Middle Ages

William the Conqueror invades England

Sep 2, 1066

William laid claim to the English throne after Edward died. He was a distant cousin of Edward and said that Edward had promised him the throne when visiting France in 1051. He even said his claim had been accepted by Harold Godwinson in 1064, when Harold had been blown onto the Norman shore by a storm. William invaded England to become King and claim the throne from Harold.

Paper is first mass-produced in Spain

Sep 2, 1150

Europe, however, didn't start papermaking until several centuries after the Arabs began making paper. The Christians who took over the Arab paper mills after driving the Moors from Spain were far less skillful and made inferior papers. And although trading cities such as Venice imported paper from the East and some mills in Italy produced outstanding rag papers, the rest of Europe was slow to embrace the new technology.

Magna Carta

Sep 2, 1270

Deteriorating relations between the Crusaders and their Christian allies in the Byzantine Empire culminated in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Third Crusade. Near the end of the 13th century, the rising Mamluk dynasty in Egypt provided the final reckoning for the Crusaders, toppling the coastal stronghold of Acre and driving the European invaders out of Palestine and Syria in 1291.

End of the Crusades

Sep 2, 1270

The Crusades were military campaigns sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. In 1095 Byzantine Emperor Alexios I, in Constantinople, sent an ambassador to Pope Urban II in Italy pleading for military help against the growing Turkish threat. The Pope responded promptly by calling Christian soldiers to join the First Crusade.

The Plague

Sep 2, 1348

In the early 1330s an outbreak of deadly bubonic plague occurred in China. The bubonic plague mainly affects rodents, but fleas can transmit the disease to people. Once people are infected, they infect others very rapidly. Plague causes fever and a painful swelling of the lymph glands called buboes, which is how it gets its name. The disease also causes spots on the skin that are red at first and then turn black.

First appearance of Robin Hood in literature

Sep 2, 1378

Robin Hood is a heroic outlaw in English folklore, and, according to legend, was also a highly skilled archer and swordsman. The outlaw has derived a reputation for performing humanitarian deeds, and in particular for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes. According to some accounts, the legend has its roots in the activities of actual medieva

Chaucer writes The Canterbury Tales

Sep 2, 1387

Stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century, during the time of the Hundred Years' War. The tales (mostly written in verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.

War of the Roses

Sep 2, 1445

In the opening battle of England's War of the Roses, the Yorkists defeat King Henry VI's Lancastrian forces at St. Albans, 20 miles northwest of London. Many Lancastrian nobles perished, including Edmund Beaufort, the duke of Somerset, and the king was forced to submit to the rule of his cousin, Richard of York. The dynastic struggle between the House of York, whose badge was a white rose, and the House of Lancaster, later associated with a red rose, would stretch on for 30 years.

First Tudor king, Henry VII, is crowned

Sep 2, 1485

KING HENRY VII, of England, was the first of the Tudor dynasty. His claim to the throne was through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, from John of Gaunt and Catherine Swynford, whose issue born before their marriage had been legitimated by parliament. This, of course, was only Lancastrian claim, never valid, even as such, till the direct male line of John of Gaunt had become extinct.

First printing of Le Morte d’Arthur-

Sep 2, 1485

Malory probably started work on Le Morte d'Arthur while he was in prison in the early 1450s and completed it by 1470. “Malory did not invent the stories in this collection; he translated and compiled them...Malory in fact translated Arthurian stories that already existed in thirteenth-century French prose (the so-called Old French Vulgate romances) and compiled them together with at least one tale from Middle English sources (the Alliterative Morte Arthure and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur) to creat