Foundation (History of England Vol 1) (70 page)

Another salient fact arises from the history of England. All the monarchs from the time of the Norman invasion were, on the male side, of foreign origin. Only the last of them in this volume, Henry VII, was of island ancestry with progenitors from an ancient Welsh noble family. This does not consort well with the notion of English independence, but it fits more closely with the facts of the matter. The Normans were succeeded by the Angevins, who were in turn supplanted by the Welsh; the Welsh were followed by the Scots, who were removed by the Hanoverians. The English were a colonized people. I have written elsewhere about the heterogeneity
of English culture, in
Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination
, but it is perhaps worth recalling that the great literary enterprises of the country derive largely from European originals.

A further point may be made. I had thought of including the histories of Wales, Scotland and Ireland within this volume but there was too great a risk of their seeming to become merely extensions of England in the process. Wales joined in a political and legal union with England in 1536, and Scotland entered a political union in 1707; but their cultures and their identities, like those of Ireland, are too dissimilar to warrant inclusion in this study. This may in turn lead to what has been called an ‘anglo-centric’ version of the past but, in a history of England, such a bias is hard to avoid. Only a history of the world could cope with the difficulty.

No philosopher, ancient or modern, has yet been able to divine the springs of human conduct or human character; so, on a more general scale, we can have little trust in historians who confidently describe the causes or consequences of such events as the Hundred Years War or the sealing of Magna Carta. In their vain attempt to follow the
ignis fatuus
or will-o’-the-wisp of certainty, their efforts will be at best uncertain and at worst contradictory. The wisest historians admit that their speculations may be misplaced and their interpretations incorrect.

History is about longing and belonging. It is about the need for permanence and the perception of continuity. It concerns the atavistic desire to find deep sources of identity. We live again in the twelfth or in the fifteenth century, finding echoes and resonances of our own time; we may recognize that some things, such as piety and passion, are never lost; we may also conclude that the great general drama of the human spirit is ever fresh and ever renewed. That is why some of the greatest writers have preferred to see English history as dramatic or epic poetry, which is just as capable of expressing the power and movement of history as any prose narrative; it is a form of singing around a fire. A drama, or a poem, is of course subject to manifold interpretations according to the judgment and imagination of the reader. Yet in that sense it resembles the events related within this volume. We might quote the words of Milton in
Paradise Lost
:

Now we look ahead to the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, encompassing the great reformation of religion in the sixteenth century. We may in the process be able to glimpse, and perhaps restore, the poetry of history.

Further reading

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it represents a selection of those books I found most useful in the composition of this volume.

1: H
YMNS OF
STONE

Bradley, Richard:
The Passage of Arms
(Cambridge, 1990).

——
An Archaeology of Natural Places
(London, 2000).

Collis, John:
The Celts
(Stroud, 2003).

Cunliffe, Barry:
Iron Age Communities in Britain
(London, 1991).

——
Facing the Ocean
(Oxford, 2001).

Darvill, Timothy:
Prehistoric Britain
(London, 1987).

Harper, M. J.:
The History of Britain Revealed
(London, 2002).

Hawkes, Christopher and Jacquetta:
Prehistoric Britain
(London, 1943).

Hills, Catherine:
Origins of the English
(London, 2003).

James, Simon:
The Atlantic Celts
(London, 1999).

Mercer, Roger:
Farming Practice in British Prehistory
(Edinburgh, 1981).

Oppenheimer, Steven:
The Origins of the British
(London, 2006).

Pryor, Francis:
Britain BC
(London, 2003).

Slack, Paul and Ward, Ryk (eds):
The Peopling of Britain
(Oxford, 2002).

Stringer, Chris:
Homo Britannicus
(London, 2006).

2: T
HE
R
OMAN
WAY

Arnold, C. J.:
Roman Britain to Saxon England
(London, 1984).

Burnham, B. C., and Johnson, H. B., (eds):
Invasion and Response
(Oxford, 1979).

Dark, Ken:
Britain and the End of the Roman Empire
(Stroud, 2002).

Faulkner, Neil:
The Decline and Fall of Roman Britain
(Stroud, 2004).

Frere, Sheppard:
Britannia: A History of Roman Britain
(London, 1967).

Millett, Martin:
The Romanization of Britain
(Cambridge, 1990).

Reece, Richard:
My Roman Britain
(Cirencester, 1988).

Salway, Peter:
Roman Britain
(Oxford, 1981).

——
The Roman Era
(Oxford, 2002).

Todd, Malcolm (ed.):
A Companion to Roman Britain
(Oxford, 2004).

Webster, G.:
The Roman Invasion of Britain
(London, 1980).

3: C
LIMATE
CHANGE

Fox, Cyril:
The Personality of Britain
(Cardiff, 1938).

Jones, Martin and Dimbleby, Geoffrey (eds):
The Environment of Man
(Oxford, 1981).

Mackinder, H. J.:
Britain and the British Seas
(London, 1902).

Parry, M. L.:
Climactic Change, Agriculture and Settlement
(Folkestone, 1978).

Rackham, Oliver:
The History of the Countryside
(London, 1986).

4: S
PEAR
POINTS

Abels, R. P.:
Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England
(London, 1988).

Arnold, C. J.:
An Archaeology of the Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdom
(London, 1988).

Blair, John:
The Anglo-Saxon Age
(Oxford, 1984).

——
The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society
(Oxford, 2005).

Campbell, James (ed.):
The Anglo-Saxons
(London, 1982).

Chadwick, H. M.:
The Origin of the English Nation
(Cambridge, 1924).

Charles-Edwards, Thomas (ed.):
After Rome
(Oxford, 2003).

Higham, N. J.:
Rome, Britain and the Anglo-Saxons
(London, 1992).

——
An English Empire
(Manchester, 1995).

Hill, Paul:
The Age of Athelstan
(Stroud, 2004).

Hodges, Richard:
The Anglo-Saxon Achievement
(London, 1989).

Jackson, Kenneth:
Language and History in Early Britain
(Edinburgh, 1953).

Jolliffe, J. E. A.:
Pre-Feudal England
(Oxford, 1933).

Kirby, D. P.:
The Making of Early England
(London, 1967).

Loyn, H. R.:
The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England
(London, 1984).

Morris, John:
The Age of Arthur
(London, 1973).

Myres, J. N. L.:
The English Settlements
(Oxford, 1986).

Pryor, Francis:
Britain AD
(London, 2005).

Randers-Pehrson, Justine Davis:
Barbarians and Romans
(London, 1983).

Reynolds, Andrew:
Later Anglo-Saxon England
(Stroud, 1999).

Stenton, F. M.:
Anglo-Saxon England
(Oxford, 1971).

Tatlock, J. S. P.:
The Legendary History of Britain
(New York, 1974).

Thomas, Charles:
Celtic Britain
(London, 1986).

Wood, Michael:
In Search of the Dark Ages
(London, 1994).

5: T
HE
BLOOD EAGLE

Cavill, Paul:
Vikings
(London, 2001).

Dark, K. R.:
Civitas to Kingdom
(London, 1994).

Davies, Wendy:
From the Vikings to the Normans
(Oxford, 2003).

Faith, Rosamond:
The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship
(London, 1997).

Foot, P. G., and Wilson, D. M.:
The Viking Achievement
(London, 1970).

Hadley D. M. and Richards, J. D. (eds):
Cultures in Contact
(Turnhout, 2000).

Loyn, H. R.:
The Vikings in Britain
(London, 1977).

Sawyer, P. H.:
The Age of the Vikings
(London, 1971).

Smyth A. P.:
King Alfred the Great
(Oxford, 1995).

Stafford, Pauline:
Unification and Conquest
(London, 1989).

Whitelock, Dorothy:
The Beginnings of English Society
(London 1952).

6: T
HE MEASURE OF THE KING

Poole, A. L.:
From Domesday Book to Magna Carta
(Oxford, 1955).

Harvey, Barbara:
The Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
(Oxford, 2001).

Wormald, Patrick:
The Making of English Law
(Oxford, 1999).

7: T
HE COMING OF THE CONQUERORS

Barlow, Frank:
Edward the Confessor
(London, 1979).

——
The English Church, 1000–1066
(London, 1979).

Brown, R. A.:
The Normans and the Norman Conquest
(London, 1969).

Clarke, P. A.:
The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor
(Oxford, 1994).

Fleming, Robin:
Kings and Lords in Conquest England
(Cambridge, 1991).

Garmonsway, G. M.:
Canute and his Empire
(London, 1964).

Lawson, M. K.:
Cnut
(Stroud, 2004).

——
The Battle of Hastings
(Stroud, 2007).

Loyn, H. R.:
Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest
(London, 1962).