Transcript Anglo-Saxon and Norman England

Kings and lords often
struggled for power
 Some lords were as powerful
as kings and served the kings
when they wished
 Some kings tried to control
nobles
 From this struggle for power
the kingdoms of England
and France emerged

• Over time the power of
monarchs in these kingdoms
became supreme
 By
450 Roman rule in Britain
ended and Germanic tribes
moved into the island
 The culture that emerged from
this Germanic settlement was
name “Anglo-Saxon” after two
of the tribes
 Overtime the Anglo-Saxons
formed several independent
kingdoms in England
 Eventually they divided these
kingdoms into governmental
districts called shires
• A shire was governed by a shire-
reeve, which became the word sheriff
 By
the early 800s the kings of
Wessex controlled almost all
of England
• There power was challenged
 In
by the Viking raiders
871 Alfred the Great
came to the throne of Wessex
determined to drive the
Danes (Vikings) from the
island
• In 876 he attacked the Danes,
by 886 the Danes were
exhausted and weakened
and sued for peace
• They signed a treaty allowing
them to live in parts of England
 During
the 900s Alfred’s
successor won back more
territory from the Danes
 They also unified the country,
and spread Christianity
 By 1013 the Danes again
controlled the entire country
 1016 King Canute of Denmark
took the throne of England
and most of Scandinavia
 By 1042 the Danish line had
died out and the Anglo-Saxon
nobles chose Edward the
Confessor as their new king
 Edward
the Confessor was part
Anglo-Saxon and part Norman
• He died without leaving an heir in
1066
 Duke
William of Normandy,
a distant relative, claimed the
English throne
• Anglo-Saxons refused to
recognize his claim
• Instead they selected Edward’s
brother-in-law, Harold of Wessex,
to be king
 Duke William
was determined
to win the throne of England
Duke William crossed the
English Channel with a
powerful force of Norman
knights
 William defeated Harold’s
Anglo-Saxon army at
Hastings in 1066
 William was crowned King of
England that very same year
 William, known as William the
Conqueror, soon overcame
armed Anglo-Saxon resistance
to his rule

• Soon England grew to combine
elements of both Anglo-Saxon
and Norman cultures

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


William ruled England from 1066
to 1087 bringing with him from
France, feudalism
William made the king, not
the nobles, have the supreme
authority in England
He made nobles swear loyalty
to the king, making the lords
vassals to the king
He scattered fiefs throughout
England to make sure the nobles
would not unite against him
This set foundations of a very strong
centralized government and a
strong monarchy in England
 William
also sent royal
commissioners around
to all parts of his kingdom
 Their task was to count
each shire’s people, assess
landholdings, and measure
type and value of property
 The results of this great
survey helped the king to
set up an accurate, central
tax system
 The records that were
gathered became known
as the Doomsday Book
 Henry
I was one of William
the Conqueror’s sons
 He set up the exchequer to
handle the kingdom’s finances
 He also made important
contributions to England’s
legal system
 Sent
traveling judges
throughout the country
to try cases
 This weakened the feudal
lords and their justice system
 Henry
II also made decisions
that increased royal authority
 Instead of performing feudal
military service to the king,
his vassals could pay a fee
 This money could be used to
hire mercenaries, or soldiers
from different places
 This made the army loyal
to him because he was
paying them

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Traveling judges continued to
strengthen royal law throughout
England
The 12 member jury developed
in the court system
• They decided civil and criminal
trials


Trial by jury to determine
guilt or innocence replaced
the feudal trial by ordeal
and combat
Henry also tried to increase the
authority of his royal courts by
trying members of the clergy
who had been tried already in
church courts
 Thomas
Becket, the
Archbishop of Canterbury,
would NOT allow his clergy
to be tried in royal courts
 Henry and Becket once
friends, became enemies
 The knights of Henry, who
thought they were helping,
murdered Becket in his
cathedral
 Henry II denied any part in
the murder but did penance
to appease the church
 Becket was named a saint
 The
last years of Henry II
reign were troubled
 His sons plotted against
him and also his marriage
to Eleanor of Aquitaine
was stormy
 His marriage brought
England into conflict
with France
 Henry II rule had
strengthened the English
monarchy at the feudal
lords expense
 Henry
II son, King John,
is known for his actions
that led to a revolt among
England’s nobles
• King John demanded that
 In
the nobles pay more taxes
to support his wars in France
1215 a powerful group of
nobles joined together against
the king and his demands
 Their threats forced King John
to accept a document known
as Magna Carta
This protected the liberties
of the nobles
 Provided limited outline
of rights for England’s
ordinary people
 Couldn’t collect any new
or special taxes without the
consent of the great council
 The acceptance of the Magna
Carta meant that the king
had to obey the law just
like his subjects
 Magna Carta became the
supreme law of the land

 Two
other major developments
took place in England in the
years following Magna Carta
 The first was the growth
of Parliament and the
beginnings of representative
government
 The second was the growth
of common law, law based
upon customs and judges’
decisions, rather than upon
written codes
A
widespread revolt of nobles
against King Henry III in the
1260s rocked England and
again threatened the monarchy
 Simon de Montfort led the
revolt and aimed to build
middle-class support for the
nobles’ cause
• Wanted these groups to combine
 In
efforts against the king
1265 Simon de Montfort
asked for representatives
from the middle class to meet
with the nobles and clergy
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The practice of having members
of the middle class meet with the
clergy and the nobles in the Great
Council remained
This representative body eventually
became the English Parliament
Overtime the Parliament divided
into two parts, called “houses”
• Nobles and clergy made up the
House of the Lords
• Knights and burgesses made up
the House of the Commons

Parliament mainly served to
advise the king but also had the
right to refuse taxes sought by
the king


Edward I ruled England from
1272 to 1307, he was one of
England’s greatest monarchs
He divided the king’s court into
three branches
• The Court of the Exchequer: kept track
of the kingdom’s financial accounts
• The Court of Common Pleas: heard
cases between ordinary citizens
• The Court of the King’s Bench: conducted
trials that concerned the king or the
government

The decisions made by the new royal
courts were collected and used as the
basis for future court verdicts
• This collection of decisions became known
as common law because it applied equally
and in common to all English people
 The
last Carolingian king died
in 987, a group of nobles chose
Hugh Capet to be King of
France
• Started a line known as the
Capetians who ruled France
for more than 300 years
 Capet
ruled only a small area
while feudal lords ruled the rest
of France called duchies
 Capetians aimed to develop a
strong central government and
to unite the duchies of France
under the rule of the monarchy
 The
Capetians sought to
increase the lands under
their control in several
ways
 Marry noblewomen
whose dowries included
great fiefs
 Take control of lands of
noble families that had
died out
 Take English holdings
in France
 The
Capetian kings appointed
well-trained officials to run the
government
• Extended the jurisdiction
of the royal courts
• Parliament of Paris became
a kind of supreme court
 Philip
IV, ruled from 1285 to
1314, he increased royal power
by taxing the clergy
• Pope Boniface VII opposed this
tax and Philip had him arrested
 Philip
influenced the election
of the next pope, Clement V
 Philip
convened the Estates
General, a representative body
made up of the three major
social classes in France
• Commoners, nobles, and clergy
• This was a way for Philip to gain
widespread support in his struggle
against the church
 Despite
the centralizing reforms
these many people achieved,
France remained largely feudal
in its political organization
• Capetian kings failed at their idea
of unification under the monarchy