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Who is the most overrated person in history? 9 experts reveal their choices
In the first of a new monthly series, we asked an expert team of historians to tackle one of the big questions about the past
Homer Composite figment of imaginations The writer credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey, and often regarded as one of the most important authors of all time, is to my mind the most overrated historical figure. That’s mostly because it’s likely that there was no one person called Homer. Careful study of those works, as well as other surviving epic fragments, has shown that they weren’t written at a single time by one person. Instead, it is likely that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed over generations by poetry performers known as rhapsodes. Each of these improved on the work of their predecessors, curating these epics and honing them to a point of perfection. From that time, probably around 700 BC, these works started to be transmitted in a more stable format. By around 550–500 BC, they were written down for the first time. By then, the belief was circulating that their genesis lay with one particular poet, Homer – not least because the idea of a single, genius author is simpler and more attractive than a slow process of evolution involving hundreds. A whole narrative was woven about the likely fictitious Homer: that he lived on Chios, that he was blind, even that he may have had some divine parentage. In fact, the notional Homer became so popular that later rhapsodes, doing performances of these now ‘finished’, stable poems, liked to claim themselves as ‘sons of Homer’ to give themselves more gravitas and fame. Ancient historians even wrote biographies of Homer as a historical figure, and busts were created of him. Yet, as a single man, he probably never existed at all. Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick Charles Dickens Verbose Victorian who distorted views of his era At the risk of being tarred and feathered next time I show my face at a Victorian history conference, I’d have to say that Dickens is overrated. It’s not that I dislike his work. Critics usually object to his long-winded prose, or baulk at the mawkish sentimentality of characters such as Little Nell, but I enjoy his writing. The callous way he treated his wife is harder to forgive – but his claim to greatness never rested on his qualities as a husband. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-171097572webready-65ad489-e1770634197183.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A black and white photograph of a middle aged man with a beard, wearing a three piece suit, and sitting at a desk. He is facing the camera, with one arm resting on the back of his chair and the other on the desk" title="“Many people see the 19th century purely through a Dickensian lens: as a world of cruel workhouses, smoke-filled factories and desperate poverty,” says Bob Nicholson (Image by Getty Images)" /> No, my objection to Dickens is one that he – always a relentless self-publicist – might actually enjoy. He is simply too famous. Dickens is often feted as the greatest English writer since Shakespeare. Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol have been inflicted on generations of schoolchildren and adapted into endless period dramas (the best of which feature Muppets). As a result, many people see the 19th century purely through a Dickensian lens: as a world of cruel workhouses, smoke-filled factories and desperate poverty. I’ve spent my career as a historian trying to reveal the lighter sides of Victorian life – to prove that things weren’t as miserable as some of Dickens’ more pointed critiques suggest. Dickens was just one of many great writers who made their names in the Victorian era. I’m not suggesting that we consign him to the dustbin of history – but perhaps the time has come to stop him from hogging all of the limelight. Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University Mary, Queen of Scots Unwise architect of her own downfall Some historical figures, such as Richard III and Anne Boleyn, attract a cult following. Mary is another. She’s typically presented as a tragic heroine: a woman of courage who battled against adversity throughout her life, only to have it savagely cut short by her cold-hearted cousin, Elizabeth I. Yet the truth is far removed from this beguiling image. Yes, Mary was dogged by tragedy in her life, but much of it could have been avoided if she had shown greater wisdom and restraint. Instead, she made a series of catastrophic decisions that eventually lost her the crown – and her life. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/gr0174359Hwebready-fecd19a-e1770634443642.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing a woman in a black dress with a white ruff and gold chains, holding a small child dressed in red and gold. Both are staring at the viewer" title="A 16th-century painting of Mary with her infant son, later King James VI & I. “She made a series of catastrophic decisions that eventually lost her the crown – and her life,” says Tracy Borman (Image by Topfoto)" /> After a pampered upbringing in France, Mary returned to her native Scotland in 1561, aged 18. She then married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, one of the most unsuitable consorts in history, before eloping with the chief suspect in his murder, James Hepburn, Lord Bothwell. Read more | Mary, Queen of Scots: your guide to her life and times Having lost all credibility, and been forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son, James, Mary fled to England, naively expecting that Elizabeth would help her regain her throne. She spent almost 19 years a prisoner there, during which time she was involved in numerous plots against the English queen, finally leaving a paper trail exposing her parts in conspiracies. Mary’s execution in 1587 propelled her to the status of Catholic martyr and tragic heroine. In truth, she was not the hapless victim of circumstance but the architect of her own downfall. Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster Petrarch Painted a dim picture of the Middle Ages The writing of early Italian Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch (1304–74) is certainly not overrated. He was responsible for an exquisite body of lyric poetry, an extraordinary scholar who rediscovered the letters of Cicero, and one of the greatest contributors to the Italian language. Reading or listening to his poetry truly feeds the soul. As a medieval historian, though, I am bound to take issue with Petrarch’s comments on the nature of history – because these truly are overrated. His remarks have long misled and deceived, producing a vision of world history that has become embedded in the European and American historiographical imagination. It was Petrarch who came up with the idea of the ‘Dark Ages’. He described the Middle Ages as a period of intellectual obscurity in which the glories of the great Roman empire had been forgotten, inhabited by benighted and stupid people. “This sleep of forgetfulness will not last forever,” he opined. “When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance.” This condemnation of 800 years of history was taken up by 16th-century Protestants and then 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers. It’s still common today, with the Middle Ages often dismissed as poorly documented, boring and dogmatic. It’s just not true! These were centuries of extraordinary intellectual discovery, of philosophical thinking about the nature of the self and society, of artistic vibrancy and sophisticated political theory. The Middle Ages matter: we study them to challenge our assumptions and better understand our common humanity. Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford Cicero Rome’s most shameless self-promoter The first-century BC Roman statesman and writer is often hailed as the voice of Republican virtue and a defender of democracy, justice and reason in a corrupt age. But this reputation owes more to his own words than to his actual achievements. In truth, Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of history’s most successful self-publicists. Cicero was elected consul in 63 BC. It was a remarkable achievement for a novus homo (‘new man’ without aristocratic ancestry) – and he never stopped reminding people of it. That same year, he crushed a conspiracy to overthrow the Republic, and had several citizens executed without trial – an act he later declared showed moral courage. In reality, it was a serious abuse of power, and deeply divisive. Despite his modest background, Cicero consistently sided with Rome’s conservative elite, opposing reforms that might have redistributed wealth or power to the poor. He praised virtue, yet defended the clearly guilty Milo on a murder charge. He was undeniably a gifted speaker and writer, but as a statesman he was relatively irrelevant. He had no army, no loyal faction and little influence over the major figures of his time, such as Caesar, Pompey and Octavian (later Augustus). More than 800 of his letters and 58 speeches survive, far more than those left by any contemporary, giving his version of events an over-amplified voice. Through them he cast himself as the Republic’s moral guardian – but without them he’d be remembered as what he truly was: a gifted lawyer with more bluster than power. Jess Venner, ancient historian, presenter and author Winston Churchill A flawed leader who could never live up to his idealised image Churchill is one of Britain’s greatest heroes. He’s the subject of countless movies and television shows. His statue stands in Parliament Square. In a nationwide poll in 2002, he was voted the greatest figure in British history. Ever. Though I have great respect for Churchill as a symbol of British courage and determination during the Second World War, the man himself cannot possibly live up to this image. In many ways, he was a terrible politician. Even by the standards of the time, his views were objectionable. He actively opposed equal rights for women, and he frequently made racist comments – particularly about Indians, calling them a “beastly people with a beastly religion”. During most of the 1930s he was shunned by the political establishment, including many in his own party. He was often drunk on the job. There is no question that Britain needed a leader with Churchill’s energy to see it through the war. Yet his own Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke, claimed that Churchill often made it impossible for the armed forces to do their work. He came up with ridiculous plans, then acted “like a spoilt child” when military experts pointed out that they were impossible. Read more | Winston Churchill: is he still the greatest Briton in history? Churchill was certainly a heroic figure. He was one of the very first to oppose Hitler, and his inspiring speeches galvanised the country in its hour of need. But can he live up to our idealised image of him? Of course not. How could anyone? Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017) Erik Bloodaxe Spectacular nickname, underwhelming legacy I love a Viking-Age hero with a dramatic nickname as much as the next person, but let’s not kid ourselves: they were masters of their own propaganda. Look for the men behind the myths (and we are mostly talking men here) and the historical reality can be a little… underwhelming. Take Erik Bloodaxe, twice ruler of Northumbria in the mid-10th century. Most of what we think we know about his colourful life comes from the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, recorded long after his lifetime. In these, he’s portrayed as a larger-than-life character: favourite son of King Harald Fairhair, slayer of his own brothers, locked in a bitter feud with Icelandic poet Egill Skallagrimsson. His wife, Gunnhild, is depicted as a shapeshifting, murderous sorceress said to have commissioned another source for Erik’s life – or, rather, afterlife – the poem Eiríksmál (‘The Lay of Erik’), in which the god Odin orders his warriors and Valkyries to prepare Valhalla for the arrival of this great hero. But beyond the vivid details of his legend, what do we know about the historical figure? Coins and chronicles tell us that he was a key political player in 10th-century Northumbria. But his brief reigns (947–48 and 952–54) were turbulent, to say the least, challenged by Anglo-Saxon Wessex to the south and Viking Dublin to the west. In 954, he came to a sticky end, driven from York and ambushed in the wilds of Cumbria. His death brought an end to Viking rule in the north of England. So, not a brilliant legacy. But still a great nickname. Eleanor Barraclough, historian, broadcaster and author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024) Ronald Reagan Seemingly a candidate for sainthood – but with questionable principles Making heroes out of historical figures requires some selective forgetting. In the US, where the cult of Ronald Reagan has many adherents, forgetting is almost an art form. Popular writing treats Reagan as a principled example of free-market rectitude who ended the Cold War and heralded morning in America. Critics of the contemporary Republican Party often invoke Reagan to signal how far his heirs have gone astray. The GOP is “no longer the party of Reagan”, critics lament in publications such as The Washington Post, Time or USA Today. Rhetorically, harking back to Reagan makes a claim of legitimacy and ideological fidelity. To invoke Reagan is to touch the hem of the saints. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-515176604webready-fb0e4e7-e1770638568611.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a man in a grey suit and red tie, standing alongside a woman in a black and white checked dress. They are holding a series of papers between them, looking at a speech" title="Ronald and Nancy Reagan prepare a 1986 speech. Modern rhetoric “gives Reagan too much credit for accomplishments that were not his”, says Adriane Lentz-Smith (Image by Getty Images)" /> This gives Reagan too much credit for accomplishments that were not his, and overlooks wrongdoing that was. Did Reagan end the Cold War? Many would argue that dynamics within the USSR – Mikhail Gorbachev’s embrace of democratic socialism, for example – sparked the transformation of the Soviet Union more than any external force did. Was Reagan’s administration principled? Anyone recalling the manipulative illegality of the Iran–Contra Affair might marvel at the question. Read more | Did Ronald Reagan 'Make America Great Again'? Did Reagan mean “morning in America” to apply to all Americans? As candidate, he gave a speech celebrating “states’ rights” in Neshoba County, Mississippi near where three voting rights activists had been murdered in 1964. For years, he publicly ignored the decade-defining public health crisis that was the HIV epidemic. He scaled back on social programmes while intensifying the war on drugs. He busted unions while preaching ‘trickle-down’ economics. Without selective forgetting, the Reagan era feels less like the antithesis of our present and more like its progenitor. Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University Simon de Montfort A history of violence Some 760 years after his death, Simon de Montfort still enjoys a fairly sturdy reputation as a social reformer – the man who summoned what’s claimed to have been the first English parliament. A portrait of him is carved above the doors of the US House of Representatives, among a pantheon of democratic worthies. An English university was named after him as recently as 1992. But this reputation rests almost entirely on modern myth. Kings of England had been summoning consultative assemblies for hundreds of years before Montfort did so in 1265, and were calling them parliaments as early as 1236. Montfort’s contribution was long reckoned to have been the introduction of representation by including knights and townsmen, but both these groups had already been attending parliaments for several decades. Montfort was undoubtedly a skilled politician – clever, persuasive and quick-witted – but his preferred method of getting things done was usually violence. He had put himself into power in 1263 by leading attacks on the supporters of his brother-in-law, Henry III, and he reduced Henry to a puppet the following year by defeating him in battle. Montfort was also a pioneering antisemite. As soon as he became Earl of Leicester in 1231, he expelled all of the Jews from that town – the first such expulsion in England – and in the 1260s he led violent massacres of other Jewish communities. A capable warrior and a charismatic leader, Montfort was expert at exploiting the grievances of others for his own ends. A founder of parliamentary democracy he was not. Marc Morris, medieval historian, writer and broadcaster This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
Conquest? What conquest? The other dramatic events that really mattered in 1066
1066 is synonymous with the battle of Hastings. Yet while Duke William was launching his conquest of England, the rest of Europe had its own crises to contend with. Charles West takes us on a tour of the continent during a dramatic year
It was the summer of 1066 and two powerful leaders were rallying their supporters behind them and preparing for war. Their clash would result in political chaos, the spilling of much blood, and one of those leader’s violent deaths. Yet the people of England barely noticed. That’s because the clash took place hundreds of miles to the south-east on the Italian peninsula, and it involved two figures – a renegade cleric named Arialdo and Guido da Velate, the archbishop of Milan – who have rarely troubled British history books. These two men had been butting heads since the 1050s and, by 1066, their intense rivalry had pitched the city-state of Milan into chaos. The trouble started when Arialdo and his supporters began accusing Milan’s formidable clerical elite of corruption, chiefly because the city’s priests were married – a longstanding local practice that many non-Milanese found deeply shocking. Things quickly turned violent: armed skirmishes erupted on the streets. The showdown was soon heading for a bloody denouement. We might suppose that the pope in Rome would take a dim view of an open rebellion against the clerical hierarchy in a major Italian city. But from the middle of the 11th century, the papacy was occupied by men who agreed that the Catholic church was in desperate need of an overhaul, and so they sided with Arialdo. In March 1066, Pope Alexander II went so far as to excommunicate Archbishop da Velate because of the charges Arialdo laid against him. It was a radical move. And it backfired spectacularly. The canny archbishop was able to spin his excommunication to his benefit by positioning himself as the champion of Milanese traditions against toxic ‘external’ interference. An enraged local populace turned on Arialdo and chased him out of the city. In June 1066, while he was making his way to Rome, emissaries of da Velate hunted down Arialdo and murdered him. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-931173370webready-9665804-e1769423234953.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting shows four men sitting at a table covered with glasses of wine. Three of them are dressed in red cloaks with gold trimming, and wide red hats. The other man is dressed all in gold and wears a tall, layered gold and white crowned hat" title="In 1066 Pope Alexander II (second from left) excommunicated the Archbishop of Milan, who was accused of corruption (Image by Getty Images)" /> Mob power 1066 is surely the most famous date in all of English history, synonymous with one event: Harold II and William of Normandy’s bitter struggle for the throne of England. We think of charging Norman knights and Anglo-Saxon foot soldiers, of the battle of Hastings and a famous arrow in the eye – all recorded in exquisite detail by the Bayeux Tapestry. Yet as Arialdo’s fate on the road to Rome proves, the Norman conquest was far from the only significant event to occur in Europe in 1066. In fact, while Norman and Anglo-Saxon forces slugged it out at Hastings, people from Spain to Scandinavia, Kyiv to Constantinople were embroiled in events every bit as momentous as those unfolding in England. By exploring those events in the round, we can build a better picture of the currents convulsing the lives of the people of Europe in the late 11th century. Read more | 1066: who was the rightful king? Take Arialdo’s uprising in Milan as an example. This wasn’t just an urban revolt, but also a sign of how western Europe was being shaped by its growing economy in the late 11th century. After the fall of the Roman empire, many western European towns had shrunk to a shadow of their former selves. But from the ninth century, or perhaps earlier, they had been steadily growing again. In 1066, Milan’s population had grown large enough for urban mobs to prove seriously troublesome for governing elites – as Archbishop da Velate discovered. This posed a problem that had not been encountered in the Christian west for centuries. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-146324414webready-77668b0-e1769423035894.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A knight is purified in a medieval relief from a holy-water font in northern Italy. By the late 11th century, urban mobs were increasingly challenging clerical elites in cities such as Milan (Image by Getty Images)" title="A knight is purified in a medieval relief from a holy-water font in northern Italy. By the late 11th century, urban mobs were increasingly challenging clerical elites in cities such as Milan (Image by Getty Images)" /> Life on the frontline Milan wasn’t the only conurbation to be rocked by significant violence in 1066. The city of Barbastro is located in what’s now north-eastern Spain, but in the 1060s it was on the frontier between Muslim Iberia – also known as Al-Andalus – and the Christian kingdoms of the north. That placed it right on the frontline of one of the most contested swathes of territory in 11th-century Europe. Barbastro had been in Muslim hands since the Arab conquest of Iberia in the eighth century. All that was to change dramatically in 1064. For, two years before the Norman conquest of England, a Christian force besieged and conquered the city. The composition of this army was varied – and even included some Normans – but it was probably led by Sancho Ramírez, ruler of the kingdom of Aragon. Pope Alexander II – the same pontiff who would go on to excommunicate the archbishop of Milan – was involved, actively encouraging the siege. In a letter referring to the troops participating in the attack on Barbastro, he wrote that, “by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, we both lift their penance and make a remission of their sins”. Exactly what he meant by this terse statement has been widely debated. But on the face of it, it sounds a lot like the terms given by Pope Urban II to participants of the First Crusade three decades later in 1095. Yet, for all Alexander’s words of encouragement, the Christian triumph in Barbastro was short-lived. Thanks to the efforts of Ahmad al-Muqtadir, the emir of Zaragoza, by 1066 Barbastro was back in Muslim hands – and would remain so for nearly four decades. While kingdoms in the north of Spain, such as Castile and Aragon, did make major territorial gains late in the 11th century, the fate of Barbastro proves that there was nothing inevitable about the Christian reconquest of Iberia. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL555342webready-65c8ded-e1769423374470.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colourful manuscript illustration shows large groups of soldiers mounted on horses fighting one another" title="The Christian reconquest of Spain, depicted in a 13th-century manuscript. Events in Barbastro in the mid-11th century suggest this was a messy, contested affair (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Pagans v Christians Most of Europe in 1066 lay under Muslim or Christian control. But this was not the case everywhere. In the far north, the Sámi peoples, who lived chiefly from their reindeer herds, steadfastly resisted efforts to convert them to Christianity. So, too, did Slavic-speaking peoples around the Baltic coastline, including a group in present-day north-eastern Germany known as the Wends, who fended off various invasions from Saxony in the east. In the summer of 1066, this resistance crystallised into an uprising against a man called Gottschalk, one of the Wends’ own rulers. Gottschalk had converted to Christianity and wanted the pagan populace to follow suit, but they took a different view. The uprising claimed the lives of not only Gottschalk but also, in November that year, John Scotus, a missionary from Scotland or Ireland, who had become bishop of Mecklenburg in modern-day Germany. Read more | The crusade against the odds: how the First Crusade succeeded despite the obstacles If a contemporary chronicler named Adam of Bremen is to be believed, John’s murder was particularly grisly. “And because [John] confessed Christ, he was beaten with cudgels and then was led in mockery through one city of the Slavs after another,” Adam tells us. “Since he could not be turned from the profession of Christ, his hands and feet were lopped off and his body was thrown upon the road. Cutting off his head, the barbarians fixed it on a spear and offered it to their god Radegast in token of their victory.” Debate has gone back and forth as to how literally we should take Adam’s account, since Christian monks’ descriptions of pagan practice were always heavily layered with their presumptions. What can’t be disputed, however, is that this part of Europe remained pagan for nearly another century. The allure of monotheism was not irresistible. Families at war To the east of the pagan people of the Baltic coastline lay Kyivan Rus. This was medieval Europe’s largest territory – stretching from the Gulf of Finland down to modern-day Ukraine – and, from 978 until his death in 1015, it was dominated by Volodymyr the Great. He was a formidable ruler who had converted to Orthodox Christianity in 988 as part of an alliance with the Byzantine empire, fought wars of conquest, and sired many children. That was all well and good, but four decades later, Volodymyr’s propensity for producing offspring was causing problems. In the 1060s, Rus was ruled over by one of Volodymyr’s grandsons, Iziaslav I, and his wife, Gertrude of Poland. Iziaslav had reigned as Grand Prince of Kyiv since 1054 but, by the middle of the following decade, his position was increasingly being challenged by rival relatives. By 1068, such was the intensity of the dynastic struggles, that Iziaslav and Gertrude were forced to flee into exile in Poland. There they sought help from Gertrude’s family. Her nephew agreed to help and, with a contingent of Polish warriors behind him, Iziaslav returned to power in Kyiv in 1069. We have some insight into Gertrude’s state of mind at this perilous moment in her life, thanks to the survival of a remarkable manuscript, now in the town of Cividale in northern Italy. It’s a psalter – a book of psalms – and was originally made in the 10th century. Yet it somehow ended up in Gertrude’s hands. While the book was by this point perhaps a century old, Gertrude made adjustments to it, including copying personal prayers into its margins and blank spaces. These heartfelt additions give a sense of her anxieties as she resided in a foreign, turbulent country: “O holy Helena, most Christian of queens… I beg you humbly … that you may deign to turn the hearts of your servants to peace and love and affection towards me, as our Lord Jesus Christ opened the heart of your emperor [Constantine] to remember you, and filled it with love.” Even though this piece of evidence is unique to Gertrude, she was hardly the first elite woman in 11th-century Europe to find herself in a country with which she was no longer familiar. At that point, kings tended to prefer marrying women from abroad, just as William the Conqueror chose the daughter of the Count of Flanders as his wife. The result was a criss-crossing of dynasties taking place over several generations. A proud teacher If the examples on these pages teach us anything, it’s that 1066 witnessed no shortage of wars and rebellions. Yet there’s much more to the late 11th century than violence and unrest. To illustrate this point, let us turn to a letter from a scholar named Goswin, schoolmaster in the cathedral in Mainz, to a former student called Walcher. In the letter, Goswin thanked his former pupil for sending him a book, which Walcher had personally copied after reading. Strikingly for the modern reader, Goswin suggested that the excellent quality of the scribal work justified the corporal punishment he had inflicted upon Walcher when he taught him as a child. For most of the letter, though, Goswin reminisces about his younger days studying and teaching in Liège. He compared the educational environment of the city favourably to Plato’s academy, while festooning the letter with learned quotations from Horace, Cicero and other classical writers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL4619329webready-f17b02e-e1769423807871.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing a man dressed in a long red shift, holding a book and reading it to a small group of men sitting around him" title="Peter Abelard was an important French theologian and philosopher, shown here teaching at the school he established on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> But Goswin didn’t only reminisce on past times. He also commented on new trends – unfavourably. These days, he claimed, avarice had taken over everywhere, and he and his fellow scholars were not suitably remunerated for their efforts. The biggest target of his ire, though, was the new generation of students: “Fleeing instruction in the gravity of moral discipline, they are blown about like light chaff in every wind of doctrine… They do homage to vain and pestiferous novelties of phrasings and questions… Also if they gather some scrap of arcane or verbose knowledge, they wander like vagabonds through the fields of learning, discoursing to no one’s satisfaction.” This might read very much like the complaint of an ageing academic about the frivolities of the young, but it’s been argued that Goswin was actually putting his finger on a genuine development in educational practice. In the mid-11th century, intellectual energy was beginning to drain away from the old and rather conservative cathedral schools such as Mainz or Liège, heirs to the Carolingian Renaissance, and into the more disputatious classes held by a new generation of charismatic teachers. This new wave of educators was epitomised by men such as Peter Abelard of Paris, a firebrand whom, we can safely surmise, Goswin would have disliked immensely. Read more | Not 1066 again! Should we ditch our obsession with dates? Heavyweight battles For all Goswin’s musings on intellectual decay in the continent’s greatest seats of learning, we have to conclude our tour of 1066 Europe by returning to a more visceral theme: conflict. This particular outbreak of bloodletting was on a such a scale that it put even the Norman conquest in the shade. At the heart of the conflict was one of the world’s great polities: the Byzantine empire. This had dominated much of the Mediterranean world since the fourth century AD when it had emerged as a continuation of the Roman empire (which is why it is often referred to as the Eastern Roman empire). In 1066, with the mighty city of Constantinople as its capital, it stretched from the Adriatic in the west to Antioch on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. However, by the middle of the 1060s, the empire was coming under pressure from multiple external forces. Turkic-speaking nomads were launching raids across the river Danube in the Balkans, with a particularly large incursion taking place in 1065. Meanwhile, in the eastern provinces, Byzantine forces had to contend with the Seljuk Turks, a powerful nomadic consortium who had converted to Islam, conquered Baghdad, and were now regularly unleashing raids in Anatolia. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL4778974webready-1ede7f5-e1769423696271.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of two ships with groups of men on them, facing each other on the sea. Below the boats, a naked man is swimming in the water" title="A soldier swims to attack an enemy ship in a Byzantine treatise from the conflict-ridden 11th century (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Byzantine historians who recorded these events tended to see them as premonitions of the disaster that would befall the empire a few years later. At the battle of Manzikert in 1071, Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes was defeated and taken prisoner by a Turk force led by Alp Arslan, sultan of the Seljuk empire. Romanos was treated honourably by his captors and soon released, but his humiliation unleashed a civil war. On his return to Constantinople, Romanos was brutally blinded by internal enemies and died from his injuries. For Byzantine historians of the time such as John Skylitzes, the seeds of this defeat were visible years before, because emperors failed to pay enough attention to the military threats menacing their borders. Skylitzes reserved some of his most stinging criticisms for Romanos’s predecessor, Constantine X, observing that: “Far more than anything else, the emperor yearned and desired to increase state revenues and to hear private law cases… while having less to do with other imperial duties, by which I mean maintaining military superiority and the fighting prowess of our soldiers.” We should beware the hindsight on display here, though. As King Harold and Duke William both discovered at Hastings, battles were unpredictable affairs, and the outcome of Manzikert was never a foregone conclusion. If, in 1066, Constantine X had devoted himself chiefly to the running of his empire, that was because it was, quite reasonably, the top priority. Although there were military problems, he could draw on enormous financial and ideological resources to overcome them. Indeed, these resources allowed Byzantium to effect a recovery and it remained a mighty state into the later 11th century, as the crusaders discovered when they surged east from 1095. Meanwhile, back in England, the country was reeling from the battle of 1066, and some contemporaries elsewhere in Europe acknowledged its drama. In Bavaria, the chronicler Frutolf of Michelsberg devoted his entire entry for the year 1066 to it. “England was pitifully attacked and eventually conquered by the Norman William, who was made king. Soon afterwards he sent virtually all the bishops of that kingdom into exile and the nobles to their deaths. Those of the middle rank he forced into the service of his knights, and all the wives of the indigenous people into marriage with the newcomers.” There’s no doubt that the Norman Conquest was an extraordinary event for the English and Normans alike. Yet, taking a wide view, it was just one of the ways in which the tectonic plates of European politics and society were dramatically shifting in the 11th century. Charles West is a professor of medieval history at the University of Edinburgh and author of Europe in the Eleventh Century: Beyond Revolution and Reform (Oxford University Press, 2025) This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
The first king of the English can teach us valuable lessons about how to navigate a world revolutionised by AI, says Professor David Woodman
Are we losing the need to learn? That’s one of the things that people are worrying about with the advent of AI. Feels like a fair concern to me. Rather than learning something yourself, you can ask AI to tell you the answer, translate something for you, tell you how to fix something, even transcribe a medieval manuscript, if that’s your bag. It’s all a bit too easy, isn’t it, and humans, like water, tend to seek out the easiest route, the path of least resistance. So that’s potentially a pretty big problem. If we don’t need to learn, will we bother to learn, and if we don’t bother to learn, are our minds going to atrophy? Academics talk about ‘digital dementia’, and researchers are looking at whether AI is going to cause a general downturn in our cognitive abilities. Unless something changes, and with AI’s rapid development, chances are that we won’t actually need to learn in the future, or at least not in the same way that we do today. So maybe we need to learn to love learning, if we’re going to avoid falling victim to brain rot. And that, perhaps surprisingly, is where Æthelstan, first king of England, comes into the mix. Creator of the kingdom Æthelstan, to remind you, was the grandson of King Alfred the Great, son of King Edward the Elder. Crowned in 925 in Kingston-upon-Thames (an event marked to this day by a tooth-shaped stone ringed by Victorian railings on the side of the road), Æthelstan went on to create the kingdom of England as we recognise it today. Famously he won a substantial victory over an alliance of his adversaries at the battle of Brunanburh in the year 937. Read more | King Æthelstan: England's colossus Professor David Woodman, from Cambridge University, is Æthelstan’s most recent biographer, and he is a keen observer of the apparently contradictory sides of the character of the man: “One of the great paradoxes of early medieval history is that Æthelstan absolutely was a great military figure. He was somebody who secured his position by military victories. He had to put down various coalitions that rose against him. But simultaneously he was somebody who had a very keen sense of the importance of learning and sponsoring reading.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/2WE1KADbattle-218bf1c.jpg" width="1648" height="1214" alt="A black and white painting showing a large battle scene, with hundreds of soldiers fighting on foot and horseback. In the background, there are cliffs and three ships on the sea" title="A 20th-century depiction of the great battle of Brunanburh in 937, which was a turning point in the creation of English national identity (Image by Alamy)" /> Æthelstan encouraged scholars to come to his court, and he also facilitated the exchange of texts and learning between these visitors. He probably took inspiration from his grandfather in this, because Alfred sponsored a rejuvenation of learning, in the 880s when he was less occupied by Viking raids. Following Alfred’s lead, Æthelstan ran with this love of learning. He drove for even mundane documents to be dressed up in learned language, as an ostentatious demonstration of the scholarly nature of his court. The diplomas that were issued in his name were works of literary scholarship, which demanded the attention of the reader. “In order to understand the brilliance of these diplomas, you have to do a very close reading of them today, where you uncover the literary allusions. We have allusions to seventh-century works by Aldhelm of Malmesbury, for example, embedded in these works,” says David. “Now, you can imagine that for your average nobleman sitting at a meeting of the royal assembly of Æthelstan, these allusions probably would have been lost on that person. They wouldn’t have been able to understand them. And in fact, maybe they thought, oh no, not another long turgid Latin diploma of the royal scribe being trotted out. And in a way that’s the point. I think they were designed to impress. They were designed to show the advances that were taking place.” So, according to David, we need to see Æthelstan as a real lover of learning, and an advocate of a learned culture among his courtiers. That’s a powerful statement by a powerful figure. He even seems to have had an allegorical board game, the Gospel Dice, which might have allowed players to study the Gospels in an innovative way. In modern terms, we might call that a gamified learning experience. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/2B8GMG2-1a48607.jpg" width="1155" height="1732" alt="A page of text, showing a game. Across the top of the page, there is writing in several small red boxes in columns, followed by some paragraphs of text. At the bottom, there is a large red grid, with several black squares on it, in a circular shape" title="The Gospel Dice was an allegorical board game that is thought to be have been played by King Æthelstan (Image by Alamy)" /> Making the effort What can we take from this? Well, there was a lot going on in Æthelstan’s reign, not least the project to create a new polity and fend off the Viking threat. So if he could maintain an interest in learning under that sort of pressure, maybe there’s a lesson for us as we wrestle with how to deal with the threat, or opportunity, of AI. “In this age that we’re living in, we are witnessing a revolution in terms of the way that people access information. Large language models, things like ChatGPT, are enabling instant access to lots and lots of details: very useful tools are at our fingertips. But I do think we lose something in that shorthand access to detail. It’s only by engagement, close reading of a scholarly article or a primary text that you really get a sense of that text, you really understand the nuance of it,” notes David. If we rely on summaries created by artificial intelligence, if we forego the close reading, then we lose the ability to do that work for ourselves. That, says David, is where we can take a leaf out of Æthelstan’s book: “For me, a big lesson from the reign of Æthelstan is that emphasis on engagement of learning, on close reading.” Read more | Be wary of technology’s big promises, but roll with the changes The beauty of the printed page We’re talking about the concentrated hard yards of Æthelstan Intelligence over the easy option of Artificial Intelligence. But I suppose the question is whether we can be convinced to get our heads down and really engage with the written word, when we know that AI will be able to make things quicker and less onerous for us. Maybe, that’s where the beauty of the printed page comes into play, and that takes us back to Æthelstan and the Anglo-Saxons once more. If you’ve ever looked at a 10th-century illuminated manuscript, you’ll know what fantastic works of art they can be, and how much labour must have been invested in them. It’s hard not to want to study them up close – they demand detailed attention, precisely because so much attention was lavished upon them. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/2PK8DWK-7720151.jpg" width="3814" height="3814" alt="A manuscript illustration showing a king wearing green and orange, holding a sceptre. He is sitting in the middle of a large blue circle" title="Can paying attention to illuminated manuscripts, like this one depicting King Æthelstan, help rekindle our love for physical print products? (Image by Alamy)" /> Though most of these manuscripts are digitised and available for virtual study, David’s first choice is to head to the library, turn the vellum pages, and get to grips with the physical object. Given the chance, I’d absolutely do that too. We’re not all academics with the opportunity to research these amazing Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts in the original, but perhaps we should be encouraged by the continuing enduring power of print in wider culture. People are still making and buying handsomely produced books and magazines (like BBC History Magazine, for example), when we could just as easily be looking at the digital versions. Obviously there’s a balance, and we would be foolish not to make use of the benefits that AI is bringing, both to scholarly research and to life generally. But we should be mindful of letting too much learning potential slip away, for the sake of a quick answer or easy solution. “We need to maintain that close reading, that close understanding. But we also need to use tools like ChatGPT to advance our knowledge in various ways. You can get so much more done with these large language models, the way in which they can access data and trawl through it much faster than us. That’s a huge advantage. So I think if they’re used in complementary terms, that’s very important. But we need not to forget the core skills that we have in the first place.” According to David Woodman, Æthelstan would have approved of this message – he reckons the Anglo-Saxon lover of learning would have been a pragmatist when it came to the potential of AI. And that’s the Life Lesson from History we should take from this formative English monarch – let’s embrace learning for the sake of learning, and not let AI disempower our mental faculties. This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
Michael Wood on women's contributions to the Bayeux Tapestry
"We should remember the unknown women who made the Tapestry", writes Michael Wood
Like all readers, I am sure, I was thrilled to hear the news that the Bayeux Tapestry is coming to England next year. 1066 is the most important date in British history, and the Tapestry is the greatest single source, taking the tale from the last days of Edward the Confessor through the drama of Harold and William, the Norman invasion, and the defeat and death of Harold at Hastings. The Tapestry has been in Bayeux since the Middle Ages and has never left, save briefly during the Franco-German War and under Napoleon and the Nazis, who both sought to weaponise it prior to their own invasion attempts. But it was made in England in the aftermath of the Conquest, probably at Canterbury by English needlewomen. Scholars think that it was commissioned by the Conqueror’s brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux, who features prominently on the Tapestry along with his followers. One of those, Vitalis, is singled out and named, shown mounted and in full armour, reporting to William the whereabouts of the English army. Perhaps he was the leader of a scouting detachment who had gone ahead of the Norman army. Read more | The Bayeux Tapestry is finally coming home to Britain – and you can see it next year The artistic inspiration was the English school of manuscript painting in Canterbury, but there may have been Roman models, too. Trajan’s Column, in particular, depicts the emperor’s Dacian campaigns in a similar manner – like a strip cartoon. Odo himself had been to Rome; so, too, had Scolland, abbot of St Augustine’s Abbey, who may have designed the Tapestry – perhaps using a sketch book from his travels? It’s a huge artwork, some 68.3 metres long, but damaged at the end: perhaps as much as 3 metres is missing. It is generally agreed that the Tapestry originally finished with William’s crowning at Westminster at Christmas 1066 – a mirror image to the opening panel of the enthroned Edward the Confessor. Based on that assumption, a brilliant full-scale reconstruction has been completed by embroiderers on Alderney (alderneybayeuxtapestry.com). It’s thought that the Tapestry was commissioned for the consecration of Bayeux Cathedral in 1077. Art historian Christopher Norton suggests that its original length would perfectly fit the nave of Odo’s new church, along three walls of a rectangular space 31 metres long and 9 metres wide, taking account of doorways and architectural supports. Possibly the first record of the embroidery tells us that, in the 15th century, it was hung in the nave at Bayeux on the feast of the cathedral’s relics, 1 July, and for the following week. By the 18th century, that period stretched from the Feast of John the Baptist on 24 June till the end of July. This gives us a key clue to its original purpose: perhaps it was made specifically to be shown in the cathedral on the relic feast. On the Tapestry, Harold has a bigger role than William, and his story unfolds as a tragedy. Harold’s fate is sealed when he breaks his oath to support William’s claim to the English throne. Before then, he was a great and successful warrior. So he’s portrayed not as a Judas but as a Macbeth – a brave man led by his ambition into disloyalty. It is possible that his fateful oath was actually sworn on the cathedral’s relics at Bayeux. If the Tapestry was dedicated by Odo to his cathedral, then the part of the relics in the story is central. Read more | “I counted the penises in the Bayeux Tapestry and I have no regrets”: what one Oxford professor found when he studied the rudest bits of the embroidery We know nothing of the women who made it. Yet we do know that the work of Old English needlewomen was later prized abroad as opus Anglicanum, ‘English work’. We know that Earl Byrhtnoth, the hero of the battle of Maldon in 991, was depicted on a tapestry hung in Ely Abbey (now Ely Cathedral) that perhaps also commemorated the faithful retainers named in the famous Old English poem. And even middling people had embroideries in their houses depicting heroic or biblical scenes, which provided richly coloured decoration and acted as draught-proofing. In her will from the 940s, a woman called Wynflaed gives her friend her “long hall tapestry”, which must have been a fine heirloom. So much bigger in scale, the Bayeux Tapestry was commissioned by a rich and powerful person at the top of society. As for its actual makers, it is only later in the Middle Ages that we start to learn the names of some of the women who created such wonderful works of art that were prized across Europe. So when we stand in front of the Tapestry next year, and take in the immense drama of the Conquest, we should also remember the unknown women who made it: the likes (let’s imagine) of Eadgyth of Sittingbourne and Ælfflæd of Whitstable. Now, they would have a story to tell. This column was first published in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The rise of Æthelstan was as important a moment in English history as 1066 and Magna Carta. On the 1,100th anniversary of his coronation, David Woodman salutes a king who forged a nation
It’s there beside the guildhall. A large grey stone surrounded by Victorian railings. Over the years, countless visitors to Kingston-upon-Thames have strolled past it, many barely registering its existence. Yet here, nestled at the heart of the London borough, is one of the most significant landmarks in the story of early England. For it was in Kingston, 1,100 years ago, that Æthelstan was presented with a ring, a sword, a sceptre and a rod – and proclaimed king. The early medieval leader was the first of, perhaps, seven rulers to be crowned in Kingston over the next five decades. Yet none would leave a legacy quite like his. Æthelstan’s investiture on 4 September 925 acted as the springboard for a reign that would redefine the parameters of early medieval kingship. The new king triggered a cultural and governmental revolution. He became the most feared and respected leader across the British Isles. He made waves across north-west Europe. Above all, he presided over the establishment of ‘England’. To tell his story is also to tell the story of the emergence of a nation. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/dreamstime122053861webready-a294964.jpg" width="1500" height="2250" alt="A large stone sitting on a stone base with inscriptions on it. Behind it, there is a blue fence and two stone turrets, and some green hedges" title="The Kingston-upon-Thames coronation stone where Æthelstan was proclaimed ‘king of the Anglo-Saxons’ in September 925 (Image by Dreamstime)" /> Whirlpools of cataclysms Although Æthelstan was formally invested in the autumn of 925, he had actually become king in the previous year, following the death of his father, Edward the Elder. That delay tells its own story. Æthelstan may now be remembered as one of the great early medieval kings. But his rise to power was anything but straightforward – and far from uncontested. There is evidence that one of his half-brothers, a man called Ælfweard, had also been recognised as king in 924. Power may, therefore, have initially been divided between the two men, with Æthelstan ruling over the kingdom of Mercia (roughly corresponding to the area we now know as the Midlands) and Ælfweard taking control of Wessex (in the south and west). Read more | If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater? Ælfweard’s death soon after brought this division of power to an end, and Æthelstan now found himself sole king across both Wessex and Mercia, a polity known as the ‘Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’. But even then his position was far from secure: there were those in Æthelstan’s capital, Winchester – chief among them its bishop, Frithestan – who opposed his position as king. Twelfth-century sources also tell us that there was a plot to end Æthelstan’s ambitions by having him blinded – only for the person involved (a certain “Alfred”) to be dispatched to Rome to be judged by the pope for his treachery. Æthelstan may have been safe for the time being, but that didn’t stop one contemporary royal document referring to the “whirlpools of cataclysms” that swirled around him. The list of potential cataclysms extended far beyond Frithestan and Alfred. For decades, successive early medieval rulers had lived in the shadow of Viking aggression – and Æthelstan was no different. In the ninth century, there had been significant Viking settlement in the eastern parts of Mercia – not to mention the kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumbria, particularly the city of York. Many of the Viking kings based in York were the descendants of Ívarr, who had risen to power in Dublin and landed in English territory in the mid-860s, causing ruin and destruction. By the early 10th century, these same Viking rulers in York maintained their links to Dublin, which meant that Æthelstan found himself confronted by potential enemies on multiple fronts. The largest threat was, perhaps, presented by Sihtric Cáech (the ‘one-eyed’), Viking king in York at the beginning of Æthelstan’s reign. Sihtric had coins minted in his name in Lincoln – a sure sign that he was attempting to increase the bounds of his authority beyond the traditional confines of Northumbria and into the east Midlands. Many of these coins give him the title of ‘rex’ (king) below an image of a sword on one side, while the reverse carries a hammer. Such objects convey obvious messages about the martial and pagan character of his rule. Fire in the skies Æthelstan and Sihtric’s relationship could, so it seems, have easily been defined by rancour and warfare. But diplomacy and then the fickle hand of fate intervened. On 30 January 926, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records how the two kings “met together at Tamworth… and Æthelstan gave him his sister in marriage”. Although the Chronicle’s account is brief, the event referred to was clearly of great significance. No details of what was agreed in Tamworth have survived, but we can assume that Æthelstan and Sihtric would have recognised each other’s authority and the need to keep the peace between both parties. Yet Sihtric’s pledge would soon be rendered redundant for, by 927, he was dead. As the Chronicle reports it, there “appeared fiery lights in the northern quarter of the sky, and Sihtric died, and King Æthelstan succeeded to the kingdom of the Northumbrians”. With this short account, the Chronicle captures what is arguably one of the most important episodes in English history. Æthelstan’s absorption of Northumbria represents the moment when an ‘England’ of a recognisable geographical and political shape was formed for the very first time. The Chronicle provides no more detail about the way in which Æthelstan had acceded to Northumbria, the challenges that he faced in extending his authority, or the importance of what had happened. Some light is perhaps shed on this episode by a 12th-century source that describes Æthelstan razing a Viking fortress at York in order to gain the city’s full submission. Whatever truly happened in the first half of 927, Æthelstan was clearly aware of the significance of this moment. After gaining Northumbria, the king held a ceremony on 12 July 927 at Eamont Bridge, a small town just to the south of Penrith, where he received the submission of various British kings, and a further Northumbrian ruler. As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle puts it, here “they established peace with pledge and oaths… and renounced all idolatry and afterwards departed in peace”. Read more | 1066: who was the rightful king? It’s a shame that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not give more detail about this momentous year. Fortunately, we do not have to rely on the Chronicle alone for our understanding of what the occasion meant to contemporaries. The retinue of people that accompanied Æthelstan north in 927 included a poet who drafted verses celebrating the fact that “Saxonia”, by which the poet means ‘England’, was now “made whole”. “King Æthelstan lives,” he declares, “Glorious through his deeds!” That there was a poet present with Æthelstan at this crucial juncture in 927 sent a strong message about the type of king he aspired to be: not just militarily dominant, but intellectually superior, too. This idea of a king who cherished learning is supported by the earliest surviving manuscript portrait of any English monarch (shown left), preserved today at the front of a manuscript in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Here Æthelstan is shown wearing a distinctive crown, book in hand, head bowed in front of St Cuthbert. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-1354472098webready-086d217.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of a king wearing a blue robe holding a book. Beside him, a saint holding a Bible and wearing a red robe stands in front of a church" title="This early 10th-century manuscript portrait projected Æthelstan’s commitment to learning, says David Woodman. It shows the king (left) holding a book, with head bowed in front of the Northumbrian saint, Cuthbert (Image by Getty Images)" /> Obsessed with theft Æthelstan now commanded more territory than any early medieval king before him.But, with his realm stretching from the English Channel in the south to the northern limits of Northumbria – and the Viking threat far from extinguished – how did he go about maintaining control? And what policies did Æthelstan enact? Thanks to surviving coins, diplomas (grants of land to favoured subjects) and a large corpus of laws that survives in the king’s name, these are questions that we can answer in some detail. Careful scrutiny of Æthelstan’s laws, for example, reveals a king who was deeply concerned by the issue of theft, a crime that he and his advisers return to again and again. We also know that Æthelstan’s legal system depended to a striking degree on the written word: on laws being sent to different parts of the kingdom to be implemented by royal officials. The king clearly sought to set up a single administrative system that worked across the entire kingdom. One of his law-codes hints at this aspiration when it calls for there to be only one coinage in use. Those coins that survive from Æthelstan’s reign are never entirely homogeneous in design, but they do all carry the king’s name. Where Æthelstan’s laws and coinage travelled, the king himself would sometimes follow. Royal diplomas – issued in the period 928–35 by an anonymous royal scribe known as ‘Æthelstan A’ – reveal that Æthelstan moved regularly around the kingdom himself, making grants of land. Most of these assemblies were convened in the heartlands of Wessex, but the diplomas tell us that they also travelled further north – convening, for example, in Nottingham in early June 934. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/BAL3964061webready-b06c79e.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large document with a paragraph of writing with lists of things below it" title="In this diploma from 931, Æthelstan grants land to a man called Wulfgar in Ham, Wiltshire. Such documents reveal the depth of the king’s interest in the administration of his kingdom plus the influence he wielded over Scottish, Welsh and Strathclyde/Cumbrian rulers (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> The royal diplomas conventionally contain lists of the important ecclesiastical and lay officials who attended the assemblies – and these make for interesting reading. Not only do they contain English names of people from Wessex and Mercia, but also Old Norse names (presumably from the north and east of Æthelstan’s realm), and those of British kings hailing from the Welsh and Scottish kingdoms. It seems, then, that these assemblies (known by the contemporary Old English word witan, literally ‘wise men’) drew powerful figures from across the British Isles, reflecting just how widely Æthelstan had managed to extend his authority. Read more | The battle of Brunanburh: the forgotten fight that changed British history Æthelstan’s status is even reflected in the sheer complexity of the language used on his royal diplomas (all written in Latin, with a deft use of rhythm and alliteration, and with a clause in Old English, too) and repeated proclamations of the king’s undoubted power. In one diploma, ‘Æthelstan A’ tells his audience that the king has been “elevated by the right hand of the Almighty to the throne of the whole kingdom of Britain”. Amazingly, two 10th-century ‘Æthelstan A’ originals survive today in the British Library in London. Large, highly professional in their script and layout – with long columns of witnesses at their conclusion – they were evidently designed to make it clear that this was a king who wielded new levels of power. Those coming from the far limits of Æthelstan’s kingdom could not fail to have been impressed by what they saw and heard. Power couples But what about those beyond the far limits of Æthelstan’s kingdom, in continental Europe? Here, too, it seems that Æthelstan was able to exert a degree of influence – courtesy of a series of strategic marriage alliances involving his half-sisters. Eadgifu married Charles the Simple, king of the West Franks; Eadhild wed Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks; Eadgyth was matched with Otto the Great, king of the East Franks and later emperor; Ælfgifu (or Eadgifu) married into the Burgundian royal line. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/BAL167523webready-a65a7f6.jpg" width="1500" height="1429" alt="Eadgifu of Wessex (second right) in a 14th-century manuscript. Æthelstan’s half-sister was married to Charles the Simple and bore him a son: the future Louis IV of France (second left) (Image by Bridgeman Images)" title="Eadgifu of Wessex (second right) in a 14th-century manuscript. Æthelstan’s half-sister was married to Charles the Simple and bore him a son: the future Louis IV of France (second left) (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> While his half-sisters were dispatched to Europe, scholars increasingly moved in the opposite direction to exchange the latest prose and verse texts at an English court that was becoming a hub of bookish activity. We think it is in Æthelstan’s court that some of the earliest English interactions with the Indian game of chess can be evidenced – yet more proof of 10th-century England’s growing cultural pulling power. A hostile coalition The tentacles of Æthelstan’s power now stretched far and wide. But such power could provoke intense resentment. And so it proved in 937 when a coalition of hostile forces – led by Óláf Guthfrithson, Viking king of Dublin; Constantine II, ruler of the Scottish kingdom of ‘Alba’; and Owain, king of ‘Strathclyde/Cumbria’ – clashed with English armies at a place called Brunanburh. Modern discussion of Brunanburh has focused on the enduring mystery of its location. But it’s important not to lose sight of the significance of the battle itself: nothing less than Æthelstan’s newly forged ‘England’ was at stake that day. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/BAL3299765webready-cd67542.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A bishop sprinkles holy water over Æthelstan’s corpse in a 14th-century manuscript. The king’s death in 939 brought to an end one of the most successful reigns in all of medieval English history (Image by Bridgeman Images)" title="A bishop sprinkles holy water over Æthelstan’s corpse in a 14th-century manuscript. The king’s death in 939 brought to an end one of the most successful reigns in all of medieval English history (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> It was certainly a large and bloody clash. A famous poem, written in the immediate aftermath to commemorate Æthelstan’s deeds, tells us that: “Never yet in this island before this by what books tell us and our ancient sages, was a greater slaughter of a host made by the edge of the sword.” Like its location, precise details of how the battle unfolded have been lost to history. But what is certain is that the English prevailed. As the Brunanburh poet tells us: “Edward’s sons [Æthelstan and his brother Edmund] clove the shield-wall, hewed the linden-wood shields with hammered swords, for it was natural to men of their lineage to defend their land, their treasure and their homes, in frequent battle against every foe. Their enemies perished; the people of the Scots and the pirates fell doomed.” So important was the outcome of Brunanburh that, unusually, sources from outside the English kingdom – from Wales, Scotland and Ireland – all register its result. Æthelstan had confronted the greatest threat to the authority of his reign and he’d faced it down. Yet his triumph was to be short-lived. Two years later, the king lay dead. And within a few short months of his burial in Malmesbury Abbey, the kingdom he had forged over the past decade began to fall apart. Vikings came to power once more. Óláf Guthfrithson, who had failed to unseat Æthelstan at Brunanburh, finally realised his ambition of seizing control in York. The political fragmentation that followed Æthelstan’s death has left some modern historians to question just how successful he had been in creating ‘England’ in the first place. We should certainly not think of his kingdom as any kind of homogeneous whole. What ‘England’ meant to the people of Winchester would have been very different to someone living in St Germans (Cornwall), or to a resident of Durham (Northumbria). But, at a time when English territories had for generations been riven by divisions, the very fact that Æthelstan was able to bring all of these areas together for the first time, and to be formally recognised as their king, shows how precociously successful he had been. It’s for these achievements that 927, the date of England’s formation, should be as well known as those other landmarks of the medieval era: 1066 (the Norman Conquest), 1215 (the issuing of Magna Carta), 1348 (the arrival of the Black Death) and 1455 (the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses). Æthelstan had presided over a transformative moment in English history. In his 15 or so extraordinary years on the throne, a new nation had been born. David Woodman is professor of history at Robinson College, Cambridge. His new biography of Æthelstan, The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom, is published by Princeton University Press This article was first published in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The wrong moustache in the Battle of Hastings
What's going on with the facial hair in King and Conqueror, have we been suckered in by an overly literal understanding of the Bayeux Tapestry, and what did a Viking beard really look like?
How and why did they get the facial hair so wrong in the new BBC 1066 drama King and Conqueror, and what did an actual Viking look like on the hair and beard front? Find out in my in-depth analysis of moustache-gate, framed, as is my wont, in the context of the Bayeux Tapestry. The new 1066 drama King and Conqueror has been accused by numerous commentators of playing fast and loose with the historical narrative of the Norman Conquest. That’s a reasonable criticism, but on my assessment of the critiques of the series, the deepest opprobrium has been reserved for the facial hair fantasy. Dad tache or bad tache? The problem is that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, as Duke William of Normandy, sports a bristling tache (memorably described by Lucy Mangan in the Guardian as a ‘1970s dad tache’ and in the Daily Mail as an Asterix look), while the upper lip of James Norton’s Harold Godwinson is unequivocally hairless. That, as many experts have pointed out, is directly at odds with the Bayeux Tapestry. The famous 11th-century embroidery, which provides the earliest visual representation of the 1066 story, quite clearly shows a moustachioed Harold and a clean-shaven William. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/528361-7b9d210.jpg" width="6224" height="4672" alt="A man with shaggy hair and a moustache stands on a beach, dressed in a dark cloak and holding a sword. Behind him, a small group of people gather around a wooden boat on the shoreline" title="William bosses the beach with his 1970s dad tache in King and Conqueror (Image by BBC/CBS Studios)" /> Harold’s facial hair in the Tapestry is in line with that of his Anglo-Saxon compatriots: they tend to (but don’t always) boast moustaches, some of which are thin and straggly, while others are impressive handlebar efforts. The Normans, on the other hand, lack upper lip action. The embroiderers were clearly following a style guide to try to offer a visual prompt to the viewer about which side the respective figures were on. Menacing reverse mullet It wasn’t just moustaches in the Tapestry that helped viewers to know who was on which team – the haircuts also offered a clue. The Normans often had curious shaved necks, which, in the words of the great Tapestry scholar Professor Gale Owen-Crocker were ‘sometimes accompanied by a menacing lock of hair at the forehead’, or a ‘reverse mullet’ as Dr Thomas Williams has fabulously described it. The English generally had a decidedly less scary bowl-cut bob sort of look going on. This was significant because one of the things with the Bayeux Tapestry is that it doesn’t give you very much information in the captions to describe what’s occurring and who is doing what, so you needed these visual hints to keep up with the story. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-moustach-Harold815687404-ddc875b.jpg" width="3543" height="2753" alt="A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicts a group of men sitting at a high table under a red, yellow and green canopy. Around them, there are animals" title="Anglo-Saxons feasting and drinking with their big Bayeux Tapestry taches (Image by Getty Images)" /> Read more | Shakespeare didn't do the Norman Conquest, but the Bayeux Tapestry did, so where does that leave the BBC's King and Conqueror? Aside from the moustache debacle, King and Conqueror doesn’t, for my money, capture the spirit of the Bayeux Tapestry with the barnets either. Norton’s haircut isn’t quite dorky enough, and Coster-Waldau’s isn’t really as shavenly intimidating as it ought to be. Maybe Luther Ford’s Tostig Godwinson gets closest to a Tapestry look with his bowl-cut (though Tostig himself does not specifically appear in the embroidery, so I’m generalising about the Anglo-Saxon vibe). I haven’t seen any explanation in the crew interviews for the TV series for this obvious diversion from the historical facial hair facts. However, I do note that Norton had originally hoped to play William. His plan, apparently, was scuppered by a contractual obligation with HBO that he could only appear in King and Conqueror if his character died. That legal stipulation ruled out the option of him appearing as the Norman Duke, who does not die at Hastings, and left him little choice but to take on the ill-fated Harold instead, who famously does. So maybe they just forgot who was supposed to grow the tache after that. Manly strength, modernity and bravery I do understand this level of moustache anxiety, particularly in these days of hipster facial hair. I’m reminded of a great HistoryExtra article from the eminent beard historian Dr Alun Withey on moustache matters. He said, “Like many other facial hair styles, the moustache has a long and complicated history. In some periods it has symbolised manly strength, modernity and bravery; in others it was decried as an affectation of fey young men. It’s easy to write facial hair off as something that is quirky or irrelevant, but it often tells us a very great deal about individual men across time, as well as shifting attitudes towards masculinity and the male body.” Having established the importance of facial hair, I’m surprised that not many people have been exercised by the chin of Eddie Marsan’s Edward the Confessor in King and Conqueror. Marsan’s simpering mother-beaten monarch is very different from the Bayeux Tapestry version, because the embroidered king wears a long flowing beard. I know Marsan can grow facial hair because he was bearded in his depiction of noted canoe conman John Darwin in an ITV drama a few years ago, so again, the King and Conqueror team have apparently made a deliberate decision to ignore the evidential pogonotrophy of the Bayeux Tapestry. I can only assume that they figured Marsan with a beard wouldn’t look as weak-willed as they wanted his King Edward to be. Someone who is clearly tooled up to look intimidating in King and Conqueror is the Norwegian King Harald Hardrada, played by Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson. He is resplendent with a big brash beard that Brian Blessed would be proud of. Hardrada’s invasion, accompanied by King Harold’s disaffected brother Tostig, is the preliminary story to the Norman Conquest (and if you want the full story, watch my chat with Marc Morris all about it on the HistoryExtra YouTube channel). Harold’s victory over his brother and the mighty Hardrada at the battle of Stamford Bridge would have been the stuff of legend if it wasn’t overshadowed by his own defeat and death a few days later at the hands of William and the Normans at Hastings. The Tapestry devotes zero attention to the Hardrada story so we cannot say whether the King and Conqueror depiction of a big beardy Viking is accurate. Actual Viking facial hair evidence However, and this is breaking news, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, Peter Pentz, has just published some research on a remarkable Viking period figurine, which gives us a very rare glimpse of what a Viking hair style actually looked like. Granted it’s from the 10th century rather than the 11th, and obviously sartorial trends can move fast, but nevertheless, it’s a good insight. The little figurine, currently on display in the Viking Sorceress exhibition at the museum in Copenhagen, has a middle parting with a side wave that leaves the ear visible, while the hair has been cropped at the back. Plus he’s got a large moustache, a long, braided goatee and sideburns. It’s some look, and according to Peter Pentz, it’s quite a find: “Hitherto, we haven’t had any detailed knowledge about Viking hairstyles, but here, we get all the details – even the little curl above the ear is marked. This is the first time we see a figure of a male Viking with his hair visible from all angles. It’s unique”. Hardrada, in King and Conqueror, isn’t quite aligned with this Viking look, given that he has a full beard rather than tache, goatee and sideburns, but this research has only just come to light, so we can let the producers of the series off on that one at least. Read more | How historically accurate is King and Conqueror? Here’s the real history that should have happened What’s interesting, I think, is to dwell briefly on whether we are reading far too much into these Bayeux Tapestry haircuts and moustache designs. Might perhaps we better assume that the designer and embroiders were simply trying to remind the viewers about who was English and who was Norman, as I mentioned above, and not really be attempting to represent the hairy reality of the day? As the noted scholar of Old English Dr Thijs Porck pointed out in this excellent blog post a few years ago, the early 11th-century Anglo-Saxon religious writer, Ælfric of Eynsham, had cause to write a letter of complaint, admonishing his fellow monks for adorning themselves ‘in Danish fashion, with bared neck and blinded eyes’. That shaved back of neck and hair flopping over the eyes sounds quite a lot like the Norman look in the Bayeux Tapestry, and not dissimilar to what we can see in the Viking figurine. So maybe both the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans were trying to look scarily Viking in the 11th century, and the Tapestry has slipped us a red herring by making out that the two groups adopted different hair styles. Maybe moustache-gate is simply an overly-literal reading of the embroidery. As Marc Morris has noted, however, there is other documentary evidence besides the Tapestry to suggest that there were stylistic differences in hair and face between Normans and English. William of Poitiers recorded how the French and Normans 'looked with curiosity' at the long-haired English hostages that the Conqueror brought home with him in 1067, and other sources do point to the Normans being clean-shaven and the English wearing facial hair. One final point on faces, moustaches and hair is this: quoting Professor Owen-Crocker once more, ‘No-one ever looks happy in the Bayeux Tapestry’. The range of facial expressions in the embroidery are limited, though Harold does look notably downtrodden when he’s making his famous oath in the presence of Duke William in Bayeux. So, if we’re being picky about facial hair and divergence from the Tapestry, we ought also to criticise King and Conqueror for allowing its characters to smile on occasion, because that really isn’t in the spirit of the embroidery. If you want to know more about the Bayeux Tapestry, feel free to have a scan of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Bayeux-Tapestry-Unravelling-Conquest/dp/0500297657/ref=sr_1_1?crid=36VNPUZVD7AT0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.MMpoBk9Uovbmr3TEL7v4h5yCcHHB7TibT_bIrEGBOBxY2Pe3qyULcF9azzUe6FSS77dBGNHt1jXTxYq4ZklhYwbTl0vPLrwYXklZE3_uXH7g1YMSgVfU06y_VHZZkn57MW1kw48WMMOmwhS-d_wuHIBjqgzxJOdyiDL2g6zJrYe7mf3Joj6Mhuu-i1x8EDFrhQ6EEihQAOCndaf5Z0YMQXFMhbJ8bz6lOmHeW7nnRG8.LiqZZPaTMKhqXNti1OiwZBLnizdALx5kanimdfEvyVM&dib_tag=se&keywords=story+of+the+bayeux+tapestry&qid=1756389351&s=books&sprefix=story+of+the+bayeux+tapestry%2Cstripbooks%2C68&sr=1-1&tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-288879" rel="sponsored" target="_blank">The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry, by myself and Professor Michael Lewis. This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
Far away from England, the mystery of Harold Godwinson's lost crown might have just been solved
New research into the history of a long-lost Belgian church suggests that something very precious may have been sold to fund its upkeep
Overlooking Bruges’ market square and a few hundred metres away from the neo-Gothic Provincial Palace stands a popular chain hotel, providing accommodation for some of the millions of tourists that visit the Belgian city each year. Looking at this unremarkable redbrick building, it’s hard to imagine that on the same site, an important place of worship once towered over this historic metropolis: the medieval St Donatian’s Church. And a new detail that has emerged from the archives of the church leads us to consider something even harder to imagine: could the crown of England’s last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson, have been sold to pay for its upkeep? A church of sanctuary and sacrilege St Donatian’s church – named after the fourth-century French saint, Donatian – was established around AD 950 by Arnulf I, the count of Flanders. Prior to its destruction during the French Revolutionary Wars, the church was a college of canons, built to hold relics of St Donatian brought to Bruges from Torhout (a municipality in West Flanders) in around 870. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/PublicDomainsander-WL-45d2aa1.jpg" width="800" height="534" alt="A sketch of a beige church with many arched windows and a tower in the centre. It has a grey roof and many smaller buildings around it too. In the corner, there is a label reading "ECCLESIA CATHEDRALIS S. DONATIANI"" title="An illustration of St Donatian's in Flandria Illustrata, 1641 (Public domain)" /> Today, the church is best-known for being the scene of the brutal murder of another Flemish count, Charles the Good, who was attacked by a group of knights in 1127. Lesser-known, however, is the fact that the place of worship also played a significant role in the exile of Lady Gunhild – sister of the last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson. Read more | Shakespeare didn't do the Norman Conquest, but the Bayeux Tapestry did, so where does that leave the BBC's King and Conqueror? The church became Gunhild’s final resting place, and recent research by Elisabeth van Houts, emeritus honorary professor of medieval history at the University of Cambridge, suggests that it may have greatly benefited from the spoils of the Norman Conquest. A family in exile It is one of the most famous tales in English history, detailed on the Bayeux Tapestry and depicted in BBC drama King and Conqueror: William of Normandy’s defeat of Harold Godwinson at the battle of Hastings. It fundamentally changed England’s political and social landscape, bringing with it a new language, new power structures and the eventual creation of the first national survey, Domesday Book. Harold was killed in the fighting, as was his brother, Tostig Godwinson, at the preceding battle of Stamford Bridge. But what happened to Harold’s surviving family after the Norman Conquest? The dramatic events of 1066 didn’t just end the Anglo-Saxon era and Harold’s life – they scattered his relatives across Europe. The king’s sister, Gunhild, and their mother, Gytha, fled England for Saint-Omer in Flanders, with Gunhild later moving on to Bruges. In 1786, almost 700 years after her death, the tomb of Gunhild was uncovered in St Donatian’s Church. Her tomb included a burial plaque alongside a long Latin obituary detailing her life in exile. Such details reveal that Gunhild lived a pious and simple existence in Bruges, where “she was abstained from all pleasures” and “did not eat anything that seemed sweet to her but instead took only enough to stay alive”. From this description, you would be forgiven for thinking that Gunhild lived in poverty, but in reality, she was still extremely wealthy. Indeed, the only contemporary document to discuss Gunhild, Domesday Book, reveals her vast riches, indicating that she “held the income of four manors, one in Sussex and three in Somerset, comprising approximately 30 hides, giving her an annual income of just under £30”. Much of this wealth would have been confiscated and redistributed by the Norman invaders, but Gunhild once again came into money upon her mother’s death. According to Elisabeth van Houts, “we can get some idea of [the size of Gunhild’s wealth] from the archive of St Donatian, which in the 14th century kept records of her bequest of gold and silver to the canons”. Read more | How well did Harold Godwinson and William the Conqueror know each other prior to the battle of Hastings? Given that the bequest was still being written about some 300 years after Gunhild’s death suggests that it was clearly of great importance. So much so, in fact, that the canons of the late 11th century had even buried Gunhild in the church as a sign of their gratitude. Relic in the roof? So – why were the canons so thankful for this bequest in particular? Van Houts’ research suggests that some of the gifts were no less than crown jewels. According to records from 1389, “the sale of certa jocalia (‘certain jewels’ or ‘precious objects’) given by Lady Gunhild for the repair of the church’s roof, vault and choir” were approved by the Bishop of Tournai. Antonius Schoonhoven – a canon of St Donatian’s – concluded that in Gunhild’s bequests, there “were among others an imperial crown (corona augustalis) and many works of the best authors richly ornamented”. In other words, the crown of Gunhild’s brother, Harold, may well have been bequeathed to the canons of St Donatian’s before being sold to fund vital works on the church. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/3BEHX1J-Harold-WL-3f1fcc8.jpg" width="1910" height="1273" alt="An illustration showing a king dressed in red with a blue robe sitting on a throne, holding a crown on his head. Around him, there are a group of men dressed in green, red and blue, talking to each other" title="A 13th-century manuscript illustration shows Harold Godwinson being crowned as King of England, a pivotal moment in English history (Image by Alamy)" /> We may never know the truth of the matter, but as Van Houts points out, “monastic houses acted as banks providing loans and mortgages from the 11th century… [and] the canons of St Donatian at Bruges would have expected to receive charitable donations from the English noblewomen”. Therefore, it is possible that Gunhild gifted the canons these precious possessions not merely as a sign of gratitude, but because she was expected to do so. Yet even if we don’t know the exact circumstances, the items would have likely been of huge personal value to Gunhild – both financially and emotionally. Historians have long speculated on what happened to Harold’s crown after the battle of Hastings, and there are no known confirmed records of its whereabouts beyond 1066. However, this insight into Gunhild’s fate after 1066 raises the tantalising possibility that it might have ended up with her in Bruges, rather than finding its way into the hands of the Normans. View Green Video on the source website King and Conqueror is streaming on BBC iPlayer now. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
Medieval warhorses: 5 moments horsepower changed the course of history
From William the Conqueror’s battle-winning cavalry to Richard III’s fatal final charge, Oliver H Creighton and Robert Liddiard explore five moments when horsepower changed the course of medieval history
1. 1066 and all that Horses were involved in King Harold’s defeat at Hastings – but also in the demise of his Norman conqueror It’s one of the most famous of all medieval images. Harold II stands upon the battlefield at Hastings, desperately grasping at an arrow lodged in his eye. This incident – depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry – is credited with ending the English king’s life and extinguishing centuries of Anglo-Saxon rule. Yet look to the right of Harold and you’ll find an image that arguably goes even further in explaining his defeat: it depicts a sword-wielding warrior mounted upon a horse. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 was an era-defining event – and its centrepiece was the battle of Hastings. That clash is graphically represented on the Bayeux Tapestry, most memorably in the image of mounted Norman knights charging the line of Anglo-Saxon warriors on foot. It’s a powerful rendition of horses making history – and for William, Duke of Normandy, those animals proved critical in securing his victory. William began the day of the pivotal action, 14 October, by ordering reconnaissance missions, receiving intelligence from returning mounted scouts on the whereabouts of Harold’s forces. When the two armies later closed in to do battle, the Bayeux Tapestry shows us, the duke mounted his warhorse and exhorted his knights to “prepare themselves manfully and wisely” as they cantered towards the forthcoming engagement. During the nine-hour struggle, William was in the thick of the fighting – and two, or possibly three, of his horses were killed beneath him. The crucial part of the battle came when a rumour spread among the Normans that their commander had been killed. The duke hurriedly rode among his now-fleeing troops, his helmet raised to prove that he was alive, so preventing a rout. At this key moment it was the mobility provided by his mount that allowed William to be in the right place at the right time, averting disaster (for him). Despite the oft-repeated tale of the ‘arrow in the eye’, Harold’s death probably came after a group of mounted Norman knights broke through his bodyguard and cut him down. On this most dramatic of days, it was the horse that was William’s enabler – for intelligence-gathering, command and control, helping save his army from defeat by allowing him to visibly lead from the front. Yet though the horse helped cement the success of the Conqueror’s military career, it also played a part in its end. In 1087, the now-overweight William was characteristically urging on his troops as they set fire to the town of Mantes in France when his horse jumped a ditch – and “his stomach projected over the forward part of the saddle”, resulting in the rupture of the king’s internal organs. He died of his injuries some weeks later, his otherwise anonymous horse an unwitting participant in the death of one of England’s greatest warrior kings. 2. The Bruce's canny cavalry gambit Faced with a mighty English mounted army, the Scottish king used both horsemanship and cunning strategy to rout the invaders Robert the Bruce’s famous victory at the battle of Bannockburn, fought over two bloody days on 23–24 June 1314, was a landmark in the history of the British Isles, paving the way for Scottish independence from English rule. That outcome hinged on the inability of the English to effectively use their heavy cavalry in the face of tactics masterminded by the Scottish king. Edward II had invaded Scotland with a vast army, aiming to raise the siege of the strategically vital castle of Stirling. The core of his army comprised men at arms – professional soldiers, knights and nobles – on warhorses that were the embodiment of English military power. Heavily armoured and emblazoned with arms, these were elite steeds, expensively bred and trained in a royal stud network. The English army of around 13,000 substantially outnumbered Robert’s force of perhaps 6,000. A prelude to the battle known to every Scottish schoolchild proved an ill omen for the English. In a scene echoing the age-old clash of military champions in single combat, on the first day of action the English knight Sir Henry de Bohun spotted Robert the Bruce in front of his troops, and aimed to strike a decisive early blow by charging at the Scottish leader on his warhorse, lance in hand. Mounted on a smaller and more nimble mount, Robert skilfully manoeuvred to dodge his opponent and, standing up in his stirrups, in the words of the epic medieval poem The Brus, “Struck him such a great blow, That neither hat or helmet could stop”, cleaving Sir Henry’s “head to the brains” and smashing his battleaxe in the process. In preparation for the main action the following day, the Scots devised tactics to negate English cavalry strength. They chose for the battlefield a site where heavy horsemen could not operate easily – the area was marshy and intersected by a network of streams – and pockmarked the landscape with a minefield-like network of covered pits or ‘pots’ designed to trap horses. Fighting in compact formations known as schiltrons, the Bruce’s pike-armed foot soldiers were able to resist the disordered attacks of the English cavalry, which eventually disintegrated and broke. As King Edward was led away from the field towards the security of Stirling, Scottish soldiers were able to get close enough to grab at the caparison (cloth covering) of his horse, which was wounded beneath him, forcing the king to remount in his humiliating flight. 3. Under his dead body English rule in France was brought to a violent end when a renowned commander became trapped beneath the corpse of his own horse In the summer of 1453, with the tide of the Hundred Years’ War having turned in France’s favour, the veteran English commander Sir John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, found himself at the head of an army attempting to relieve the beleaguered garrison at Castillon in Aquitaine. His target was the besieging French army’s fortified encampment outside the town and, encouraged by dust clouds from what he believed were retreating soldiers, he ordered his own troops to attack. Talbot was the only Englishman to remain mounted – on a white riding horse – and went into battle without armour, honouring a vow he had made to the French king while a prisoner some years earlier. It soon transpired, though, that the French were not retreating – in fact, the dust had simply been raised by horses leaving the camp – and that Talbot’s men were facing the whole French army, dug in behind their fortifications and ready to fire more than 200 guns. Talbot, against the advice of some of his subordinates, pressed on with the assault, possibly because he believed that “his name alone would cause the enemy to flee”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/2AYGJ83-eae7084.jpg" width="1772" height="1181" alt="A brightly coloured image depicting a war scene. Many men, all dressed in armour and carrying spears and guns are attacking each other in a large group. One man is trapped under a white horse that has fallen down" title="A 15th-century illustration depicts the death of English commander John Talbot (bottom left), trapped under a stricken horse at the 1453 battle of Castillon (Image by Alamy)" /> What followed was a disaster for his forces: they were cut down by swathes of cannon fire, with every shot from the French artillery taking out up to six English soldiers. After two hours of fighting, the English army was attacked in the flank by a group of Bretons – and, as Talbot sought to deal with the threat, the whole French army sallied out from their camp to complete the rout. While attempting to steady his retreating forces, Talbot’s horse was struck by a cannonball. As the earl lay powerless beneath his steed, a French soldier dispatched him with an axe blow. Talbot’s smashed body was identified by his herald the following day, the telltale feature being a missing tooth in his lower jaw. An examination of his skeleton in the 19th century found evidence of a 7 x 1.6cm hole in his skull, confirming the violent manner of his death. Though described by his adversaries at the time as France’s “dread and terror”, the old earl was held in such respect by the French commanders that they founded a chapel on the spot where he had been killed – a fitting tribute to a veteran campaigner of the chivalric age. His horse received no such monument, though it had played a vital part in the first battle in which artillery proved to be the decisive weapon – and which was also the clash that ultimately led to the end of English rule in France. 4. Did a lost horse doom a dynasty? As the battle of Bosworth raged, Richard III launched a cavalry charge at Henry Tudor but ended up losing the throne – and his life “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Richard III’s final words before his death at the battle of Bosworth, as imagined by Shakespeare, have a special place in English memory. Tudor propaganda has, famously, coloured popular views of that king’s character and reign, but we have a good understanding of the demise of England’s last Yorkist king – and it was an event in which horses played a central role, if not quite as portrayed by Shakespeare. On 22 August 1485, Richard’s army clashed with the forces of Henry Tudor in the Leicestershire countryside in what’s often considered to have been the final battle in the Wars of the Roses. Following an infantry engagement between the vanguards of the opposing forces, Richard – spotting that his rival was protected by only a small lifeguard – mounted a heavy cavalry charge at Henry. This was not necessarily the desperate act of a doomed monarch, as has been argued; it could have been a carefully calculated attempted decapitation of the rebel leader that would end the battle there and then. In the words of the prime Tudor source for the battle, Polydore Vergil, the king “strick his horse with the spurres” and charged, accompanied by a small body of capable and loyal knights. The gambit almost succeeded: Henry’s standard bearer was killed in the melee, but the charge was stopped and driven towards a marshy area. Richard’s actions were all the more remarkable given that previous battles in the Wars of the Roses had seen little in the way of cavalry action; most of the clashes had been brutal slugfests in which leaders as well as soldiers fought mainly on foot. The king’s attack ultimately proved to be a brief last hurrah for the fabled heavy cavalry charge by medieval knights. The grim reality of exactly how Richard met his end has become clearer since his remains, discovered beneath a Leicester car park in 2012, were subjected to scientific analysis. The concentration of multiple wounds on his head shows that he wasn’t wearing a helmet, and must have been dismounted when he suffered these blows. This accords with the account of Molinet, the only contemporary source detailing Richard’s final moments, who said that the king was killed by a Welsh halberdier after his horse became stuck in marshy ground. In a final indignity, Richard’s dead, naked body was hung over a horse to be taken back to Leicester for burial. A wound through the buttocks, revealed by analysis of the skeleton, suggests this was when a “humiliation injury” was inflicted on the royal corpse. What might have happened had Richard’s cavalry charge broken through and killed Henry Tudor? This is one of the great ‘what ifs’ of English history. In the event, that failure of horse-powered warfare proved the turning point of the battle that heralded the end of the Middle Ages – and tipped England into a new Tudor future. 5. How the mighty have fallen When Henry VIII took a tumble during a joust, he suffered an injury that may have transformed the Tudor dynasty Bosworth may have witnessed the last hurrah for the mounted knight charging across the battlefield, but the knightly tournament lost none of its importance. It remained the pre-eminent vehicle for displays of aristocratic masculinity well into the 16th century. Henry VIII took particular enjoyment in jousting, and constructed a series of purpose-built tiltyards at his lavish homes. It was at his palace and equestrian centre at Greenwich on 24 January 1536 that the 44-year-old Henry suffered a famous accident while jousting with his courtier and friend Sir Henry Norris. During a tilt, Henry’s lance hit Norris’s saddle – and the force of the impact toppled the king from his own saddle, with his horse landing on top of him. Some accounts detailing the severity of Henry’s injuries state that he was knocked unconscious for two hours. Others glossed over the episode, but there seems little doubt that the incident was serious. At the very least, the fall seems to have opened up an older leg injury that plagued the king for the rest of his life, and which also curtailed his ability to take part in hunting. Certainly, Henry never jousted again, and historians have speculated that this accident sparked a turning point in his reign and character. Over the years that followed, the once-athletic king became an increasingly unhealthy, unpredictable and despotic tyrant. While the horse in question may not have been wholly responsible for a sea change in the personality of the king, it may unwittingly have had a hand in the royal succession. Not long after Henry’s fall, Anne Boleyn miscarried his unborn son – a misfortune that, the queen and others believed, had been brought on by worry following the king’s accident. The exact cause of that tragic episode remains unknowable, of course – but if the pregnancy had gone to full term, and if Anne had given birth to a male heir, then the history of the Tudor dynasty could have been very different. Oliver H Creighton is professor of archaeology at the University of Exeter. Robert Liddiard is professor of history at the University of East Anglia. They are co-editors of Medieval Warhorse: Equestrian Landscapes, Material Culture and Zooarchaeology in Britain, AD 800–1550 (Liverpool University Press, 2025) This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
England’s forgotten medieval hero: how John, Duke of Bedford carried on Henry V's fight
When the Hundred Years’ War was reaching a climax, one man was fighting tenaciously to secure the English claim to the French crown. So why, asks Joanna Arman, is Henry V’s formidable brother, John, Duke of Bedford, not better known?
As black skies faded to grey, and dawn broke on that fateful day in the early 15th century, an English army gazed across a field in northern France. What their eyes encountered was a vastly superior force: some 15,000 French-led troops glared back – their numbers nearly double those of England’s men-at-arms and archers. The English had faced seemingly insuperable odds before, and emerged victorious. But could they really triumph over this well-armed force bolstered by fearsome international allies? The Hundred Years’ War had been raging for close to a century already, with negotiations between England and France coming and going – but all ultimately failing to decisively end the conflict. The balance of military success had swung one way and then the other in clashes on land and, occasionally, at sea. Read more | Jonathan Sumpton on the Hundred Years’ War: “It was Joan of Arc who persuaded the French that they could win” Many confrontations had ended with English longbowmen proving decisive. But as morning ebbed and the afternoon rolled on, the outcome remained uncertain. Finally, battle commenced – and the English won a great and memorable victory against the odds. Sounds familiar? No, this is not a description of the battle of Agincourt, Henry V’s famous victory of 1415. Instead, it’s the story of the clash fought on 17 August 1424 – nearly nine years after Agincourt, and two after Henry’s death – outside the town of Verneuil-sur-Avre in Normandy. Here, the English army led by Henry’s younger brother John, Duke of Bedford, hammered a combined force of French and Scottish solders plus 2,000 Milanese heavy cavalry, killing perhaps 6,000 enemy troops while suffering minimal losses. Historians refer to the battle of Verneuil as ‘the second Agincourt’ – yet that clash, like John himself, is largely forgotten today. Why has such a heroic victory faded from memory? And what part did John play in that tumultuous period of English and French history? Born to battle We’ll return to the battle later, but to answer those questions, we must first turn the clock back 25 years. In 1399, Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster – better known today as Henry IV – usurped the English throne from his cousin Richard II. John was just 10 years old at the time and, as Henry’s third son, would be unlikely to inherit the throne. Read more | The tyrant and the usurper: Richard II v Henry IV Yet the young man quickly proved himself a highly capable leader during his father’s turbulent reign. In 1403, aged just 14, John was made Warden of the East March, the region on the Scottish border around Berwick-on-Tweed. He soon proved his mettle defending England’s northern borders against Scottish incursions alongside his older cousin Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland. After his brother succeeded to the English throne as Henry V in 1413, John was trusted with the rule of England during his warlike sibling’s many expeditions abroad, and was created Duke of Bedford in May 1414. The new king was closer to John than to any of his other brothers – even Thomas, Duke of Clarence, who was next in line for the throne. Henry was absent from England for almost half of his nine-year reign, and allowed Bedford to act as regent in all but name during most of that time. John appears to have discharged his growing responsibilities with aplomb. Yet nothing could have prepared him for what happened next. In August 1422, Henry V died while on campaign in France, possibly from dysentery. England had lost its indomitable warrior king. It was a perilous moment. With the crown now passing to Henry’s nine-month-old son, Henry VI, and England embroiled in war with the French, the nation urgently needed someone to shepherd it through the dangerous months ahead. Read more | Alternate history: what if Henry V hadn't died in 1422? Luckily, Henry V had realised that Bedford was up to the task, and appointed his brother as regent of France just before he died. For 13 years, Bedford effectively held together the English presence in the country. Ten months after his brother’s death, John married Anne, sister of Phillip, Duke of Burgundy. Unusually for medieval noblemen, a picture of John created during his lifetime survives in the Bedford Hours, a beautifully illuminated manuscript given by John to Anne as a wedding present and containing images of both him and his wife. It reveals that John bore a striking resemblance to his father and brother: tall, with a beaked nose and dark hair cut in a pudding-bowl style. A son’s guerrilla war John’s marriage to Anne cemented England’s alliance with the Duchy of Burgundy – and that alliance was to grow ever more crucial as relations between England and France continued to plumb the depths. In 1420, Henry V had been nominated as the heir of Charles VI of France by the terms of the Treaty of Troyes. This created a ‘dual monarchy’, by which the kings of England were entitled to rule both England and France. The biggest loser from the Treaty of Troyes was Charles VI’s disinherited son, also called Charles – and, in the early 1420s, he waged a sort of guerrilla war against the English, bolstered by aid from Scotland. It was in the younger Charles’s name that, in 1424, the French Count of Aumerle (along with John Stewart, Earl of Buchan and Archibald Douglas, Earl of Douglas) joined battle with the English outside Verneuil, which had recently been taken by trickery. After brutal hand-to-hand fighting, English longbowmen and crossbowmen turned the course of the battle, and the French were routed. John then determinedly finished off the Scottish contingent, reportedly crying out the name of Clarence – an act of vengeance for his brother, who had been killed three years earlier by a largely Scottish army at the battle of Baugé. Read more | What was it like to be a Prisoner of War during the Hundred Years’ War? John took seriously his promise to uphold his nephew Henry VI’s claim to the French throne and continued to defend the English territories in France over the years that followed. The fortunes of his forces oscillated in this war – not helped by the ill-advised marriage of his youngest brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, to Jacqueline of Hainault, cousin of the Duke of Burgundy. This union threw the alliance with Burgundy into jeopardy, as Humphrey clashed with the duke, and John spent valuable time and effort building diplomatic bridges with England’s longstanding ally. Then, in 1429, a French peasant girl named Joan arrived on the scene. John and Joan of Arc’s paths crossed only a few times, and his relationship to the saintly French warrior is much misunderstood. In movies about Joan, John is typically cast as the villain, even the man responsible for her fate. In reality, the two never met, though Joan addressed two irate letters to him. “You, Duke of Bedford who call yourself Regent of France… make satisfaction to the king of Heaven,” she demanded in one missive. “Surrender to the Pucelle [maiden], who has been sent here by God, the king of Heaven, the keys of all the good towns that you have taken and violated in France… I am commander of war, and in whatever place I come upon your men in France, I will make them leave, whether they wish to or not. And if they do not wish to obey, I will have them all killed; I have been sent here… to drive you out of all France.” At first, John wasn’t too troubled by Joan’s declamations. Within five months of her arrival on the scene, however, she had relieved the siege of Orléans, and on 17 July had the younger Charles crowned King Charles VII of France in Reims Cathedral. By summer 1429, then, John was worried and annoyed. Like most of his English contemporaries, he considered Joan a witch – and he wasn’t going to allow her to threaten the dual monarchy. So he devised a plan to stop her in her tracks. First, he sent word to England to have Henry VI crowned king of France (though he’d succeeded his father in 1422, his coronation hadn’t yet taken place). Then, as his next gambit, he lured Joan and Charles to Paris, forcing them to expend time and resources in taking the capital instead of focusing on weak spots such as Orléans. John shored up Paris for a long siege that summer, and set about winning hearts and minds. His plan worked remarkably well. When Joan arrived in August, she was forced to wait outside the city, failing in her attempts to draw her enemies into open battle. John had learned from observation of Joan’s previous engagements not to take the bait, preferring to fight her on his own terms. Following a siege, the French took the small suburb of Saint-Denys, but Paris itself eluded them. Eventually, in frustration, Joan of Arc appeared before the walls, screaming that all inside should surrender – or, she threatened, she would bring down the wrath of God upon them and kill everybody. The defenders of Paris were not impressed: an English soldier reportedly shot her with a crossbow, calling her a “bloody tart”. Joan had to be dragged away from the gate, bleeding and humiliated, and Charles’s army withdrew from Paris. In 1430, Joan was captured – but John wasn’t able to enjoy this moment. As Henry VI was now in France, the council didn’t technically need a regent and so it threatened to fire John. As a result, he spent much of that year in limbo, unable to do much politically or militarily. He did not play a role in determining Joan’s fate; by then, she had been condemned for heresy, so the matter was left almost entirely in the hands of the church. John was not even present in Rouen on 30 May 1431, when Joan was burned at the stake. Instead, he was bringing supplies to Paris, which continued to suffer frequent attacks. Their fortunes at that moment contrasted starkly: while the young woman who became France’s potent and enduring figurehead was being brutally executed in Rouen, John of Bedford was being greeted as a hero in Paris. Yet the situation then was not as clear-cut as it may seem today. Timeline: the remarkable life of John, Duke of Bedford 20 June 1389 Mary de Bohun, wife of Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, gives birth to her third son, probably at Kenilworth Castle. He is named after his paternal grandfather, John of Gaunt. 30 September 1399 John’s father is proclaimed King Henry IV after deposing his cousin Richard II. 1403 In the aftermath of the battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July, John is appointed Warden of the East March, aged just 14, marking the beginning of his military training. 1414 At the second parliament of his oldest brother, Henry V, John is made Duke of Bedford and Earl of Kendal. October 1422 Just weeks after Henry V’s death, John takes up the office of regent of France. May 1423 John marries Anne, younger sister of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, one of England’s most important allies. 17 August 1424 John leads an English army to victory against combined Franco-Scottish forces near Verneuil-sur-Avre, Normandy. The battle becomes known as the ‘Second Agincourt’. August – September 1429 In response to a challenge by John, Joan of Arc and Charles VII of France attempt to take Paris, starting a fruitless siege. Bedford’s careful preparations ensure that the city does not fall. 13 November 1432 Anne of Burgundy dies in Paris, possibly of plague. John marries Jacquetta of Luxembourg the following April. 14 September 1435 John dies in Rouen, aged 46, one week before the Congress of Arras ends the alliance between England and Burgundy. A family at war Henry VI crossed the channel to France in the summer of 1430, and for the next 18 months rivalry simmered between John and various members of the council, especially his paternal uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, who was determined to assert his own primacy. These tensions resulted in the regency being removed from John, and for a time Henry’s council took charge of the war effort in France. Yet John had always had a good relationship with the young king. He had been in England when his nephew was born in late 1421, while Henry V was away in France. And his campaigns in France had been undertaken, it seems, not only to preserve his brother’s legacy but also to advance the interests of the young English monarch. Read more | How Henry VI's love of peace cost him the throne – and his life He must, then, have looked on with some satisfaction when – on 16 December 1431, at the tender age of 10 – Henry VI was crowned King of France at Notre Dame de Paris. The coronation proved something of a turning point for both Henry and John. The king would soon depart for England, never to set foot on French soil again. As for John, he was immediately reinstated as regent – reflecting overwhelming trust in his abilities, even if some in the English court didn’t want to admit it. He immediately set about reversing some of the policies Henry VI’s council had put into place. Then, in 1432, John lost the love of his life and his greatest ally: his wife, Anne. She was only in her late 20s, possibly succumbing to an outbreak of plague in Paris. Though John remarried the following year, he never produced any legitimate children. Anne’s death proved the final nail in the coffin for the alliance between England and Burgundy, though John managed to hold it together for almost three more years. During this time he had to return to England because he was the only person considered trustworthy enough to mediate between the rival factions forming in Henry VI’s government. His brother Humphrey and uncle Cardinal Beaufort were at odds – not for the first time – and the division was tearing the government apart. John had another problem: the continuing conflict in France was becoming increasingly unpopular in England. In the words of medieval historian Jonathan Sumption, John was “the only statesman who truly understood the demands of the dual monarchy and in the end truly believed in it”. That belief was stretched to breaking point in the summer of 1435 at the Congress of Arras. This summit saw Charles VII and Philip, Duke of Burgundy embarking on a series of negotiations that threatened to conclude with both of them rejecting English claims to the French throne. A young and healthy John, Duke of Bedford might have better represented English interests at the summit. But John, who hosted the English delegation at the congress, was not young and healthy. He was in his mid-forties, exhausted and on the edge of death. In fact, John died before the summit reached its end, breathing his last in Rouen Castle on 14 September 1435. One week later, Philip and Charles came to terms, ending the alliance between Burgundy and England that had endured for almost 15 years. John was buried not in England but in Rouen Cathedral. Today, nothing remains of his tomb nor any other memorial. Though England clung on to control of Normandy for 15 years after John’s death, the nation had been deprived of its most loyal, capable and dedicated leader. After his demise, commitment to the war in France waned, and the divisions in Henry VI’s government became increasingly virulent. By 1453, England had lost almost all of its remaining French possessions. In death, as in life, John’s reputation remained untarnished. The English would look back on the days of his regency as a golden age. He was even respected and admired in France. Read more | The miraculous afterlife of Henry VI One cannot help but think that if he had lived longer, the course of Henry VI’s reign might have run differently. Would the king’s famous and beloved uncle have helped to heal divisions – perhaps even persuading his nephew to go to France and fight? If John had produced a legitimate heir, would Henry have had a loyal cousin by his side when the House of York rose to challenge his throne? We can only guess at the answers to those conundrums. But we can, at least, remember and honour the valour and loyalty of this long-forgotten prince. This article was first published in the February 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Henry III and the Magna Carta that mattered
King John’s sealing of a charter at Runnymede in 1215 is one of the most feted moments of the Middle Ages. Yet, writes David Carpenter, it was the charter issued by his son 10 years later that became fundamental to England’s history
February 2025 marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. But wait – surely we already commemorated that milestone in 2015? Certainly, on 15 June that year, the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the archbishop of Canterbury, prime minister David Cameron and assorted dignitaries gathered at Runnymede. At the meadow by the Thames between Windsor and Staines, they celebrated the charter King John had sealed there exactly 800 years earlier. That document, sealed under duress from rebel barons and famously subjecting the king to the law and promising justice to all, is widely lauded today as a milestone in the establishment of English law. Read more | What did Magna Carta mean to the English in 1215? Yet the fact is that, in the centuries after 1215, the term Magna Carta was hardly ever used for John’s document. Rather, that was the name given to the charter issued nearly a decade later by King John’s son, Henry III, at Westminster on 11 February 1225. Although Henry’s charter was based on his father’s, the earlier iteration was usually called simply the ‘Charter of Runnymede’. So when, in 1297 and 1300, Henry’s son Edward I confirmed Magna Carta, he meant the charter of 1225 – and the same was true of all later confirmations. Indeed, though most of its provisions have since been repealed, those chapters that remain on the statute book of the UK today are from the 1225 version. So how did the Charter of Runnymede in 1215 become Magna Carta in 1225? On the podcast | Are we celebrating the wrong Magna Carta? Abandoned promises At the end of 1215 any progression beyond the Charter of Runnymede would have seemed unlikely, for it appeared to be a failure without a future – quashed by the pope, at the king’s behest. It had also, in effect, been abandoned by the rebel barons. Having failed to hold the king to its terms, they had taken another route: they deposed John and offered the throne to Louis, eldest son of the king of France. Louis came to England in May 1216, on a wave of support – but said nothing about the charter. Under his benevolent rule, he doubtless assured his supporters, it would be quite unnecessary. It was John’s death during the night of 18/19 October 1216 that transformed the situation. The minority government of his nine-year old son, Henry III – led by regent William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and the papal legate Guala Bicchieri – was in a desperate situation. Louis controlled much of England. The only way forward seemed to be to accept what John had rejected and Louis was ignoring. Read more | The real King Arthur and his Lancelot? Henry the Young King's remarkable friendship with William Marshal So on 12 November 1216, a new version of the charter was issued in Henry’s name. The most controversial and radical provisions of the Charter of Runnymede were omitted, but the great bulk remained in place. This concession had its effect. Though there were no immediate desertions from Louis’ side, at the decisive battle of Lincoln in May 1217 (when forces loyal to Henry III defeated an army supporting Louis), the rebel barons hardly fought very hard. None were killed; most simply surrendered. With a revised version of the charter accepted, they could believe their cause was won. The baronial victory was confirmed by the peace settlement at the end of the war. Louis abandoned his claim to the throne and returned to France. In return, the minority government restored the rebels to their lands and, in November 1217, issued a new and improved version of the charter, accompanied by an entirely new charter regulating the running of the royal forest. It was at this point that the term Magna Carta (‘Great Charter’) was first introduced, referring not to its grandeur but to its size, to distinguish that physically larger charter from the smaller Charter of the Forest. Those two charters would now always be linked together. With both in place, why might further changes be needed in 1225? Because the 1217 charters remained problematic. How could they be trusted when issued by a king only 10 years old and lacking his own seal? Instead they bore the seals of the legate and the regent. There was another problem. Might it not be claimed that the charters were invalid, having been extracted from the king by rebellion? At a council meeting in 1223, that point was made by one of John’s most rebarbative old minsters, William Brewer. Two years later, the chance arose to put these problems right, thanks to a crisis overseas. In 1224, Louis – now king of France – overran the county of Poitou. Far to the south, Gascony seemed likely to fall as well. A gigantic effort would be needed to save the English king’s one remaining continental possession – and for that, he needed money. Read more | 6 Magna Carta myths explained With no reserves of treasure, the government knew that those vital funds could come only from a tax levied on the whole kingdom. They knew, too, that such a tax could never be collected unless sanctioned by a great council – the kind of assembly soon to be called parliament. How to secure such consent? The answer was for the king to concede, in return for the tax, new versions of Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest – versions that put right the deficiencies of their predecessors. Once again, the exigencies of the continental empire played a central part in the history of Magna Carta. The loss of Normandy and Anjou in 1204, and the heavy taxation designed to fund their recovery, had been a turning point on the road to the charter of 1215. Similarly, the loss of Poitou in 1224 led directly to the Magna Carta of 1225. However, while John failed to recover his continental possessions, the great tax of 1225 did save Gascony, which remained in English hands until 1453. Doing the deal Two men above all were responsible for negotiating the deal that led to the 1225 charters, though acting from very different motives. They were the justiciar Hubert de Burgh, head of government since the death of William Marshal in 1219, and the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. For cautious, pragmatic de Burgh, the charters were simply a practical necessity. For Langton, one of the great biblical scholars of the age, they responded to deeply held ideas about the need for rulers to be limited by the law. The texts of both charters, crafted by Langton and de Burgh, had new preambles and new conclusions designed to address the anxieties mentioned previously. In the preamble, the king (now aged 17) was said to act “of his spontaneous and good will” – a statement not found in the 1216 and 1217 charters, nor indeed in John’s Charter of Runnymede. At the end of the new charters now hung Henry’s own seal, introduced in 1218. It showed him on the front crowned and enthroned, and on the back mounted, armoured and brandishing his sword – images that encapsulated the majesty of kingship. Read more | Alternate history: what if Magna Carta hadn’t been written? The conclusion to these revised charters also rebutted the charge that they had been extracted from the king by force. Rather, they stated, in return for his concessions everyone in the kingdom had granted him a 15th part of their movable property – essentially, a 15th part, by value, of their agricultural produce and farm animals. Producing some £40,000, roughly three times the king’s current annual revenue, this was the tax that saved Gascony. The charge of coercion was thus laid to rest. Magna Carta and the Forest Charter were the result of a freely entered bargain between king and kingdom. The consensual nature of the new documents was further demonstrated by lists of those who had witnessed and, thus, affirmed the granting of the charters – unlike earlier iterations, which had no witness lists to speak of. All the good and great of the land witnessed the charters, whatever their stance in the civil war. The witness list was headed by Archbishop Langton, 11 bishops and 20 abbots. Then came Hubert de Burgh, followed by nine earls and 23 magnates. Sensing the significance and novelty of this certification, the copy of the charters made soon afterwards at Cerne Abbey in Dorset set out the witness list in beautifully elaborate fashion, and inscribed the place and date of issue in great capital letters. Inclusivity statement Langton, responding to ideas about how just rule should benefit the whole community, also did something to make Magna Carta more inclusive. The concessions in the charters of 1216 and 1217, like those in 1215, had been made only to people who were free – thus excluding the unfree peasantry who made up the largest part of the population. In 1225, this changed. The statement that the concessions had been made to the free remained, but it was qualified – indeed, contradicted – by the new preamble in which these concessions were granted to “everyone in the kingdom”. Likewise, in the conclusion, everyone was said to have agreed the tax in return for which the charters were granted. Langton moved decisively to bring in the church full-square behind the new charters. In 1215, he had felt unable to excommunicate those who contravened John’s charter, in part because it was clearly the product of rebellion. When the charters of 1216 and 1217 were issued, Langton was out of England; now, with the new versions clearly consensual, he and his fellow bishops sentenced to excommunication all who breached them. This set a precedent, and further sentences of excommunication were promulgated in 1237 and 1253, the latter with great publicity and with circulation of the texts. Churchmen could profit as much as laymen from many of Magna Carta’s provisions but, in particular, they treasured the very first chapter, which guaranteed the freedom of the church. How right Langton had been to add it into the charter at Runnymede. Strengthened in these ways, the 1225 texts became the final and definitive versions of Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest – but they were not without flaw. Despite acting “of his spontaneous and good will”, Henry was not yet 21 when issuing the charters, and therefore underage; this defect had to be put right in a proclamation of 1237. More serious was the fact that the charters set out no constitutional means of enforcement. The 1215 document had given 25 barons the power to enforce its provisions, but the barons were omitted from the subsequent versions, with nothing put in their place. Though the sentences of excommunication elevated the status and publicised the texts of the 1225 charters, their practical effect is unclear. Not surprisingly, there were constant complaints that the charters were being broken. The complaints had an element of truth, but some key chapters of Magna Carta were obeyed. The inheritance tax demanded from earls and barons, which sometimes ran into hundreds and thousands of pounds before 1215, was set at just £100. For the most part, widows of barons and knights were not forced into remarriage. Justice was no longer openly sold. The Forest Charter saw substantial areas removed from the royal forest. In general, the rule of Henry III was far less abrasive and extortionate than his father’s. Read more | “He was not a great king but he was respected as a most Christian one”: David Carpenter on Henry III The texts of the charters also became widely known and, thus, sank deep roots into English society. Copies were made by religious houses, magnates, ministers, knights, freemen and lawyers. Of the various versions, that of 1225 was easily the most copied. When the 1217 charter featured, it was often amended in the light of the 1225 changes, thus including from the preamble the king acting of his “spontaneous and good will” and, from the conclusion, him making concessions in return for the tax. Those examining the texts – and marginal annotations bear witness to intensive study – could see that Magna Carta was far more than just a baronial document. Chapters such as those regulating the levying of fines and the running of local government benefited wide sections of society. The Great Charter would never have survived had that not been the case. What’s in a name? By the end of the 13th century, Magna Carta was firmly established at the heart of the English polity and was well set for its long later history. Yet, on that point, one question remains: how and when did the Charter of Runnymede take centre stage and become universally known as Magna Carta? In the early 17th century, when the lawyers Selden and Coke saw Magna Carta as a bulwark against Stuart tyranny, it was still the charter of 1225 to which they appealed; they hardly mentioned John at all. William Shakespeare himself, in his King John, made no reference to the charter. The change came in the next century, thanks to lawyer William Blackstone. His seminal work, The Great Charter, published in 1759, printed for the first time an authentic text of the 1225 Charter under the heading ‘Magna Carta Regis Johannis’. His introduction, too, referred continuously to the ‘Great Charter’ of King John. Blackstone, it seems, was unaware that the word Magna had originally referred simply to the physical size of the 1217 and 1225 charters compared with the Charter of the Forest; he understood it to mean ‘great’ in terms of status, and thus thought it very much applicable to the charter of 1215 – the parent, as he showed, of Henry III’s later Magna Carta. (Blackstone also printed authentic texts of the 1216, 1217 and 1225 charters.) Read more | Is 15 June 1215 the true date of Magna Carta? Two historians debate Blackstone’s terminology stuck. In Bishop Stubbs’ hugely influential Constitutional History of England, published in the 1870s, John’s charter is called “The Great Charter” or Magna Carta. Likewise, JC Holt’s classic book Magna Carta, first published in 1965, was essentially about the charter of 1215. In many respects, this seems absolutely right. Without John’s charter, as Blackstone showed, the Henrician versions would never have existed. And yet the charter of 1225, consensual in a way its predecessors were not, placed Magna Carta on new and firmer foundations. The charters of 1215 and 1225 should always march together. This article was first published in the February 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine