return for homage and further military support, and eventually
13185-555: The East-West Schism of 1054 . The Crusades , first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims . Kings became the heads of centralised nation-states , reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism , a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by
13478-532: The Gregorian chant in liturgical music for the churches. An important activity for scholars during this period was the copying, correcting, and dissemination of basic works on religious and secular topics, with the aim of encouraging learning. New works on religious topics and schoolbooks were also produced. Grammarians of the period modified the Latin language, changing it from the Classical Latin of
13771-589: The Hundred Years' War . At times England enjoyed huge military success, with the economy buoyed by profits from the international wool and cloth trade, but by 1450 the country was in crisis, facing military failure in France and an ongoing recession. More social unrest broke out, followed by the Wars of the Roses , fought between rival factions of the English nobility. Henry VII 's victory in 1485 conventionally marks
14064-566: The Industrial Revolution , which started in England, Great Britain ruled a colonial Empire , the largest in recorded history. Following a process of decolonisation in the 20th century, mainly caused by the weakening of Great Britain's power in the two World Wars; almost all of the empire's overseas territories became independent countries. The time from Britain's first inhabitation until the Last Glacial Maximum
14357-592: The Isle of Wight was killed in 686. The Anglo-Saxon mission on the continent took off in the 8th century, leading to the Christianisation of practically all of the Frankish Empire by 800. Throughout the 7th and 8th centuries, power fluctuated between the larger kingdoms. Bede records Æthelberht of Kent as being dominant at the close of the 6th century, but power seems to have shifted northwards to
14650-489: The Little Ice Age ; by the 14th century spring temperatures had dropped considerably, reaching their coldest in the 1340s and 1350s. This cold end to the Middle Ages significantly affected English agriculture and living conditions. Even at the start of the Middle Ages the English landscape had been shaped by human occupation over many centuries. Much woodland was new, the result of fields being reclaimed by brush after
14943-714: The Macedonian dynasty . Commerce revived and the emperors oversaw the extension of a uniform administration to all the provinces. The military was reorganised, which allowed the emperors John I (r. 969–976) and Basil II (r. 976–1025) to expand the frontiers of the empire on all fronts. The imperial court was the centre of a revival of classical learning, a process known as the Macedonian Renaissance . Writers such as John Geometres ( fl. early 10th century) composed new hymns, poems, and other works. Missionary efforts by both Eastern and Western clergy resulted in
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#173276538327715236-488: The Medieval Warm Period , a prolonged period of warmer temperatures; in the early 13th century, for example, summers were around 1 °C warmer than today and the climate was slightly drier. These warmer temperatures allowed poorer land to be brought into cultivation and for grapevines to be cultivated relatively far north. The Warm Period was followed by several centuries of much cooler temperatures, termed
15529-884: The Mesolithic , Neolithic and Bronze Age , such as Stonehenge and Avebury . In the Iron Age , all of Britain south of the Firth of Forth was inhabited by the Celtic people known as the Britons , including some Belgic tribes (e.g. the Atrebates , the Catuvellauni , the Trinovantes , etc.) in the south east. In AD 43 the Roman conquest of Britain began; the Romans maintained control of their province of Britannia until
15822-424: The Order of the Garter ), grand tournaments and round table events. Society and government in England in the early 14th century were challenged by the Great Famine and the Black Death. The economic and demographic crisis created a sudden surplus of land, undermining the ability of landowners to exert their feudal rights and causing a collapse in incomes from rented lands. Wages soared, as employers competed for
16115-468: The Post-classical period of global history . It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery . The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity , the medieval period, and the modern period . The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early , High , and Late Middle Ages . Population decline , counterurbanisation ,
16408-417: The Somerset Levels is one of the oldest timber trackways known in Northern Europe and among the oldest roads in the world, dated by dendrochronology to the winter of 3807–3806 BC; it is thought to have been a primarily religious structure. Archaeological evidence from North Yorkshire indicates that salt was being manufactured there in the Neolithic. The Bronze Age began around 2500 BC with
16701-444: The Yamnaya culture of the eastern European Pontic-Caspian Steppe . While the migration of these Beaker peoples must have been accompanied by a language shift, the Celtic languages were probably introduced by later Celtic migrations. The Bronze Age saw a shift of emphasis from the communal to the individual, and the rise of increasingly powerful elites whose power came from their prowess as hunters and warriors and their controlling
16994-425: The beginning of Jewish settlement in London . The English Middle Ages were characterised by civil war , international war, occasional insurrection, and widespread political intrigue among the aristocratic and monarchic elite. England was more than self-sufficient in cereals, dairy products, beef and mutton. Its international economy was based on wool trade , in which wool from the sheepwalks of northern England
17287-503: The liturgy , combined with the abuses of wealth within the Church and the role of senior churchmen in government, distracted from that study. A loose movement that included many members of the gentry pursued these ideas after Wycliffe's death in 1384 and attempted to pass a Parliamentary bill in 1395: the movement was rapidly condemned by the authorities and was termed " Lollardy ". The English bishops were charged to control and counter this trend, disrupting Lollard preachers and to enforcing
17580-403: The loss of Normandy . The 14th century in England saw the Great Famine and the Black Death , catastrophic events that killed around half of England's population, throwing the economy into chaos, and undermining the old political order. Social unrest followed, resulting in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, while the changes in the economy resulted in the emergence of a new class of gentry , and
17873-430: The pogroms carried out against Jewish communities in the reign of Richard I. After an initially peaceful start to John's reign, the king again began to extort money from the Jewish community and, with the breakdown in order in 1215, the Jews were subject to fresh attacks. Henry III restored some protection and Jewish money-lending began to recover. Despite this, the Jewish community became increasingly impoverished and
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#173276538327718166-576: The usury laws . During the 12th century, the Jewish financial community grew richer still, operating under royal protection and providing the king with a source of ready credit. All major towns had Jewish centres, and even the smaller towns saw visits by travelling Jewish merchants. Towards the end of Henry II's reign, however, the king ceased to borrow from the Jewish community and instead turned to extracting money from them through arbitrary taxation and fines. The Jews became vilified and accusations were made that they conducted ritual child murder , encouraging
18459-408: The 1220s, establishing 150 friaries by the end of the 13th century; these mendicant orders rapidly became popular, particularly in towns, and heavily influenced local preaching. The religious military orders that became popular across Europe from the 12th century onwards acquired possessions in England, including the Templars , Teutons and Hospitallers . The Church had a close relationship with
18752-427: The 12th and 13th centuries, fueling an expansion of the towns, cities, and trade, helped by warmer temperatures across Northern Europe. A new wave of monasteries and friaries was established while ecclesiastical reforms led to tensions between successive kings and archbishops . Despite developments in England's governance and legal system , infighting between the Anglo-Norman elite resulted in multiple civil wars and
19045-408: The 17th-century German historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: ancient, medieval, and modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is around 500, with the date of 476 first used by Bruni. Later starting dates are sometimes used in the outer parts of Europe. For Europe as a whole, 1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there
19338-406: The 5th and 6th centuries, establishing small farms and settlements, and their language, Old English , swiftly spread as more settlers arrived and those of the previous inhabitants who had not moved west or to Brittany switched from Common Brittonic and British Latin to the migrants' language. New political and social identities emerged, including an Anglian culture in the east of England and
19631-427: The 5th and the 7th centuries, going first to England and Scotland and then on to the continent. Under such monks as Columba (d. 597) and Columbanus (d. 615), they founded monasteries, taught in Latin and Greek, and authored secular and religious works. The Early Middle Ages witnessed the rise of monasticism in the West. The shape of European monasticism was determined by traditions and ideas that originated with
19924-475: The 5th century. The Eastern Empire was marked by closer relations between the political state and Christian Church, with doctrinal matters assuming an importance in Eastern politics that they did not have in Western Europe. Legal developments included the codification of Roman law ; the first effort—the Codex Theodosianus —was completed in 438. Under Emperor Justinian (r. 527–565), another compilation took place—the Corpus Juris Civilis . Justinian also oversaw
20217-520: The 5th century. The collapse of the Roman system in the late 5th century, however, brought about the end of formal Christian religion in the east of England, and the new Germanic immigrants arrived with their own polytheistic gods, including Woden , Thunor and Tiw , still reflected in various English place names. Despite the resurgence of paganism in England, Christian communities still survived in more western areas such as Gloucestershire and Somerset . The movement towards Christianity began again in
20510-425: The 630s and 640s, and the wave of change carried on through the middle of the 7th century across the kingdoms of Mercia, the South Saxons and the Isle of Wight . The process was largely complete by the end of the 7th century, but left a confusing and disparate array of local practices and religious ceremonies. This new Christianity reflected the existing military culture of the Anglo-Saxons: as kings began to convert in
20803-462: The 6th and 7th centuries, all of them ruled by the Merovingian dynasty, who were descended from Clovis. The 7th century was a tumultuous period of wars between Austrasia and Neustria. Such warfare was exploited by Pippin (d. 640), the Mayor of the Palace for Austrasia who became the power behind the Austrasian throne. Later members of his family inherited the office, acting as advisers and regents. One of his descendants, Charles Martel (d. 741), won
21096-419: The 6th and 7th centuries, conversion began to be used as a justification for war against the remaining pagan kingdoms, for example, while Christian saints were imbued with martial properties. The Viking invasions of the 8th and 9th centuries reintroduced paganism to North-East England, leading in turn to another wave of conversion. Indigenous Scandinavian beliefs were very similar to other Germanic groups, with
21389-458: The 6th century, however, these different groups began to coalesce into stratified societies across England, roughly corresponding to the later Angle and Saxon kingdoms recorded by Bede in the 8th century. By the 9th century, the term the Angelcynn was being officially used to refer to a single English people, and promoted for propaganda purposes by chroniclers and kings to inspire resistance to
21682-654: The Anarchy . Matilda's son, Henry , finally agreed to a peace settlement at Winchester and succeeded as king in 1154. Henry II was the first of the Angevin rulers of England, so-called because he was also the Count of Anjou in Northern France. Henry had also acquired the huge duchy of Aquitaine by marriage, and England became a key part of a loose-knit assemblage of lands spread across Western Europe, later termed
21975-715: The Arabs. The migrations and invasions of the 4th and 5th centuries disrupted trade networks around the Mediterranean. African goods stopped being imported into Europe, first disappearing from the interior and by the 7th century found only in a few cities such as Rome or Naples . By the end of the 7th century, under the impact of the Muslim conquests , African products were no longer found in Western Europe. The replacement of goods from long-range trade with local products
22268-536: The Bald received the western Frankish lands, comprising most of modern-day France. Charlemagne's grandsons and great-grandsons divided their kingdoms between their descendants, eventually causing all internal cohesion to be lost. In 987 the Carolingian dynasty was replaced in the western lands, with the crowning of Hugh Capet (r. 987–996) as king. In the eastern lands the dynasty had died out earlier, in 911, with
22561-623: The Balkan Peninsula. The settlement of peoples was accompanied by changes in languages. Latin , the literary language of the Western Roman Empire, was gradually replaced by vernacular languages which evolved from Latin, but were distinct from it, collectively known as Romance languages . These changes from Latin to the new languages took many centuries. Greek remained the language of the Byzantine Empire, but
22854-583: The Battle of Poitiers in 732, halting the advance of Muslim armies across the Pyrenees. Great Britain was divided into small states dominated by the kingdoms of Northumbria , Mercia , Wessex , and East Anglia which descended from the Anglo-Saxon invaders. Smaller kingdoms in present-day Wales and Scotland were still under the control of the native Britons and Picts . Ireland was divided into even smaller political units, usually known as tribal kingdoms, under
23147-640: The Black Prince , were heavily involved in campaigning in France and administering the new continental territories. Edward's grandson, the young Richard II , faced political and economic problems, many resulting from the Black Death, including the Peasants' Revolt that broke out across the south of England in 1381. Over the coming decades, Richard and groups of nobles vied for power and control of policy towards France until Henry of Bolingbroke seized
23440-513: The Brittonic language, a Celtic language which is the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages. The Atlantic trade system had by this time effectively collapsed, although England maintained contacts across the channel with France, as the Hallstatt culture became widespread across the country. Its continuity suggests it was not accompanied by substantial movement of population; crucially, only
23733-577: The Byzantine Empire, as the assumption of the imperial title by the Carolingians asserted their equivalence to the Byzantine state. There were several differences between the newly established Carolingian Empire and both the older Western Roman Empire and the concurrent Byzantine Empire. The Frankish lands were rural in character, with only a few small cities. Most of the people were peasants settled on small farms. Little trade existed and much of that
24026-523: The Byzantine Empire, which he sealed with the marriage of his son Otto II (r. 967–983) to Theophanu (d. 991), daughter of an earlier Byzantine Emperor Romanos II (r. 959–963). By the late 10th century Italy had been drawn into the Ottonian sphere after a period of instability; Otto III (r. 996–1002) spent much of his later reign in the kingdom. The western Frankish kingdom was more fragmented, and although kings remained nominally in charge, much of
24319-648: The Christian period as nova (or "new"). Petrarch regarded the post-Roman centuries as " dark " compared to the "light" of classical antiquity . Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People (1442), with a middle period "between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of city life sometime in late eleventh and twelfth centuries". Tripartite periodisation became standard after
24612-660: The Church had widened to the extent that the cultural and religious differences were greater than the similarities. The formal break, known as the East–West Schism , came in 1054, when the papacy and the patriarchy of Constantinople clashed over papal supremacy and excommunicated each other, which led to the division of Christianity into two Churches—the Western branch became the Roman Catholic Church and
24905-499: The Church had become music and art rather than the book. Most intellectual efforts went towards imitating classical scholarship, but some original works were created, along with now-lost oral compositions. The writings of Sidonius Apollinaris (d. 489), Cassiodorus (d. c. 585 ), and Boethius (d. c. 525) were typical of the age. Changes also took place among laymen, as aristocratic culture focused on great feasts held in halls rather than on literary pursuits. Clothing for
25198-468: The Conqueror and his successors took over the existing state system, repressing local revolts and controlling the population through a network of castles . The new rulers introduced a feudal approach to governing England, eradicating the practice of slavery , but creating a much wider body of unfree labourers called serfs . The position of women in society changed as laws regarding land and lordship shifted. England's population more than doubled during
25491-442: The Conqueror acquired the support of the Church for the invasion of England by promising ecclesiastical reform. William promoted celibacy amongst the clergy and gave ecclesiastical courts more power, but also reduced the Church's direct links to Rome and made it more accountable to the king. Tensions arose between these practices and the reforming movement of Pope Gregory VII , which advocated greater autonomy from royal authority for
25784-607: The Continent. A reformed network of around 40 monastic institutions across the south and east of England, under the protection of the king, helped re-establish royal control over the reconquered Danelaw. The 1066 Norman conquest brought a new set of Norman and French churchmen to power; some adopted and embraced aspects of the former Anglo-Saxon religious system, while others introduced practices from Normandy. Extensive English lands were granted to monasteries in Normandy, allowing them to create daughter priories and monastic cells across
26077-528: The Danelaw, and by the 950s and the reigns of Eadred and Edgar , York was finally permanently retaken from the Vikings. The West Saxon rulers were now kings of the Angelcynn , that is of the whole English folk. With the death of Edgar, however, the royal succession became problematic. Æthelred took power in 978 following the murder of his brother Edward , but England was then invaded by Sweyn Forkbeard ,
26370-662: The Danes at the Battle of Edington , and he exploited the fear of the Viking threat to raise large numbers of men and using a network of defended towns called burhs to defend his territory and mobilise royal resources. Suppressing internal opposition to his rule, Alfred contained the invaders within a region known as the Danelaw . Under his son, Edward the Elder , and his grandson, Æthelstan , Wessex expanded further north into Mercia and
26663-587: The Danes in East Anglia in 910 and 911 were followed by a crushing victory at Tempsford in 917. These military gains allowed Edward to fully incorporate Mercia into his kingdom and add East Anglia to his conquests. Edward then set about reinforcing his northern borders against the Danish kingdom of Northumbria . Edward's rapid conquest of the English kingdoms meant Wessex received homage from those that remained, including Gwynedd in Wales and Scotland. His dominance
26956-457: The Danes in England. In response, Sweyn began a decade of devastating attacks on England. Northern England, with its sizable Danish population, sided with Sweyn. By 1013, London, Oxford, and Winchester had fallen to the Danes. Æthelred fled to Normandy and Sweyn seized the throne. Sweyn suddenly died in 1014, and Æthelred returned to England, confronted by Sweyn's successor, Cnut . However, in 1016, Æthelred also suddenly died. Cnut swiftly defeated
27249-569: The Danish Great Heathen Army ) upset the political and social geography of Britain and Ireland. In 867 Northumbria fell to the Danes; East Anglia fell in 869. Though Wessex managed to contain the Vikings by defeating them at Ashdown in 871, a second invading army landed, leaving the Saxons on a defensive footing. At much the same time, Æthelred , king of Wessex died and was succeeded by his younger brother Alfred . Alfred
27542-429: The Danish invasions. The Normans and French who arrived after the conquest saw themselves as different from the English. They had close family and economic links to the Duchy of Normandy, spoke Norman French and had their own distinctive culture. For many years, to be English was to be associated with military failure and serfdom. During the 12th century, the divisions between the English and Normans began to dissolve as
27835-410: The Danish kings, a bodyguard of housecarls also accompanied the court. At a regional level, ealdormen played an important part in government, defence and taxation, and the post of sheriff emerged in the 10th century, administering local shires on behalf of an ealdorman. Anglo-Saxon mints were tightly controlled by the kings, providing a high-quality currency, and the whole country was taxed using
28128-704: The Dnieper River in modern Ukraine to the Adriatic Sea. By 1018, the last Bulgarian nobles had surrendered to the Byzantine Empire. Few large stone buildings were constructed between the Constantinian basilicas of the 4th century and the 8th century, although many smaller ones were built during the 6th and 7th centuries. By the beginning of the 8th century, the Carolingian Empire revived the basilica form of architecture. One feature of
28421-585: The Early Middle Ages are mostly illuminated manuscripts and carved ivories , originally made for metalwork that has since been melted down. Objects in precious metals were the most prestigious form of art, but almost all are lost except for a few crosses such as the Cross of Lothair , several reliquaries , and finds such as the Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo and the hoards of Gourdon from Merovingian France, Guarrazar from Visigothic Spain and Nagyszentmiklós near Byzantine territory. There are survivals from
28714-585: The Eastern branch the Eastern Orthodox Church . The ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Empire survived the movements and invasions in the west mostly intact, but the papacy was little regarded, and few of the Western bishops looked to the bishop of Rome for religious or political leadership. Many of the popes prior to 750 were more concerned with Byzantine affairs and Eastern theological controversies. The register, or archived copies of
29007-538: The Eastern emperors to pay tribute. They remained a strong power until 796. An additional problem to face the empire came as a result of the involvement of Emperor Maurice (r. 582–602) in Persian politics when he intervened in a succession dispute . This led to a period of peace, but when Maurice was overthrown, the Persians invaded and during the reign of Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641) controlled large chunks of
29300-453: The English for their poor pronunciation. By the 14th century, however, French was increasingly having to be formally taught, rather than being learnt naturally in the home, although the aristocracy would typically spend many years of their lives in France and remained entirely comfortable working in French. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the English began to consider themselves superior to
29593-641: The English legal system; some women benefited from this, while others lost out. The rights of widows were formally laid down in law by the end of the 12th century, clarifying the right of free women to own property, but this did not necessarily prevent women from being forcibly remarried against their wishes. The growth of governmental institutions under a succession of bishops reduced the role of queens and their households in formal government. Married or widowed noblewomen remained significant cultural and religious patrons and played an important part in political and military events, even if chroniclers were uncertain if this
29886-422: The English state throughout the Middle Ages. The bishops and major monastic leaders played an important part in national government, having key roles on the king's council. Bishops often oversaw towns and cities, managing local taxation and government . This frequently became untenable with the Viking incursions of the 9th century, and in locations such as Worcester the local bishops came to new accommodations with
30179-436: The European population remained rural peasants. Many were no longer settled in isolated farms but had gathered into small communities, usually known as manors or villages. These peasants were often subject to noble overlords and owed them rents and other services, in a system known as manorialism . There remained a few free peasants throughout this period and beyond, with more of them in the regions of Southern Europe than in
30472-482: The European tradition or, uniquely to England, chapters of monks. These institutions were badly affected in the 9th century by Viking raids and predatory annexations by the nobility. By the start of the 10th century, monastic lands, financial resources and the quality of monasteries' religious work had been much diminished. Reforms followed under the kings of Wessex who promoted the Benedictine rule then popular on
30765-733: The Frankish King Charles the Simple (r. 898–922) to settle in what became Normandy . The eastern parts of the Frankish kingdoms, especially Germany and Italy, were under continual Magyar assault until the invader's defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955. The breakup of the Abbasid dynasty meant that the Islamic world fragmented into smaller political states, some of which began expanding into Italy and Sicily, as well as over
31058-578: The Franks and Celtic Britons set up small polities. Francia was centred in northern Gaul, and the first king of whom much is known is Childeric I (d. 481). His grave was discovered in 1653 and is remarkable for its grave goods , which included weapons and a large quantity of gold. Under Childeric's son Clovis I (r. 509–511), the founder of the Merovingian dynasty , the Frankish kingdom expanded and converted to Christianity. The Britons, related to
31351-428: The French throne. Over the next century, English forces fought many campaigns in a long-running conflict that became known as the Hundred Years' War . Despite the challenges involved in raising the revenues to pay for the war, Edward's military successes brought an influx of plundered wealth to many parts of England and enabled substantial building work by the king. Many members of the English elite, including Edward's son
31644-685: The German tried to annex all of East Francia. Louis the Pious died in 840, with the empire still in chaos. A three-year civil war followed his death. By the Treaty of Verdun (843), a kingdom between the Rhine and Rhone rivers was created for Lothair to go with his lands in Italy, and his imperial title was recognised. Louis the German was in control of Bavaria and the eastern lands in modern-day Germany. Charles
31937-700: The Great (d. 526) and set up a kingdom marked by its co-operation between the Italians and the Ostrogoths, at least until the last years of Theodoric's reign. The Burgundians settled in Gaul, and after an earlier realm was destroyed by the Huns in 436, formed a new kingdom in the 440s. Between today's Geneva and Lyon , it grew to become the realm of Burgundy in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. Elsewhere in Gaul,
32230-546: The Heptarchy . In the 7th century, the Kingdom of Mercia rose to prominence under the leadership of King Penda . Mercia invaded neighbouring lands until it loosely controlled around 50 regiones covering much of England. Mercia and the remaining kingdoms, led by their warrior elites, continued to compete for territory throughout the 8th century. Massive earthworks, such as the defensive dyke built by Offa of Mercia , helped to defend key frontiers and towns. In 789, however,
32523-516: The Italian peninsula was conquered by the Ostrogoths . The Eastern Roman Empire, often referred to as the Byzantine Empire after the fall of its western counterpart, had little ability to assert control over the lost western territories. The Byzantine emperors maintained a claim over the territory, but while none of the new kings in the west dared to elevate himself to the position of emperor of
32816-559: The Lombards, which freed the papacy from the fear of Lombard conquest and marked the beginnings of the Papal States . The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor on Christmas Day 800 is regarded as a turning point in medieval history, marking a return of the Western Roman Empire, since the new emperor ruled over much of the area previously controlled by the Western emperors. It also marks a change in Charlemagne's relationship with
33109-465: The Mediterranean, pottery remained prevalent and appears to have been traded over medium-range networks, not just produced locally. The various Germanic states in the west all had coinages that imitated existing Roman and Byzantine forms. Gold continued to be minted until the end of the 7th century in 693-94 when it was replaced by silver in the Merovingian kingdom. The basic Frankish silver coin
33402-590: The Mercians at the Battle of Ellendun in 825. Four years later, he received submission and tribute from the Northumbrian king, Eanred . Since so few contemporary sources exist, the events of the fifth and sixth centuries are difficult to ascertain. As such, the nature of the Anglo-Saxon settlements is debated by historians, archaeologists and linguists. The traditional view, that the Anglo-Saxons drove
33695-479: The Mercians" and continued expansion. It seems Edward had his son Æthelstan brought up in the Mercian court. On Edward's death, Æthelstan succeeded to the Mercian kingdom, and, after some uncertainty, Wessex. Æthelstan continued the expansion of his father and aunt and was the first king to achieve direct rulership of what we would now consider England. The titles attributed to him in charters and on coins suggest
33988-411: The Middle Ages, derives from medium aevum . Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the " Six Ages " or the " Four Empires ", and considered their time to be the last before the end of the world. When referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being "modern". In the 1330s, the Italian humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua (or "ancient") and to
34281-788: The Middle East than Europe, losing control of sections of the Muslim lands. Umayyad descendants took over the Iberian Peninsula, the Aghlabids controlled North Africa, and the Tulunids became rulers of Egypt. By the middle of the 8th century, new trading patterns were emerging in the Mediterranean; trade between the Franks and the Arabs replaced the old Roman economy . Franks traded timber, furs, swords and slaves in return for silks and other fabrics, spices, and precious metals from
34574-805: The Norman kings to project power across the region, including funding campaigns along the frontiers of Normandy. Norman rule, however, proved unstable; successions to the throne were contested, leading to violent conflicts between the claimants and their noble supporters. William II inherited the throne but faced revolts attempting to replace him with his older brother Robert or his cousin Stephen of Aumale . In 1100, William II died while hunting. Despite Robert's rival claims, his younger brother Henry I immediately seized power. War broke out, ending in Robert's defeat at Tinchebrai and his subsequent life imprisonment. Robert's son Clito remained free, however, and formed
34867-533: The Protectorate (1653–1659). The Stuarts returned to the restored throne in 1660, though continued questions over religion and power resulted in the deposition of another Stuart king, James II , in the Glorious Revolution (1688). England, which had subsumed Wales in the 16th century under Henry VIII, united with Scotland in 1707 to form a new sovereign state called Great Britain . Following
35160-613: The Pyrenees into the southern parts of the Frankish kingdoms. Efforts by local kings to fight the invaders led to the formation of new political entities. In Anglo-Saxon England , King Alfred the Great (r. 871–899) came to an agreement with the Viking invaders in the late 9th century, resulting in Danish settlements in Northumbria, Mercia, and parts of East Anglia. By the middle of the 10th century, Alfred's successors had conquered Northumbria, and restored English control over most of
35453-623: The Rhine and eastwards, leaving Charles West Francia with the empire to the west of the Rhineland and the Alps. Louis the German (d. 876), the middle child, who had been rebellious to the last, was allowed to keep Bavaria under the suzerainty of his elder brother. The division was disputed. Pepin II of Aquitaine (d. after 864), the emperor's grandson, rebelled in a contest for Aquitaine , while Louis
35746-515: The Roman Empire into a more flexible form to fit the needs of the Church and government. By the reign of Charlemagne, the language had so diverged from the classical Latin that it was later called Medieval Latin . Charlemagne planned to continue the Frankish tradition of dividing his kingdom between all his heirs, but was unable to do so as only one son, Louis the Pious (r. 814–840), was still alive by 813. Just before Charlemagne died in 814, he crowned Louis as his successor. Louis's reign of 26 years
36039-558: The Romano-British inhabitants out of what is now England, was subject to reappraisal in the later twentieth century. One suggestion is that the invaders were smaller in number, drawn from an elite class of male warriors that gradually acculturated the natives. An emerging view is that the scale of the Anglo-Saxon settlement varied across England, and that as such it cannot be described by any one process in particular. Mass migration and population shift seem to be most applicable in
36332-443: The Romans and the invaders are often similar, and tribal items were often modelled on Roman objects. Much of the scholarly and written culture of the new kingdoms was also based on Roman intellectual traditions. An important difference was the gradual loss of tax revenue by the new polities. Many of the new political entities no longer supported their armies through taxes, instead relying on granting them land or rents. This meant there
36625-524: The Trent in 679 against Mercia, and Nechtanesmere in 685 against the Picts . The so-called "Mercian Supremacy" dominated the 8th century, though it was not constant. Aethelbald and Offa , the two most powerful kings, achieved high status; indeed, Offa was considered the overlord of south Britain by Charlemagne . His power is illustrated by the fact that he summoned the resources to build Offa's Dyke . However,
36918-529: The Tweed, with the Britons in the less fertile hill country becoming acculturated over a longer period. Fox interprets the process by which English came to dominate this region as "a synthesis of mass-migration and elite-takeover models." Genetic testing has been used to find evidence of large scale immigration of Germanic peoples into England. Weale et al. (2002) found that English Y DNA data showed signs of
37211-400: The Unready that the Danish threat resurfaced. Two powerful Danish kings ( Harold Bluetooth and later his son Sweyn ) both launched devastating invasions of England. Anglo-Saxon forces were resoundingly defeated at Maldon in 991. More Danish attacks followed, and their victories were frequent. Æthelred's control over his nobles began to falter, and he grew increasingly desperate. His solution
37504-423: The Vandals went on to cross the strait of Gibraltar after which they conquered the province of Africa . In the 430s the Huns began invading the empire; their king Attila (r. 434–453) led invasions into the Balkans in 442 and 447, Gaul in 451, and Italy in 452. The Hunnic threat remained until Attila's death in 453, when the Hunnic confederation he led fell apart. These invasions by the tribes completely changed
37797-410: The Welsh princes. After a final confrontation with Henry, his son Richard I succeeded to the throne in 1189. Richard spent his reign focused on protecting his possessions in France and fighting in the Third Crusade ; his brother, John , inherited England in 1199 but lost Normandy and most of Aquitaine after several years of war with France. John fought successive, increasingly expensive, campaigns in
38090-427: The Welsh, Scots and Bretons . The English perceived themselves as civilised, economically prosperous and properly Christian, while the Celtic fringe was considered lazy, barbarous and backward. Following the invasion of Ireland in the late 12th century, similar feelings were expressed about the Irish, with the distinctions clarified and reinforced in 14th-century English legislation. The English also felt strongly about
38383-455: The West were not uniform; some areas had greatly fragmented landholding patterns, but in other areas large contiguous blocks of land were the norm. These differences allowed for a wide variety of peasant societies, some dominated by aristocratic landholders and others having a great deal of autonomy. Land settlement also varied greatly. Some peasants lived in large settlements that numbered as many as 700 inhabitants. Others lived in small groups of
38676-413: The absence of their husbands some noblewomen led the defence of manors and towns. Most Anglo-Saxon women, however, worked on the land as part of the agricultural community, or as brewers or bakers . After the Norman invasion, the position of women in society changed. The rights and roles of women became more sharply defined, in part as a result of the development of the feudal system and the expansion of
38969-453: The acceptance of figurative monumental sculpture in Christian art , and by the end of the period near life-sized figures such as the Gero Cross were common in important churches. During the later Roman Empire, the principal military developments were attempts to create an effective cavalry force as well as the continued development of highly specialised types of troops. The creation of heavily armoured cataphract -type soldiers as cavalry
39262-407: The ambitions of the Normans whom Edward introduced to English politics to bolster his own position caused each to vie for control of Edward's reign. Harold Godwinson became king, probably appointed by Edward on his deathbed and endorsed by the Witan . But William of Normandy , Harald Hardråde (aided by Harold Godwin's estranged brother Tostig ) and Sweyn II of Denmark all asserted claims to
39555-565: The ancestry of the modern English population contains large contributions from both Anglo-Saxon migrants and Romano-British natives. Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England began around 600 AD, influenced by Celtic Christianity from the northwest and the Roman Catholic Church from the southeast. Augustine , the first Archbishop of Canterbury , took office in 597. In 601, he baptised the first Christian Anglo-Saxon king, Æthelberht of Kent . The last pagan Anglo-Saxon king, Penda of Mercia , died in 655. The last pagan Jutish king, Arwald of
39848-401: The appearance of bronze objects. This coincides with the appearance of the characteristic Bell Beaker culture , following migration of new people from the continent. According to Olalde et al. (2018), after 2500 BC Britain's Neolithic population was largely replaced by this new Bell Beaker population, that was genetically related to the Corded Ware culture of central and eastern Europe and
40141-417: The basilica is the use of a transept , or the "arms" of a cross-shaped building that are perpendicular to the long nave . Other new features of religious architecture include the crossing tower and a monumental entrance to the church , usually at the west end of the building. Carolingian art was produced for a small group of figures around the court, and the monasteries and churches they supported. It
40434-407: The city of Byzantium as the newly renamed eastern capital, Constantinople . Diocletian's reforms strengthened the governmental bureaucracy, reformed taxation, and strengthened the army, which bought the empire time but did not resolve the problems it was facing: excessive taxation, a declining birthrate, and pressures on its frontiers, among others. Civil war between rival emperors became common in
40727-535: The clergy, condemned the practice of simony and promoted greater influence for the papacy in church matters. Despite the bishops continuing to play a major part in royal government, tensions emerged between the kings of England and key leaders within the English Church. Kings and archbishops clashed over rights of appointment and religious policy, and successive archbishops including Anselm , Theobald of Bec , Thomas Becket and Stephen Langton were variously forced into exile, arrested by royal knights or even killed. By
41020-416: The collapse of centralized authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes , which had begun in Late Antiquity , continued into the Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period , including various Germanic peoples , formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire —came under
41313-461: The collapse of the Roman Empire. Human intervention had established wood pastures , an ancient system for managing woods and animals, and coppicing , a more intensive approach to managing woodlands. Other agricultural lands included arable fields and pastorage, while in some parts of the country, such as the South-West, waste moorland remained testament to earlier over-farming in the Bronze Age . England's environment continued to be shaped throughout
41606-399: The community in their own right. An English cultural identity first emerged from the interaction of the Germanic immigrants of the 5th and 6th centuries and the indigenous Romano-British inhabitants. Although early medieval chroniclers described the immigrants as Angles and Saxons, they came from a much wider area across Northern Europe, and represented a range of different ethnic groups. Over
41899-405: The conquest of North Africa sundered maritime connections between those areas. Increasingly, the Byzantine Church differed in language, practices, and liturgy from the Western Church. The Eastern Church used Greek instead of the Western Latin. Theological and political differences emerged, and by the early and middle 8th century issues such as iconoclasm , clerical marriage , and state control of
42192-747: The conquest the English ruling class had been almost entirely dispossessed and replaced by Norman landholders, who monopolised all senior positions in the government and the Church. William and his nobles spoke and conducted court in Norman French , in both Normandy and England. The use of the Anglo-Norman language by the aristocracy endured for centuries and left an indelible mark in the development of modern English. Upon being crowned, on Christmas Day 1066, William immediately began consolidating his power. By 1067, he faced revolts on all sides and spent four years crushing them. He then imposed his superiority over Scotland and Wales, forcing them to recognise him as overlord. Economic growth and state finances were aided by
42485-446: The construction of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and the reconquest of North Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Ostrogoths, under Belisarius (d. 565). The conquest of Italy was not complete, as a deadly outbreak of plague in 542 led to the rest of Justinian's reign concentrating on defensive measures rather than further conquests. At the Emperor's death, the Byzantines had control of most of Italy , North Africa, and
42778-447: The control of kings. There were perhaps as many as 150 local kings in Ireland, of varying importance. The Carolingian dynasty , as the successors to Charles Martel are known, officially took control of the kingdoms of Austrasia and Neustria in a coup of 753 led by Pippin III (r. 752–768). A contemporary chronicle claims that Pippin sought, and gained, authority for this coup from Pope Stephen II (pope 752–757). Pippin's takeover
43071-408: The conversion of the Moravians , Bulgars , Bohemians , Poles , Magyars, and Slavic inhabitants of the Kievan Rus' . These conversions contributed to the founding of political states in the lands of those peoples—the states of Moravia , Bulgaria , Bohemia , Poland , Hungary, and the Kievan Rus'. Bulgaria, which was founded around 680, at its height reached from Budapest to the Black Sea and from
43364-404: The core areas of settlement such as East Anglia and Lincolnshire, while in more peripheral areas to the northwest, much of the native population likely remained in place as the incomers took over as elites. In a study of place names in northeastern England and southern Scotland, Bethany Fox concluded that Anglian migrants settled in large numbers in river valleys, such as those of the Tyne and
43657-465: The crown was unable to intervene in the factional fighting between different nobles and their followers. The resulting Wars of the Roses saw a savage escalation of violence between the noble leaderships of both sides: captured enemies were executed and family lands attainted . By the time that Henry VII took the throne in 1485, England's governmental and social structures had been substantially weakened, with whole noble lines extinguished. Medieval England
43950-419: The dead in the form of chambered cairns and long barrows. Towards the end of the period, other kinds of monumental stone alignments begin to appear, such as Stonehenge; their cosmic alignments show a preoccupation with the sky and planets. Flint technology produced a number of highly artistic pieces as well as purely practical. More extensive woodland clearance was done for fields and pastures. The Sweet Track in
44243-425: The death of Louis the Child , and the selection of the unrelated Conrad I (r. 911–918) as king. The breakup of the Carolingian Empire was accompanied by invasions, migrations, and raids by external foes. The Atlantic and northern shores were harassed by the Vikings , who also raided the British Isles and settled there as well as in Iceland. In 911, the Viking chieftain Rollo (d. c. 931) received permission from
44536-401: The death of Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1504, or the conquest of Granada in 1492. Historians from Romance-speaking countries tend to divide the Middle Ages into two parts: an earlier "High" and later "Low" period. English-speaking historians, following their German counterparts, generally subdivide the Middle Ages into three intervals: "Early", "High", and "Late". In the 19th century,
44829-450: The discovery of stone tools and footprints at Happisburgh in Norfolk have indicated. The earliest evidence for early modern humans in Northwestern Europe , a jawbone discovered in Devon at Kents Cavern in 1927, was re-dated in 2011 to between 41,000 and 44,000 years old. Continuous human habitation in England dates to around 13,000 years ago (see Creswellian ), at the end of the Last Glacial Period . The region has numerous remains from
45122-403: The disorder, was killed fighting the Goths at the Battle of Adrianople on 9 August 378. In addition to the threat from such tribal confederacies in the north, internal divisions within the empire, especially within the Christian Church, caused problems. In 400, the Visigoths invaded the Western Roman Empire and, although briefly forced back from Italy, in 410 sacked the city of Rome . In 406
45415-414: The ealdermen), sheriffs and church seniors were all drawn from their ranks. In many areas of society there was continuity, as the Normans adopted many of the Anglo-Saxon governmental institutions, including the tax system, mints and the centralisation of law-making and some judicial matters; initially sheriffs and the hundred courts continued to function as before. The existing tax liabilities were captured in
45708-402: The early 12th-century raised armies against Scottish invaders and built up extensive holdings of castles across the country. New orders began to be introduced into England. As ties to Normandy waned, the French Cluniac order became fashionable and their houses were introduced in England. The Augustinians spread quickly from the beginning of the 12th century onwards, while later in the century
46001-416: The early 13th century, however, the church had largely won its argument for independence, answering almost entirely to Rome. In the 1380s, several challenges emerged to the traditional teachings of the Church, resulting from the teachings of John Wycliffe , a member of Oxford University . Wycliffe argued that scripture was the best guide to understanding God's intentions, and that the superficial nature of
46294-446: The early 5th century. The end of Roman rule in Britain facilitated the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain , which historians often regard as the origin of England and of the English people . The Anglo-Saxons , a collection of various Germanic peoples , established several kingdoms that became the primary powers in present-day England and parts of southern Scotland . They introduced the Old English language, which largely displaced
46587-442: The early Carolingian period, with a growing dominance of elite heavy cavalry. The use of militia-type levies of the free population declined over the Carolingian period. Although much of the Carolingian armies were mounted, a large proportion during the early period appear to have been mounted infantry , rather than true cavalry. One exception was Anglo-Saxon England, where the armies were still composed of regional levies, known as
46880-484: The east Midlands, and Yorkshire having over 50%. North German and Danish genetic frequencies were indistinguishable, thus precluding any ability to distinguish between the genetic influence of the Anglo-Saxon source populations and the later, and better documented, influx of Danish Vikings. The mean value of continental Germanic genetic input in this study was calculated at 54 per cent. In response to arguments, such as those of Stephen Oppenheimer and Bryan Sykes , that
47173-465: The elites was richly embellished with jewels and gold. Lords and kings supported entourages of fighters who formed the backbone of the military forces. Family ties within the elites were important, as were the virtues of loyalty, courage, and honour. These ties led to the prevalence of the feud in aristocratic society, examples of which included those related by Gregory of Tours that took place in Merovingian Gaul. Most feuds seem to have ended quickly with
47466-399: The emergence of Islam in Arabia during the lifetime of Muhammad (d. 632). After his death, Islamic forces conquered much of the Eastern Roman Empire and Persia, starting with Syria in 634–635, continuing with Persia between 637 and 642, reaching Egypt in 640–641, North Africa in the later seventh century, and the Iberian Peninsula in 711. By 714, Islamic forces controlled much of
47759-403: The empire than tax-payers. The Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305) split the empire into separately administered eastern and western halves in 286; the empire was not considered divided by its inhabitants or rulers, as legal and administrative promulgations in one division were considered valid in the other. In 330, after a period of civil war, Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) refounded
48052-418: The empire to Christianity , a gradual process that lasted from the 2nd to the 5th centuries. In 376, the Goths , fleeing from the Huns , received permission from Emperor Valens (r. 364–378) to settle in the Roman province of Thracia in the Balkans . The settlement did not go smoothly, and when Roman officials mishandled the situation, the Goths began to raid and plunder. Valens, attempting to put down
48345-447: The empire, including Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia until Heraclius' successful counterattack. In 628 the empire secured a peace treaty and recovered all of its lost territories. In Western Europe, some of the older Roman elite families died out while others became more involved with ecclesiastical than secular affairs. Values attached to Latin scholarship and education mostly disappeared, and while literacy remained important, it became
48638-423: The empire. Such movements were aided by the refusal of the Western Roman elites to support the army or pay the taxes that would have allowed the military to suppress the migration. The emperors of the 5th century were often controlled by military strongmen such as Stilicho (d. 408), Aetius (d. 454), Aspar (d. 471), Ricimer (d. 472), or Gundobad (d. 516), who were partly or fully of non-Roman background. When
48931-553: The end of the Middle Ages in England and the start of the Early Modern period . At the start of the Middle Ages, England was a part of Britannia , a former province of the Roman Empire . The local economy had once been dominated by imperial Roman spending on a large military establishment, which in turn helped to support a complex network of towns, roads, and villas . At the end of the 4th century, however, Roman forces had been largely withdrawn, and this economy collapsed. Germanic settlers began to arrive in increasing numbers during
49224-454: The entire Middle Ages were often referred to as the " Dark Ages ", but with the adoption of these subdivisions, use of this term was restricted to the Early Middle Ages, at least among historians. The Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent during the 2nd century AD; the following two centuries witnessed the slow decline of Roman control over its outlying territories. Economic issues, including inflation, and external pressure on
49517-401: The entire country. The road system was adequate for the needs of the period, although it was significantly cheaper to transport goods by water. The major river networks formed key transport routes, while many English towns formed navigable inland ports . For much of the Middle Ages, England's climate differed from that in the 21st century. Between the 9th and 13th centuries England went through
49810-414: The final march on the Catuvellauni capital at Camulodunum (modern Colchester ), before he returned to Rome for his triumph. The Catuvellauni held sway over most of the southeastern corner of England; eleven local rulers surrendered, a number of client kingdoms were established, and the rest became a Roman province with Camulodunum as its capital. Over the next four years, the territory was consolidated and
50103-400: The first Scandinavian raids on England began; these Viking attacks grew in number and scale until in 865 the Danish micel here or Great Army , invaded England, captured York and defeated the kingdom of East Anglia. Mercia and Northumbria fell in 875 and 876, and Alfred of Wessex was driven into internal exile in 878. However, in the same year Alfred won a decisive victory against
50396-440: The flow of precious resources to manipulate tin and copper into high-status bronze objects such as swords and axes. Settlement became increasingly permanent and intensive. Towards the end of the Bronze Age, many examples of very fine metalwork began to be deposited in rivers, presumably for ritual reasons and perhaps reflecting a progressive change in emphasis from the sky to the earth, as a rising population put increasing pressure on
50689-407: The focus for fresh revolts until his death in 1128. Henry's only legitimate son, William , died aboard the White Ship disaster of 1120, sparking a fresh succession crisis: Henry's nephew, Stephen of Blois , claimed the throne in 1135, but this was disputed by the Empress Matilda , Henry's daughter. Civil war broke out across England and Normandy, resulting in a long period of warfare later termed
50982-458: The foreign traders who lived in the special enclaves in London in the Late Middle Ages; the position of the Jews is described below, but Italian and Baltic traders were also regarded as aliens and were frequently the targets of violence during economic downturns. Even within England, different identities abounded, each with their own sense of status and importance. Regional identities could be important – men and women from Yorkshire , for example, had
51275-401: The form of the Peasants' Revolt; a violent retribution followed, with as many as 7,000 alleged rebels executed. A new class of gentry emerged as a result of these changes, renting land from the major nobility to farm out at a profit. The legal system continued to expand during the 14th century, dealing with an ever-wider set of complex problems. By the time that Richard II was deposed in 1399,
51568-452: The founding of universities . The theology of Thomas Aquinas , the paintings of Giotto , the poetry of Dante and Chaucer , the travels of Marco Polo , and the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres are among the outstanding achievements toward the end of this period and into the Late Middle Ages. The Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine, plague, and war, which significantly diminished
51861-405: The frontiers combined to create the Crisis of the Third Century , with emperors coming to the throne only to be rapidly replaced by new usurpers. Military expenses increased steadily during the 3rd century, mainly in response to the war with the Sasanian Empire , which revived in the middle of the 3rd century. The army doubled in size, and cavalry and smaller units replaced the Roman legion as
52154-517: The future emperor Vespasian led a campaign into the Southwest where he subjugated two more tribes. By AD 54 the border had been pushed back to the Severn and the Trent, and campaigns were underway to subjugate Northern England and Wales. But in AD 60, under the leadership of the warrior-queen Boudicca , the tribes rebelled against the Romans. At first, the rebels had great success. They burned Camulodunum, Londinium and Verulamium (modern-day Colchester, London and St. Albans respectively) to
52447-492: The governor Agricola incorporated into the province the last pockets of independence in Wales and Northern England. He also led a campaign into Scotland which was recalled by Emperor Domitian. The border gradually formed along the Stanegate road in Northern England, solidified by Hadrian's Wall built in AD 138, despite temporary forays into Scotland. The Romans and their culture stayed in charge for 350 years. Traces of their presence are ubiquitous throughout England. In
52740-404: The great Anglo-Saxon families, and the links with the Duchy began to weaken. By the late 12th century, mobilising the English barons to fight on the continent was proving difficult, and John's attempts to do so ended in civil war. Civil strife re-emerged under Henry III, with the rebel barons in 1258–59 demanding widespread reforms, and an early version of Parliament was summoned in 1265 to represent
53033-405: The ground. There is some archaeological evidence that the same happened at Winchester. The Second Legion Augusta , stationed at Exeter , refused to move for fear of revolt among the locals. Londinium governor Suetonius Paulinus evacuated the city before the rebels sacked and burned it; the fire was so hot that a ten-inch layer of melted red clay remains 15 feet below London's streets. In the end,
53326-430: The growth of an English identity. Despite repeated crises of succession and a Danish seizure of power at the start of the 11th century, it can also be argued that by the 1060s England was a powerful, centralised state with a strong military and successful economy. The Norman invasion of England in 1066 led to the defeat and replacement of the Anglo-Saxon elite with Norman and French nobles and their supporters. William
53619-419: The heavily wooded Weald , through to the upland moors of Yorkshire . Despite this, medieval England broadly formed two zones, roughly divided by the rivers Exe and Tees : the south and east of England had lighter, richer soils, able to support both arable and pastoral agriculture, while the poorer soils and colder climate of the north and west produced a predominantly pastoral economy. Slightly more land
53912-435: The help of a majority of the nobility, exercising power through the exchequer , the common bench and the royal household. This government was better organised and on a larger scale than ever before, and by the 14th century the king's formerly peripatetic chancery had to take up permanent residence in Westminster . Edward used Parliament even more than his predecessors to handle general administration, to legislate and to raise
54205-411: The highly distinctive Arras culture . And from around 150–100 BC, groups of Belgae began to control significant parts of the South. These invasions constituted movements of a few people who established themselves as a warrior elite atop existing native systems, rather than replacing them. The Belgic invasion was much larger than the Parisian settlement, but the continuity of pottery style shows that
54498-399: The imperial officials called missi dominici , who served as roving inspectors and troubleshooters. Charlemagne's court in Aachen was the centre of the cultural revival sometimes referred to as the " Carolingian Renaissance ". Literacy increased, as did development in the arts, architecture and jurisprudence, as well as liturgical and scriptural studies. The English monk Alcuin (d. 804)
54791-427: The invaders and killed Harald III of Norway and Tostig at the Battle of Stamford Bridge . On 28 September 1066, William of Normandy invaded England in a campaign called the Norman Conquest . After marching from Yorkshire , Harold's exhausted army was defeated and Harold was killed at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October. Further opposition to William in support of Edgar the Ætheling soon collapsed, and William
55084-401: The island around 325 BC. Both of these texts are now lost; although quoted by later writers, not enough survives to inform the archaeological interpretation to any significant degree. Britain, we are told, is inhabited by tribes which are autochthonous and preserve in their ways of living the ancient manner of life. They use chariots, for instance, in their wars, even as tradition tells us
55377-415: The king of the united Austrasia and Neustria. Charles, more often known as Charles the Great or Charlemagne , embarked upon a programme of systematic expansion in 774 that unified a large portion of Europe, eventually controlling modern-day France, northern Italy, and Saxony . In the wars that lasted beyond 800, he rewarded allies with war booty and command over parcels of land. In 774, Charlemagne conquered
55670-441: The kingdom became the centre of government for the North Sea empire which included Denmark and Norway. Cnut was succeeded by his sons, but in 1042 the native dynasty was restored with the accession of Edward the Confessor . Edward's failure to produce an heir caused a furious conflict over the succession on his death in 1066. His struggles for power against Godwin, Earl of Wessex , the claims of Cnut's Scandinavian successors, and
55963-407: The kingdom of Northumbria, which was formed from the amalgamation of Bernicia and Deira. Edwin of Northumbria probably held dominance over much of Britain, though Bede's Northumbrian bias should be kept in mind. Due to succession crises, Northumbrian hegemony was not constant, and Mercia remained a very powerful kingdom, especially under Penda. Two defeats ended Northumbrian dominance: the Battle of
56256-411: The kingdom, which remained united thereafter. There were renewed Scandinavian attacks on England at the end of the 10th century. Æthelred ruled a long reign but ultimately lost his kingdom to Sweyn of Denmark , though he recovered it following the latter's death. However, Æthelred's son Edmund II Ironside died shortly afterwards, allowing Cnut , Sweyn's son, to become king of England. Under his rule
56549-448: The kingdom. Many churchmen and thegns were also given permission by the king to hold their own local courts. The legal system depended on a system of oaths in which the value of different individuals swearing on behalf of the plaintiff or defendant varied according to their social status – the word of a companion of the king, for example, was worth twelve times that of a churl . If fines were imposed, their size similarly varied accord to
56842-471: The kingdom. The monasteries were brought firmly into the web of feudal relations, with their holding of land linked to the provision of military support to the crown. The Normans adopted the Anglo-Saxon model of monastic cathedral communities, and within seventy years the majority of English cathedrals were controlled by monks; every English cathedral, however, was rebuilt to some extent by the new rulers. England's bishops remained powerful temporal figures, and in
57135-451: The land. England largely became bound up with the Atlantic trade system , which created a cultural continuum over a large part of Western Europe. It is possible that the Celtic languages developed or spread to England as part of this system; by the end of the Iron Age there is much evidence that they were spoken across all England and western parts of Britain. The Iron Age is conventionally said to begin around 800 BC. At this time,
57428-500: The large brooches in fibula or penannular form that were a key piece of personal adornment for elites, including the Irish Tara Brooch . Highly decorated books were mostly Gospel Books and these have survived in larger numbers , including the Insular Book of Kells , the Book of Lindisfarne , and the imperial Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram , which is one of the few to retain its " treasure binding " of gold encrusted with jewels. Charlemagne's court seems to have been responsible for
57721-488: The late 6th and 7th centuries, helped by the conversion of the Franks in Northern France, who carried considerable influence in England. Pope Gregory I sent a team of missionaries to convert King Æthelberht of Kent and his household, starting the process of converting Kent. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury and started to build new churches across the South-East, reusing existing pagan shrines. Oswald and Oswiu , kings of Northumbria, were converted in
58014-450: The late king's council, but primogeniture rapidly became the norm for succession. The kings further bolstered their status by adopting Christian ceremonies and nomenclature, introducing ecclesiastical coronations during the 8th century and terming themselves "Christ's deputy" by the 11th century. Huge estates were initially built up by the king, bishops, monasteries and thegns , but in the 9th and 10th centuries these were slowly broken up as
58307-416: The latter of whom had overthrown his cousin Richard II (the only surviving son of Edward III"s eldest son Edward the Black Prince ) in 1399. In 1485, the war ended when Lancastrian Henry Tudor emerged victorious from the Battle of Bosworth Field and married the senior female Yorkist descendant, Elizabeth of York , uniting the two houses . Under the Tudors and the later Stuart dynasty , England became
58600-415: The letters, of Pope Gregory the Great (pope 590–604) survived, and of those more than 850 letters, the vast majority were concerned with affairs in Italy or Constantinople. The only part of Western Europe where the papacy had influence was Britain, where Gregory had sent the Gregorian mission in 597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Irish missionaries were most active in Western Europe between
58893-417: The line of Western emperors ceased, many of the kings who replaced them were from the same background. Intermarriage between the new kings and the Roman elites was common. This led to a fusion of Roman culture with the customs of the invading tribes, including the popular assemblies that allowed free male tribal members more say in political matters than was common in the Roman state. Material artefacts left by
59186-425: The local ealdormen , exchanging some authority and revenue for assistance in defence. The early English church was racked with disagreement on doctrine , which was addressed by the Synod of Whitby in 664; some issues were resolved, but arguments between the archbishops of Canterbury and York as to which had primacy across Britain began shortly afterwards and continued throughout most of the medieval period. William
59479-517: The main and sometimes only outposts of education and literacy in a region. Many of the surviving manuscripts of the Latin classics were copied in monasteries in the Early Middle Ages. Monks were also the authors of new works, including history, theology, and other subjects, written by authors such as Bede (d. 735), a native of northern England who wrote in the late 7th and early 8th centuries. The Frankish kingdom in northern Gaul split into kingdoms called Austrasia , Neustria , and Burgundy during
59772-461: The main influx of population probably happened after the fifth century. The precise nature of these invasions is not fully known; there are doubts about the legitimacy of historical accounts due to a lack of archaeological finds. Gildas ' De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae , composed in the 6th century, states that when the Roman army departed the Isle of Britannia in the 4th century AD, the indigenous Britons were invaded by Picts , their neighbours to
60065-410: The main tactical unit. The need for revenue led to increased taxes and a decline in numbers of the curial , or landowning, class, and decreasing numbers of them willing to shoulder the burdens of holding office in their native towns. More bureaucrats were needed in the central administration to deal with the needs of the army, which led to complaints from civilians that there were more tax-collectors in
60358-419: The male-dominated beer industry in the 15th century. Higher status jobs and apprenticeships, however, remained closed to women. As in earlier times, noblewomen exercised power on their estates in their husbands' absence and again, if necessary, defended them in sieges and skirmishes. Wealthy widows who could successfully claim their rightful share of their late husband's property could live as powerful members of
60651-401: The middle of the 4th century, diverting soldiers from the empire's frontier forces and allowing invaders to encroach. For much of the 4th century, Roman society stabilised in a new form that differed from the earlier classical period , with a widening gulf between the rich and poor, and a decline in the vitality of the smaller towns. Another change was the Christianisation , or conversion of
60944-436: The migrations of the Slavs added Slavic languages to Eastern Europe. As Western Europe witnessed the formation of new kingdoms, the Eastern Roman Empire remained intact and experienced an economic revival that lasted into the early 7th century. There were fewer invasions of the eastern section of the empire; most occurred in the Balkans. Peace with the Sasanian Empire , the traditional enemy of Rome, lasted throughout most of
61237-491: The military situation in France began to unravel. A sequence of bloody civil wars, later termed the Wars of the Roses , finally broke out in 1455, spurred on by an economic crisis and a widespread perception of poor government. Edward IV , leading a faction known as the Yorkists , removed Henry from power in 1461 but by 1469 fighting recommenced as Edward, Henry, and Edward's brother George , backed by leading nobles and powerful French supporters, vied for power. By 1471 Edward
61530-464: The military was the horseshoe , which allowed horses to be used in rocky terrain. The High Middle Ages was a period of tremendous expansion of population . The estimated population of Europe grew from 35 to 80 million between 1000 and 1347, although the exact causes remain unclear: improved agricultural techniques, the decline of slaveholding, a more clement climate and the lack of invasion have all been suggested. As much as 90 per cent of
61823-448: The native population remained in place. Yet, it was accompanied by significant socio-economic change. Proto-urban, or even urban settlements, known as oppida , begin to eclipse the old hillforts, and an elite whose position is based on battle prowess and the ability to manipulate resources re-appears much more distinctly. In 55 and 54 BC, Julius Caesar , as part of his campaigns in Gaul , invaded Britain and claimed to have scored
62116-429: The natives of Britannia – modern-day Great Britain – settled in what is now Brittany . Other monarchies were established by the Visigothic Kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula , the Suebi in northwestern Iberia, and the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa . In the sixth century, the Lombards settled in Northern Italy , replacing the Ostrogothic kingdom with a grouping of duchies that occasionally selected
62409-437: The necessary taxes to pay for the wars in France. The royal lands—and incomes from them—had diminished over the years, and increasingly frequent taxation was required to support royal initiatives. Edward held elaborate chivalric events in an effort to unite his supporters around the symbols of knighthood. The ideal of chivalry continued to develop throughout the 14th century, reflected in the growth of knightly orders (including
62702-416: The next level of society, often holding land in their own right or controlling businesses in the towns. Geburs , peasants who worked land belonging to a thegn , formed a lower class still. The very lowest class were slaves, who could be bought and sold and who held only minimal rights. The balance of power between these different groups changed over time. Early in the period, kings were elected by members of
62995-429: The nobility began to exercise power through a system termed bastard feudalism . Nearly 1,500 villages were deserted by their inhabitants and many men and women sought new opportunities in the towns and cities. New technologies were introduced, and England produced some of the great medieval philosophers and natural scientists . English kings in the 14th and 15th centuries laid claim to the French throne , resulting in
63288-432: The north (now Scotland) and the Scots (now Ireland). Britons invited the Saxons to the island to repel them but after they vanquished the Scots and Picts, the Saxons turned against the Britons. Seven kingdoms are traditionally identified as being established by these migrants. Three were clustered in the South east: Sussex , Kent and Essex . The Midlands were dominated by the kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia . To
63581-530: The north was Northumbria which unified two earlier kingdoms, Bernicia and Deira . Other smaller kingdoms seem to have existed as well, such as Lindsey in what is now Lincolnshire, and the Hwicce in the southwest. Eventually, the kingdoms were dominated by Northumbria and Mercia in the 7th century, Mercia in the 8th century and then Wessex in the 9th century. Northumbria eventually extended its control north into Scotland and west into Wales . It also subdued Mercia whose first powerful King, Penda ,
63874-506: The oath-value of the individual. The Anglo-Saxon authorities struggled to deal with the bloodfeuds between families that emerged following violent killings, attempting to use a system of weregild , a payment of blood money, as a way of providing an alternative to long-running vendettas. Within twenty years of the Norman conquest, the former Anglo-Saxon elite were replaced by a new class of Norman nobility, with around 8,000 Normans and French settling in England. The new earls (successors to
64167-418: The old Greek heroes did in the Trojan War. Contact with the continent was less than in the Bronze Age but still significant. Goods continued to move to England, with a possible hiatus around 350 to 150 BC. There were a few armed invasions of hordes of migrating Celts. There are two known invasions. Around 300 BC, a group from the Gaulish Parisii tribe apparently took over East Yorkshire, establishing
64460-422: The organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles , and feudalism , the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors , were two of the ways society was organized in the High Middle Ages. This period also saw the collapse of the unified Christian church, with
64753-478: The payment of some sort of compensation . Women took part in aristocratic society mainly in their roles as wives and mothers of men, with the role of mother of a ruler being especially prominent in Merovingian Gaul. In Anglo-Saxon society the lack of many child rulers meant a lesser role for women as queen mothers, but this was compensated for by the increased role played by abbesses of monasteries. Only in Italy does it appear that women were always considered under
65046-421: The peasantry held land in return for local labour services, creating a web of loyalties and resources enforced in part by new honorial courts. This system had been used in Normandy and concentrated more power in the king and the upper elite than the former Anglo-Saxon system of government. The practice of slavery declined in the years after the conquest, as the Normans considered the practice backward and contrary to
65339-467: The peninsula in a region they called Al-Andalus . The Islamic conquests reached their peak in the mid-eighth century. The defeat of Muslim forces at the Battle of Tours in 732 led to the reconquest of southern France by the Franks, but the main reason for the halt of Islamic growth in Europe was the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate and its replacement by the Abbasid Caliphate . The Abbasids moved their capital to Baghdad and were more concerned with
65632-432: The peoples of both nations. Following the Hundred Years' Wars, England became embroiled in its own succession wars between the descendants of Edward III's five sons. The Wars of the Roses broke out in 1455 and pitted the descendants of the second son (through a female line) Lionel of Antwerp known as the House of York against the House of Lancaster who descended from the third son John of Gaunt and his son Henry IV,
65925-472: The period, through the building of dykes to drain marshes, tree clearance and the large-scale extraction of peat . Managed parks for hunting game, including deer and boars, were built as status symbols by the nobility from the 12th century onwards, but earlier versions of parks, such as hays , may have originated as early as the 7th century. History of England The territory today known as England became inhabited more than 800,000 years ago, as
66218-408: The political and demographic nature of what had been the Western Roman Empire. By the end of the 5th century the western section of the empire was divided into smaller political units, ruled by the tribes that had invaded in the early part of the century. The deposition of the last emperor of the west, Romulus Augustulus , in 476 has traditionally marked the end of the Western Roman Empire. By 493
66511-532: The political power devolved to the local lords. Missionary efforts to Scandinavia during the 9th and 10th centuries helped strengthen the growth of kingdoms such as Sweden , Denmark , and Norway , which gained power and territory. Some kings converted to Christianity, although not all by 1000. Scandinavians also expanded and colonised throughout Europe. Besides the settlements in Ireland, England, and Normandy, further settlement took place in what became Russia and Iceland . Swedish traders and raiders ranged down
66804-442: The population of Europe; between 1347 and 1350, the Black Death killed about a third of Europeans. Controversy, heresy , and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, and peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period . The Middle Ages
67097-442: The power of the major noble magnates had grown considerably; powerful rulers such as Henry IV would contain them, but during the minority of Henry VI they controlled the country. The magnates depended upon their income from rent and trade to allow them to maintain groups of paid, armed retainers, often sporting controversial livery, and buy support amongst the wider gentry; this system has been dubbed bastard feudalism . Their influence
67390-418: The pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, and Saracens from the south. During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism ,
67683-403: The previous Brittonic language . The Anglo-Saxons warred with British successor states in western Britain and the Hen Ogledd (Old North; the Brittonic -speaking parts of northern Britain), as well as with each other. Raids by Vikings became frequent after about AD 800, and the Norsemen settled in large parts of what is now England. During this period, several rulers attempted to unite
67976-413: The princes of North Wales led to Edward mobilising a huge army, defeating the native Welsh and undertaking a programme of English colonisation and castle building across the region. Further wars were conducted in Flanders and Aquitaine. Edward also fought campaigns in Scotland , but was unable to achieve strategic victory, and the costs created tensions that nearly led to civil war. Edward II inherited
68269-419: The protection and control of a male relative. Peasant society is much less documented than the nobility. Most of the surviving information available to historians comes from archaeology ; few detailed written records documenting peasant life remain from before the 9th century. Most of the descriptions of the lower classes come from either law codes or writers from the upper classes. Landholding patterns in
68562-417: The rebel interests. On becoming king in 1272, Edward I reestablished royal power, overhauling the royal finances and appealing to the broader English elite by using Parliament to authorise the raising of new taxes and to hear petitions concerning abuses of local governance. This political balance collapsed under Edward II and savage civil wars broke out during the 1320s. Edward III restored order once more with
68855-417: The rebels were said to have killed 70,000 Romans and Roman sympathisers. Paulinus gathered what was left of the Roman army. In the decisive battle , 10,000 Romans faced nearly 100,000 warriors somewhere along the line of Watling Street , at the end of which Boudicca was utterly defeated. It was said that 80,000 rebels were killed, but only 400 Romans. Over the next 20 years, the borders expanded slightly, but
69148-410: The region . Some Norman lords used England as a launching point for attacks into South and North Wales , spreading up the valleys to create new Marcher territories. By the time of William's death in 1087, England formed the largest part of an Anglo-Norman empire, ruled over by a network of nobles with landholdings across England, Normandy, and Wales. England's growing wealth was critical in allowing
69441-440: The remaining Saxons, killing Æthelred's son Edmund in the process. Cnut seized the throne, crowning himself King of England. Alfred of Wessex died in 899 and was succeeded by his son Edward the Elder . Edward, and his brother-in-law Æthelred of (what was left of) Mercia, began a programme of expansion, building forts and towns on an Alfredian model. On Æthelred's death, his wife (Edward's sister) Æthelflæd ruled as "Lady of
69734-433: The rest of the world, was exclusively anatomically modern humans , and the evidence suggests that their societies were increasingly complex and they were manipulating their environment and prey in new ways, possibly selective burning of then omnipresent woodland to create clearings for herds to gather and then hunt them. Hunting was mainly done with simple projectile weapons such as javelin and possibly sling . Bow and arrow
70027-470: The rivers of the Russian steppe, and even attempted to seize Constantinople in 860 and 907 . Christian Spain, initially driven into a small section of the peninsula in the north, expanded slowly south during the 9th and 10th centuries, establishing the kingdoms of Asturias and León . In Eastern Europe, Byzantium revived its fortunes under Emperor Basil I (r. 867–886) and his successors Leo VI (r. 886–912) and Constantine VII (r. 913–959), members of
70320-449: The royal chancery, while the familia regis , the military household, emerged to act as a bodyguard and military staff. England's bishops continued to form an important part in local administration, alongside the nobility. Henry I and Henry II both implemented significant legal reforms , extending and widening the scope of centralised, royal law; by the 1180s, the basis for the future English common law had largely been established, with
70613-415: The rule of the House of Plantagenet , a dynasty which later inherited claims to the Kingdom of France . During this period, Magna Carta was signed and Parliament became established. Anti-Semitism rose to great heights, and in 1290, England became the first country to permanently expel the Jews . A succession crisis in France led to the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), a series of conflicts involving
70906-437: The rule of the Umayyad Caliphate , an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors . Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or "Code of Justinian",
71199-440: The similarity between English and continental Germanic DNA could have originated from earlier prehistoric migrations, researchers have begun to use data collected from ancient burials to ascertain the level of Anglo-Saxon contribution to the modern English gene pool. Two studies published in 2016, based on data collected from skeletons found in Iron Age, Roman and Anglo-Saxon era graves in Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire, concluded that
71492-433: The site. Indeed, by the 12th century reports of posthumous miracles by local saints were becoming increasingly common in England, adding to the attractiveness of pilgrimages to prominent relics. Participation in the Crusades was also seen as a form of pilgrimage, and indeed the same Latin word, peregrinatio , was sometimes applied to both activities. While English participation in the First Crusade between 1095 and 1099
71785-449: The slow infiltration of the Balkans by the Slavs added a further difficulty for Justinian's successors. It began gradually, but by the late 540s Slavic tribes were in Thrace and Illyrium , and had defeated an imperial army near Adrianople in 551. In the 560s the Avars began to expand from their base on the north bank of the Danube ; by the end of the 6th-century, they were the dominant power in Central Europe and routinely able to force
72078-423: The society was still firmly patriarchal. Some exercised power as abbesses, exerting widespread influence across the early English Church, although their wealth and authority diminished with the monastic reforms of the 9th century. Anglo-Saxon queens began to hold lands in their own right in the 10th century and their households contributed to the running of the kingdom. Although women could not lead military forces, in
72371-406: The son of a Danish king. Attempts to bribe Sweyn not to attack using danegeld payments failed, and he took the throne in 1013. Swein's son, Cnut , liquidated many of the older English families following his seizure of power in 1016. Æthelred's son, Edward the Confessor , had survived in exile in Normandy and returned to claim the throne in 1042. Edward was childless, and the succession again became
72664-411: The south-west coast. The first major attack in Britain was in 793 at Lindisfarne monastery as given by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle . However, by then the Vikings were almost certainly well-established in Orkney and Shetland , and many other non-recorded raids probably occurred before this. Records do show the first Viking attack on Iona taking place in 794. The arrival of the Vikings (in particular
72957-430: The southern part of Great Britain. In northern Britain, Kenneth MacAlpin (d. c. 860) united the Picts and the Scots into the Kingdom of Alba . In the early 10th century, the Ottonian dynasty had established itself in Germany , and was engaged in driving back the Magyars. Its efforts culminated in the coronation in 962 of Otto I (r. 936–973) as Holy Roman Emperor . In 972, he secured recognition of his title by
73250-413: The system of government. Royal landownings and wealth stretched across England, and placed the king in a privileged position above even the most powerful of the noble elite. Successive kings, though, still needed more resources to pay for military campaigns, conduct building programmes or to reward their followers, and this meant exercising their feudal rights to interfere in the land-holdings of nobles. This
73543-459: The teaching of suitable sermons in local churches. By the early 15th century, combating Lollard teachings had become a key political issue, championed by Henry IV and his Lancastrian followers, who used the powers of both the church and state to combat the heresy . Pilgrimages were a popular religious practice throughout the Middle Ages in England, with the tradition dating back to the Roman period. Typically pilgrims would travel short distances to
73836-454: The teachings of the church. The more prosperous peasants, however, lost influence and power as the Normans made holding land more dependent on providing labour services to the local lord. They sank down the economic hierarchy, swelling the numbers of unfree villeins or serfs , forbidden to leave their manor or seek alternative employment. At the centre of power, the kings employed a succession of clergy as chancellors , responsible for running
74129-425: The throne with the support of parliament in 1399. Ruling as Henry IV, he exercised power through a royal council and parliament, while attempting to enforce political and religious conformity. His son, Henry V , reinvigorated the war with France and came close to achieving strategic success shortly before his death in 1422. Henry VI became king at the age of only nine months and both the English political system and
74422-468: The throne. By far the strongest hereditary claim was that of Edgar the Ætheling , but due to his youth and apparent lack of powerful supporters, he did not play a major part in the struggles of 1066, although he was made king for a short time by the Witan after the death of Harold Godwinson. In September 1066, Harald III of Norway and Earl Tostig landed in Northern England with a force of around 15,000 men and 300 longships . Harold Godwinson defeated
74715-464: The top of the social structure was the king, who stood above many of the normal processes of Anglo-Saxon life and whose household had special privileges and protection. Beneath the king were thegns , nobles, the more powerful of which maintained their own courts and were termed ealdormen . The relationship between kings and their nobles was bound up with military symbolism and the ritual exchange of weapons and armour. Freemen, called churls , formed
75008-447: The towns chosen as capitals. Although there had been Jewish communities in many Roman cities , the Jews suffered periods of persecution after the conversion of the empire to Christianity. Officially they were tolerated, if subject to conversion efforts, and at times were even encouraged to settle in new areas. Religious beliefs in the Eastern Roman Empire and Iran were in flux during the late sixth and early seventh centuries. Judaism
75301-399: The various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, an effort that led to the emergence of the Kingdom of England by the 10th century. In 1066, a Norman expedition invaded and conquered England . The Norman dynasty , established by William the Conqueror , ruled England for over half a century before the period of succession crisis known as the Anarchy (1135–1154). Following the Anarchy, England came under
75594-414: The wake of the breakdown of Roman rule in Britain from the middle of the fourth century, present day England was progressively settled by Germanic groups. Collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons , these included Angles , Saxons , Jutes and Frisians . The Battle of Deorham was critical in establishing Anglo-Saxon rule in 577. Saxon mercenaries existed in Britain since before the late Roman period, but
75887-404: The war with Scotland and faced growing opposition to his rule as a result of his royal favourites and military failures. The Despenser War of 1321–22 was followed by instability and the subsequent overthrow, and possible murder, of Edward in 1327 at the hands of his French wife, Isabella , and a rebel baron, Roger Mortimer . Isabella and Mortimer's regime lasted only a few years before falling to
76180-625: The warlords. As the Norse in mainland Scandinavia started to convert , many mainland rulers recruited missionaries from England to assist in the process. With the conversion of much of England in the 6th and 7th centuries, there was an explosion of local church building. English monasteries formed the main basis for the church, however, and were often sponsored by local rulers, taking various forms, including mixed communities headed by abbesses , bishop-led communities of monks , and others formed around married priests and their families. Cathedrals were constructed, staffed either with secular canons in
76473-514: The west, Byzantine control of most of the Western Empire could not be sustained; the reconquest of the Mediterranean periphery and the Italian Peninsula ( Gothic War ) in the reign of Justinian (r. 527–565) was the sole, and temporary, exception. The political structure of Western Europe changed with the end of the united Roman Empire. Although the movements of peoples during this period are usually described as "invasions", they were not just military expeditions but migrations of entire peoples into
76766-426: The young Henry III . England's power structures remained unstable and the outbreak of the Second Barons' War in 1264 resulted in the king's capture by Simon de Montfort . Henry's son, Edward , defeated the rebel factions between 1265 and 1267, restoring his father to power. On becoming king, Edward I rebuilt the status of the monarchy, restoring and extending key castles that had fallen into disrepair. Uprisings by
77059-604: Was a patriarchal society and the lives of women were heavily influenced by contemporary beliefs about gender and authority. However, the position of women varied considerably according to various factors, including their social class ; whether they were unmarried, married, widowed or remarried; and in which part of the country they lived. Significant gender inequalities persisted throughout the period, as women typically had more limited life-choices, access to employment and trade, and legal rights than men. In Anglo-Saxon society, noblewomen enjoyed considerable rights and status, although
77352-500: Was a popular destination from the 7th century onwards; sometimes these trips were a form of convenient political exile. Under the Normans, religious institutions with important shrines, such as Glastonbury , Canterbury and Winchester , promoted themselves as pilgrimage destinations, maximising the value of the historic miracles associated with the sites. Accumulating relics became an important task for ambitious institutions, as these were believed to hold curative powers and lent status to
77645-438: Was a trend throughout the old Roman lands that happened in the Early Middle Ages. This was especially marked in the lands that did not lie on the Mediterranean, such as northern Gaul or Britain. Non-local goods appearing in the archaeological record are usually luxury goods. In the northern parts of Europe, not only were the trade networks local, but the goods carried were simple, with little pottery or other complex products. Around
77938-459: Was also known as "Henry Beauclerc" because he received a formal education, unlike his older brother and heir apparent William who got practical training to be king. Henry worked hard to reform and stabilise the country and smooth the differences between the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman societies. The loss of his son, William Adelin , in the wreck of the White Ship in November 1120, undermined his reforms. This problem regarding succession cast
78231-402: Was an active proselytising faith, and at least one Arab political leader converted to it. In addition Jewish theologians wrote polemics defending their religion against Christian and Islamic influences. Christianity had active missions competing with the Persians' Zoroastrianism in seeking converts, especially among residents of the Arabian Peninsula . All these strands came together with
78524-438: Was an important feature of the 5th-century Roman military. The various invading tribes had differing emphases on types of soldiers—ranging from the primarily infantry Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain to the Vandals and Visigoths who had a high proportion of cavalry in their armies. During the early invasion period, the stirrup had not been introduced into warfare, which limited the usefulness of cavalry as shock troops because it
78817-447: Was appropriate behaviour. As in earlier centuries, most women worked in agriculture, but here roles became more clearly gendered, with ploughing and managing the fields defined as men's work, for example, and dairy production becoming dominated by women. The years after the Black Death left many women widows; in the wider economy labour was in short supply and land was suddenly readily available. In rural areas peasant women could enjoy
79110-446: Was attached to the continent for much of this earliest period of history, and varying temperatures over tens of thousands of years meant that it was not always inhabited. England has been continuously inhabited since the last Ice Age ended around 9000 BC, the beginning of the Middle Stone Age, or Mesolithic era . Rising sea-levels cut off Britain from the continent for the last time around 6500 BC. The population by then, as in
79403-435: Was contentious and a frequent issue of complaint, as there was a growing belief that land should be held by hereditary right, not through the favour of the king. Property and wealth became increasingly focused in the hands of a subset of the nobility, the great magnates, at the expense of the wider baronage, encouraging the breakdown of some aspects of local feudalism. As time went by, the Norman nobility intermarried with many of
79696-411: Was covered by trees than in the 20th century, and bears , beavers and wolves lived wild in England, bears being hunted to extinction by the 11th century and beavers by the 12th. Of the 10,000 miles of roads that had been built by the Romans, many remained in use and four were of particular strategic importance—the Icknield Way , the Fosse Way , Ermine Street and Watling Street —which criss-crossed
79989-468: Was crowned king on Christmas Day 1066. For five years, he faced a series of rebellions in various parts of England and a half-hearted Danish invasion, but he subdued them and established an enduring regime. The Norman Conquest led to a profound change in the history of the English state. William ordered the compilation of the Domesday Book , a survey of the entire population and their lands and property for tax purposes, which reveals that within 20 years of
80282-420: Was dominated by efforts to regain the dignity and classicism of imperial Roman and Byzantine art , but was also influenced by the Insular art of the British Isles. Insular art integrated the energy of Irish Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Germanic styles of ornament with Mediterranean forms such as the book, and established many characteristics of art for the rest of the medieval period. Surviving religious works from
80575-442: Was exerted both through the House of Lords at Parliament and through the king's council. The gentry and wealthier townsmen exercised increasing influence through the House of Commons , opposing raising taxes to pay for the French wars. By the 1430s and 1440s the English government was in major financial difficulties, leading to the crisis of 1450 and a popular revolt under the leadership of Jack Cade . Law and order deteriorated, and
80868-485: Was exported to the textile cities of Flanders , where it was worked into cloth. Medieval foreign policy was as much shaped by relations with the Flemish textile industry as it was by dynastic adventures in western France. An English textile industry was established in the 15th century, providing the basis for rapid English capital accumulation . Henry I , the fourth son of William I the Conqueror , succeeded his elder brother William II as King of England in 1100. Henry
81161-408: Was finally expelled from England in 1290 by Edward I, being replaced by foreign merchants. Christianity had been the official imperial religion of the Roman Empire, and the first churches were built in England in the second half of the 4th century, overseen by a hierarchy of bishops and priests. Many existing pagan shrines were converted to Christian use and few pagan sites still operated by
81454-411: Was immediately confronted with the task of defending Wessex against the Danes. He spent the first five years of his reign paying the invaders off. In 878, Alfred's forces were overwhelmed at Chippenham in a surprise attack. It was only now, with the independence of Wessex hanging by a thread, that Alfred emerged as a great king. In May 878 he led a force that defeated the Danes at Edington . The victory
81747-408: Was invited to Aachen and brought the education available in the monasteries of Northumbria. Charlemagne's chancery —or writing office—made use of a new script today known as Carolingian minuscule , allowing a common writing style that advanced communication across much of Europe. Charlemagne sponsored changes in church liturgy , imposing the Roman form of church service on his domains, as well as
82040-411: Was killed by Oswy in 655. Northumbria's power began to wane after 685 with the defeat and death of its king Aegfrith at the hands of the Picts . Mercian power reached its peak under the rule of Offa , who from 785 had influence over most of Anglo-Saxon England. Since Offa's death in 796, the supremacy of Wessex was established under Egbert who extended control west into Cornwall before defeating
82333-466: Was known in Western Europe since at least 9000 BC. The climate continued to warm and the population probably rose. The New Stone Age, or Neolithic era , began with the introduction of farming, ultimately from the Middle East, around 4000 BC. It is not known whether this was caused by a substantial folk movement or native adoption of foreign practices or both. People began to lead a more settled lifestyle. Monumental collective tombs were built for
82626-434: Was less need for large tax revenues and so the taxation systems decayed. Warfare was common between and within the kingdoms. Slavery declined as the supply weakened, and society became more rural. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, new peoples and individuals filled the political void left by Roman centralised government. The Ostrogoths , a Gothic tribe, settled in Roman Italy in the late fifth century under Theoderic
82919-401: Was limited, England played a prominent part in the Second , Third and Fifth Crusades over the next two centuries, with many crusaders leaving for the Levant during the intervening years. The idea of undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem was not new in England, however, as the idea of religiously justified warfare went back to Anglo-Saxon times. Many of those who took up the Cross to go on
83212-439: Was marked by numerous divisions of the empire among his sons and, after 829, civil wars between various alliances of father and sons over the control of various parts of the empire. Eventually, Louis recognised his eldest son Lothair I (d. 855) as emperor and gave him Italy. Louis divided the rest of the empire between Lothair and Charles the Bald (d. 877), his youngest son. Lothair took East Francia , comprising both banks of
83505-496: Was not possible to put the full force of the horse and rider behind blows struck by the rider. The greatest change in military affairs during the invasion period was the adoption of the Hunnic composite bow in place of the earlier, and weaker, Scythian composite bow. Another development was the increasing use of longswords and the progressive replacement of scale armour by mail armour and lamellar armour . The importance of infantry and light cavalry began to decline during
83798-409: Was rediscovered in Northern Italy in the 11th century. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks , under the Carolingian dynasty , briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th and early 9th centuries. It covered much of Western Europe but later succumbed to
84091-404: Was reinforced by his son Æthelstan , who extended the borders of Wessex northward, in 927 conquering the Kingdom of York and leading a land and naval invasion of Scotland . These conquests led to his adopting the title 'King of the English' for the first time. The dominance and independence of England was maintained by the kings that followed. It was not until 978 and the accession of Æthelred
84384-442: Was reinforced with propaganda that portrayed the Merovingians as inept or cruel rulers, exalted the accomplishments of Charles Martel, and circulated stories of the family's great piety. At the time of his death in 768, Pippin left his kingdom in the hands of his two sons, Charles (r. 768–814) and Carloman (r. 768–771). When Carloman died of natural causes, Charles blocked the succession of Carloman's young son and installed himself as
84677-417: Was so complete that the Danish leader, Guthrum , was forced to accept Christian baptism and withdraw from Mercia . Alfred then set about strengthening the defences of Wessex, building a new navy—60 vessels strong. Alfred's success bought Wessex and Mercia years of peace and sparked economic recovery in previously ravaged areas. Alfred's success was sustained by his son Edward , whose decisive victories over
84970-417: Was the denarius or denier , while the Anglo-Saxon version was called a penny . From these areas, the denier or penny spread throughout Europe from 700 to 1000 AD. Copper or bronze coins were not struck, nor were gold except in Southern Europe. No silver coins denominated in multiple units were minted. Christianity was a major unifying factor between Eastern and Western Europe before the Arab conquests, but
85263-413: Was to pay off the Danes: for almost 20 years he paid increasingly large sums to the Danish nobles to keep them from English coasts. These payments, known as Danegelds , crippled the English economy. Æthelred then made an alliance with Normandy in 1001 through marriage to the Duke's daughter Emma , in the hope of strengthening England. Then he made a great error: in 1002 he ordered the massacre of all
85556-655: Was triumphant and most of his rivals were dead. On his death, power passed to his brother Richard of Gloucester , who initially ruled on behalf of the young Edward V before seizing the throne himself as Richard III. The future Henry VII , aided by French and Scottish troops, returned to England and defeated Richard at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, bringing an end to the majority of the fighting, although lesser rebellions against his Tudor dynasty would continue for several years afterwards. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were hierarchical societies, each based on ties of allegiance between powerful lords and their immediate followers. At
85849-409: Was with the British Isles and Scandinavia, in contrast to the older Roman Empire with its trading networks centred on the Mediterranean. The empire was administered by an itinerant court that travelled with the emperor, as well as approximately 300 imperial officials called counts , who administered the counties the empire had been divided into. Clergy and local bishops served as officials, as well as
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