HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-06-16T15:26:32.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Reshaping narratives, repatriation and Richard III : 25 lessons we've learnt from history in the last 25 years
items: When was the worst time to be alive? You'll be surprised at what our expert has to say
items: Henry III and the Magna Carta that mattered
items: Do you know the correct date of Magna Carta? Here’s why you might be wrong
items: How King John helped bring about a political miracle in medieval England
items: 1215: Magna Carta
items: Is 15 June 1215 the true date of Magna Carta? Two historians debate
items: Was King John murdered?
items: King John and the French invasion
items: The Textus Roffensis: a medieval manuscript to rival Magna Carta

Reshaping narratives, repatriation and Richard III : 25 lessons we've learnt from history in the last 25 years
type: item
date: 2025-06-18T08:00:37.000Z
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Debate
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
description: To celebrate a quarter-century of BBC History Magazine, we asked 25 expert contributors to nominate the most important historical discoveries and revelations since the publication launched in 2000
encoded: 1. Women played major roles in the Viking Age Just 25 years ago, there seemed to be little new to say about the Vikings – and that was particularly the case for Viking women. The centuries-old consensus was that Viking wives and daughters stayed at home, passively watching as the Viking Age unfolded around them. New technologies have forced a rethink, though, completely revolutionising what we know about Viking women. The first significant discovery came from a systematic survey of a nationwide database of metal-detected female dress jewellery. This demonstrated for the first time that Scandinavian women migrated to England in substantial numbers. Next, isotope analysis of teeth from the graves of Viking women showed that they had formed a key part of the migration process elsewhere, too, moving across the Viking world alongside their families. The most dramatic and most debated discovery, however, came through analysis of ancient DNA. In Birka, Sweden, an individual buried in a high-status warrior grave turned out to be biologically female. This led to a worldwide discussion of the roles of Viking women: we now agree that, though many certainly did stay at home, some played active roles in trade, craft and manufacturing processes, and even held military positions. Cat Jarman is an archaeologist, author and TV presenter. Her books include The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons (William Collins, 2023) 2. Britain has been culturally diverse for far longer than most believed The murder of George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020 signalled a turning point in the way the histories of people of African descent were taught and perceived across Europe. From that moment, the British press and institutions felt that they had to engage better with narratives about minority ethnic communities. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-1292414316-CMYK-6ff23f7.jpg" width="1451" height="967" alt="…

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When was the worst time to be alive? You'll be surprised at what our expert has to say
type: item
date: 2025-06-04T14:12:23.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
description: If there's one lesson we should take from history, it's that we're fortunate not to be living in the past, Professor David Carpenter tells Dr David Musgrove
encoded: Imagine you’re having a truly bad day. You’ve dropped your phone down the toilet, burnt your toast, endured a packed commute on a slow-running train, and got soaked in a rain shower. And that’s all before you get to work. If there’s one lesson from history that might get you through such woes, it’s the fact that however bleak things are for you now, chances are they would have been worse if you’d had the misfortune to be alive in the past. That’s the message I got from the great medieval historian Professor David Carpenter, as he compared England in the 13th century to today. Professor Carpenter knows that century intimately: he is a world authority on Magna Carta (and was in the news recently over the discovery that he and Professor Nicholas Vincent made of a medieval copy of Magna Carta in an American library) and the definitive biographer of King Henry III. Recently I was chatting to him about Magna Carta for a HistoryExtra podcast, and when I asked him, at the end of that conversation, if there was any learning from his deep and extensive study of the past that he carried with him in day-to-day life, this was his reply: “We ought to feel how profoundly lucky we are, in two key ways: the first is parliamentary democracy, in which we have evolved a system whereby political conflicts are conducted within a democratic framework. That contrasts hugely with the 13th century when we had two very, very violent civil wars from 1215–17 and 1263–67 in which property was ravaged, people were killed, Jews were massacred, and peasants starved to death. So I think that we should value our parliamentary democracy compared to, for example, the situation in the 13th century. “The other thing we should value is that, although I know there’s obviously a lot of poverty, we live in a society where no one starves to death. Whereas in the 13th century, in years of bad harvest, very considerable numbers of peasants, and to some extent townsmen too, quite literally, starved to death.” Ba…

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Henry III and the Magna Carta that mattered
type: item
date: 2025-02-20T16:19:13.000Z
creator: Professor David Carpenter
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
description: 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
encoded: 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 s…

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Do you know the correct date of Magna Carta? Here’s why you might be wrong
type: item
date: 2025-02-11T16:17:25.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
description: Could we have been commemorating the wrong date of Magna Carta all along? Speaking on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, Professor David Carpenter shares another date as a contender for the anniversary, and how the story of the charter has been shaped by other forces…
encoded: It’s one of the most memorable dates in English history: 1215, the year of Magna Carta. In that year, under pressure from his rebellious barons, King John was forced to agree to their charter at a meeting by the River Thames at Runnymede. He reluctantly put his seal to Magna Carta on 15 June and then accepted the final version on 19 June. Read more | 6 facts about Magna Carta But according to Professor David Carpenter, one of the world’s leading authorities on Magna Carta, we might have been commemorating the wrong occasion all along. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Carpenter explains that at the time, people didn’t see King John’s 1215 charter as the Magna Carta at all. “For people in the 13th century and beyond, John's charter was not regarded as Magna Carta," said Carpenter. Instead, they saw it as "the Charter of Runnymede.” So if 1215 wasn’t the defining moment, what was? The answer, Carpenter argues, is 11 February 1225 – the date when John’s son, Henry III, issued the final, definitive Magna Carta. “And in that sense, therefore, the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta is 11 February 2025,” Carpenter explains. On the podcast | Are we celebrating the wrong Magna Carta? What was Magna Carta actually about? The 1215 charter, often hailed as a cornerstone of constitutional law, was essentially a peace treaty. It was a response to the significant grievances of England’s barons, who were furious at King John’s military failures, heavy taxation, and abuses of power. The charter established a crucial principle: the king was subject to the law. But unlike modern declarations of rights, Magna Carta wasn’t a sweeping statement of liberty. It was a highly practical document, laying out specific limits on royal power. It regulated taxation, feudal inheritance, and legal procedures, while also talking about more prosaic matters such as fish weirs. One of its most famous clauses, still quoted today, declared: "To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justi…

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How King John helped bring about a political miracle in medieval England
type: item
date: 2024-08-07T20:02:44.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Hundred Years War
subject: Medieval kings and queens
description: From the historic moment that 'bad' King John was made to put his seal to Magna Carta to parliament, taxation and the law courts, the 13th and 14th centuries heralded many changes in England. In fact, Caroline Burt and Richard Partington explore how these changes laid the foundations for the modern British state
encoded: Good. But could do better. That was the message that the English people conveyed to their all-conquering monarch at the height of the Hundred Years’ War. In 1358, England’s great warrior-king Edward III asked parliament if he should accept a peace treaty he’d negotiated with the French, following a series of dramatic military victories. Parliament emphatically advised the king to fight again. Too much blood had been shed and too much treasure expended. The French, MPs declared, were not offering enough. For Edward’s distant predecessor King John, such a scenario would have been unthinkable. Then, at the dawn of the 13th century, there was no notion of shared national enterprise around foreign policy. The English king’s lands in France were a matter for the king alone – not for the community of the realm expressing its will through parliament. The people, if they had been courageous enough to venture their opinions to John, would have been told – not so politely – to keep their noses out. It was also unimaginable during John’s reign that other matters that parliament routinely considered in Edward III’s day – issues such as how much tax people paid, and the way in which law and justice was dispensed to the masses – might be a matter of nationwide debate. English state transformed Yet the 150 or so years between John’s reign and Edward’s victories over the French witnessed the utter transformation of the English state. This extraordinary period saw the introduction of a system of national taxation by consent, and the advent of the forum that approved that tax: parliament. It saw the legal system grow exponentially and a network of royal officers being appointed across the land. It saw striking advances in military organisation, including the professionalisation of the army. And, of course, it saw the introduction of Magna Carta, which established the much-cherished principle that the king was subject to the same law as his subjects. <img src="https://images.immediate.…

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1215: Magna Carta
type: item
date: 2021-12-27T07:05:56.000Z
creator: Professor David Carpenter
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Turning points in British history
description: Part five in our 20-part series looking at decisive moments of the last 1,000 years in British history explores 1200–1249. In 1215, when England's barons clipped the wings of a tyrannical king, they established principles that still influence British justice 800 years on
encoded: The year of Magna Carta, 1215, when an English ruler was first subjected to the law, has resonated down the ages as a landmark in Britain’s constitutional history. The Charter itself still lives. Its most fundamental chapters remain on the Statute Book of the UK as barriers to arbitrary rule. They condemn the denial, sale and delay of justice, and forbid imprisonment and dispossession save by lawful judgement of one’s peers (social equals), or the law of the land. The Charter was negotiated at Runnymede between 10 and 15 June 1215, with King John riding down each day from Windsor, and the barons encamped in their tents across the meadows beside the Thames. On 15 June, John, tricky to the end, refused more concessions and simply sealed the Charter – “take it or leave it” – thereby cleverly keeping the names of the 25 barons who were to enforce its terms out of the document, this because they had still to be chosen. John hoped the Charter would become no more than a toothless symbol of his generosity to the kingdom; the barons hoped that its terms would be rigorously enforced and indeed extended. The result was civil war. By September, John had got the pope to quash the Charter. That month, the opposition barons deposed John and offered the throne to Louis, eldest son of King Philip II of France. He came to England in May 1216 and by the time of John’s death in October controlled more than half the kingdom. In the north Alexander II of Scotland had gained Carlisle, and was making good his claims to Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumberland. In Wales, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, ruler of Gwynedd, had swept through the south and taken the royal bases of Cardigan and Carmarthen. Yet John’s dynasty survived, and with it, paradoxically, the Charter. Its implantation into English political life was the work of the minority government of John’s son, Henry III, who was only nine on his accession. Magna Carta was also a British document. Both Alexander and Llywelyn had been with th…

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Is 15 June 1215 the true date of Magna Carta? Two historians debate
type: item
date: 2021-06-15T05:02:00.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: In 1215, King John sealed Magna Carta, a document that safeguarded basic freedoms and placed limits on the power of the crown. The event was a turning point in British constitutional history, but are we marking its anniversary on the correct date? Professors David Carpenter and George Garnett debate...
encoded: The sealing of Magna Carta was a turning point in British constitutional history, but are we marking its anniversary on the correct date? Was it really sealed on 15 June 1215? Two historians debate... Yes, it is – Professor David Carpenter The date 15 June seems fixed by Magna Carta itself. King John ends the Charter by stating that it has been “given by our hand in the meadow which is called Runnymede between Windsor and Staines on the 15th day of June in the 17th year of our reign”. This conclusion appears in all four surviving originals of the 1215 Magna Carta, and in the letter issued by Archbishop Langton and his fellow bishops setting out and guaranteeing the final text. The “given by the hand” formula is standard in royal charters: it indicates the day and place on which the ‘giver’ – either the king or a chancery official – authorised the drawing up and sealing of the charter in question, perhaps indeed by handing the final draft to the clerk who was going to write it out. King John, therefore, authorised the writing out and sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. 6 Magna Carta myths explained That all seems clear enough, yet distinguished historians have argued that the 15 June date is nothing more than “fictitious”. In their view, it took several more days for the details of the charter to be hammered out, and it was not till 19 June that John authorised its issue. If they are to be believed, we should not be celebrating the anniversary of Magna Carta on 15 June. The argument for a later date for Magna Carta was propounded by Sir James Holt in both the first and second editions (1965/1992) of his magisterial book Magna Carta. His opinions have not gone unchallenged. In a paper in 1996 and in my own book Magna Carta, recently published in the Penguin Classics series, I have sought to vindicate the 15 June date. The debate, however, continues. Why Magna Carta matters In their introduction to the third edition of Holt’s Magna Carta, which appears…

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Was King John murdered?
type: item
date: 2021-04-09T08:34:21.000Z
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Murder
description: In the late 13th century, a rumour swept England that the reviled King John hadn't been killed by dysentery – as the historical record suggests – but an assassin's poison. Why did that alternative version of the king's death gain so much traction? And is it founded on truth?
encoded: In October 1216 the king of England, travelling across country with what remained of his followers, stopped for a night’s rest at the abbey of Swineshead, deep in the Lincolnshire Fens. It had been hard going and he’d lost half of his baggage train in the treacherous fenland. The abbey was thrown into disarray by his arrival. Its residents scrambled to find accommodation and food for the king and his men, painfully aware that King John brought civil war to their doorstep. At the same time as the king demanded hospitality, Louis of France – attempting to seize John’s kingdom at the head of a determined force of rebel English barons – was laying siege to Dover Castle. The French prince had already received the submission of London and Winchester, and besieged the castles at Windsor and Lincoln. John had not faced him in battle, retreating north in the hope of regrouping his forces. The abbot would hardly have wanted to host John, even in better times. The king had a reputation for unpredictable cruelty and malicious spite. It was widely rumoured that he had killed his nephew Arthur with his own hands – certainly the young prince, a rival claimant for the English throne, had died while in John’s keeping. The king had a nasty habit of demanding hostages from his own nobles as a guarantee of their loyalty. In 1208 one noblewoman, Matilda de Briouze, had refused to hand over her eldest son for fear that he would meet the same fate as Arthur. Within two years the family had been destroyed. Matilda’s husband was outlawed and forced into exile, where he died. John arrested and imprisoned Matilda and her son, and starved them to death. Read more: Was King John really that bad? Yes! Sitting at dinner in Swineshead Abbey, John asked a wary monk how much a loaf of bread cost. No more than a halfpenny, he was told, and the king smiled humourlessly. “What good value,” he murmured. “But if I live, in half a year’s time this same loaf will cost as much as 20 shillings. I swear it.” …

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King John and the French invasion
type: item
date: 2021-03-30T10:00:00.000Z
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval kings and queens
description: Sean McGlynn discusses nine places related to an often forgotten assault on England and its much-maligned monarch in 1216
encoded: When Richard the Lionheart was killed by a crossbow bolt in France in April 1199, a French chronicler, no friend of the English monarch, wrote: “God visited the kingdom of the French, for King Richard died.” Richard had been a feared and victorious enemy of France, and few believed that his younger brother and successor, John, would be a match for the formidable and experienced French king Philip II, known as Augustus. As an archbishop presciently despaired on hearing of Richard’s death: “What hope remains to us now? There is none, for, after him, I can see nobody to defend the kingdom. The French will overrun us, and there will be no one to resist them.” When John died in 1216, more than one-third of England, including the capital, was under French rule. King John’s reign started out promisingly enough, helped by the relatively peaceful state of his lands in England and France (known as the Angevin empire, these extensive territories bisected France from Normandy to the Pyrenees). John had quickly come to peace terms with Philip of France, for which one English chronicler approvingly named him ‘Softsword’. Before long it was to take on a wholly derogatory sense. Even when war did break out between England and France, John initially notched up a great triumph: in 1202 at Mirebeau he captured many of his leading enemies, the prize of which was his 15-year-old nephew, Arthur of Brittany, a claimant to the English throne and ally of King Philip. John wrote boastfully home that he “had got the lot”. But one of John’s many weaknesses was his inability to capitalise on his successes. In a forerunner of Richard III and the disappearance of the princes in the Tower, John was almost certainly responsible for the murder of Arthur. He also seriously mistreated his prisoners, thereby alienating powerful marcher lords in Normandy. When Philip launched an all-out invasion of Normandy and Anjou, John found fewer allies on the ground than he would have liked. He did little to rally…

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The Textus Roffensis: a medieval manuscript to rival Magna Carta
type: item
date: 2021-03-26T15:35:58.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
description: The Textus Roffensis, produced at Rochester Cathedral in the 12th-century, is 100 years older than Magna Carta and contains the only copy of the oldest set of laws in English...
encoded: The Textus Roffensis, which was compiled by a single scribe at Rochester Cathedral in Kent in the 1120s, is seen by some as containing foundation documents of the English state. Safeguarded by the cathedral since its inception, the charter was digitised by the University of Manchester in 2014. Here, Dr Chris Monk highlights 10 things we ought to know about the remarkable ‘text of Rochester’. It contains the earliest example of written English in the form of the only surviving copy of the oldest known English law The law-code of King Æthelberht of Kent (560–616) represents the creation of the Old English alphabet, which combines Latin characters and letters based on ancient runes. Issued around the year 600, Æthelberht’s Code is the first of three Kentish laws unique to the Textus Roffensis – the others being Hlothere and Eadric’s Code (c679–85), and Wihtræd’s Code (695). It is the opening text of a ‘legal encyclopaedia’ of more than three dozen English laws (ranging from 600–1100) that constitute the bulk of the first part of the Textus Roffensis. Æthelberht’s Code offers us insight into the system of compensation that probably prevailed in Kent at the start of the 7th century. Its opening words, ‘Godes feoh & ciricean XII gylde’ set out the level of restitution to be made by one who stole from ‘God’s property and the Church’s’, namely ‘a twelve-fold compensation’. The law also includes an extensive list of payments to be made for acts of violence, including 50 shillings for gouging out an eye and six shillings for stabbing a man through his genitals. It contains a forged document written by Wulfstan, Archbishop of York (1002–23), purporting to be a settlement drawn up between King Alfred (r871–99), Edward the Elder (r899–924), and Guthrum, Viking king of East Anglia (d899/90) This decree, known as Peace of Edward and Guthrum, was fabricated as an addition to the genuine Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum [an agreement between Alfred the Great of Wessex and Guthrum, the V…

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