|
Description: With the sealing of the Magna Carta, and the death of King John in 1216, the thirteenth century began in England with a great sense of hope. But during the next four reigns the chroniclers recorded a series of horrors, famine, war and cruelty, culminating in the Black Death – the plague that swept across Europe, killing almost half of the population. Economic chaos added its frightening disorder. Enormous sums of gold were exacted from the people for the rulers of church and state to squander on sumptuous palaces, extravagant gifts to their favourites, lavish feasts, richly adorned Gothic cathedrals and, not least, ruinously expensive wars.
Yet it was also a time of chivalry and courtly love, when the Order of the Garter was founded and when literature and the arts flourished. Writers such as Boccaccio, Dante and Chaucer delighted their literate audiences, and Cimabue, Giotto and Martini heralded the Italian Renaissance.
The chroniclers were recording events as they happened. Henry III’s long reign was viewed with careful eyes by the talented Barnwell annalist, through the highly coloured prose of Roger of Wendover, through the outstanding and delightfully illustrated works of Matthew Paris, a monk of St Albans, and many more. Henry III’s kinsman and rival, Louis IX of France, was more popular with his contemporaries as extracts from Joinville show; and another great ruler, Frederick II, who in turn shocked, stupefied and dazzled the men of his age, is brought vividly to life by the Italian chronicler Salimbene.
Henry III’s son Edward I was a great administrator and military leader who tamed the Welsh and hammered the Scots, as a number of lively and well-informed annalists record. Edward II’s reign, which ended with his untimely deposition and murder at Berkeley Castle, entered the world of legend with the inventive Geoffrey le Baker, who continued to write through much of the long, eventful reign of Edward III. Edward, having broken away from the powerful influence of his mother Isabella, the dreaded ‘She-Wolf of France’, went on to lead England into the long and destructive conflict with France, the Hundred Years War. The exploits of his own son, the Black Prince, were described by the celebrated Flemish writer Jean Froissart.
With the death of Edward III in 1377, in the arms of his mistress, this turbulent period comes to a close. The Plantagenet world was at the centre of great changes in political power and in social and economic structure. For the first time in history, parliaments included townsfolk and simple knights as well as the great nobles. More important, perhaps, was the development of English as the language of the nation. Between 1216 and 1377, the Plantagenet dynasty had become an English family of Kings.
|
