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15
BRITAIN IN MIDDLE AGES
EARLY MIDDLE AGES
A MATURING FEUDALISM. THE DOMESDAY BOOK. THE PLANTAGENET KINGS. CONFLICTS
WITH THE CHURCH AND BARONS. RICHARD I, JOHN LACKLAND. MAGNA CARTA
LIBERTATA.
LATER MIDDLE AGES
B SIMON DE MONFORT. THE GROWTH OF PARLIAMENT. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. THE
BLACK DEATH. THE PEASANTS' REVOLT.
Key words, terms and concepts
1. Feudalism, feudal hierarchy
2. A language gap
3. Domesday book
4. Tenants-in-chief (barons), vassals
5. Freemen, freeholders, cottagers, villeins, serfs
6. To raise money (shield money)
7. To impose taxes, fiscal policy
8. Thomas Becket – the martyr
9. Richard (Coeur-de-Lion), the Lion-Heart
10. John Lackland. Magna Carta – the Great Charter of Liberty (1215)
11. Simon de Montfort. The Parliament
12. The Plague – the black death
13. Poll Tax
14. Wycliffe
15. John Ball, Wat Tyier (1381)
Anglo-Norman Britan
The Norman Conquest did have immediate social, political and cultural implications. The new tough
foreign aristocracy captured power and lands. By 1100 (12th c.) there were 500 Norman castles in the English
countryside. There was a blow against the Church as well; Saxon bishops were either deposed or replaced by
Normans. During the 11th and 12th centuries an apparatus of Government of exceptional effectiveness was
established.
England was also drawn into close links with the other side of the Channel. But there was a language gap
between the local (Anglo-Saxon) population and the new landowners, of both the Church and the Norman
Aristocracy.
Latin was a language of monasteries, Norman French was now the language of law and authority. Inflected
English, spoken differently in the various regions remained the language of the people.
The brightest evidence of the situation in the country was the Domesday Book (1086), a survey of England's
land and people; according to it Norman society still rested on "lordship, secular and spiritual, and the King,
wise or foolish, was the lord of lords, with only Lord in Heaven and the Saints above him.”
Historians have introduced into their interpretation of Norman and other European lordship the term