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Jan 1, 1066
William the Conqueror invades England
In October 1066, a daylong battle near Hastings, England, changed the course of history. There, just ten miles from the channel dividing England from France, Duke William of Normandy, France, defeated and killed King Harold of England, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings. So began the Norman Conquest, an event that radically affected English history, the English character, and the English language. Unlike the Romans, the Normans never withdrew from England. -
Jan 1, 1150
Paper is first mass-produced in Spain
Through the wanderers who travelled from Africa to Spain, Europeans met with paper in modern sense and the first paper mill was set up in Valencia. -
Jan 1, 1215
Magna Carta
The event that most clearly heralded a return to older, democratic tendencies in England was the signing of the Magna Carta (the “Great Charter”) by King John in 1215, at Runnymede. The vicious but pragmatic John was strongly backed by the pope, but the English barons forced him to sign the document. The signing was a defeat for central papal power. As aristocrats writing for aristocrats, the barons had no interest in the rights of the common people. But the Magna Carta later became the basis fo -
Jan 1, 1270
End of the Crusades
a series of wars waged by European Christians against the Muslims, with Jerusalem and the Holy Land as the prize. Although the Europeans ultimately failed to hold Jerusalem, they benefited enormously from contact with the higher civilization of the Middle East. -
Jan 1, 1348
The Plague
The Black Death, or bubonic plague, which struck England in 1348–1349, delivered another blow to feudalism. Highly contagious and spread by fleas from infected rats, the disease reduced the nation’s population by a third—causing a labor shortage and inevitably giving the lower classes more leverage than ever before against their overlords. One long-term result was the serfs’ freedom, which knocked out feudalism’s last support. -
Jan 1, 1378
First apperance of Robin Hood in literature
Robin Hood originated in the form of folk tales, but was later recorded onto paper. The oldest written reference to Robin Hood is an indirect one, The Vision of Piers Plowman (1378), while the first direct reference is in a Yorkshire place-name, The Stone of Robin Hood (1322). The first written work to describe Robin in thorough detail was A Lytell Geste of Robin Hood (about 1495). Robin was also in Ivanhoe (1819), a work written by Sir Walter Scott. A cameo was also made in The Once and Future -
Jan 1, 1387
Chaucer writes The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories in a frame story, between 1387 and 1400. It is the story of a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury (England). The pilgrims, who come from all layers of society, tell stories to each other to kill time while they travel to Canterbury.
If we trust the General Prologue, Chaucer intended that each pilgrim should tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two tales on the way back. -
Jan 1, 1455
War of the Roses
The Wars of the Roses were a series of dynastic wars fought between supporters of two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York (whose heraldic symbols were the "red" and the "white" rose, respectively) for the throne of England. They were fought in several sporadic episodes between 1455 and 1485, although there was related fighting both before and after this period. -
Jan 1, 1485
First printing of Le Morte d'Arthur
Sir Thomas Malory (c. 1405 - 14 March 1471) was an English author. His prose epic Le Morte d'Arthur, written during a long imprisonment in Newgate Prison as a captured partisan of the Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick during the Wars of the Roses, covers the careers of King Arthur and his knights. It is largely a free translation of various French romances. -
Jan 1, 1485
First Tudor king, Henry VII, is crowned
Henry VII (Welsh: Harri Tudur; 28 January 1457 – 21 April 1509) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizing the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death on 21 April 1509, as the first monarch of the House of Tudor. Henry won the throne when he defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of England to win his throne on the field of battle. He was successful in restoring the power and stability of the English monarchy.
