Kingdoms

Answer the following questions:

1. How did William the Conqueror set up a strong monarchy in England?

2. How did common law and trial by jury develop? How did they unite England?

3. What legal provisions were specifically set forth in the Magna Charta? What principles evolved from these provisions?

4. What are the origins of the English Parliament? How did Parliament limit the monarch’s authority?

Identify items in bold

In medieval Europe, kings stood at the head of society. Yet feudal monarchs had limited power. They ruled their own domains but relied on vassals for military support. Nobles and the Church had as much--or more--power than the king. Both nobles and the Church had their own courts, collected their own taxes, and fielded their own armies. They jealously guarded their rights and privileges against any effort by rulers to increase royal authority.

Crafty, ambitious, and determined rulers used various means to centralize power. They expanded the royal domain and set up a system of royal justice that undermined feudal or Church courts. They organized a government bureaucracy, developed a system of taxes, and built a standing army. Monarchs strengthened ties with the middle class; Townspeople, in turn, supported royal rulers, who could impose the peace and unity that were needed for trade and commerce.

During the early Middle Ages, Angles, Saxons, and Vikings invaded and settled in England. Although feudalism developed, English rulers generally kept their kingdoms united. In 1066, the Anglo- Saxon king Edward died without an heir. His death triggered a power struggle that changed the course of English history. A council of nobles chose Edward's brother-in-law Harold to rule. But Duke William of Normandy, a tough, ruthless descendant of the Vikings, also claimed the English throne. The answer to the rival claims lay on the battlefield.

Duke William raised an army and won the backing of the pope. He then sailed across the English Channel. At the Battle of Hastings, William and his Norman knights triumphed over Harold. On Christmas Day, 1066, William the Conqueror, as he was now called, assumed the crown of England.

Once in power, William exerted firm control over his new lands. Like other feudal monarchs, he granted fiefs to the Church and his Norman lords, or barons, but he kept a large amount of land for himself and held on to a far more extensive royal domain than the King of France held. He strictly controlled who built castles and where. He required every vassal to swear the famous Salisbury Oath, which made all land holders swear first allegiance to him rather than to any other feudal lord. Even though William listened to the advice of his chief nobles, he always had the last word.

To learn about his kingdom, and to establish firm financial control, William had a complete census taken in 1086. The result was the Domesday Book (pronounced doomsday), which listed every castle, field, and pigpen in England. As the title suggests, the survey was as thorough and inevitable as doomsday, believed to be God's final day of judgment that no one could escape. Information in the Domesday Book helped William and his successors build an efficient system of tax collecting. To effectively govern his kingdom, William appointed royal officials called sheriffs to be his representative in each of the counties or shires of England.

William's successors strengthened two key areas of government: finances and law. They created the royal exchequer, or treasury, to collect taxes. Into the exchequer flowed fees, fines, and other dues. William's successors began to exempt nobles from military service to the king by allowing them to pay a tax instead of supplying knights for the king’s army. This special tax, called scutage, did two important things: it provided additional revenue for the exchequer and it freed the king from relying on the lords for military service.

In 1154, energetic, well-educated king, Henry II, inherited the throne. He broadened system of royal justice. Henry, however, found ways to expand old ideas into law. He then sent out traveling justices to enforce royal laws. The decisions of the royal courts became the basis for English common law, or law that was common--the same-for all people. In time, people chose royal courts over those of nobles or the Church. Since royal courts charged fees, the exchequer benefited from the growth of royal justice. Under Henry II, England also developed an early jury system. When traveling justices visited an area, local officials collected a jury, or group of men sworn to speak the truth. (from medieval French, meaning "sworn on oath.") These early juries determined which cases should be brought to trial and were the ancestors of today's grand jury. Later, another jury evolved that was composed of 12 neighbors of an accused. It was the ancestor of today’s trial or petit jury.

Henry's efforts to extend royal power led to a bitter dispute with the Church. Henry claimed the right to try clergy in royal courts. Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury and once a close friend of Henry's, fierce I)' opposed the king's move. The conflict simmered for years. Then, in 1170, four of Henry's knights, believing they were d6ing Henry's bidding, murdered the archbishop in his own cathedral. Henry denied any part in the attack. Still, to make peace with the Church, he eased off his attempts to regulate the clergy. Becket, meantime, was honored as a martyr and declared a saint. Pilgrims flocked to his tomb at Canterbury

Later English rulers repeatedly clashed with nobles and the Church. Most battles developed as a result of efforts by the monarch to raise taxes or to impose royal authority over traditional feudal rights. Out of those struggles evolved traditions of government that would influence the modern world.

Henry's son John was a clever, greedy, cruel, and un-trustworthy ruler. During his reign, he faced three powerful enemies: King Philip II of France, Pope Innocent III, and his own English nobles. He lost his struggles with each.

Ever since William the Conqueror, Norman rulers of England had held vast lands in France. In 1205, John lost a war With Philip II and had to give up English-held lands in France. Next, John battled with Innocent III over-selecting a new archbishop of Canterbury. When John attacked the Church, the pope responded by excommunicating him. He also placed England under the interdict, a papal order that forbade Church services in an entire kingdom. Even the strongest ruler was likely to give in to that pres- sure. To save himself and his crown, John had to accept England as a fief of the papacy and pay a yearly fee to Rome.

Finally, John angered his own nobles with heavy-handed taxes and other abuses of power. In 1215, a group of rebellious barons cornered John and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, or great charter. In this document, the king affirmed a long list of noble rights. Besides protecting their own privileges, the nobles included a few clauses recognizing the rights of townspeople and the Church.

The Magna Carta contained two basic ideas that in the long run would shape government traditions in England. First, it asserted that the nobles had certain rights. Over time, the rights that had been granted to nobles were extended to all English citizens. Second, the Magna Carta made clear that even the monarch must obey the law. Among the most significant clauses were those that protected the legal rights of the people.

Parliament acquired a larger role in government, and it helped unify England. In 1295, Edward I summoned Parliament to approve money for his wars in France. "What touches all," he declared, "should be approved by all." He had representatives of the "common people" join the lords and clergy. The "commons" included two knights from each county and two representatives of each of the towns that had been granted a royal charter. Much later, this assembly became known as the Model Parliament because it set up the framework for England's legislature. In time, Parliament developed into a two-house body: the House of Lords with nobles and high clergy and the House of Commons with knights and middle-class citizens. English monarchs summoned Parliament for their own purposes, but over the centuries, Parliament gained the crucial "power of the purse." That is, it won the right to approve any new taxes. With that power, Parliament could' insist that the monarch meet its demands before voting for taxes. In this way, it could check, or limit, the power of the monarch.

In earlier centuries, wars had been generally short and small in scale. In the 14th century, a new trend developed. The most destructive war was a series of conflicts between the English and the French known as the Hundred Years’ War, which raged off and on from 1337 to 1453. In truth it was about 68 years of uneasy truce interspersed with about 44 years of actual fighting.

From the time of the French Norman conquest of England in 1066, and further complicated by later intermarriages, English kings inherited through marriage and ruled extensive lands in France. Conflict between the two monarchies was common. In 1328, the last in the Capetian dynasty of French kings died without an heir. An assembly of French nobles gave the crown to a French relative, but Edward III, king of England, asserted that he in fact had a superior claim through his French mother. This, then, was one of the primary background causes of the Hundred Years' War.

Another cause of the Hundred Years' War was economic conflict. The French monarchy tried to squeeze new taxes from towns under their control in Flanders—towns that had grown wealthy as trade and wool cloth-making centers. Resenting French taxes and depending on English wool to produce their goods, these towns supported England and Edward III.

War had become a more expensive proposition by the 14th century. Larger, better-trained armies were needed. Most governments began to rely on paid mercenaries to do their fighting for them. The problem with mercenaries is that they were expensive, so to pay the high price of warfare, European monarchs imposed even more taxes upon the people. The French were most adept at this: there were taxes on salt, bread, and wine as well as taxes on the rights to use wine presses, grindstones and mills.

The most pressing issue at the beginning of the Hundred Years' War was the status of Aquitaine, a large province in southwestern France that (according to feudal law) Edward III held as part of his fiefdom. When the French King Philip attacked Aquitaine, claiming it was rightfully his, Edward's response in 1337was to join forces with the resentful peoples of Flanders. This was the immediate cause of the war.

The war, fought entirely on French soil, raged off and on for more than 100 years. English victories during the first half of the period were then followed by French victories in the last few decades of the conflict. During periods of truce, English and French mercenaries roamed the French countryside killing and stealing, spreading misery among the civilian population.

The English won the early battles of Crecy, Poitiers, and finally, Agincourt in 1415. New technology was the key. The English adopted the superior long bow, which allowed English bowmen to pick off armored French knights. (This contributed to the end of the traditional role in warfare of the feudal knight on horseback.) The English controlled most of northern France. It appeared that England would shortly conquer France and unite the two countries under one crown. At this crucial moment in French history, a young and illiterate peasant girl, Joan of Arc (d.1431), helped to rescue France. At the age of 13 she believed she heard heavenly voices bidding her to rescue the French people. God had commanded heard to drive the English out of France. It is a measure of the depth of France’s hopelessness that the French king allowed Joan to ride out with the soldiers. Joan rallied the demoralized French troops. Clad in a suit of white armor and flying her own standard she liberated France from the English at the battle of Orleans. Ultimately captured and imprisoned by the English, Joan of Arc was condemned as a heretic and a witch and stood trial before the Inquisition in 1431. Joan was found guilty and was burnt at the stake, becoming a martyr and national hero. Joan’s intervention was the turning point, and over the next 20 years, The English were driven out of France and the war came to an end in 1453.

The Hundred Years’ War, with its ultimate French victory contributed powerfully to the emergence of a French national identity. French kings used the war to extend their power over the kingdom of France. The deaths of many French nobles helped to undermine the role of the nobility, as did changes in warfare itself. The longbow made knights on horseback obsolete: what was needed for modern warfare was a large, well-trained army of bowmen, not feudal vassals on horseback. In its way, the Hundred Years’ War played an important role in shifting power to monarchs, and away from feudal nobles.