Category: History

Alfred the Great (848/9-99) was the grandfather of the first King of England and did much himself to unite the people at a time when the Danes were threatening to invade the whole country. His leadership, along with his reforms to education, law and tax, laid the foundation for English culture and earned him the accolade ‘the Great’.

Alfred (or Aelfred) was born in Wantage and had four older brothers. His father, who was King Aethelwulf of Wessex, a Saxon kingdom, died in 858. The first three brothers then reigned and died in quick succession. By 870, Alfred was fighting alongside his fourth brother, Aethelred, in a series of battles against the Danes. Some were won, others were lost and Aethelred died shortly after the Battle of Marton in 871, leaving two infant sons who were too young to rule, so Alfred stepped up.

After losing a few more skirmishes, Alfred decided to pay the Danes to retreat back to London, but in 877 they made a surprise attack on him at Chippenham. He escaped to the marshes of Somerset, where he built a fort at Athelney. He amassed more men for his army and finally defeated the Danes at the Battle of Edington in 878.

(Image [cropped]: Philip Halling at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Battle of Waterloo on 18th June 1815 finally crushed the self-styled French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s attempt to rule Europe. Ten years earlier, the British had defeated him decisively at the Battle of Trafalgar, but Napoleon would not lie down. Despite another defeat by the Russians in 1812 and exile in 1814, he managed to escape to France and rally the troops to support his renewed power-grab.

The British, led by Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), re-entered the fray, this time with German and Dutch allies, along with a Prussian force, hastily brought together at news of Napoleon’s return. Napoleon had fewer men but was a great tactician and thought he had outwitted his opponents when he attacked the Prussians before they were able to join Wellington at Waterloo, south of Brussels.

However, Wellington was more than a match and, with the timely arrival of the re-grouped Prussians on the French flank, achieved victory after 9½ hours in which 10,000 horses and 50,000 men died. It was Napoleon’s last battle and Wellington’s too, since he was devastated by the loss of life. He and his horse, ‘Copenhagen’, were national heroes and Wellington became Prime Minister twice. Peace returned to Europe after twenty-three years of war.

(Image of illustration by W. Heath and J.C. Stadler: British Library at Flickr.com / Public domain)

In the early days of aviation, Amy Johnson CBE (1903-41) was a typist working in London and aeroplanes were a passion in her spare time. By 1929 she had earned a pilot’s licence and bought a secondhand De Havilland Gipsey Moth fixed wing, open cockpit, single engine biplane, registration G-AAAH, named Jason I.

Until 5th May 1930 her longest solo flight had been from London to her hometown of Hull, but on that day she took off from Croydon, with just 75 hours’ flying experience under her belt, and started south-eastwards in a straight line, ‘as the crow flies’, heading for Darwin, Australia. This feat had been achieved two years earlier by a man, but she was the first woman to attempt it. She flew for eight hours at a time, with no radio communication and only rudimentary maps.

The journey covered 11,000 miles and she reached her destination on 24th May, to the excitement of the waiting crowd. She was fêted as a superstar and toured Australian high-spots for the next six weeks. In 1932 she married a Scottish aviator and together they set more flying records. Tragically, she died in WW2 after parachuting into freezing water near the propellors of a Royal Navy ship.

(Top image: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

Like his second cousin, Lady Jane Grey, King Edward VI was born in 1537 and both their lives ended in their mid-teens, but while he died of an infection, her execution by Edward’s Catholic half-sister Mary was the direct result of his fervent desire to keep the country Protestant.

Edward was the long-awaited son of King Henry VIII and his third wife, Jane, who died after his birth. His safety was jealously guarded and he was the first royal heir to be immersed in the Protestantism of the new Church of England. His coronation in 1547 was noteworthy not only for its changes to suit a boy, e.g. extra cushions on the throne and lopping five hours off its length, but also for the Archbishop anointing him by the authority of God, not the Pope.

His uncle, Edward Seymour, ruled for him, taking the title ‘Lord Protector’, but he was corrupt and stole his money. Seymour was eventually executed on twenty-nine counts of treason. Mary also caused him problems by illegally continuing with the Catholic mass, but, as his heir, he was powerless to stop her; hence his last-gasp attempt to put the Protestant Lady Jane on the throne after his death.

(Image: Ann Longmore-Etheridge at Flickr.com / Public domain)

Neighbours of the Angles, the Saxons’ own land, Old Saxony, was in north-east Germany. Their settlement of England in the mid-5th century, known as Adventus Saxonum, possibly occurred for a combination of reasons:-

• major flooding events swept away many of their waterside villages;
• mass migration from the east was putting pressure on their resources; and
• a beleaguered British warlord called Vortigern foolishly asked for their armed assistance against the Scots and the Picts, and rewarded them with land in Kent, thereby sparking their ideas of widespread invasion.

Saxon pirates had begun making raids on the inviting flatlands of eastern England in the 3rd and 4th centuries. This led to the building of fortifications (or, in fact, trading posts) along that stretch of coastline, nicknamed ‘Saxon Shore’. Evidence is scant but some say that Saxon immigration, from 449 onwards, was a vicious, tyrannical, barbaric occupation, while others portray a more peaceful infiltration.

Nevertheless, many Britons moved west to Wales and Cornwall to avoid the new folk with their Germanic paganism, class structure and brutal punishments. In spite of this, the Sutton Hoo artefacts encourage us to believe that those early medieval additions to the British ancestral family were not entirely brutish.

(Image: Adrian Cable at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Richard Cox Gough (1826-1902) discovered the cave, now named Gough’s Cave, which yielded many human remains, including the 10,000-year-old ‘Cheddar Man‘ skeleton. This was found by Gough’s sons in a side fissure called Skeleton Pit in the year following their father’s death. The family’s aim had been to open up the cave for tourists visiting Cheddar Gorge in Somerset and it is still the most visited show cave in the UK.

‘Cheddar Man’ is the country’s oldest near-complete skeleton. His age was deduced from examination of a molar. An attempt to determine his eye colour, skin tone and hair colour was made in 2015, but the technology is not yet advanced enough to produce definitive results. However, the suggestion is that he had green eyes, a swarthy complexion, dark wavy hair and that he is genetically linked to modern-day ethnic Britons.

He died either from a blow or infection and was spared the hunter-gatherers’ cannibalistic rituals that scientists have surmised went on. Instead, his skeleton was preserved under a slowly-forming layer of stalagmites. Much of the other archaeological material from Gough’s Cave was discarded, but bone fragments up to 14,700 years old indicate that red deer, horses and arctic hares were also present.

(Top image (cropped): Abhi Here at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The feudal system prevailed in Britain between 800 and 1500, when a government with centralised control became the new method of ruling the country. Feudalism had served its purpose well, but after the catastrophe of the Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt and the revelations being made by science and exploration of the globe, societal changes were inevitable. The growth of towns and cities gave alternatives to rural life.

The medieval belief was that there was a hierarchy of closeness to God ~ the Pope, then the King, dukes, earls, barons, knights and, at the bottom, peasants. The monarch was, and still is, the absolute owner of the country’s land and everyone below him or her was/is a tenant. The term ‘freehold’ comes from the feudal system and means that your tenancy is indefinite.

Under feudalism, peasants were given a cottage and up to five acres of farmland, usually by a baron, in return for food, taxes and membership of the baron’s private army, signified by a ceremonial oath of fealty and homage. This type of relationship was replicated up the chain to the King. At a time with no welfare state, police or judiciary, this was a sensible, mutually beneficial community arrangement.

(Images: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

The years 1348-50 saw the greatest loss of life in British and European history, when 20-50 million people died, both rich and poor. To the bewildered population, the Black Death was seen as God’s punishment for their sins. How terrified they must have been on witnessing their loved ones die horribly within five days of the first sharp tingling sensation transitioning to their rotting, putrid skin turning black.

We now know that the disease was bubonic plague, carried by rats’ fleas, but people believed that humankind was being wiped out in an apocalypse. Some of them threw morals aside and debauched themselves, while a few were heroic. Crowds flocked to the churches for salvation, but many clergy ran away or died themselves. Graveyards were extended to accommodate mass graves.

The Black Death arrived first in Weymouth, Bristol and London, where a boundary wall was built, but this failed to shield its inhabitants. Herbs and scented posies did not work either. Eventually, it was realised that it was being imported on trading ships and that homes needed to be more hygienic, but the plague returned every few decades until it culminated in the Great Plague of London in 1665.

(Image: Leo Reynolds at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA/2.0)