This summer, The Mail on Sunday will be supporting the Chalke Valley History Festival, Britain’s premier history event, sponsored by the Daily Mail.
And as an exclusive preview, Mail on Sunday readers are today offered the chance to join a private evening celebrating the importance of history in modern Britain.
Here, one of our evening’s eminent speakers explains the neglected legacy of the most successful Royal house in British history…
So what did the Plantagenets ever do for us? Apart from give us our laws, our language and save us from the French!
The Mail on Sunday will be supporting the Chalke Valley History Festival
Readers are today offered the chance to join a private evening celebrating the importance of history in modern Britain
Plantagenets are the most successful Royal house in British history
By historian Dan Jones For The Mail On Sunday
3 April 2016
Mail On Sunday
This summer, The Mail on Sunday will be supporting the Chalke Valley History Festival, Britain’s premier history event, sponsored by the Daily Mail.
And as an exclusive preview, Mail on Sunday readers are today offered the chance to join a private evening celebrating the importance of history in modern Britain.
Here, one of our evening’s eminent speakers explains the neglected legacy of the most successful Royal house in British history…
Revival: There is a renewed interest in Plantagenets, such as Henry V, played by Tom Hiddleston, who is fancied to be the new Bond, in 2012
William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, was about 70 years old and by his own reckoning still the greatest knight in England. As he sat astride his horse outside the walls of Lincoln on Saturday, May 20, 1217, he faced the biggest test of his glorious career – a battle that would secure England’s future as an independent realm rather than a mere province of France.
Lincoln was one of the great cities of a medieval England ripped in two by civil war. Behind its stone walls lay an enemy army made up of traitors and Frenchmen attacking its castle. Marshal, regent to the child king, Henry III, was there to drive them out with an outnumbered army.
It was a fight to the death and Marshal commanded his knights to be ready to kill their horses and use the corpses to build barricades.
And they won a stunning victory, relieving the besieged loyalists in Lincoln castle. The highest-ranking Frenchman, the Count of Perche, was killed by a sword thrust through the visor-hole of his helmet. Lincoln was saved and so was England.
Had things gone differently, the Battle of Lincoln would have ranked alongside the Battle of Hastings. Had Marshal lost, the son of the king of France, a warrior known as Louis the Lion, would have been our King Louis I. It is astonishing how close he came. Louis had crossed the Channel in 1216 to take the crown from King John, the tyrant who had been forced to grant Magna Carta but refused to stick to its terms.
His enemies – a coalition of English barons and bishops – asked Louis to replace him. Had he succeeded, Louis, who duly inherited the French crown as Louis VIII, would have been king of England and France.
That’s why the Battle of Lincoln was so important. It was the first step towards keeping the crowns of England and France separate. It also guaranteed the survival of the Plantagenet dynasty, the most long-reigning and arguably the most important royal house in English history.
The Plantagenets were originally from Anjou – a French county. But their 331-year rule over England, from 1154 to 1485, lay the foundations of modern England and had a profound effect on the rest of what we now call the United Kingdom. The Plantagenets gave us the basis for the English legal system. Henry II made sweeping legal reforms, effectively creating the common law. Magna Carta, granted by his son John in 1215, guaranteed the principle that kings should govern according to their own laws.
Under the Plantagenets, trial by ordeal and torture were abandoned in favour of a jury – still one of our most cherished principles. Later, during the reign of Edward III, justices of the peace were introduced – who remain as our magistrates.
By the 1370s, Parliament was a powerful institution with the authority to impeach corrupt royal ministers. In 1399, it was the forum in which Richard II was deposed and his cousin Henry IV took the throne. They changed the physical landscape of Britain, too, building huge fortresses such as the Tower of London, Dover Castle and the massive fortresses of North Wales. Cathedrals soared in Lincoln (Lincoln Cathedral was the tallest building in the world between 1300 and 1549), Salisbury, Winchester, York and Hereford. London boomed and new towns including Liverpool and Portsmouth were founded.
Lincoln Castle
The 1217 Battle of Lincoln was the original Brexit
Meanwhile, English relations with her neighbours were set. Edward I, known as Longshanks, conquered the Welsh and hammered the Scots, who have never forgotten it.
In the 1150s, Henry II claimed the right to conquer Ireland – the echoes of which we still feel – and the historical rivalry between England and France was born. The Hundred Years War, which produced famous victories such as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, established the English and French as natural enemies with profoundly different and incompatible cultures.
Partly as a result, the modern English language developed. In the 12th Century, English was considered a peasant tongue: the upper classes spoke French and churchmen used Latin.
By the 1390s, English had become the language of literature, which the Plantagenets had made a respectable tongue.
When I started writing history books, the Plantagenets were deeply uncool. Now they are roaring back into fashion, not least due to the producers of Game Of Thrones, which is based on the Wars Of The Roses.
All this could have been different if William Marshal had not triumphed at the battle of Lincoln. It was, in a sense, the original Brexit: the moment we began our journey to modern nationhood.
Dan Jones is speaking about the Plantagenets at the Daily Mail Chalke Valley History Festival on July 2. His latest book is Realm Divided: A Year In The Life of Plantagenet England (Head of Zeus).
And as an exclusive preview, Mail on Sunday readers are today offered the chance to join a private evening celebrating the importance of history in modern Britain.
Here, one of our evening’s eminent speakers explains the neglected legacy of the most successful Royal house in British history…
So what did the Plantagenets ever do for us? Apart from give us our laws, our language and save us from the French!
The Mail on Sunday will be supporting the Chalke Valley History Festival
Readers are today offered the chance to join a private evening celebrating the importance of history in modern Britain
Plantagenets are the most successful Royal house in British history
By historian Dan Jones For The Mail On Sunday
3 April 2016
Mail On Sunday
This summer, The Mail on Sunday will be supporting the Chalke Valley History Festival, Britain’s premier history event, sponsored by the Daily Mail.
And as an exclusive preview, Mail on Sunday readers are today offered the chance to join a private evening celebrating the importance of history in modern Britain.
Here, one of our evening’s eminent speakers explains the neglected legacy of the most successful Royal house in British history…
Revival: There is a renewed interest in Plantagenets, such as Henry V, played by Tom Hiddleston, who is fancied to be the new Bond, in 2012
William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, was about 70 years old and by his own reckoning still the greatest knight in England. As he sat astride his horse outside the walls of Lincoln on Saturday, May 20, 1217, he faced the biggest test of his glorious career – a battle that would secure England’s future as an independent realm rather than a mere province of France.
Lincoln was one of the great cities of a medieval England ripped in two by civil war. Behind its stone walls lay an enemy army made up of traitors and Frenchmen attacking its castle. Marshal, regent to the child king, Henry III, was there to drive them out with an outnumbered army.
It was a fight to the death and Marshal commanded his knights to be ready to kill their horses and use the corpses to build barricades.
And they won a stunning victory, relieving the besieged loyalists in Lincoln castle. The highest-ranking Frenchman, the Count of Perche, was killed by a sword thrust through the visor-hole of his helmet. Lincoln was saved and so was England.
Had things gone differently, the Battle of Lincoln would have ranked alongside the Battle of Hastings. Had Marshal lost, the son of the king of France, a warrior known as Louis the Lion, would have been our King Louis I. It is astonishing how close he came. Louis had crossed the Channel in 1216 to take the crown from King John, the tyrant who had been forced to grant Magna Carta but refused to stick to its terms.
His enemies – a coalition of English barons and bishops – asked Louis to replace him. Had he succeeded, Louis, who duly inherited the French crown as Louis VIII, would have been king of England and France.
That’s why the Battle of Lincoln was so important. It was the first step towards keeping the crowns of England and France separate. It also guaranteed the survival of the Plantagenet dynasty, the most long-reigning and arguably the most important royal house in English history.
The Plantagenets were originally from Anjou – a French county. But their 331-year rule over England, from 1154 to 1485, lay the foundations of modern England and had a profound effect on the rest of what we now call the United Kingdom. The Plantagenets gave us the basis for the English legal system. Henry II made sweeping legal reforms, effectively creating the common law. Magna Carta, granted by his son John in 1215, guaranteed the principle that kings should govern according to their own laws.
Under the Plantagenets, trial by ordeal and torture were abandoned in favour of a jury – still one of our most cherished principles. Later, during the reign of Edward III, justices of the peace were introduced – who remain as our magistrates.
By the 1370s, Parliament was a powerful institution with the authority to impeach corrupt royal ministers. In 1399, it was the forum in which Richard II was deposed and his cousin Henry IV took the throne. They changed the physical landscape of Britain, too, building huge fortresses such as the Tower of London, Dover Castle and the massive fortresses of North Wales. Cathedrals soared in Lincoln (Lincoln Cathedral was the tallest building in the world between 1300 and 1549), Salisbury, Winchester, York and Hereford. London boomed and new towns including Liverpool and Portsmouth were founded.
Lincoln Castle
The 1217 Battle of Lincoln was the original Brexit
Meanwhile, English relations with her neighbours were set. Edward I, known as Longshanks, conquered the Welsh and hammered the Scots, who have never forgotten it.
In the 1150s, Henry II claimed the right to conquer Ireland – the echoes of which we still feel – and the historical rivalry between England and France was born. The Hundred Years War, which produced famous victories such as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, established the English and French as natural enemies with profoundly different and incompatible cultures.
Partly as a result, the modern English language developed. In the 12th Century, English was considered a peasant tongue: the upper classes spoke French and churchmen used Latin.
By the 1390s, English had become the language of literature, which the Plantagenets had made a respectable tongue.
When I started writing history books, the Plantagenets were deeply uncool. Now they are roaring back into fashion, not least due to the producers of Game Of Thrones, which is based on the Wars Of The Roses.
All this could have been different if William Marshal had not triumphed at the battle of Lincoln. It was, in a sense, the original Brexit: the moment we began our journey to modern nationhood.
Dan Jones is speaking about the Plantagenets at the Daily Mail Chalke Valley History Festival on July 2. His latest book is Realm Divided: A Year In The Life of Plantagenet England (Head of Zeus).
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