England 241monastic life in England. These onetime centers of cul-
tural and educational activity faded into memories.
King ALFRED, through strategic fortification of cities
and through a brilliant military campaign, defeated sev-
eral Viking armies. There was a truce at Wedmore in 878
that left the Scandinavian settlers of the Danelaw in
place. Alfred’s successors, Edward the Elder (r. 899–924)
and Æthelstan (r. 924–939), solidified his kingdom,
which was centered on Wessex. In the reign of Edgar
there was a major revival of Benedictine monastic life
under DUNSTAN. However, in the reign of ÆTHELRED“the
Unready” England suffered another invasion by Danish
armies. The English were ultimately defeated by Sven
Forkbeard, the king of DENMARK(r. ca. 987–1014). He
seized the Crown and was succeeded by his son, CANUTE
II, on the English throne between 1016 and 1035.
Canute’s dynasty died out in 1042, and Æthelred’s son,
EDWARD THECONFESSOR, became king with the support
of the powerful Godewine (d. 1053), the earl of Wessex.
Edward was childless in 1066, and Godewin’s son,
HAROLD, briefly occupied the English throne. WILLIAM,
the duke of NORMANDY, claimed that it had been offered
to him by Edward. He invaded England, killed Harold at
the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, and became
King William I.
NORMAN AND ANGEVIN ENGLANDThe Norman Conquest of England exploited Anglo-
Saxon governmental institutions but changed the lan-
guage of rule from Old English to Latin. The survey made
in around 1086 and preserved in the Domesday Bookwas
a great administrative achievement only made possible by
the Anglo-Saxon institutions of the sworn inquest, the
use of the writ as a means of communication between the
king and the localities, and the administrative districts
called hundreds. On the other hand, little else initially
changed in English life and culture. The wealth of the
kingdom allowed the Norman kings William I, WILLIAM
II RUFUS, and HENRYI to fight the nearly constant wars
with France to hold Normandy, their homeland.
On King Henry I’s death in 1135, the succession
to the Crown was disputed by his daughter, Matilda
(ca. 1102–67), and his nephew, Stephen of Blois
(ca. 1096–1154). After a long civil war, Stephen lost
control of Normandy to the Angevins and then, after
the death of his son, he recognized Henry of Anjou (the
future HENRYII), the son of Matilda, as his heir by the
treaty of Winchester in 1153.
Henry II ruled ANJOUand Poitou as well as England
and Normandy and acquired Gascony through his mar-
riage to ELEANOR of Aquitaine in 1152. His greatest
achievement was to lay the foundations of a system of
common law. He promoted the use of writs to initiate
actions in royal courts and made this system available to
all freemen. During his reign a jury procedure replaced
the archaic practices of trial by battle and ORDEAL. His
representatives, the royal justices, went out from the
king’s court to hear cases locally. He quarreled famously
with Thomas BECKET, the martyred archbishop of CAN-
TERBURY(1162–70) and once the king’s close friend and
chancellor from 1155 to 1162. This dispute involved the
royal demand that criminous clerks found guilty of
felonies in church courts be sent to a secular court for
punishment and that appeals from English church courts
to the pope at Rome be limited.
Henry’s sons, RICHARDI Lionheart and JOHN, suc-
ceeded him. Richard spent much of his reign waging
wars in France, crusading and living in captivity. He
died of a wound received while trying to maintain his
rights on the Continent. John lost control of Normandy
and was forced to accept limits on his power in MAGNA
CARTAin 1215.
The reign of King Henry III (1216–72), John’s son,
was marked by the building of WESTMINSTERAbbey and a
nasty civil war against a group of barons led by SIMONde
Montfort the Younger. The reign of his son, EDWARDI,
was devoted to expensive and partially successful wars of
conquest in Wales and SCOTLAND. As legislator and
administrator, Edward I dealt with many of the problems
taken up by the barons in 1258–59, when, indeed, he was
briefly of their party.FOURTEENTH CENTURY
At Edward’s death in 1307, the political crises of the next
40 years, involvement in wars in Scotland and France and
an aggressive and aggrieved baronage, had already begun.
To these problems, EDWARDII added his ineptitude and
predilection for favorites. With his loss in Scotland,
Edward II’s favor for Hugh Despenser the Elder (d. 1326)
and his son, Hugh, provoked the resentment of the
English nobility and of his wife, Isabel, the “She-Wolf of
France” (1292–1358). Edward was deposed and elimi-
nated in 1327.
For a great part of his son, EDWARDIII’s reign, the
Crown managed to satiate the chivalric tastes and eco-
nomic ambitions of the English nobility by military suc-
cesses in the HUNDRED YEARS’WAR in France at the
Battles of CRÉCYand POITIERS. In the end, however, in the
Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, Edward had to renounce his
claim to the throne of France in return for recognition of
his claim to a shrunken Gascony.
The political tensions of the last 10 years of Edward
III’s reign characterized much of RICHARD II’s reign
(r. 1377–99). Complaints against Richard, who was only
10 years old at his accession, focused on the extravagant
spending of his household and on his dependence on
and enrichment of a few favorites. When combined with
what was perceived as tyrannical rule, all this came to a
head when he confiscated the property of and banished
Henry Bolingbroke, JOHN OFGAUNT’s son. Henry left but
returned with an army, which was readily welcomed by a
very unhappy nobility in July 1399, and deposed Richard.