Great Tales From English History (27 page)

Brown, Michelle P.,
Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts
(London, The British Library), 1991.

de Hamel, Christopher,
Medieval Craftsmen: Scribes and Illuminators
(London, British Museum Press), 1997.

Webb, J. F. (trans.), Farmer, D. H. (intro.),
The Age of Bede
(London, Penguin), 1998.

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878: Alfred and the Cakes

Start with the original, Bishop Asser’s
Life of King Alfred
. Then turn to the much criticised Alfred Smyth, who maintains that Asser was a forgery. There is not much marshland left in the Somerset Levels these days, but you can get a feeling of how the waters once swirled around the sedge when you look out from the train between Taunton and Bruton on a wet winter’s day. On summer afternoons, you can climb up the great tower built at Athelney in the eighteenth century to commemorate Alfred’s adventures in the swamps. That other great Anglo-Saxon king of the previous century, Offa of Mercia, left more of a memorial in the shape of his massive earthwork built to keep out the Welsh. Offa’s Dyke Centre is at Knighton in Powys, halfway along the eighty-mile border trail:
www.offasdyke.demon.co.uk
.

Jones, Gwyn,
The Vikings
(London, The Folio Society), 1997.

Keynes, Simon, and Lapidge, Michael (trans.),
Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources
(London, Penguin Books), 1983.

Smyth, Alfred P.,
King Alfred the Great
(Oxford, Oxford University Press), 1995.

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911–911: The Lady of the Mercians

From this point onwards, and for the next two centuries, we can enjoy the acerbic comments of the compilers of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
. Kathleen Herbert, Henrietta Leyser and Pauline Stafford examine from different angles the role of women in medieval society.

Herbert, Kathleen,
Peace-Weavers and Shield-Maidens: Women in Early English Society
(Hockwold-cum-Wilton, Anglo-Saxon Books), 1997.

Leyser, Henrietta,
Medieval Women
(London, Phoenix), 1997.

Stafford, Pauline,
Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-century England
(Oxford, Blackwell Publishers), 1997.

Swanton, Michael (trans. and ed.),
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
(London, J. M. Dent), 1997.

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978–978: Ethelred the Unready

Corfe Castle in Dorset, the site of the killing of Ethelred’s half-brother Edward, is all that a castle should be, with a history of warfare that extends as late as the Civil War of the 1640s - see
www.corfe-castle.co.uk
. Lavelle’s recent biography bravely defends the Unready’s reputation. Michael Swanton’s anthology contains Archbishop Wulfstan’s famous denunciation of the evils of the reign of Ethelred - the Sermon of the Wolf to the English. To get a glimpse of the life created by the Danes whom Ethelred tried to slaughter, head for Jorvik (York to us), the place that a surprising number of Vikings called home:
www.jorvik-viking-centre.co.uk
.

Lavelle, Ryan,
Aethelred II: King of the English 978-1016
(Stroud, Tempus), 2002.

Swanton, Michael (trans. and ed. ),
Anglo-Saxon Prose
(London, J. M. Dent), 1993.

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1010: Elmer the Flying Monk

Elmer went by many names in the documents -Aethelmaer, Eilmer, Aylmer and even Oliver - all derived from readings and misreadings of the original account of his flight by his fellow-monk William of Malmesbury. At Malmesbury Abbey the Friends of the Abbey bookshop sells a full account of the flight, including the researches of Dr Lynn White Jr, President of the US Society for the History of Technology. If you want the Friends to send you a copy of the book you will have to send them a book of stamps, since they do not have credit card facilities.

Malmesbury, William of,
Gesta Regum Anglorum, The History of the English Kings,
volume 2, general intro. and commentary by R. M. Thomson with M. Winterbottom (Oxford, Clarendon Press), 1999.

Woosnam, Maxwell, Eilmer,
Eleventh-century Monk of Malmesbury: The Flight and the Comet
(Malmesbury, Friends of Malmesbury Abbey), 1986.

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1016–1016: King Canute and the Waves

Few of King Canute’s attempts to make himself an English gentleman have survived. The story of how he tried to turn back the waves provides a great opportunity to dip into Henry of Huntingdon, the first of the post-Norman chroniclers to come our way. Lawson provides a thorough review of the original sources.

Huntingdon, Henry of,
The History of the English People 1000-1154
, trans. Diana Greenway (Oxford, Oxford University Press), 2002.

Lawson, M. K., Cnut:
The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century
(London, Longman), 1993.

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1042–66: Edward the Confessor

The Westminster Abbey that we see today was started in the reign of Henry III, but it is the obvious place to experience the dream of the Confessor. Make sure you visit the cloisters beside the abbey to get the flavour of the monastic buildings attached to the great church. The abbey’s website is particularly rich in historical detail and displays an interpretation of what the Confessor’s original abbey probably looked like:
www.westminster-abbey.org
. Debby Banham offers a wonderful insight into the everyday life of mid-eleventh-century monks through an analysis of the sign language they used when they were not allowed to speak - ‘Pass my underpants, please.’

Banham, Debby (ed. and trans.),
Monasteriales Indicia: The Anglo-Saxon Monastic Sign Language
(Hockwold-cum-Wilton, Anglo-Saxon Books), 1996.

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1043: The Legend of Lady Godiva

Call up ‘Godiva’ on your search engine and you will have difficulty finding the strictly historical sites. The Harvard professor Daniel Donoghue has written a stimulating analysis of the Godiva legend, which includes a translated text of Roger of Wendover.

Donoghue, Daniel, Lady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend (Oxford, Blackwell Publishing), 2003.

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1066: The Year of Three Kings

Tracking the most graphic evidence for the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings requires a trip across the Channel to Bayeux in Normandy:
www.bayeux-tourism.com
. But almost better than a visit, Martin Foys’s new CD-Rom enables you to scroll the whole tapestry and magnify images so that individual stitches can be seen, and compare the modern images with the facsimiles of the past. On
www.hastings1066.com
you can view the tapestry for nothing. From 1066 onwards, Nigel Saul delivers measured guidance to all the major events and themes.

Foys, Martin K.,
The Bayeux Tapestry Digital Edition
(Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer), 2003.

Saul, Nigel,
A Companion to Medieval England
, 1066-1485 (Stroud, Tempus), 2000.

Howarth, David, 1066:
The Year of the Conquest
(New York, Penguin Books), 1981.

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1066: The Death of Brave King Harold

Battle Abbey in East Sussex - said to be built on the very spot where Harold’s body was found - is open the year round and English Heritage guides will show you round the famous battlefield. The pioneering work of David Hill and John McSween has yet to be published but is summarised, with some illustrations, in Lawson’s exhaustive study.

Hill, David, and McSween, John,
The Bayeux Tapestry: The Establishment of a Text
, forthcoming.

Lawson, M. K.,
The Battle of Hastings
, 1066 (Stroud, Tempus), 2002.

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1070: Hereward the Wake and the Norman Yoke

Once again, Michael Wood (see General Histories, above) is the most readable. His account of the Norman Yoke starts memorably with his encounter as a teenager with the great general, Montgomery of Alamein - with Clement Attlee playing a supporting role. Castle websites abound. Start with
www.castles.org
and
www.castles-abbeys.co.uk
. And if you missed Marc Morris’s television series, don’t miss his book.

Morris, Marc,
Castle
(London, Channel 4), 2003.

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1086:
The Domesday Book

The Public Record Office was recently rebranded as the National Archives. It remains an airy temple of documentary delights. There is a small exhibition room on the ground floor where you can view Domesday in its glass case, in the company of a changing selection of themed exhibits:
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
.

Hallam, Elizabeth,
Domesday: Souvenir Guide
(London, Public Record Office), 1986.

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1100: The Mysterious Death of William Rufus

You can visit William Rufus’s magnificent banqueting hall in the Palace of Westminster -
www.parliament.uk/parliament/guide/palace.htm
. To get the flavour of a Norman royal hunting preserve, visit the New Forest in Hampshire - ideally with a copy of Duncan Grinnell-Milne’s book, which treats William Rufus’s killing in the style of a murder mystery. The Yale English Monarchs series provides consistently excellent biographies of all the medieval kings, but try Brooke for a single volume overview, which is particularly perceptive on Rufus’s death.

Brooke, Christopher,
The Saxon and Norman Kings
(London, Fontana), 1984.

Grinnell-Milne, Duncan,
The Killing of William Rufus: An Investigation in the New Forest
(Newton Abbot, David & Charles), 1968.

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1120: Henry I and the White Ship

Once again a trip to Normandy is in order. From the lighthouse on the cliffs beside Barfleur you can see the rock on which the
White Ship
foundered. The account by Orderic Vitalis is one of the most gripping passages in any of the medieval chronicles.

Chibnall, Marjorie (trans. and ed.),
The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis
, volume 6, Books XI, XII and XIII (Oxford, Clarendon Press), 1978.

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1135–1135: Stephen and Matilda

This is where we say goodbye to the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, whose description of the civil war horrors around Peterborough provides a rousing, if tragic, conclusion.

Davis, R. H. C.,
King Stephen 1135-1154
(London, Longman), 1990.

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1170: Murder in the Cathedral and
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1174: A King Repents

The stunning stained-glass windows in Canterbury Cathedral’s Trinity Chapel, which were created within half a century of Thomas Becket’s death, tell the story of his murder and the miracles that followed. Henry VIII tried his best to eradicate the cult of St Thomas in the sixteenth century, but the aura of the martyr survives. Frank Barlow’s study of Becket is a particularly fine biography.

Barlow, Frank, Thomas Becket (London, The Folio Society), 2002.

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1172: The River-bank Take-away

You can read the full text of William FitzStephen’s description of London in Frank Stenton’s Historical Association leaflet. The Museum of London is the place to go for imaginative exhibits on the medieval city:
www.museum-london.org.uk
.

Stenton, Frank, Norman
London, An Essay
(London, Historical Association), 1934.

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1189–1189: Richard the Lionheart

Coeur de Lion has been well served by his biographers, with John Gillingham the most notable. Should you be lucky enough to go sailing down the River Danube, look out for the site of Richard’s imprisonment, Castle Durnstein, the archetypal wicked baron’s fortress. Lying buried side by side in Fontevrault Abbey by the River Loire, Richard and his parents, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, make a poignant family scene.

Gillingham, John,
Richard the Lionheart
(London, Yale), 1999.