The Middle Ages

William the Conqueror invades England

Sep 28, 1066

With approximately 7,000 troops and cavalry, William seized Pevensey and marched to Hastings, where he paused to organize his forces. On October 13, Harold arrived near Hastings with his army, and the next day William led his forces out to give battle. At the end of a bloody, all-day battle, King Harold II was killed–shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend–and his forces were defeated.

Paper is first mass-produced in Spain

Sep 27, 1150

The Muslim conquest of Spain brought papermaking into Europe. Both Spain and Italy claim to be the first to manufacture paper in Europe. Papermaking continued under Moorish rule until 1244 when the moors were expelled. Paper making then began to gradually spread across Christian Europe.

Magna Carta

Sep 28, 1215

The document, essentially a peace treaty between John and his barons, guaranteed that the king would respect feudal rights and privileges, uphold the freedom of the church, and maintain the nation’s laws.

End of the Crusades

Sep 28, 1270

The last major crusade aimed at the Holy Land, and an failure that well symbolises the end of the crusades. In the previous twenty years, the remaining crusader states had become increasingly powerless pawns while tides of Mongol and then Mameluke conquests swept across the area.

The Plague

Sep 28, 1348

The Black Death was an epidemic of bubonic plague, a disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis that circulates among wild rodents where they live in great numbers and density. Plague among humans arises when rodents in human habitation, normally black rats, become infected.

First appearance of Robin Hood in literature

Sep 28, 1378

In the earliest tellings of the Robin Hood legend, the outlaw hero is a yeoman (roughly speaking, a member of the middle class). And in 1599, Anthony Munday wrote two plays that made Robin Hood the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon.

Chaucer writes The Canterbury Tales

Sep 28, 1387

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.

War of the Roses

Sep 28, 1455

The Wars of the Roses were a series of battles fought in medieval England from 1455 to 1485 between the House of Lancaster and the House of York. The name Wars of the Roses (sometimes mistakenly referred to as War of the Roses) is based on the badges used by the two sides, the red rose for the Lancastrians and the white rose for the Yorkists.

First printing of Le Morte d’Arthur

Sep 28, 1485

Le Morte d'Arthur, completed in 1469 or 1470 and printed by Caxton in abridged form in 1485, is the first major work of prose fiction in English and remains today one of the greatest. It is the carefully constructed myth of the rise and fall of a powerful kingdom the real English kingdom which in Malory's day seemed as surely doomed by its own corruption as the ancient realm of King Arthur.

First Tudor king, Henry VII, is crowned

Sep 28, 1485

Henry VII, crowned king in 1485, was the first ruler from the Tudor line. During the later part of the Wars of the Roses (1471 - 1485), Henry lived in Northwest France in the Duchy of Brittany. After the deaths of Henry VI and his son Edward, Henry through his mother's ancestry became the head of the House of Lancaster.