Hampton Court

A thirty-minute train ride from London lands you at one of the most spectacular and historically rich palaces in Britain. Located on the banks of the Thames, Hampton Court Palace includes 60 acres of beautiful parkland in addition to the palace itself. According to the palace website, the history of Hampton Court Palace includes the following monarchs: Henry VIII (r 1509-47); Queen Mary I (r 1553-8); James I (r 1603-25); Charles I (r 1625-1649); Charles II (r 1630-85); William III and Mary I); and George II (r 1727-60). But these kings and queens are not the only people to have left their mark on the palace. Other notable people include Oliver Cromwell and Cardinal Wolsey.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the palace that I found was taking a tour through the different time periods and subsequent changes as seen through the development of the building itself. The building of Hampton Court Palace is billed as “the story of two palaces: a Tudor palace, magnificently developed by Cardinal Wolsey and later Henry VIII, alongside a baroque palace built by William III and Mary II” (Historic Royal Palaces). Of all the stories involved with Hampton Court, that of Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII is the most famous. And their story is what immediately drew me to the site.

The palace underwent major transformation during the time Cardinal Wolsey lived there, only to have the Cardinal lose his high-ranking position as a Cardinal, Archbishop of York as well as Lord Chancellor, but also his splendid house during the fallout with Henry VIII. Delderfield relates what happened: “It was Wolsey’s failure to arrange for Henry’s divorce from his first wife [Katherine of Aragon] that led to his dismissal in 1529 and summons the following year to London on a charge of high treason; he died on the journey” (64). Henry seized Wolsey’s magnificent house and turned it into a center of the Tudor court.

When it came to refurbishing his palace, no expense was too great in Henry’s eyes: “In just ten years Henry VIII spent more than £62,000 rebuilding and extending Hampton Court. This vast sum would be worth approximately £18 million today” (Historic Royal Palaces). By the time Henry was finished with it, Hampton Court Palace was elegant and sophisticated: “There were tennis courts, bowling alleys and pleasure gardens for recreation, a hunting park of more than 1,100 acres, kitchens covering 36,000 square feet, a fine chapel, a vast communal dining room (the Great Hall) and a multiple garderobe (or lavatory)—known as the Great House of Easement—which could sit 28 people at a time. Water flowed to the palace from Coombe Hill in Kingston, three miles away, through lead pipes” (Historic Royal Palaces). I especially enjoyed the atmospheric and hammerbeamed Great Hall; it didn’t take much to imagine a great table laden with food and surrounded by people and dogs, with the fire blazing in the middle as Henry looked on the scene proudly.

It is especially poignant to consider the situation surrounding the royalty living at the palace during Henry VIII’s time. At one time, the young prince and heir, Edward, lived with his two half-sisters who would both become queen someday, Elizabeth and Mary. Elizabeth’s mother was beheaded, Mary’s divorced, and Edward’s died. It’s the kind of situation that would definitely make for some awkward dinners. Nevertheless, the Tudors carried on, culminating in the Golden Age of the capable and intelligent Elizabeth I.


Hampton Court’s place in English history doesn’t end with the Tudors. The succeeding dynasty—the Stuarts—also made use of the palace, albeit in a somewhat diminished role when compared to its former centrality in English courtly life. In a rising tide of religious controversy and factious fighting, James I, a dedicated Calvinist except when it came to matters of church government, called for a conference to be held at Hampton Court between the bishops and the Puritans. Roberts relates that “the conference was by no means a total victory for the bishops, but the final outcome was, since James, once the conference ended, lost interest. He allowed the bishops . . . [to revise] the Book of Common Prayer in their own interest and secured passage trough Convocation of new canons, one of which required the clergy to subscribe to the royal supremacy, the Thirty-nine articles, and the revised Prayer Book” (331-32). This event is only one of many that illustrates the deep history and importance that the palace has played in British history.

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Works Cited

Delderfield, Eric R. Kings and Queens of England & Great Britain. London: Greenwich Editions, 1996.

Historic Royal Palaces. http://www.hrp.org.uk/. Accessed 5/6/2008 through http://www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace.

Roberts, Clayton, and David Roberts. A History Of England: Prehistory to 1714. Upper
Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1998.

Globe Theater

In his play Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare obliquely references, through the character Ulysses, the theater that forever is linked to his name, “Take but degree away, untune that string,/ And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets/ In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters/ Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,/ And make a sop of all this solid globe . . .” (TC 1.3.109-13). This statement, framed against the backdrop of the cosmos, sets the theater up in general, and the Globe in particular, as a microcosm in itself. As Levin puts it, the Globe was “an artistic replica of the whole human condition” (7). Although my visit to this microcosm was through a reproduction of the original theater, the Globe still remains a key element in understanding British cultural life. This journal will focus on the function and importance of the original Globe as Shakespeare would have known it in the Elizabethan era.


The building of the Globe begins with what was called simply the Theatre by the owner, James Burbage, which began in the spring in 1576. The area that Burbage settled on to build the Theatre in The Liberty of Halliwell (called ‘”Liberty” because it was an area licensed by the Mayor of London for theatres and other entertainment venues) was wholly unremarkable in its time; Schoenbaum relates, “The Liberty, which took its name from an ancient holy well, had belonged to a Benedictine priory. The convent was now dissolved: the well, decayed and filthy, replenished a horsepond; and the property came within the jurisdiction of the Crown. Around the well stood undeveloped land, except for a few derelict tenements, a crumbling barn, and some gardens. Here, on a small parcel of vacant ground between the tenements and the old brick wall of the precinct, Burbage’s workman began building . . .” (132).

The Globe itself was built in 1599 with the ruins of the torn-apart Theatre: “The timber from the dismantled Theatre [was] ferried across the river to Bankside, where they erected a new playhouse more splendid than any London had yet seen. This they called the Globe” (Schoenbaum 208). Historically, the first recorded performance at the Globe was Julius Caesar. Although no one really knows what the Globe looked like, it is traditionally thought to have been built, like its predecessors, in the theatre-in-the-round style, in which three wooden tiers of seats allow for near 360 degree views of the stage. The top gallery consists of a thatched roof called a tectum, while the center of the top is completely exposed, which means, as I found out during A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that during a rainstorm the people standing under the hole—called “groundlings”—have no protection from the storm other than what poncho or rain gear they bring themselves. Unlike our time, where sitting close to the stage at a performance is seen as a great privilege that costs a subsequent great amount of money, the wealthy patrons in Shakespeare’s time showed off by sitting high in the tiers—the higher you sat, the better off you were known to be. The cheap “seats” bought you a bit of standing space in front of the stage.

From 1599 to 1608 or 1609 the Globe playhouse was the home of the Chamberlain-King’s company and the only theater where it publicly presented its plays in London. The company, to which Shakespeare belonged, changed their name to the King’s men from the Lord Chamberlain’s upon the death of Queen Elizabeth. Despite this small change, the company experienced the remarkable success in the Globe that has come to signify an entire art. As Beckerman puts it, the construction of the Globe “initiated a glorious decade during which the company achieved a level of stability and a quality of productivity rarely matched in the history of the theater" (Beckerman ix). And remarkably, considering how very little we have by way of actual documents and resources from the Globe and its surrounding activities, it is this stability and quality that has ensured the Globe’s indelible mark upon Western civilization.

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Works Cited

Beckerman, Bernard. Shakespeare at the Globe: 1599-1609. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

Levin, Harry. “Introduction.” The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd Ed. Baker, Herschel, et al., eds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. 1-25.

Schoenbaum, S. William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life. New York: Oxford UP, 1977.

“Troilus and Cressida.” The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd Ed. Baker, Herschel, et al., eds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Canterbury Cathedral

Before studying about and visiting Canterbury Cathedral, I had only surface knowledge about the history of the building. In fact, mostly what I knew about the cathedral stemmed from my brush with Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales. Since I’m an English major this comes as no surprise that my scant knowledge of the place was linked through literature. But as I soon learned, the cathedral has a deeper history and place of importance in Britain’s religious landscape that moves well beyond the scope of Chaucer.

The existence of Canterbury Cathedral is coupled with the beginning of Christianity in England. Pope Gregory the Great is the man responsible for launching England’s conversion; according to tradition, he “had seen English youths in Rome and pronounced them not ‘Angles but angels’” (Morgan 77). The pope also knew that the queen of Kent was a Christian so he chose to send the first mission there, led by a Roman monk named Augustine. After converting the king, Augustine founded an abbey, and soon after became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 601.

Canterbury Cathedral was thus built in the style called Anglo-Norman Romanesque. Along with Canterbury, cathedrals such as Durham, Tewskesbury, Winchester, Old Sarum, Chichester, Ely, Norwich, and Bath are built in this style. Willson gives further insight into the plans of cathedrals such as Canterbury: “Cathedrals were built in the shape of a cross, with the upper portion of the cross pointing toward the east. The lower portion was represented by the nave, which was the main body of the church . . . The transepts, large projections built to the north and south, represented the arms of the cross. It was above the intersection of nave and transepts that the central tower was erected” (113). On my visit to the cathedral, one of my favorite architectural aspects was the complicated network of ribbed vaulting in the nave and transepts. Although not as large and grand as the nave and tower in comparison, I also appreciated the peace and atmosphere of the cathedral’s cloisters.

Architecture aside, the cathedral is also notable for its shrine to Thomas à Becket, who was martyred in the cathedral in 1170. The story goes that Henry the king and Thomas the archbishop, having once been on the best of terms and insuperable allies, quarreled badly on the issue of church versus kingly authority. In a brief moment of rage, Henry was overhead declaring, “’What a parcel of fools and dastards have I nourished in my house that none of them will avenge me of this one upstart priest!’ Four knights, taking the king at his word, and no doubt hoping for reward, sailed to England to murder the Archbishop. They came upon him in his cathedral and cut him down with their swords, the last blow splitting their victim’s tonsured skull and spilling his brains on the stone floor of the north transept” (Hibbert 64). After Becket was buried in the church, the cathedral became a pilgrimage site almost immediately. As Chaucer wrote, “from every shires ende/ Of Engelond to Canterbury they wende,/ The holy blissful martyr for to seeke” (Norton lines 15-17). The story of Becket’s loyalty to the church and uncalled-for death remains a poignant story in the history of the cathedral.

Canterbury Cathedral is also notable for being the burial place of Edward Plantagenet, the “Black Prince,” and King Henry IV. Today the cathedral still serves as a place of worship and as the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the leader of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion.

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Works Cited

Hibbert, Christopher. The Story of England. London: Phaidon, 1992.

Morgan, Kenneth O., ed. The Oxford History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed, Major Authors. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton & Co., 2006.

Willson, David Harris. A History of England. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972.

The Imperial War Museum: The Blitz

The Citizens’ War. The Blitz. The Battle of Britain. Known by many different names, the Germans’ incessant bombing of Britain’s major metropolitan areas, particularly London, during World War II has gone down in history as one of the most destructive military strikes recorded. One reason for the Blitz’s significance lies in its direct impact on the everyday lives of British civilians. As I wandered through the World War II exhibit and the Blitz Experience at the Imperial War Museum, I began to get some idea of the true extent of what the bombing meant--and still means--for Londoners.

For the Germans, the Blitz, which began on 7 September 1940, was seen as merely a prelude to invasion, or as a way to weaken the country to make Hitler’s taking over easier. I can only imagine how frightening it would be to live each day in fear of invasion; right now, as I walk around a London that successfully spurned Hitler’s advances, it’s hard to think of German forces taking over the country. But for the British during the Blitz, the possibility was an everyday reality. The people weren’t completely unprepared for what was coming though, for “by February 1941 the government had given out 2.5 million Anderson shelters, tents of corrugated iron people buried in backyards and covered with earth. Each one held six persons” (Roberts 801). The shelters, of which there was also a style called a Morrison, which as Brother Chittock mentioned, was more dangerous because it could mean the death of 300 instead six people, were not infallible though. Because the situation was so intense at the height of bombing in London, children were billeted with families in the country, most often for a year or longer. This ensured that they were safe, despite living with the possibility that one or both of their parents in London would be killed by the Luftwaffe.

Life during the Blitz was hard. Rationing drastically cut short the amount and quality of food prepared for meals. For example, Brother Chittock said that eggs were rationed to 1 egg per person for every two months, and everyone got a small piece of meat each week. The frugality and ingenuity of the people was amazing. Some kitchens experimented with “mock” dishes, in which ingredients more readily available were substituted for others harder to come by. Although it sounds like a good idea, the result was often unappetizing. But the people ate it anyway.

Despite the destruction and chaos caused by the bombing, the citizens showed brilliant resilience and shared a sense of banded community. In almost all cases, they met the challenges of war equally: “Britons spent many nights during the blitz in all kinds of shelters—underground stations, the crypts of churches, hotel lobbies, caves railway arches, and Turkish baths. Each shelter had a distinctive personality, but all had a neighborliness that came from shared sacrifice. A similar equality was found in factories and fields, where citizens doubled their energies so that Britain could defy the Nazis” (Roberts 801).


The people were not without a strong leader though, and the importance of Winston Churchill in getting Britain through not only the Blitz but also the war itself cannot be taken too lightly. As Roberts informs us, Churchill was known for his “candor, eloquence, and resoluteness. He promised not ‘peace in our time’ but ‘blood, toil, tears, and sweat’ and spoke of the resolve that ‘We shall fight in the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender. . . .’ His eloquence and courage inspired a people tired of the prosaic and timid. During the dark hours of the blitz his stirring speeches gave an exhilarating sense of heroism to millions” (800).

The Royal Air Force, whose part was fighting the Battle of Britain, also played an unequivocal part in keeping Britain free from Nazi oppression. Jenkins states that “The essence of the Battle of Britain was that the Germans endeavoured to destroy the British fighter force either in the air or on the ground, and also to disrupt the output, mounting strongly during the summer months, of Hurricanes, Spitfires and bombers” (631). Hitler’s failure to break up the RAF and other military forces turned into a punitive assault on London. Thus the citizens turned from the Battle of Britain to the Blitz. Nevertheless, the RAF continued to fight the Germans, perhaps even more fiercely than before.

The Blitz is an event in British history whose effects are still being felt, even by a short-term resident like me. I feel it whenever I read of a building that was destroyed “in the Blitz,” or when I hear of the Underground being delayed because an unexploded bomb from WWII was found in a Docklands canal. From my own study and experience I have come to appreciate and somewhat understand that importance of the Blitz in British history.

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Works Cited

Brother Chittock Talk. 10 June 2008 at BYU London Center.

Jenkins, Roy. Churchill. London: Pan Books, 2001.

Roberts, Clayton, and David Roberts. A History of England: 1688 to the Present. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1991.

The Houses of Parliament

The Houses of Parliament, also known in earlier history as The Palace of Westminster, stands on the site where Edward the Confessor had the original palace built in the first half of the eleventh century. In 1547 the royal residence was moved to Whitehall Palace, but the Lords continued to meet at Westminster, while the commons met in St. Stephen's Chapel. Ever since these early times, the Palace of Westminster has been home to the English Parliament.

In 1834, a fire broke out and destroyed much of the old palace; all that remained was the chapel crypt, the Jewel Tower and Westminster Hall. It was Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, who saved the great hall by arranging for the fire engines to be brought right into the hall and personally supervising the fire fighting operation (HMSO).

The magnificent Gothic Revival masterpiece that stands today was built between 1840 and 1888 with the work of Charles Barry, who designed the buildings to blend with nearby Westminster Abbey. The two imposing towers, well known landmarks in London, are the clock tower, named after it's thirteen-ton bell called Big Ben, and Victoria tower, on whose flag pole the Union Jack flies when parliament is sitting. Much of the Victorian detail of the interior was the work of Barry's assistant, Augustus Pugin.

Entrance to Westminster Hall is permitted only as part of a guided tour, otherwise it can be viewed from St. Stephen's porch above. The hall measuring 240 feet by 60 feet has an impressive hammerbeam roof of oak and is said to be one of the most imposing medieval halls in Europe. In this dignified setting, coronation banquets were held until 1821. The statue of Oliver Cromwell, which stands outside the hall, serves as a reminder that here in 1653 he was sworn in as Lord Protector.

It was also used as England's highest court of law until the nineteenth century and it was here that Guy Fawkes was tried for attempting to blow up the House of Lords on 5th November 1605. After their religion was dealt a heavy blow in the aftermath of the Hampton Court Conference, a group of English Catholic gentlemen conspired against the King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons (Hibbert 125). On that fateful day in November, a “hired Catholic soldier of fortune, Guy Fawkes, plac[ed] thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in a room underneath the House of Lords. The powder might well have gone off at the beginning of Parliament had not one of the conspirators revealed the plot to the government” (Roberts 332). The conspirators, along with Guy Fawkes, were captured and executed for treason. The famed Gunpowder Plot sparked the annual national celebration of Guy Fawkes Day, in which effigies are burned on Bonfire Night.

The route to the upper and lower houses takes you through the huge wooden doors into St. Stephen's hall. The vaulted ceiling and murals were designed by Barry to replicate the medieval chapel where the Commons met until 1834. From here you are ushered into the well-known octagonal Central Lobby, whose tiled walls are inscribed with Latin mottos. This is the central meeting place where constituents can meet or "lobby" their Members of Parliament. It is from here that you will be shown your direction either to the House of Lords or Commons.

An incendiary bomb destroyed the House of Commons in 1941. A reconstruction of Barry's original design for the house, taken from St. Stephen's chapel, the commons old meeting place, was completed in 1950. The seating arrangement in the house is reminiscent of choir stalls, the members of the cabinet sit on the front benches while opposition senior members sit directly opposite. The distance between the benches marked out on the floor in red lines, is exactly two sword lengths and one foot apart. Members are not allowed to cross these lines, thus ensuring that debates are kept orderly. In the centre of the floor stands the Table of the House, on which the mace is placed at the start of each parliamentary sitting; this is the Speaker's sceptre. The speaker of the house presides over sittings and (attempts) to keep order.

The House of Lords, decorated in scarlet and gold, has all the grandeur one would expect in this chamber. This is where Her Majesty the Queen comes to open Parliament each November. Placed beneath a regal canopy, the gold throne that dominates the house is where the Queen sits to deliver the traditional opening speech. The Lord Chancellor sits opposite, on the famous Woolsack, which is a large scarlet cushion filled with wool, a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages when wool was England's largest export. For me, the Houses of Parliament in all their weighty glory next to the Thames will always remain an iconic and integral part of the British landscape.

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Works Cited

Hibbert, Christopher. The Story of England. London: Phaidon, 1992.

HMSO. 10 Downing Street. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/. Retrieved 8 June 2008 from http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page152.asp.

Roberts, Clayton, and David Roberts. A History Of England: Prehistory to 1714. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1998.

Stonehenge

For most of my life, Stonehenge has always been associated with the mystical and ancient history of England. In a few words, the unknown. Set in a quiet and peaceful on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, Stonehenge has existed since time out of mind, before the iconic veneration it is given today by thousands of visitors. My sentiments on Stonehenge were echoed by Dr. Talbot, who remarked on that breezy, sunny day we visited the site that seeing places like Stonehenge makes all the medieval and Roman sites we’ve experienced thus far seem like a drop in the bucket in terms of time.

My knowledge of this prehistoric monument was somewhat limited to what I had learned in my art history classes. I knew that the Sarsen Circle was supposed to be held in place with mortice and tenon joints, and that it employs post and lintel construction. Also, Stonehenge was begun around 3,500 years ago, and was built in several stages from about 3,000 B.C.

The alignment of the stones leaves little doubt that the circle is connected with the sun and the passing of the seasons, and that its builders possessed a sophisticated understanding of both arithmetic and astronomy. Despite popular belief, the circle was not built by the Druids, who flourished more than 1,000 years after Stonehenge was completed (Leapman 262).

The most recent issue of National Geographic gives the following timeline in the building of Stonehenge:

3000 B.C. Middle Neolithic
Earthwork Enclosure: A circular ditch-and-bank monument some 375 feet across was cut into the chalk of Salisbury Plain about 3000 B.C. This earthwork is the “henge” in Stonehenge, though most Neolithic henges were built with the ditch inside the bank. Timber posts may have stoof in some of the 56 circular pits that lined the bank’s inner edge.

Timber Monuments: A distinct new phase took shape in the middle to late Neolithic period. Timber posts were erected in linear patterns near the northeast entrance and across the center toward the southern entrance. Cremation remains lead archeologists to believe the site was being used as a cemetery.

2500 B.C. Enter the Stones
Bluestones: Circular or semicircular arrangements of stones probably appeared by 2500 B.C., the earliest being pairs of four-ton bluestones (their color when wet) now known to have been brought about 250 miles from Wales. Also added: features called Station Stones, the Altar Stone, and the Heel Stone just outside the northeast entrance.

Sarsen Circle
Stonehenge gained its iconic shape with the creation of the 16-foot-high Sarsen Circle—30 worked stones topped by lintels. In a horseshoe configuration inside the circle towered five freestanding trilithons, each formed of two upright stones linked by a lintel. The tallest reached 25 feet. The chalk bank was recut, small circular earthworks were added, and a banked avenue ran nearly two miles to the River Avon.

2000 B.C. Early Bronze--Later Refinements
Bluestones that had been cast aside were repositioned as a circle and a horseshoe within the Sarsen Circle, and a double ring of pits was dug. By about 1500 B.C. Stonehenge was no longer maintained.

Recent evidence suggests that Stonehenge was used as a burial site earlier than was previously thought by researchers. An article on CNN.com suggests, “They estimate that up to 240 people were buried within Stonehenge, all as cremation deposits” (“Stonehenge”). While the complete purpose for building Stonehenge is not known yet, this bit of research takes us one step closer to understanding this enigmatic piece of the puzzle that is the history of ancient Britain.

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Works Cited

Alexander, Caroline. “If the Stones Could Speak: Searching for the Meaning of Stonehenge.” National Geographic. June 2008: 39.

Leapman, Michael. DK Eyewitness Travel: Great Britain. London: 2007.

“Stonehenge was a place of burial, researchers say.” CNN.com. Accessed 7 June 2008 from http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/05/29/stonehenge.ap/index.html.

Battle of Hastings

It’s called “1066 Country” for a reason. In a quiet area in the South Downs of Kent stands the village of Battle. Despite its now peaceful atmosphere, it, along with Hastings, is famous as being the site of one of the most significant turning points in British history. The Battle of Hastings has carved a spot in the British annals as being the last successful invasion of England and as marking the end of Anglo-Saxon England and the beginning of French Norman rule. As Roberts tells us, “William’s conquest of England gave an abrupt turn to the path of English history. It imposed on England an alien aristocracy, introduced into the kingdom feudal institutions, and linked England—commercially, ecclesiastically, and culturally—with Europe, not Scandinavia” (68).

The immediate causes of such sweeping change are simple. In January 1066, the death of King Edward (called “the Confessor”) left the kingdom without a definite heir. Contention broke out among competing factions, and eventually Harold Godwinson accepted the crown, only to be immediately a traitor and a liar by William. One reason for William’s outrage is that supposedly, in 1064, or maybe early in 1065, “Harold visited Duke William in Normandy. He went, say the Norman sources, as Edward’s ambassador, to swear an oath confirming an earlier promise of the English crown” (Morgan 102). Yet another story gives a second explanation: “Harold falls into William’s hands by mischance, is forced to swear the oath, and returns shamefacedly to a horrified King Edward” (Morgan 102). In both cases, the English crown is promised to Duke William by Harold, making his taking the crown an act of treason, even if the oath had been given under forced conditions. Thus William, who has been painted as more bent on taking England’s wealth rather than the kingship, took Harold’s crowning as justification for launching a full-scale invasion of the island country.

Harold’s armies, exhausted after winning a decisive victory over two rivals also vying for the kingdom, Harold’s brother Tostig and the King of Norway, met William’s on 14 October 1066. The battle was evenly pitched, and according to Roberts, “William had some 5000 troops, Harold perhaps 7000, though many were untrained, ill-equipped recruits. On both sides the soldiers wore chainmail and conical helmets, carried shields, and fought with spear and sword” (72-73). Although the odds didn’t show a clear favor early in the battle, the tide of the fighting turned in favor of the Normans when Harold’s army “seem to have been enticed down the slope in pursuit of real or feigned retreats, and then cut off and overwhelmed” (Morgan 103). Harold’s army was broken up and after a hard fought battle, William emerged victorious when at the end of the day, “Harold was killed, shot through the eye by an arrow as tradition supposes, then hacked to death by Norman knights, one of whom cut off his leg” (Hibbert 39). Harold's death is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, below. The spot where Harold fell is now marked by the high altar of Battle Abbey.


There are different perspectives to take in this story. One viewpoint is that of the conqueror and his knights; to them, the battle was merely a conquest in pursuit of a rich country under the guise of bruised honor and the perceived denial of rights to the crown. In this case, the name William the Conqueror seems fitting. But a second perspective, in which William is merely and sarcastically called “the Bastard,” involves that of the English people, who would now be subjected to uncaring, Norman overlords. Whichever perspective you take in the story, whether in support of the conquered or the conqueror, the fact remains that “the Battle of Hastings represented the victory of new tactics over old, of a mobile cavalry, supported by archers, over a massed infantry wielding ax and spear” (Roberts 73). And in the end, that is the only difference that matters.

From this turning point battle came the vast influence of French on the English language and the Norman feudal system. The unassuming farmland of this former battlefield made an impression on me not only for the gorgeous scene it presented, and but also for my knowing that one of the most important battles in the story of Britain took place there.

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Works Cited

Hibbert, Christopher. The Story of England. London: Phaidon, 1992.

Morgan, Kenneth O. The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984.

Roberts, Clayton, and David Roberts. A History Of England: Prehistory to 1714. Upper
Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1998.