Great Tales From English History
Read Great Tales From English History Online
Authors: Robert Lacey
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #History, #Europe, #Great Britain, #BIO006000
ROBERT, EARL OF ESSEX
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HENRY VIII
THE QUEENS OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC
SIR WALTER RALEGH
MAJESTY: ELIZABETH II AND THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR
THE KINGDOM
PRINCESS
ARISTOCRATS
FORD: THE MEN AND THE MACHINE
GOD BLESS HER!
QUEEN MOTHER
LITTLE MAN
GRACE
SOTHEBY’S: BIDDING FOR CLASS
THE YEAR 1000
THE QUEEN MOTHER’S CENTURY
ROYAL: HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Copyright © 2003 by Robert Lacey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue,
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First published in Great Britain by Little, Brown, 2003
First eBook Edition: June 2004
The author gratefully acknowledges permission to quote from
Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People
(Penguin Classics, 1995; revised edition, 1968), translation copyright © Leo Sherley-Price, 1955, 1968;
The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis
(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978),
translator Marjorie Chibnall, © Oxford University Press, 1978;
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
(J. M. Dent, 1996),
translator M. J. Swanton, © J. M. Dent, 1996;
Piers the Ploughman
by William Langland (Penguin Books, 1966),
translation © J. F. Goodridge, 1959, 1966.
Illustrations and maps © 2003 by Fred van Deelen
ISBN: 978-0-7595-1161-3
FOR SASHA
Contents
Anglo-Saxon and Norman England
England's Norman and Angevin, or Plantagenet, Kings
The Angevin Empire of Henry II
Pytheas and the Painted People
The Standard-Bearer of the 10th
And did those Feet? Jesus Christ and the Legends of Glastonbury
The Emperor Claudius Triumphant
King Oswy and the Crown of Thorns
Caedmon, The First English Poet
The Death of Brave King Harold
Hereward the Wake and the Norman Yoke
The Mysterious Death of William Rufus
Simon De Montfort and His Talking-Place
A Prince Who Speaks No Word of English
The Fair Maid of Kent and the Order of the Garter
The Bedside Manner of A Plague Doctor
The Dream of Piers The Ploughman
Exploring the Original Sources
Anglo-Saxon and Norman England
Simplified family tree of England’s Norman and Angevin Kings
France and Normandy, showing the Angevin possessions of King Henry II (Henry Plantagenet) around 1174
T
HE FIRST HISTORY BOOK THAT I REMEMBER
reading with pleasure was a stout, blue, exuberantly triumphalist volume,
Our Island Story - A History of England for Boys and Girls
by H. E. Marshall. It had a red and gold crested shield embossed on the cover, and it told tales of men, women and often children whom it dared to describe as ‘heroes’ and ‘heroines’. It was accompanied by a companion volume,
Our Empire Story
, which was still more politically incorrect, relating the sagas of the heroes and heroines who adventured ‘across the seas’ to paint much of the globe pink. I must confess that I loved it still more - even though I discovered, at the beginning of the second chapter, that the author had a vivid imagination.
John Cabot’s ship the
Matthew
was described by Marshall as sailing out from Bristol harbour one bright May morning in 1497, ‘followed by the wishes and prayers of many an anxious heart . . . until it was but a speck in the distance’. Old H. E. - who, I later learned, was an Edwardian lady, Henrietta Elizabeth, living and writing in Australia - was clearly not aware that the port of Bristol is several muddy miles inland from the Bristol Channel. As a pupil at Clifton National Infants School, a few hundred yards from the Bristol docks, I could have told her that if there had been a crowd waving goodbye to Cabot in 1497, they would have lost sight of the doughty mariner as he tacked round the first corner of the Avon Gorge.
It was my first lesson in the imperfections of history. There may be such a thing as pure, true history - what actually, really,
definitely
happened in the past - but it is unknowable. We can only hope to get somewhere close. The history that we have to make do with is the story that historians choose to tell us, pieced together and handed down, filtered through every handler’s value system and particular axe that he or she chooses to grind.
In fact, I was never that disillusioned by H. E. Marshall’s mistake. I was in thrall to the tales that she told - and in our postmodern age it could even be considered healthy to have realised that I was reading not the truth, but someone else’s imperfect version of it. ‘History’ and ‘story’ derive from the same linguistic root, and if history can never escape its authorship, it should at least try to make the authorship readable and bright.
Unlike English, maths, and science, history is not in the core curriculum of British schools. You can give it up at fourteen, and the minority of pupils (around 5 per cent) who do choose to study history at GCSE and A level are not taken through every reign and century of their country’s development. They are offered an episodic menu of currently fashionable topics that are considered ‘relevant’ - Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia feature prominently under this heading. In fact, the apparently obscure subject of English medieval history would present students with material of much more relevance - the growth and principles of our freedoms, law and Parliamentary system, not to mention the buildings, towns, and countryside that help define our sense of who we are. It would also introduce them to some extraordinary personalities.
Heroes and heroines are judged to have had their day. The un-teaching of history concentrates on ‘themes’ rather than personalities. But personality - human nature - is surely the essence of history, and I have deliberately made personalities the essence of this book. Brief though each chapter is,
Great Tales
seeks to create a coherent, chronological picture of our island story, while following the guiding principle that all men and women have heroism inside them - along with generous and fascinating measures of incompetence, apathy, evil and lust. This volume makes a start on the history of England. Later will follow the great tales of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales - which may, or may not, add up to an overall anthology of Great Britishness. There are more and richer dimensions to life than nationality, but our sense of community does rest inescapably upon the stories that we recall from our past.
Making due allowance for the Avon Gorge factor, all the tales in these pages are true. I have consulted the best available contemporary sources and eyewitness accounts, and I record my thanks in the acknowledgements to the many historians on whose modern research I have drawn. But telling stories that are ‘true’ does not exclude England’s legends - the romances of King Arthur, Hereward the Wake, or Robin Hood. You will find them examined here as myths that illustrate a truth about the age from which they spring - while also revealing how we today like our Englishness to be.
This book seeks to illuminate, but also to entertain, and looking back at
Our Island Story
, I find that H. E. Marshall was similarly inspired. In her foreword, she asked her young readers not to be too cross with her when they grew up, read ‘serious’ history and discovered the difference between her beguiling narrative and the less riveting messiness of reality.
‘Remember,’ she wrote, ‘I was not trying to teach you, but only to tell a story.’