Foundation (History of England Vol 1) (88 page)

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Authors: Peter Ackroyd

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32. A woman who has contracted leprosy. The leper would carry a clapper and bell to warn of her approach.

33. A blood-letting. The doctor would taste the blood of his patient. Healthy blood was slightly sweet.

34. The Battle of Crécy, which took place on 26 August 1346, was one of the most important engagements of the Hundred Years War, when the army of Edward III effectively crushed the French. This was the battle in which gunpowder cannon were first employed.

35. The tomb of the Black Prince behind the quire of Canterbury Cathedral. Its epitaph begins, ‘Such as thou art, sometime was I. Such as I am, such shalt thou be.’

36. The image of Richard II from the ‘Wilton Diptych’. Standing around him are King Edmund (saint and martyr), Edward the Confessor (saint), and John the Baptist (saint). He considered these to be his forebears and protectors.

37. A page from Wycliffe’s Bible. This translation into Middle English is not the work of Wycliffe himself, but of several authors inspired by Wycliffe’s example.

38. The cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral, with the earliest and perhaps the best fan-vaulted roof in England, were built in the latter half of the fourteenth century. The cathedral itself is of Norman origin based on an Anglo-Saxon original. In this, it does not differ from many other English cathedrals.

39. A scene from the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. It marked the greatest rebellion of the people against their masters in English history.

40. The coronation of Henry IV in Westminster Abbey, October 1399. Since he had gained the crown by conquest, it always lay uneasily upon his head.

41. The Battle of Agincourt, fought in the autumn of 1415, was an overwhelming victory for Henry V against the French. On his return from the field he was hailed by the English as ‘lord of England, flower of the world, soldier of Christ’.

42. The wedding of Henry V and Katherine of Valois, daughter of the King of France, in the summer of 1420 at Troyes Cathedral. Henry died a little over two years later, but Katherine had given birth to a male heir.

43. An image of Joan of Arc, or ‘the Maid of Orleans’, whose victories in 1429 anticipated the English expulsion from the towns and cities of France two decades later.

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