Finally the foot soldiers breaking into a run behind. And then there was just the murderous smashing and crashing of horses, the slicing and thrusting of weapons, screams, cries of the wounded and dying. ibid.
William was crowned at Westminster, Christmas Day 1066. ibid.
Hot on the heels of massacre and starvation came plague. ibid.
And then there appeared a young King – brave and charismatic who stopped the anarchy. His name was Henry and he would become the greatest of all our medieval Kings ... The King who ordered the murder in the Cathedral. Or as the father of the much more famous impossibly bad King John, and the impossibly glamorous Richard the Lionheart. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s1e3: Dynasty
Henry II, his wife Eleanor and their children Richard and John were the most astonishing of all the family firms to run the enterprise of Britain. ibid.
In 1128 Matilda married Geoffrey of Anjou nicknamed Plantagenet ... His family emblem was three lions. ibid.
Henry had established permanent professional courts sitting at Westminster or touring the counties. ibid.
It was not, ‘Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ But a much more alarming outcry: ‘What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household who let their Lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?’ ibid.
In 1189 Richard declared war on his father. This time Henry faced defeat. ibid.
England’s own home-grown Caesar – Edward I. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s1e4: Nations
Edward could be called the first really English King. ibid.
Early in his reign Edward, perhaps acting from religious conviction, outlawed money-lending, and so put most of England’s Jews out of business. He then forced them to wear yellow felt badges of identification ... A year after his invasion Edward arrested all the heads of the Jewish households, and hanged nearly three hundred in the Tower. ibid.
It was Scotland that was destined to be on the end of Edward’s power games. ibid.
Just as he had ripped the heart out of the Welsh sense of independence by carrying off their sacred relics, Edward now took the Stone of Scone, the symbol of the independent Scottish Crown, to Westminster. ibid
Having won a victory on the battlefield if not the war itself, the Scots now sought international recognition of their newly won liberty. The occasion was a letter sent to the pope. ibid.
For a century and a half there had been an entrenched English colony in east and north Ireland, often safe only in castles ... A bitter civil war broke out between native Irish supporters of both sides. ibid.
In the summer of 1348 the English could be forgiven for thinking themselves unconquerable. They had vanquished the old enemies – the Scots and the French. Their King – Edward III – seemed the most powerful ruler in Europe. But they would be conquered … [by] King Death. His weapon was plague ... Almost half the country would be dead. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s1e5: King Death
Despite his famous victory at Agincourt Henry V remains a might-have-been – dead at the age of thirty five from dysentery. ibid.
The competing wings for the Plantagenet family: for thirty years the Houses of York and Lancaster slogged it out in a roll-call of battles we know as the Wars of the Roses. ibid.
A world of monks, masses, of colour and plainsong, a world of brilliant images: the world of Catholic England ... Then, in a generation, this stopped being a truism and started being treason. ibid.
What a strange world this Catholic England was. ibid.
William Tyndale, an ordained priest, was the first to take on the dangerous task of translating, publishing and printing an English version of the New Testament. ibid.
What followed was an English version of the Inquisition. ibid.
Henry – the man who without ever really meaning to would turn Catholic England into a Protestant nation ... In 1509 King Henry VII died and his seventeen-year-old son came into his own. The young king was a spectacular sight. You could practically smell the testosterone. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s1e6: Burning Convictions
Her name was Anne Boleyn ... Anne Boleyn entered the glittering dangerous world of the Tudor Court. Physically, she was no raving beauty. ibid.
For the first time in English law it was a crime just to say things. ibid.
Cromwell stepped up his assault on the old religion ... crushing the cult of saints and shrines. ibid.
This would be the real Reformation: just look what happened in the six years of Edward's reign. All the customs and ceremonies of the old church ... were banned. Away went the religious guilds and ceremonies. ibid.
And so England’s first female ruler since Queen Matilda ascended the throne with just two aims in mind: to return England to its obedience to Rome and to produce a Catholic male heir to keep it that way. ibid.
But if Elizabeth put out the fires of religious fanaticism, she lit them in the breasts of patriotic Englishmen and women ... The reinstatement of a truly English way ... It was above all a Protestant Englishness ... Now Protestantism and Patriotism were one and the same. ibid.
What was once a national church became a faith on the run. ibid.
It doesn’t do to be too starry eyed about the Virgin Queen. Elizabeth I was only too obviously made of flesh and blood. She was vain, spiteful, arrogant, she was frequently unjust, and she was often maddeningly indecisive. But she was also brave, shockingly clever, an eyeful to look at, and on occasions she was genuinely wise. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s1e7: The Body of the Queen
She simply adored being adored. ibid.
Dudley was everything Cecil was not: flashy, gallant, a noisy extrovert and not least incredibly good looking, especially on a horse. ibid.
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots: throughout the whole tortured history of their relationship Elizabeth was eaten up by curiosity about her cousin Mary ... Mary was next in line to the English throne. ibid.
The cult, the religion of Elizabeth, was spectacularly created. ibid.
In Rome the Pope declared that Elizabeth was to be considered a heretic. Whoever sends her out of the world, the Pope decreed, does not only sin but gains merit in the eyes of God. ibid.
A mother dressed in a breast-plate of steel. Everything Elizabeth had ever learned came together at Tilbury ... ‘My loving people, I come among you not for my recreation and disport but being resolved in the midst of the heat of the battle to live and die amongst you all. To lay down for God and my Kingdom and for my people my honour and blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King. And a King of England too. And think foul scorn that Spain or any prince of Europe should dare invade the borders of my realm. To which rather dishonour I myself will take up arms.’ ibid.
Elizabeth and Mary Stuart never met. ibid.
Here at Edgehill, Eden had become Golgotha. Over the next long years the nations that both James and Charles yearned to bring together would tear each other apart in murderous civil wars. Hundreds of thousands of lives would be lost in battles, sieges, epidemics, famine. Simon Sharma, A History of Britain s2e1: The British Wars
What’s truly amazing and very touching about the spring and summer of 1642 is the abundance of evidence we have about the agonies of allegiance. ibid.
The war was over and Parliament had won. So finally God had spoken. Surely even Charles could see that. ibid.
On January 30th 1649 the English killed their king. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s2e2: Revolutions
The poet John Milton, an ardent champion of the parliamentary commonwealth, was hired to attack the cult of the king-martyr as so much wicked idolatry. ibid.
Off to the Tower went the Leveller leaders like so many traitors ... A petitioning campaign to demand the release of the Levellers was mobilised in London by Leveller women. ibid.
Say hello to the Antichrist across the Irish Sea. The target of Cromwell’s march through blood was an army of royalists holding out in Ireland in the name of King Charles ... This was Cromwell’s war crime. An atrocity so hideous it contaminated Anglo-Irish history ever since. ibid.
For the Scots had invited the 20-year-old Charles II to come and be their King, and went to war on his behalf. ibid.
What kind of a republic was it supposed to be? ibid.
To Cromwell the Rump was a monstrosity. A bastion of selfishness and greed. More like Sodom than Jerusalem. ibid.
He chose to become Lord Protector – that had a good ring: authority but not tyranny. ibid.
What it turned out Cromwell wanted for everyone was a quiet life. But Catholics were excluded from this vision. ibid.
The irony about the restoration of Charles II was that he came to the throne not because England needed a successor to Charles I, he came to the Throne because England needed a successor for Oliver Cromwell. ibid.
Prince William, they asked, would you mind invading Britain and saving us from a Catholic King? ibid.
In February 1689 William of Orange and Mary Stewart were proclaimed King and Queen of England. But during the ceremony something profoundly novel happened. A declaration of rights was read out listing the condition under which the new monarchs were allowed to sit on the Throne. ibid.