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1. Between Magna Carta and the Parliamentary State: The fine rolls of King Henry III 1216-1272 and the project A fine in the reign of King Henry III (1216-1272) was an agreement to pay the king a sum of money for a specified concession. The rolls on which the fines were recorded provide the earliest systematic evidence of what people and institutions across society wanted from the king and he was prepared to give. They open a large window onto the politics, government, economy and society of England in the hinge period between the establishment of Magna Carta at the start of Henry's reign and the parliamentary state which was emerging at its end. This Project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, makes the rolls freely available to a wide audience while at the same time, in the Fine of the Month feature, providing regular comment on their historical interest. Users of the website are also invited to follow and contribute to the Fine Rolls blog.

The subject of The Life of King Louis the Fat  was Louis VI, the first important Capetian king of France, who reigned from 1108 to 1137.  Louis's main achievement was to consolidate royal power within the Ile-de-France by suppressing the castellans who dominated the royal domain lands. (The term "castellan" refers to a noble who possessed one or more castles.) Louis's success owed much to an alliance he forged between the French monarch and the great Churchmen (bishops and abbots) and the leading townsmen of northern France.  Suspicious of the power of his barons, Louis used clergy and burghers rather than great nobles as royal administrators. His efforts to establish peace and maintain order facilitated the development of agriculture, trade and intellectual activity in the Ile-de-France. Under his rule, Paris began its expansion which would make it by 1200 the greatest Christian city north of the Alps. The following excerpts describe Louis's military actions against the "robber barons" of the Ile-de-France and the King of England Henry I (r.1100-1135).

"So unpopular was John that his barons finally rose up in rebellion against his arbitrary rule, and against the severe punishments often inflicted upon them, until they eventually forced the king to grant them the Charter of Liberties, also known as Magna Carta, at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. Few can have lamented King John's eventual demise at Newark Castle - most probably following an attack of dysentery -in October 1216. Writing some forty years later, Matthew Paris (d. 1259), monk and historian of St Albans Abbey, delivered the ultimate condemnation: 'Foul as it is, Hell itself is made fouler by the presence of John'."

"Story of medieval England 20/36 King John and the Magna Carta" VIDEO

" We created this short quiz about Kings of Medieval England, focusing on those between 1066 and 1500. We hope you will try it out and if you like it, let us know if you have some suggestions for future quizzes."

"Introduction: Here on our first slide, we have John reluctantly ratifying the Magna Carta. He is surrounded by his barons and senior clergymen, and they are all gathered at Runnymede meadow, neutral ground between Windsor Castle and the lands of his barons. But on this image, which dates from centuries after the Magna Carta there is a small historical inaccuracy…King John is holding a quill signing the Magna Carta in this image, when in fact he engrossed the Magna Carta with his seal…Little thing like that may not seem particularly important, but its indicative of how the Magna Carta passed into mythology."

Leges Henrici Primi:all facts at a glanceThe Leges Henrici Primi or Laws of Henry I is a legal treatise, written in about 1115, that records the legal customs of medieval England in the reign of King Henry I of England. The Leges Henrici Primi or Laws of Henry I is a legal treatise, written in about 1115, that records the legal customs of medieval England. It was written during the reign of King Henry I of England, and was part of a ... (Source: Wikipedia: Leges Henrici Primi)

"Another year, another crackpot Battle of Hastings theory. Last year it was 'the battle was fought somewhere else'. This year it's 'King Harold survived the battle'. This one is, if anything, even more feeble and confused, so let's put it to bed as soon as possible."

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss King Alfred and the defeat of the Vikings at Battle of Edington. At the end of the 9th century the Vikings controlled almost all of what we now call England. Mercia had fallen and its king had fled, Northumbria had fallen and so had Essex. The only independent kingdom left standing against the rampaging Danes was Wessex, and Alfred the Great; then he was overrun, his treasury, palaces and castles taken whilst he and his most loyal followers were left to wander the moors. Yet he came back.

The Conqueror and His Sons For the next four lectures, I will diverge from my usual chronological plan. I will be talking about the policies of William and the two sons who followed him as king of England in a topical manner. The first of these lectures concerns the relations that obtained between England and Normandy under these Norman kings.

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.

"In the summer of 1797 a group of workmen in Worcester Cathedral caused a sensation, locally if not nationally, by discovering the body of King John."

"Edward II was born on 25 April 1284 as the youngest child of Edward I and his first wife Eleanor of Castile, and succeeded his father as king of England at the age of twenty-three on 7 July 1307.  On 25 January 1308 at Boulogne in northern France, Edward married Isabella, only surviving daughter of the reigning king of France, Philip IV, and the late Joan I, queen of Navarre in her own right.  Isabella was only twelve at the time of her wedding, born probably in the second half of 1295.  The couple's betrothal had been arranged all the way back in June 1299, when Edward was fifteen and Isabella probably only three."

Dr David Starkey's complete history of the British Monarchy, which reveals the epic and bloody stories of our Kings and Queens and charts the course of the oldest surviving political institution in Europe

Dr David Starkey's complete history of the British Monarchy, which reveals the epic and bloody stories of our Kings and Queens and charts the course of the oldest surviving political institution in Europe

"A King's Ransom is the follow up to Lionheart and tells the story of King Richard I's imprisonment in Germany at the hands of Duke Leopold of Austria and Emperor Heinrich VI and of his battle to win back his Kingdom from his rapacious brother John."

"Tests on descendants of last Plantagenet king point to 'false paternity event' and reveal he may have been blue-eyed blond"

The manuscript dates to the last years of the 14th century, and was compiled for the court of King Richard II; a printed version was first published in the 18th century.

"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."

"In this essay, I shall be examining what I feel are the main issues surrounding the problem of why historians do not agree whether Henry V was a good king. The main reasons all stem from individual choices of the historian, and include their choice of frameworks, of sources, how these sources are interpreted and finally the historian's own motives for writing. Through this, I hope to conclusively show how a historian's opinion on a historical figure is often a subjective opinion, just as if they were judging how successful a person alive today had become."