Group items tagged

ETHNIC CLEANSING OF THE ENGLISH 'THE HARRYING OF THE NORTH'   The previous article talked of the ethnic cleansing of the English known as the Harrying of the North, and how much of the northern counties of England was laid waste*. The Normans seemed to combine up to date military skill and tactics, with their own violent Scandinavian Viking heritage. They had many vengeful Bretons with them. They were the Romano-Brythons (who some mistakenly call Celts,) who had fled the English / Saxon onslaught in 458 AD to Brittany in northwestern France and sought some weird revenge. French mercenaries accompanied them. Later English retaliation on northern France was furious. In their blood lust the Normans killed 150,000 English. The Harrying of the North was a brutal act that wouldn't have been worthy of an English King, but was certainly worthy of the usurper William Duke of Normandy. His 'harrying' not only affected Northumberland and Cumberland, and Yorkshire, but also large tracts of Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire.

The English language has been shaped by a number of other languages over the centuries, and many English speakers know that Latin and German were two of the most important. What many people don't realize is how much the French language has influenced English.

Welcome to Old English Literature: A Hypertext Coursepack. This site is designed to help you study several of the primary texts that have been included in many Old English Courses. A range of resources are available including primary texts with a running glossary and notes, reading lists, translations, contextual information and sources of the poem. There is also a facility to allow you to add comments or additional notes to each of the texts via an online discussion forum. Just select the text you are interested in on the right hand side.

For about 300 years following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Norman kings and their high nobility spoke only one of the langues d'oïl called Anglo-Norman, which was a variety of Old Norman used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles during the Anglo-Norman period and originating from a northern dialect of Old French, whilst English continued to be the language of the common people. Middle English was influenced by both Anglo-Norman and, later, Anglo-French (see Anglo-Norman language, "Characteristics").

Our story begins in 1360. It was a time of castles and intrigue, of knights and chivalry. Less than twenty years before, the Black Death had decimated Europe's population. Twenty years later, Wat Tyler would meet his fate while leading a peasant uprising. In the meantime, Geoffrey Chaucer the great English poet, was writing his famous Canterbury Tales. The Knights of France and England had tales to tell of their own. Of jousting and tournaments. Of fair maidens and dragons. Of King Arthur and the Round Table. English speakers then did not sound like English speakers today. But people who attended the popular jousting tournaments of the 14th century expected from their heroes what we expect from ours: Courage in the face of great danger.

The most spectacular of all the 14th century peasants was the English Peasants' War. In 1381, the English peasants revolted, angered over legislation like the Statute of Labourers, which tied them to the land and imposed new taxes. One of these taxes, the poll tax, was particularly troublesome. A whole or head tax is a tax levied on individual simply because he exists. In 1380, the English government issued a new poll tax, the third in just four years. Meanwhile, landlords were constantly increasing rents on their land, lay and to which the peasants was now tied by the Statute of Labourers.

"The Economics of English Agriculture in the Middle Ages is the economic history of English agriculture from the Norman invasion in 1066, to the death of Henry VII in 1509. England's economy was fundamentally agricultural throughout the period, though even before the invasion the market economy was important to producers. Norman institutions, including serfdom, were superimposed on an existing system of open fields."

This site provides materials for Harvard University's Chaucer classes in the Core Program, the English Department, and the Division of Continuing Education. (Others of course are welcome to use it.) It provides a wide range of glossed Middle English texts and translations of analogues relevant to Chaucer's works, as well as selections from relevant works by earlier and later writers, critical articles from a variety of perspectives, graphics, and general information on life in the Middle Ages. At the moment the site concentrates on the Canterbury Tales, but the longer-term goal is to create a more general Chaucer page.

The English Peasants' Revolt of 1381 erupted suddenly, but not without warning. The seeds of dissent fell from the tree that was medieval society itself and were watered by the continuous oppression of the poor in towns as well as the countryside by those in power. Artisans, parish priests, poor city workers, and even small traders rose with the peasants in their call for the abolition of feudal obligations (serfdom) and the resulting economic/social injustice they had endured for so long. The wide variety of rebels indicates the tremendous level of dissatisfaction with the corruption in government and the confines of 14th century English society; this dissatisfaction indicates that the people were thinking and questioning instead of meekly accepting their role as a human beast without hope for a better life. The Revolt may have failed in its immediate goals, but it served as a link in the quest of the poor for emancipation from servitude, controlled wages, and unfair taxes. Their expression of concerns, desires, and demands was an example in courage, courage to challenge the strict boundaries of society.

This page brings together all the recipes on this site redacted (updated) from the 1390 Medieval Manuscript The Forme of Cury (The [Proper] Method of Cookery). All recipes are given both in their original Middle English form, as updated English versions and as a modern redaction that and cook today could follow so that you, too, can prepare classic Georgian fare at home. Below I also provide a brief history of the manuscript. I am making my way through the entire recipe collection and as soon as they are added to my site they will be available here. (For the recipe list scroll down.) Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/the-forme-of-cury.php Copyright © celtnet

"Introduction: A visitor to the Empress Matilda's tomb at Rouen might be mistaken in believing that its occupant had never sought the English throne in her own right. Yet in the long struggle which engulfed the kingdom after her father's death in 1135 this is exactly what she did. Matilda may indeed have been the greatest English heiress of the twelfth century to fail to secure her inheritance. Charles Beem remarks that Matilda's epitaph 'described the summit of earthly achievement to which a twelfth-century aristocratic woman could aspire, according to the dictate of a male-dominated feudal society'. Matilda's rule lasted less than seven months before she was unceremoniously driven out of London in the spring of 1141. Even so, her lordship bore many of the typical characteristics of royal administration, and with King Stephen imprisoned by her supporters Matilda for a time was recognised as the sole source of royal authority in the kingdom."

"History of the English People, Volume I by John Richard Green" Read Chapter 4 re the Angevin Empire

After an hour of battle, the Norman army suffered heavy casualties. Seeing this, the undisciplined English army were tempted to pursue the enemy. They broke their formations and dispersed. As they were no longer protected by the shield wall, the Norman invaders led by William, could easily attack and kill the Englishmen. By the time, the English army realised that it was counter-attacked, it was too late.

"Introduction: History sometimes has scattered poppy without merit. We know little of many who were once great in the earth, and still less of the life of the people in their times. The life of the past must be visualized by piecing together detached and scattered fragments from many sources. The result is a composite picture, not a portrait. It is only now and then that the student of history is able to penetrate behind the veil of obscurity and get glimpses of intimate personal life and learn to know the men and women of the past with some degree of acquaintance."

An Introduction to Middle English Plays

THE TREASURY The Winchester Pipe Rolls, the annual accounts of the bishop's extensive estates, and the bishop's money were once stored at the palace gatehouse. The bishops derived their wealth from vast landholdings, one of the richest estates of medieval England. The yearly income and expenditure on the estates was recorded in great detail in the Pipe Rolls, an astonishing surviving series of documents covering the years from 1208-9 until 1710-11.

This interest stands in contrast, as Hatcher points out, to the view of the Black Death taken by historians at mid-century and it may be that the social and economic history of late medieval English society has emerged from the shadow of historians such as Postan and Levett, where the Black death was seen as a catalyst, not a prime mover. Colin Platt's King Death. The Black Death and its aftermath in latemedieval England is a work of synthesis which continues this trend. Written in a fairly chatty style (phrases such as 'Mickey Mouse numbers' and 'rich old ladies' abound) with a liberal sprinkling of modern marketing-speak ('shopping blight', 'customer base' and 'market spread', for example), it is a personal tour through a great deal of the recent secondary literature, largely generated by historians of town and countryside; the book also offers a brief survey of postplague art and architecture.

From the 1360s, however, English architecture became simpler, moving to the more perpendicular style seen in Winchester Cathedral, which saw work on its west gate begin in 1360. The flamboyant masonry of major buildings was replaced by straight lines, partly due to the new shift towards austerity, but also because of the depleted workforce available.

"Lindisfarne is intimately connected with the history of Christianity in Britain. In 635 the Northumbrian king, Oswald (r.634-42), summoned an Irish monk named Aidan from Iona - the island-monastery off the south-west coast of what is now Scotland - to be bishop of his kingdom. Oswald granted Aidan and his companions the small tidal island of Lindisfarne on which to found a monastery."

"This free interactive cultural and learning app will be of interest to anyone interested in Tudor history, cultural research, e-learning, art history, or the town of Thetford. It was created by a joint team from the University of Leicester, Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service, English Heritage, Oxford University and Yale Center for British Art. It stems from a 3-year project applying space science technology to art historical monuments."