Medieval Britain

Kings, barons and the birth of Magna Carta

Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, England was ruled by powerful kings who claimed extensive authority over the land and the people on it. For well over a century there were few formal limits on what a king could do. He could raise taxes, make laws and imprison people largely as he wished, though medieval kings were expected to consult the leading churchmen and noblemen of the realm, usually through informal councils.

This changed in 1215. King John's heavy taxation and arbitrary treatment of his subjects had angered his barons, the great landowners who held their land directly from the crown. They forced him to agree to a charter of rights known as Magna Carta, the Great Charter, sealed at Runnymede. Magna Carta established the idea that even the king was subject to the law, and it protected the rights of the nobility while restricting the king's power to collect taxes or to make and change laws without wider agreement.

Magna Carta did not create democracy and gave no rights to ordinary people at the time. Its immediate effect was to require the king to involve his noblemen in decisions of government, particularly when he needed money. Over time, this requirement to consult became the basis for the meetings that developed into England's Parliament, since parliaments were called specifically so the king could seek the advice, and often the funds, of his nobles.

The barons and bishops who advised the king

The medieval nobility consisted of the great landowners, the barons and earls, together with the senior bishops of the Church. These men held their estates directly from the king in return for loyalty and service, and they formed the natural leadership of the kingdom below the monarch himself. Kings were expected to seek their counsel, and meetings of this kind were generally called councils.

As Parliament developed during the Middle Ages, the nobility, the great landowners and the bishops came to sit together in a separate chamber that became the House of Lords, distinct from the elected House of Commons that represented knights and townspeople. This division into two Houses was one of the lasting institutional legacies of medieval government, and the presence of the nobility in Parliament gave them a formal, ongoing role in advising and restraining the monarch that went beyond the personal favour of any one king.

Feudalism: land, loyalty and labour

The Normans introduced a system of land ownership and obligation known as feudalism after 1066. Under this system the king was regarded as the ultimate owner of all land. He granted large estates to his barons in return for military service and loyalty, and the barons in turn granted smaller portions of land to knights, who owed them service in the same way. At the bottom of this structure were the peasants, who worked the land in return for protection and a share of what they produced, and who were often bound to remain on their lord's manor.

Feudalism gave medieval kings the resources they needed, an army bound to serve when called upon, and taxes or produce from the land, while it secured the loyalty of the nobility through grants of land and guaranteed status. It shaped the structure of society for several centuries, fixing most people's position according to birth rather than choice.

The system began to weaken in the fourteenth century. The Black Death, an outbreak of bubonic plague that reached England in 1348, killed a very large proportion of the population. With far fewer labourers available, surviving peasants could demand higher wages and better conditions, which undermined the traditional feudal obligations that had tied them to their lord's land. Attempts by the crown to fix wages at pre-plague levels caused resentment, and this was one of the pressures that contributed to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, when the feudal order came under direct challenge. Feudalism declined gradually rather than ending abruptly, but by the close of the Middle Ages it no longer defined English society as it once had.

The Church at the centre of medieval life

In medieval Britain, the Roman Catholic Church shaped almost every part of daily life. Every village had a parish church, and most people attended services regularly. The Church taught that life on earth was a preparation for the afterlife, and it set the rhythm of the calendar through feast days, fasts and festivals such as Christmas and Easter.

The Church was also a wealthy and powerful institution in its own right. It collected a tithe, a tax of one tenth of a person's earnings or produce, to support the parish priest, maintain the church building and help the poor. Bishops and archbishops held great influence, sometimes rivalling that of the king, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was the most senior churchman in England.

Kings and the Church were often in tension over where power lay. The most famous clash was between King Henry II and Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 after a long dispute over the authority of church courts. Becket became a saint, and Canterbury became one of the most important sites of pilgrimage in England.

Monasteries and monastic life

Monasteries were communities of monks or nuns who had dedicated their lives to prayer, work and study, following a strict daily routine of religious services. Many belonged to particular orders, such as the Benedictines or the Cistercians, each with its own rule of life. Some monasteries grew very wealthy, particularly through farming and the wool trade, and became major landowners.

Monasteries played a wider role in society beyond religion. They were centres of learning at a time when few people could read, and monks copied and preserved manuscripts, kept records and ran schools. They also cared for the sick and offered hospitality to travellers and pilgrims, since few other places along medieval roads offered food or shelter.

Monasteries remained a powerful feature of English life throughout the Middle Ages until King Henry VIII closed them down in the 1530s during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when he broke away from the authority of the Pope. Many abbeys were demolished or left to fall into ruin, though some, including Westminster Abbey and several cathedrals, survived and can still be visited today.

Farming and village life

Most people in medieval Britain lived in the countryside and worked on the land. Villages were usually built around a manor, the estate of a local lord, and a parish church. The lord owned the land, and most villagers, known as peasants, worked it in return for a place to live and a share of what they grew.

Farming followed an open-field system, in which the land around a village was divided into large fields, and each family worked several scattered strips within them rather than a single enclosed plot. This required neighbours to cooperate closely over sowing, harvesting and the use of shared pasture. Many peasants were serfs, bound to the manor and unable to leave or marry without their lord's permission, while others were free tenants with somewhat greater independence.

Village life was hard and closely tied to the seasons. Most families grew their own food, and the parish church served as the social centre of the community as well as a place of worship. Bad harvests, disease and high mortality were constant risks, and life expectancy was much lower than today.

The Black Death, which reached England in 1348, killed a large proportion of the population and had lasting effects on rural life. With fewer workers available afterwards, peasants could demand better wages and conditions, and some were able to leave the land they had been tied to. This shift in bargaining power contributed to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, when discontent over taxation and feudal obligations led to a large uprising against royal authority.

Towns, trade and the rise of a middle class

The Middle Ages, the period running from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to around 1485, brought steady growth in towns and trade. As farming methods improved and the population grew, more people left the countryside to live and work in towns. Growing wealth in these towns led to the development of a strong middle class, sitting between the nobility and the peasantry.

Trade depended heavily on wool. English wool was prized across Europe, and the wealth it generated helped build parish churches, guildhalls and grand houses in towns such as those in East Anglia and the Cotswolds. Skilled craftsmen in the same trade often formed themselves into guilds, associations that set standards for their members' work and helped protect their trade. Membership of a guild carried real social standing, since it showed a person was a skilled and trusted worker.

This growth was interrupted by the Black Death, the plague that reached England in 1348 and killed a large proportion of the population. The resulting shortage of labour meant peasants could demand higher wages, and new social classes appeared, including large landowners who later became known as the gentry. In Ireland, the plague killed many people in the Pale, and for a time the area under direct English control became smaller.

King John and his conflicts with the barons

King John ruled England in the early thirteenth century. Before his reign, there had been few formal limits on the power of the monarch. John's demands for money and his handling of the barons, the powerful noblemen who held land from the king, provoked deep resentment among them.

In 1215, this resentment came to a head. John's noblemen forced him to agree to a set of demands that curbed his authority and set out rights that even the king had to respect.

Magna Carta

The result of the barons' pressure on King John was a charter of rights known as Magna Carta, which means the Great Charter, agreed in 1215. It established the idea that the king himself was subject to the law, rather than standing above it.

Magna Carta did not create democracy or give ordinary people the vote; its immediate purpose was to limit royal power and protect the rights of the barons, though its principle that the ruler must obey the law became a cornerstone of later constitutional development. This idea, that no one, including the monarch, is above the law, remains a fundamental part of the British constitution today.

The origins of Parliament can also be traced to this period. Parliament grew from the king's council of advisers, a body that included leading noblemen and senior figures of the Church, and which gradually became the institution that would later check and share power with the monarch.

The House of Lords and the birth of Parliament

Parliament developed gradually during the medieval period, growing out of the councils of nobles and clergy that monarchs had always consulted. Medieval kings needed money, especially for wars, and they found it easier to raise taxes if they had the agreement of the most powerful people in the country. Over time, these gatherings of great nobles and bishops became the House of Lords.

A crucial early step came in 1258, when Henry III was forced to accept reforms that set up a council of barons to oversee government. In 1265, the rebel baron Simon de Montfort, having taken control of government from Henry III, called a parliament that for the first time included representatives of the towns and knights of the shires, alongside the nobles and bishops. This is seen as an early ancestor of the House of Commons.

Edward I built on this practice. In 1295 he summoned what became known as the Model Parliament, which brought together bishops and archbishops, abbots, earls and barons with representatives chosen from every shire and town. This assembly is widely regarded as the first representative parliament and it set the pattern for how future parliaments were composed, with the Lords Spiritual and Temporal on one side and elected representatives on the other. During the 1330s and 1340s, under Edward III, the knights and burgesses began meeting separately from the lords and bishops, and by 1341 there is clear evidence of the Commons deliberating apart from the Lords. From this point, Parliament consisted of two distinct houses: the House of Lords, made up of bishops and nobles, and the House of Commons, made up of elected representatives.

Edward I

Edward I reigned as King of England from 1272 to 1307. He is remembered for strengthening royal government, developing Parliament and conquering Wales.

Edward summoned the Model Parliament of 1295, which brought together nobles, bishops and representatives of the shires and towns and became the template for later parliaments. He needed the support of these gatherings chiefly to fund his campaigns, above all his wars against the Welsh and the Scots.

In Wales, Edward fought a series of campaigns against the native princes. He defeated and killed Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last Welsh prince to rule the whole of an independent Wales, in 1282; Llywelyn's brother Dafydd ap Gruffudd was captured and executed the following year. Edward followed his conquest with the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, which brought English law and administration to much of Wales, and he built a ring of great castles, including Caernarfon and Harlech, to secure his new territory. A further Welsh uprising, led by Madog ap Llywelyn, broke out in 1294 to 1295 but was defeated. In 1301 Edward gave his son and heir, the future Edward II, the title Prince of Wales, beginning a tradition that continues to this day.

English rule in Wales

Following his conquest of the last independent Welsh principality in 1282 to 1283, Edward I imposed English rule through the Statute of Rhuddlan of 1284. This ordinance introduced English common law to much of Wales and divided the conquered territory into shire counties on the English model, though Welsh custom continued to apply in some local matters. The settlement rested on military force as much as law: Edward's new castles at Caernarfon, Conwy, Harlech and elsewhere gave the crown a permanent grip on the country.

This arrangement lasted, with adjustments, until the reign of Henry VIII. The Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542, often called the Acts of Union, went further than Edward's settlement by formally incorporating Wales into the Kingdom of England, abolishing the separate legal distinctions between English and Welsh law and giving Wales representation in the English Parliament.

Welsh resistance to English rule

In the thirteenth century, the English kings sought to bring Wales fully under their control. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Gwynedd, had been recognised as Prince of Wales under the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267, which required him to pay homage to the English crown. Relations broke down and King Edward I invaded Wales in 1277, defeating Llywelyn and stripping him of much of his territory.

War broke out again in 1282 when Llywelyn joined his brother Dafydd in rebellion against English rule. Edward responded with a determined campaign, and Llywelyn was killed in a skirmish near Builth in December 1282. His brother Dafydd continued resistance for several months before being captured and executed in 1283, which effectively ended the independent Welsh principality.

Edward I secured his conquest by building a chain of great stone castles across north Wales, including Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech, and by reorganising the government of Wales along English lines through the Statute of Wales in 1284. A further Welsh uprising, led by Madog ap Llywelyn, broke out in 1294 but was defeated by 1295, after which the title of Prince of Wales passed to the English king's eldest son. This tradition continues today: the heir to the throne is still given the title Prince of Wales.

William Wallace and the fight for Scottish independence

In 1296, King Edward I of England deposed the Scottish king John Balliol and declared himself ruler of Scotland, sparking Scottish resistance. William Wallace, a member of the minor Scottish gentry, emerged as a leader of this resistance after killing the English sheriff of Lanark in 1297.

Wallace's forces won a famous victory over the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, and he was made Guardian of Scotland in the name of the imprisoned King John Balliol. His success was short-lived: Edward I defeated the Scots at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298, after which Wallace resigned the guardianship.

Wallace continued to resist English rule but was eventually captured near Glasgow in 1305, betrayed to the English. He was taken to London, tried for treason and executed. He remains one of Scotland's best-known national figures and a symbol of resistance to English domination.

Robert the Bruce and Scottish independence

Robert the Bruce was a Scottish nobleman with a rival claim to the Scottish throne. He had at times supported the English king and at other times the Scottish cause, and in 1298 he became a Guardian of Scotland alongside his rival John Comyn.

In February 1306, Bruce killed John Comyn in a church in Dumfries, an act that led to his excommunication by the Church. Weeks later, in March 1306, he had himself crowned King Robert I of Scotland at Scone.

Robert I fought a long campaign against English rule, suffering early defeats before gradually gaining the upper hand. His decisive victory came at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, where his forces defeated a much larger English army led by Edward II. This victory did not immediately end the war, but it confirmed Robert as king and greatly strengthened the Scottish cause.

In 1320, Scottish nobles sent the Declaration of Arbroath to the Pope, asserting Scotland's right to defend itself and recognising Robert as king. Scottish independence was finally confirmed by treaty in 1328, shortly before Robert's death in 1329.

The Battle of Bannockburn

After the Norman kings extended their power across much of Britain, English monarchs repeatedly tried to bring Scotland under their control. They did not succeed. In 1314 the Scots, led by Robert the Bruce, defeated the English at the Battle of Bannockburn, and Scotland remained unconquered by England.

The battle was fought on 23 and 24 June 1314 near Stirling, where Robert the Bruce's forces defeated an English army led by King Edward II. Although the fighting itself settled the immediate campaign, full recognition of Scottish independence did not come until 1328, with the Treaty of Northampton agreed under Edward III.

The Hundred Years' War

English kings also fought a long war with France, called the Hundred Years War, even though it actually lasted 116 years. One of the most famous battles of the Hundred Years War was the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, where King Henry V's vastly outnumbered English army defeated the French. The English left France in the 1450s.

The war grew out of English claims to French territory and to the French crown itself, and it was fought on and off across more than a century rather than as one continuous campaign. It shaped English identity and military practice, and Agincourt in particular remains one of the best remembered English victories from the period.

The Black Death

In 1348, a disease, probably a form of plague, came to Britain. This was known as the Black Death.

It killed a very large proportion of the population of England, and it struck across society without regard for wealth or rank. The sudden shortage of labour that followed gave surviving peasants and workers more bargaining power over wages and conditions, since landowners could no longer easily find people to work their land. This shift helped weaken the old feudal system, in which peasants were tied to their lord's land in return for the right to farm a small plot for themselves.

The Peasants' Revolt of 1381

In 1381, England saw its first large popular uprising, known as the Peasants' Revolt. The trigger was a poll tax, a flat charge on every adult, which Parliament had imposed to help pay for war with France. People in Essex refused to pay and attacked the officials sent to collect it, and the protest quickly spread to Kent and beyond.

The revolt's most prominent leader was Wat Tyler, who led rebels from Kent towards London. Thousands of rebels marched on the city, where they were joined by sympathetic Londoners. They stormed the Tower of London and killed officials they blamed for the tax, including the Archbishop of Canterbury. The teenage King Richard II met the rebels in person, first at Mile End and then at Smithfield, where he agreed to their demands, including an end to serfdom, the system that tied unfree labourers to a lord's land.

At Smithfield, Wat Tyler was killed during the negotiations. With their leader dead, the remaining rebels dispersed and the revolt collapsed within weeks. Richard II went on to break the promises he had made, and the poll tax itself was eventually withdrawn, though the underlying pressures behind the revolt, a shortage of labour after the Black Death and resentment of feudal restrictions, continued to weaken serfdom over the following century.

The Wars of the Roses

The Wars of the Roses were a series of civil wars fought between 1455 and 1485 for control of the English throne. The two rival sides were the House of Lancaster and the House of York, both descended from King Edward III, which is why the conflict is sometimes described as a family quarrel that grew into a national struggle for power.

The wars are named after the emblems later associated with each side: a red rose for Lancaster and a white rose for York. The instability grew out of the long and troubled reign of Henry VI, whose bouts of illness and weak government allowed powerful nobles to compete for control of the crown. Fighting broke out at the First Battle of St Albans in 1455 and continued through a series of battles across England, including Towton in 1461, one of the bloodiest battles fought on English soil, and Tewkesbury in 1471, where the Yorkist king Edward IV crushed the remaining Lancastrian forces.

The wars ended at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where Henry Tudor, who held a Lancastrian claim to the throne, defeated and killed King Richard III of York. Henry became King Henry VII and married Elizabeth of York, uniting the two warring houses. Their marriage is commemorated by the Tudor rose, which combines the red and white roses to symbolise the end of the conflict and the start of the Tudor dynasty.

The House of Lancaster

The House of Lancaster was one of the two royal houses at the centre of the Wars of the Roses, descended from Edward III through his son John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. The Lancastrian line came to the throne in 1399, when Henry IV deposed Richard II, and it held power through the reigns of Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI.

Henry VI's periods of mental illness and the influence of his wife, Margaret of Anjou, weakened Lancastrian authority and allowed the rival House of York to challenge for power, leading directly to the outbreak of civil war. The main Lancastrian male line ended in 1471, after Lancastrian forces were defeated at Tewkesbury and the Lancastrian heir was killed.

The Lancastrian claim then passed through the Beaufort family, descendants of John of Gaunt, to Henry Tudor. His victory at Bosworth Field in 1485 brought him to the throne as Henry VII, ending Lancastrian and Yorkist rivalry and founding the Tudor dynasty.

The House of York and the Wars of the Roses

The House of York was one of two rival branches of the royal Plantagenet family, both descended from King Edward III. Its rival, the House of Lancaster, had held the throne since 1399. When Henry VI, a Lancastrian king, proved a weak and at times mentally incapacitated ruler, the Duke of York and his supporters pressed a competing claim to the crown. This dynastic quarrel developed into the civil wars later known as the Wars of the Roses, fought between the 1450s and 1485.

The two sides took their names from their heraldic badges: the red rose for Lancaster and the white rose for York. Fighting broke out repeatedly over three decades as the crown changed hands between the two houses. The Yorkist cause eventually placed Edward IV on the throne, and after his death his brother became King Richard III, setting aside the young Edward V. Richard III proved to be the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty.

The Battle of Bosworth Field

The Battle of Bosworth Field took place on 22 August 1485. It pitted the Yorkist king, Richard III, against Henry Tudor, a Lancastrian claimant who had returned from exile in France to challenge him for the throne. During the battle, key supporters of Richard III switched sides or held back their forces, and Richard was defeated and killed on the field. This is generally regarded as the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses.

Henry Tudor's victory brought him the crown as King Henry VII, founding the Tudor dynasty. The following year he married Elizabeth of York, uniting the rival houses of Lancaster and York and symbolically ending the conflict between them. The Battle of Bosworth Field therefore marks the point at which the Plantagenet age gave way to the Tudor age in English history.