Foundation (History of England Vol 1) (87 page)

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Authors: Peter Ackroyd

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20. An image of Matilda, de facto queen of England from March to November 1141, holding a charter. The illumination comes from
The Golden Book of Saint Albans
by Thomas Walsingham, circa 1380.

21. Henry II confronting Thomas Becket. The soldiers beside them are an apt reminder of those who killed the archbishop on 29 December 1170.

22. Richard I, more commonly known as ‘Richard the Lionheart’, watching the execution of the 3,000 prisoners, whom he had captured at the siege of Acre in the Gulf of Haifa during the Third Crusade.

23. ‘John Lackland’ (otherwise known as King John) on horseback. He is here seen riding out against a castle with sword in hand. He was also known as ‘John Softsword’.

24. The season of March as seen in The Bedford Book of Hours, an exquisite and lavish manuscript dating from the early fifteenth century. The farm animals of the medieval period were smaller, and the productivity of the soil inferior, to their modern counterparts.

25. The varied labours of the agricultural year. The scythe and the sickle, the flail and the winnowing fan and the plough, are to be seen in many medieval illuminations.

26. The abbots, and monks, of a medieval monastery. The monks of England were the historians and illuminators who helped to preserve the continuities of the country.

27. The building of a monastery, taken from a miniature of the fourteenth century.

28. Edward I addressing one of his parliaments. The first parliament of his reign, assembled in 1275, had some 800 representatives. Once they had obeyed his will, he dismissed them.

29. A view of Harlech Castle, one of the Welsh castles created for Edward I by Master James of St George; he was the master-builder of the age. The castle itself might seem to have been fashioned out of the rock on which it sits.

30. Queen Isabella, errant wife of Edward II, being received by her brother Charles le Bel in France.

31. The Black Death, reaching England in the autumn of 1348, killed approximately 2 million people. There had never been mortality on such a scale, nor has there been since.

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