# THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND - All Parts

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Knowledgia
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwFJeEh-zic
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/40566

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

Is England's history the most impactful of any country? Is certainly in the running for it? At its height, England commanded a third of the world, spreading ideas, technology, goods, people, and violence to every corner of the globe. But how did England end up so powerful? In this series, we will chart the history of England from its first settlement through the days of knights and castles to its globe spanning empire and to its modern-day state. The first modern humans arrived in England about 30,000 years ago. Neanderthalss and other homminid species had inhabited the land before, but they would all die out with the arrival of modern humans if they hadn't died out already. These early humans crossed over via the now submerged Dogger Land in the modern North Sea and soon scattered themselves across Britain. Cave drawings and stone artifacts are all that remains of these earliest peoples, although genetic studies have drawn direct links between the modern English and remains that are at least 9,000 years old. In time, rising sea levels submerged Doggerland, leaving Britain accessible only by the sea. Waves of settlers continued to trickle in by boat over the following millennia. The nomadic or semi-nomadic paleolithic hunting cultures were supplanted by these new settlers who brought agricultural life and the prototypes of later Brettonic and Celtic languages with them. By 3000 BC, settled communities had emerged with primitive houses and rudimentary mines which were used to extract flint for tools and weapons. Among the most obvious legacies of these communities are large barrerows dug deep into the ground where they buried their dead with a selection of treasures indicating some belief in an afterlife and some level of social hierarchy. After 3000 BC, a group known as the Beaker people, named for the distinct shape of their pottery, arrived and supplanted many of the existing inhabitants. Initially they were a nomadic people but they too settled down into agricultural communities which gave way to larger villages and more complex burials. Stonehenge the development of these complex societies can be easily seen in their most famous monument of early England Stonehenge. First raised on the Salsbury plane in Wiltshshire around 2,200 BC. Stonehenge appears to have been a ritual site, although it may also have served as a public forum, a calendar, or a burial ground at different times simultaneously. Traces of villages and other human activity around it suggest it drew in visitors from a wide area. The stones used to build it were hauled all the way over from South Wales. Transporting and raising these stones would have been a difficult and laborintensive task. That it was even possible is proof that England had reliable travel networks, enough food to sustain a sizable non-aggricultural laboring population, and had social authorities that were capable of commanding that labor and those resources. Not far from Stonehenge, archaeologists discovered the grave of the Aimbury Archer, who appears to have been some sort of chieftain or high priest. His grave was rich with artifacts like copper knives and golden jewelry. He may have been a wealthy pilgrim or perhaps a local chieftain. Combined with other evidence of villages across the region, the Salsbury plane appeared to be the center of a small civilization of which Stonehenge was the most sacred heart. Civilizations like this spread across England during the Bronze Age. These were warrior societies with plenty of weapons and remains of those who died in warfare. Larger settlements were often built on raised hills and surrounded by defensible wooden walls, showing that warfare was a constant concern for people. Religious life appears to have been heavily based on the land. Rivers especially were held to be sacred sites and a great many artifacts have been found tossed into rivers as offerings to the gods. Even in this early stage, the regional divisions of modern England were emerging. The colder and more mountainous north were dominated by livestock which led to sparser settlement. Meanwhile, southern England was more favorable to agriculture

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

leading to more concentrated settlement. The Tempame's Valley with its easy trade access to Europe was the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan area of the island just as it is today. The society was advanced enough to play its part in much larger trade networks. Although it was on the far reaches of the known world, English traders connected to those in the Baltics, Greece, and even Egypt or beyond. Imports of precious beads, metals, furs, and other goods show England had plenty of things to exchange with the wider world. Most significant among England's exports was tin. The land was rich in tin, which the inhabitants were mining by the middle of the second millennium B. C. It was tin combined with copper which produced the allimportant bronze that defined the age. While England was not the only source of tin, it was one of the best and drew in traders from distant lands. English tin ended up in the Middle East and helped outfit armies as diverse as those of Feronic Egypt or the Masonian Greece. Of course, the English worked with bronze themselves to outfit their warriors and leaders with bronze weapons, shields, jewelry, and other tools or treasures that became symbols of the native ruling class. From the 7th century BC, a new wave of people arrived, the Kelts. The Kelts were an advanced, aggressive people who swept into England from the continent, bringing iron, formal kingdoms, and money that was new to the island. Iron weapons were superior to bronze, allowing the Kelts to sweep away the disunited tribes. Furthermore, iron tools made for better farming implements, allowing the Kelts to set down larger settlements that grew much faster. The defining feature of this new Iron Age in England was the hill fort. Expanding upon earlier Bronze Age designs, Iron Age hill forts were large fortified settlements built into hills and ringed by large walls. From these forts, local rulers could command obedience from surrounding tribes. The largest Iron Age hill fort was Maiden Castle in Dorset, which encompassed a 47 acre area at its height during the 5th century BC. It appears that the Kelts relegated the existing Britain to secondass status and enjoyed a superior aristocratic status. Celtic society has two major divisions. The warriors and the priests known as druids. Celtic religion was deeply rooted in land and nature which were infused with spirits as told by the druids. Celtic society also developed a distinct artistic style defined by the use of flowing curves that are still recognizable today. In 325 BC, the Greek merchant explorer Pythus [snorts] landed on the island's shores, marking the first recorded visit from an outsider to the island, which he names Pritik or Britanni. The account of his visits survives only in references from other authors, but we know that he visited the tin mines in Cornwall and founds Britain to be a generally peaceful place ruled by many independent kings and princes. Over time, hillforts died out as the more powerful kingdoms emerged, which were able to establish security over vast areas. By the 1st century BC, England was pockmarked with these Celtic kingdoms who could rule over undefended rural settlements, a mark of true stability and security. The arrival of Rome. English society had come a long way, but it was nothing in the eyes of the true power of the day, Rome. When Caesar arrived on British shores in 55 BC, the Romans knew little of Britain outside of what Greek travelers had told them. Caesar knew of its wealth in metal and potential slaves, and its warrior inhabitants could be a source of glory for the upand cominging Roman general. The Britain's simple chariots and disorganized tactics were little match for Caesar's elite legions, but his conquest was cut short by a rebellion back in Gaul. Caesar returned the following year, this time driving the Britain's back across the Temp's River. However, events elsewhere demanded his attention yet again. Caesar accepted tribute and pledges of friendship from some of the local kings, but did not leave a garrison. It would be a waste of

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

men for too little benefit. Britain was mostly forgotten for the next century as Rome convulsed in civil wars. However, trade and friendship with some of its kings continued. This included King Kobalin of Colchester who died in 42 AD to be replaced by his son Karatus. Karaticus had no respect for Roman power and set out to conquer neighboring Roman client kings like King Verscia of Atriartes. In 43 AD, Emperor Claudius, eager for a military victory to boost his reputation, directed his legions to Britain to conquer the island once and for all. The Romans forced a landing in Kent and again cut swiftly through the Britain. Roman power attracted some of the local kings and warriors to pledge loyalty, leaving resistors like Karatus isolated. In 50 AD, Karatus made his final stand against the Romans somewhere near the Welsh border. After his defeat, he fled the battle and sought sanctuary with the Brigantine Queen Cartandua, who immediately surrendered him to the Romans. Karaticus' capture was the symbolic end of pre- Roman Britain. Within a few years, Rome controlled most of modern England and Wales from Kent over to Anglesy and from the English Channel up to the river Humber. Buudaca's rebellion. This control was still tenuous though. In 61 AD, Prasutagus, chief of the Ei tribe in Eastern England, died. The Romans ignored his will that his kingdom go to his family and annexed the Eeni land instead. This insult would not be forgiven by Prasutagus' wife, a fiery woman named Buudaca, who was flogged and her daughters raped by Roman men. When she protested, Buudaca took up arms to avenge her family's honor. She rallied other tribes to her causes, pointing to Roman taxation and settlement as intrusions on their own way of life. In a speech attributed to Buudaca, she said to her followers, "Let us show them that they are hairs and foxes trying to rule over dogs and wolves. " Buudaca's armies marched upon the Roman center at Colchester, where they slaughtered the civilians and fended off the small Roman army sent to stop them. The bulk of Rome's forces under Gaio Sutonius Paulinus were occupied in North Wales, but rushed back to defend London when word reached them. Paulinus arrived just ahead of Buudaca's forces, but had no time to prepare a proper defense, so he abandoned the city. London was burned to the ground, and any citizens who could not escape were slain. Some 80,000 people were said to have been killed. The Roman army withdrew to the northwest where they dug in at a small valley. The exact location has been lost and awaited Buudaca's men. The Romans numbered just 10,000 against a Celtic force that was probably around 100,000 strong. Buudaca's followers were so confident of victory that the warriors families and communities came out to watch the battle, drawing their camps and wagons up behind the Celtic line. However, the Roman troops were disciplined and well-trained. The disorganized Celtic warriors broke upon the Roman line and were cut down by the thousands. When the Kelts turned to retreat, they found themselves trapped by the family's wagons and carts. Paulinus gave them no mercy. Almost all of the Kelts were slain. Buudaca escaped, but sources disagree on whether she died of illness or poison not long after. Roman Britain Buudaca's defeat brought Britain under firm Roman control. Affirming this control were three primary legions stationed at Chester, York, and Kelia. They were connected to each other and to the Roman cities by a well-maintained and well patrolled road network that eased trade and travel throughout England. Things were more difficult in the north where the hilly terrain had to be littered with forts to control the surrounding area. Governor Julius Agricola managed to push Roman control into modern-day Scotland. There he achieved victory over the native Caledonians at the battle of Mons Grapius in 83 AD, but he was recalled to Rome before he could complete the conquest of the island. The

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

Caledonians and other northern groups raided into Roman England in the following decades. In 122, Emperor Hadrien decided enough was enough and ordered the construction of a border wall. 15 ft high and stretching 73 mi from the mouth of the Ty River to Sowway FTH on the Irish Sea. Hadrien's wall was the largest defensive construction in the empire. It took almost 10,000 men to guard the wall and man the forts dotted across its length. It worked though, managing to halt further raids into England for years. It marked the limits of Roman power and foreshadowed the divide between England and Scotland. Still, the province of Britannia was more an occupied territory than a settled Roman colony. Most of its Roman population were soldiers or officials, although a mix of Romano British population would emerge over the next 300 years of Roman rule. The chief centers of power were Colchester, Gloucester, Lincoln, London, and York, but there were some 30 or so recognized towns. By the second century, London, with around 30,000 citizens, was the largest city in the province. Towns were the centers and symbols of Roman power. With stone architecture, sewers, hygiene, and literacy, they were a radical departure from pre- Roman life. Rather than a warrior aristocracy, power was exercised by wealthy towns people and by appointed or elected Roman magistrates. They brought Roman law, economic models, culture, art, dress, food, and literature unlike anything ever seen in England. Perhaps nowhere embodied this new Roman luxury like Aquulus, today known as Bath, which became a leisure resort known across the empire for its natural springs. Wealthy Romans who tired of the city might retire to one of the hundreds of villas across England. These grand estates offered all the luxuries of Roman life, decorated with fine art and in some cases blessed with heated floors. Villas usually commanded large estates upon which slaves or tenants would grow crops, raise animals, or practice other crafts to support the villa's owner. However, most people in Britain did not live in these towns or in villas. Most people were still farmers living in rural villages. Roman rule affected them through taxes and the building of roads and forts across their land. Life was safer and more stable than before, but probably less free and with heavier taxes. Rome extracted both monetary taxes and a grain levy for its troops, which many Britons struggled to pay. One solution was to pivot to livestock rearing, which was much more lucrative than crop raising. Sheep were the favorite, and Roman Britain became the center of a thriving wool industry. As a result, English wool would remain an economic staple and major export for centuries to come. Aside from wool, Britain's other great exports was metal. Tin continued to be useful, of course, but lead was becoming a big boom for the Romans. They used it in pottery, pipes, and baths, and Britain was one of the best sources of it anywhere in the empire. Lead deposits often yielded silver as well, which the Romans had plenty of use for, too. The departure of Rome. Roman Britain enjoyed remarkable peace and stability for almost 300 years, but eventually the Roman Empire would unravel. The Roman Empire was afflicted by internal strife, barbarian invasion, and economic collapse, all of which fell hard on Britain. By the 3rd century, the Saxons from the northern coast of Europe began raiding along the coast. The Romans struggled to fend them off. In 367, the Saxons allied with the Pix and Scots to launch a simultaneous attack on Roman Britain from north, east, and west. The Great Barbarian Conspiracy overran Hadrien's wall and decimated Roman forces. Rome managed to restore order, but Roman Britain would never truly recover. As imperial authority collapsed, pretenders to the throne arose.

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In 383, Magnus Maximus declared himself emperor from Britain and took his troops with him back to Gaul. What few troops remained afterward were siphoned away to defend against the Visiggoth invasions in the 390s. Throw in yet another Roman commander in Britain, Constantine III, declaring himself emperor in 407, and there were precious few men left to hold the island. Roman rule ended with a whimper. The last Roman soldiers and officials left in 409, never to return. They left behind an island of advanced Roman towns ruled by a Romano British aristocracy, surrounded by a countryside with an overwhelming population of rural Celtic Britons, to whom Roman rule had meant little more than taxes and roads. Over the coming decades and centuries, the Roman forts and many of their cities fell into ruin. The peace and unity of the Roman days faded. Its legacy enduring only in roads, ruins, and a few major cities. And perhaps most of all, Christianity. A new chapter had begun, one that would be defined by waves of new invaders that would forge a new nation out of the ruins Rome left behind. From the Doggerland migrants to the Kelts to the Romans, successive waves of newcomers had transformed England each time. With Rome's departure, England was left undefended from new waves of settlers and warriors who would be just as transformative as those who came before. In this video, the former Roman province of Britannia will be reforged by generations of invaders into a new nation of England. Angles, Saxons, Vikings, and more will reshape the land and its people, giving rise to famous figures like Arthur, Alfred, and Ethelan, whose names would reverberate through English history forever after. The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. The story of this new age must begin with the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. While the Saxons first appeared on English soil as raiders during the Roman period, their permanent presence came at the invitation of the British. The kingdoms which emerged to fill the vacuum left by Rome were eager to protect themselves. The Saxons came as mercenaries for these kings, most famously King Vortigern, who invited a band of Saxon mercenaries led by Hangust and Horsa to defend his kingdom in the southeast from roaming bands of Pixs and Scots around the 450s. They eventually fell out with Vortigern, rebelled, and established the first Saxon kingdom at Kent in 455. What followed was steady waves of Germanic Anglo-Saxon settlers. Three groups made up the bulk of these newcomers. The Saxons originally from the land around the Elber River, the Angles from the Angland region of Denmark, and the Jutes from the Jutland Peninsula. Smaller groups such as the Fians also settled, but these three predominated. The Angles typically settled farther north, the Saxons in the south, while the Judes settled in Kent, Hampshire, and the Isisle of White. The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons was a mix of peaceful settlement and violent removal of the indigenous Britons. For example, around 477, the Saxon warlord Allah inflicted a terrible slaughter on the native Britain to clear the way for his new kingdom in Sussex. No trace of the Celtic language survives in the place names of many Anglo-Saxon dominated regions like Sussex, suggesting that all who spoke it were wiped away. The minuscule influence of Celtic languages upon modern English compared to the significant legacy of Scandinavian and German languages is further proof of this. In this early period of Anglo-Saxon England, society was heavily based around honor and battlefield prowess, as seen in the Epic of Beowolf, where a man's status was built on what he could boast of in his lord's hall. They were not Christian, nor were they literate, and leadership was determined by whoever proved the best conqueror. Societies were led by warrior chiefs

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the greatest of which might presume to call themselves king. A king or chief's retinue of warriors was known as his. And they forms the new elite class of Anglo-Saxon society. Beneath them were the native Britain who were reduced to servitude, in some cases slavery to support the warrior lifestyle of their new rulers. It wasn't just warriors, though. Waves of these Anglo-Saxon settlers came across the sea and up the rivers in ordrawn boats where they found new settlement sites. The Tames, Trent, and Humber rivers became the main focal points of settlement, but in time they spread inland as well. King Arthur. The Celtic kingdoms were long gone, and the Romano British aristocracy could not muster the same marshall might that the Romans had once commanded. But the existing British did not roll over peacefully. The most famous resistance came at the battle of Baden located somewhere in Dorset around the year 500. There an army of Anglo-Saxons was defeated by a British army under the leadership of a Romano British captain named Aurelius Ambrosius. Later historians conflated, related or replaced him with another warrior, Arthur. The stories of King Arthur are mostly a medieval invention. The more fantastical elements like Marlin or the lady in the lake are inheritances from Celtic mythology, but even the more grounded aspects like the castle of Camelot or the Battle of Camelan are believed to be legendary. At best, they might have some vague grounding in real events that have since been twisted beyond all recognition. If Arthur did exist, he was probably a Romano British captain under Orurelius Ambrosius or a minor British king in the region of Cornwall or somewhere in Wales whose brief resistance under the seemingly unstoppable tide of Anglo-Saxons enshrined his memory into the popular culture. Either way, Arthur and his fellow Britain were not able to prevent the Anglo-Saxon incursion. And by the 7th century, Anglo-Saxons dominated England. An assortment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms emerged. Known as the Heptarchy, this shifting tapestry of kingdoms included East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Murcia, North Umbrea, Sussex, and Wessex, with many smaller kingdoms blinking in and out of existence throughout the years. The power and nature of these kings can be seen in the famous burial at Sutton who believed to be the resting place of King Redwald of East Anglia. The burial contained a 90 ft boat and an assortment of treasures including weapons, armor, jewelry, coins, instruments, and more. These Anglo-Saxon kings were clearly rich and proud of their warrior status. The presence of dozens of other human remains believed to be the king's things shows the importance of the relationship between a warrior and his lord in this society that continued even unto death. But the goods show a mind for trade and an appreciation of the arts that challenges a simple view of them as mere battlehungry warriors. The Anglo-Saxons reshaped England, but they'd be reshaped in turn by Christianity. Rome had converted most of Britain to Christianity already, but the Anglo-Saxon rulers were still pagan. In the 590s, Pope Gregory ordered the missionary Augustine to England to convert these pagan kings. Augustine arrived at the Kentish capital in Canterbury in 597 and quickly achieved the king's conversion, probably thanks to his Christian Galish bride. Within a year, Augustine's missionaries had made Christians out of the kings of East Anglia, Essex, and North Thumberland, too. Alas, these conversions were unstable, and the Anglo-Saxon elite often lapsed with the death of their kings. It took decades, but by the mid7th century, much of southern England's Anglo-Saxon elite had been Christianized. So-called Celtic Christianity offered another avenue of Christianization that was especially effective in the north.

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King Oswald of North Umbrea subscribed to this strand of Christianity and invited the monk Aiden to establish a famous monastery on the island of Lindesvarn. Monasticism was a defining trait of Celtic Christianity and the monasteries of Anglo-Saxon England would be the chief producers of its literature and artistic works. For example, it was North Umbrean monasteries which produced the venerable bead whose ecclesiastical history of the English nation is considered the first book on English history. Roman and Celtic Christianity differed in their relative emphasis on the bishop and dasis versus the abbot and the monastery respectively. The most relevant divergence though was over the dating of Easter which differed by a few days between them. It was especially difficult for King Owe of North Umbrea of Celtic persuasion who had married a Kentish Roman Christian bride. The embarrassment of celebrating Christianity's holiest festival on two separate days persuaded Oswe to call the cinnid of Whitby in 664 to resolve the dispute. After being convinced that St. Peter held to the Roman date, Oswe sided with them, lest when I come to the gates of the kingdom of heaven, there should be none to open them. By the second half of the 7th century, England was a Christian nation. The Pope dispatched Theodore of Tarsus to become the Archbishop of Canterbury and entrusted him with the proper organization of the English church. Theodore spent almost 20 years drawing up the dasis structure of England, appointing its bishops, preaching to its people, and converting cinnids to iron out church matters. Thanks to his work, the church became the first institution since the Romans to unify all of England under one organization. With its moral codes and spiritual justification for social hierarchy, Christianity was a much more useful religion for a changing England. It was a religion for settled social order of marriage, law, and obedience to the king that was fitting for the ever growing Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. North Umbrea, Mercuria, and Wessex. By the early 8th century, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms consolidated through war and marriage into three dominant kingdoms. North Umbrea in the north, Mercuria in the west, and Wessex in the south. The middle period was one of growing royal authority. The Christian belief that the king was God's representative on earth afforded them greater powers over their subjects. These were no mere warlords, but settled rulers who had begun passing laws and minting coins to signal their power. North Umbrea enjoyed several decades of ascendancy thanks to the steady rule of Oswald and Oswi. It was they who first included the title of Bretwalda, ruler of Britain in their royal presentation. They could claim to control most of England with their power stretching from Scotland in the north to Mercia in the south. This proved their undoing since both the Scots and Mercuria were formidable foes and constant warfare with them demanded too much of the kingdom's resources and manpower. In the 8th century, initiative moved to Mercia under its greatest king off. Mercia achieved dominance over lesser kingdoms in Kent, East Anglia, and Sussex. Offa was recognized in his day as Rex Angalorum, King of the English. A title that appeared in his correspondence with European rulers like Charlemagne and upon his coins, with Mercia being the first kingdom since Rome to mint coins in Britain. Offa's role in defining England can still be seen in the massive earthwork defense of Offa's dyke, which runs for over 170 mi along the Welsh border and has defined the border between England and Wales ever since. With Offa's death, it was Wessex's turn for glory. In 825, Egart of Wessex defeated the Mercians at the Battle of Alendum. And now Wessex's kings could style themselves Brett Walda. However, Wessex power would be forged in the fires of a very different threat. The Vikings. On June 8th, 793, the monks

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at the famous monastery of Lindesvarn, the sacred heart of North Umbrea, awoke to ships on the horizon. From those ships came towering Danish warriors with fearsome iron axes who slaughtered the monks, burned the monastery, and made off with its treasures. In the words of one chronicle, "Never before had such a terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race. The Vikings had arrived. " The Vikings burst onto the European scene in the late 8th century using their masterful boat building techniques to raid the coasts from Russia to Ireland and beyond. Like the Anglo-Saxons, what began as raiding evolved into conquest and settlement. In 866, a massive Viking force known in English sources as the great heathen army landed in East Anglia. Led by Halton Ragnerson, Ivar the Boneless, and Uba, they cut a bloody swath across England. Within months, they captured York and subjugated North Umbrea before moving on to Mercia. In 869, the East Anglian king Edmund fell in battle against them, leaving his kingdom to be absorbed by the Vikings, too. In 871, only Wessex remained, and its hopes rested on a young king fresh to the throne named Alfred. Alfred the Great. Alfred's early reign was defined by battle. He fought at least nine battles with the Vikings in 871 alone. He was able to save Wessex from conquest, but only by paying off the Vikings with a payment known as Denigel. This merely bought Wessex time until the Vikings under King Guthram returned in 878. The Vikings swept through Wessex, taking multiple towns and forcing Alfred to retreat. Not to be deterred, Alfred set himself up in exile at Aaliy. A famous story tells of Alfred being asked by a peasant woman to watch her cakes cook while she was away. Distracted by his kingdom's affairs, Alfred forgot about the cakes and let them burn to a crisp. The peasants scolded her king for his inattentiveness. But given the scale of the Viking threat, his distraction can be forgiven. Alfred summoned his militia for a desperate gamble against the Vikings. That May, they met at the Battle of Edington. Miraculously, Alfred's men prevailed. According to Alfred's biographer, Asser, the Vikings broke under Alfred's shield wall and were swept away. The defeated King Guthram agreed to be baptized before leading his army out of Wessex. Edington was the greatest victory the Anglo-Saxons ever won over the Vikings. It did not totally solve the problem. Raids continued for some years afterwards, but in 885, Alfred met with Guthram again to settle affairs. They drew a line across England along the Tames to London, then up to Bedford, then diagonally across to Chester. Everything north and east belonged to Guthram and the Vikings. A territory known as the Danlaw. The rest of England to the west and south was Alfred's. Alfred's England. Alfred would prove to be far more than just a great warrior. During his reign, he transformed England and proved himself worthy of the epithet of great. Wary that the Viking threat might come back, Alfred ordered the construction of numerous forts across England. Some were new forts, others repaired or expanded from Roman or older predecessors. These forts were manned by a standing army paid for by Alfred's Danigel tax. Alfred wanted everyone in his kingdom to be no less than a day's travel from one of these forts so they could shelter there if the Vikings returned. Alfred reformed the law, too, issuing a lengthy law code to simplify and publicize the laws of his kingdom, drawing from both unwritten Anglo-Saxon practices and the laws of other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to produce an effective legal system. His great

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success here was the expansion of the were guild or manprice as an alternative to the Anglo-Saxon blood feud. Previously, families took it into their own hands to get revenge for crimes committed against them, which meant blood feuds and revenge killings. Having one's subjects kill each other wasn't good for social order. The wear guild assigned a monetary value to any injury or insult instead, varying by the victim's social status, so issues were resolved without violence. To apply this law, Alfred and his successors reformed the administration of their kingdoms. They divided it up into shiers overseen by aldermen, later by sheriffs, who reported directly to the king. Each Shire had a court known as a moot, which would meet there twice a year to discuss issues in the Shire and address any serious disputes. Below them were the hundreds, whose moot meant monthly to resolve the typical disputes of daily life like land disagreement or cattle theft. Alfred's legacy further survived in matters of culture. He was an aggressive supporter of learning and the English language and took a direct hand in the translation of many works into English. The king personally translated some of the works of Pope Gregory, Bootius, and St. Augustine. And in the case of Orosius's history against the pagans, he revised and expanded the work with his own research while translating it. He also ordered translations of Bead's ecclesiastical history of the English nation from Latin and the creation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, both of which provided the foundation of English history writing and historical identity. A scholar, a warrior, and a lawgiver, Alfred's work to establish English law, define its administration, protect its land, and promote its language were a vital moment in the emergence of the English nation. Anglo-Saxon society. So, what did life look like in late Anglo-Saxon England? Starting with the Thains, who had once been the king's warrior retinue, the development of settled stable kingship shifted their role from warriors to land owners. Fains acted as landlords to manners and their surrounding villages and were entitled to a share of their people's labor and product in exchange for providing security and order. By the late Anglo-Saxon period, a typical peasant owed their lord at least two days of labor per week, and most could not leave their lord's lands without permission. It should be noted that English people in the Danlaw area had a different arrangement. Farmers were generally freer there and not bound to lords, but in turn, they lacked the same security that such lordship brought. Life for the average English person was tough wherever they were. Men were expected to work the fields, care for livestock, hunt, gather wood, and provide other essentials. Women's duties, meanwhile, included weaving, cooking, baking, and brewing, and lending a hand in the field when it was needed. Most people lived in one room huts with their families and their only solace from the relentless toil with the church holidays which were usually just an excuse to drink and party rather than display religious piety. The Anglo-Saxon period saw the introduction of new farming techniques which for a society built around the agricultural cycle had a profound impact on how the people lived. The introduction of heavier plows allowed people to farm in tougher ground, but they required multiple oxen to pull. Since individual farmers wouldn't own enough oxen alone, they were encouraged to come together in villages to share resources. Villages would plow fields together and share the land around them rather than living in their own isolated farms. These villages practiced another new technique known as the three field farming method. Every year farmers would plant one field with a spring crop like barley or oats, one with a fall crop like wheat, and leave oneow to recover its nutrients. For the average farmer in Anglo-Saxon England, it was these changes to the rhythm of agricultural life that

### Segment 10 (45:00 - 50:00) [45:00]

mattered much more than changes in kingship or the cultural output of the monasteries. These changes led to a steady rise in agricultural output that could support an increasing non-aggricultural population that was emerging in the towns. After a decline following the departure of the Romans, towns were recovering in the later Anglo-Saxon period as political stability and improved agricultural yields made urban life more possible. These towns were still quite small, no more than a few thousand people at a time. But for the first time since the Roman period, urban living was growing. Many English towns trace their origins back to this Anglo-Saxon period, including Birmingham, Oxford, Reading, Norwich, and Southampton. Alfred's successors. Fortunately, Alfred's successors proved to be capable and wise leaders as well. His son Edward switched from defensive to offensive actions towards the Danes and began capturing areas once under the Dne Law. The Danes had settled into agricultural life in the decades since they'd arrived, and his organized armies had a much easier time than previous rulers had against the Vikings. Alfred's daughter Ethelfed married the ruler of what little remained of Mercuria. And upon his husband's death, she took power there and joined her brother in attacking the Danes. Ethelfed personally led Mercian armies against the Danes before her death, after which Mercia passed into her brother's hands. Edward went on to retake Nottingham and Stanford. And after his death, his son Ethelstand captured the last Viking kingdom at York, making him the first monarch to rule over all of England. Ethelstand's reign from 929 to 939 showed how far England and the Anglo-Saxons had come since the departure of the Romans. What had been a chaotic vacuum after the Romans had left had now been unified and tamed through centuries of work. Ethlan was recognized as one of the great kings of his day with marriage alliances connecting England into the more established monarchies of Europe and his court being respected as a center of culture and learning. England now stood as a distinct and defined kingdom with its own history, rulers and laws. It faced many threats. The Vikings were not gone and new powers were stirring in Europe that would again invade and transform it. But the story of England had completed its opening chapters. Ethel Stan was the first to unify England. But many aspects of what we recognize as England today were yet to develop. Many of the iconic aspects we think of for England, like its castles, its common law, and endless rivalry with all of its neighbors, were still to come. A final wave of invaders was yet to arrive who would give England many of its iconic characteristics. In this video, we will see how the Norman conquest transformed England and how they created many of England's greatest and longest lasting institutions. The Anglo-Saxon crisis. Ethelston's death marked the beginning of renewed instability. His successor Edmund I was immediately faced with the loss of the north again in 939 when Olaf Guthritzen, the Norse king of Dublin, attacked and seized York and reasserted Viking control over North Umbrea. Over the decades, power in the north seessawed between English kings and Norse invaders. Among the most notable was Eric Bloodax, a former king of Norway who ruled as king of York intermittently in the 940s. His dramatic career forged in both Norway and the Viking world of Ireland and the Isisles symbolized the ongoing Norse challenge to Anglo-Saxon authority. Blood Axe was ultimately killed in battle around 954, ending Norse rule in York for good and allowing King Ed to fully reunify the kingdom under English control. Later in the century, under King Edgar the peaceful, England saw administrative consolidation, ecclesiastical reform, and a rare period of peace. But the

### Segment 11 (50:00 - 55:00) [50:00]

death of Edgar in 975 sparked succession disputes and the murder of his son Edward the Martyr in 978 left the young Ethel on the throne just as the tides of Norse aggression were once again rising. Anglo-Saxon England have been blessed with many great kings, but it was inevitable that would come to an end. The 978 assession of Etheld the unready did exactly that. Unreliable and indecisive, Ethel was unable to rally his realm to face a new wave of Danish attacks. In 1013, he was briefly deposed by the Danish Sven Forkbeard, but Sven's sudden death a few months later allowed Etheld back into power. He was unable to secure his own son's succession though and upon his death in 1016, Sven's son Konut reestablished a Danish kingship over England. England enjoyed 19 years of peace under Kut. He treated the English nobles fairly, invested in the navy and army, and also organized the country into Earlddoms ruled over by powerful earls loyal to him. The most significant of these earls was Godwin, Earl of Wessex. After the brief and disappointing reigns of Canut's sons, Harold Herfoot and Kunut, the English nobles called Ethel Red's son, Edward, to the throne. Among these nobles was Godwin, whose family now controlled several of England's Erdom. Edward kept the crown, but the House of Godwin effectively held more power than him. Edward's piety and kindness earned him a saintthood and the epithet of confessor, but it could not make up for his weak rule and his failure to leave an heir upon his death in 1066. The Norman conquest. The nobles quickly nominated Harold Godwinson to succeed Edward. As the most powerful of the earls and the heir to Godwin, he could command respect. But his claim was challenged by two rivals. Harold Hardrada, king of Norway, claimed his predecessor had been promised the throne years ago. Then there was William of Normandy, nicknamed William the Bastard. He was a first cousin once removed of the late Edward and claims that Edward had promised him the throne. Hardrada reached England first in September 1066 and Harold rushed to meet him on September 26th. They clashed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge where once Vikings had dominated the English. Now the English armies had the upper hand. Hardrada was slain on the field marking the symbolic end of major Viking invasions in England. Though Viking influence remained in law and in culture, there was no time to savor the victory, however, as William landed in the south just 3 days later. Harold marched what remained of his exhausted army south, grabbing up new troops along the way and drew up for battle at Hastings on October 14th. They were no match for superior Norman cavalry and archers. Figned retreats broke the English shield wall and an arrow struck down Harold on the field. The English army crumbled soon after Norman England. On Christmas Day 1066, William the Conqueror was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey. William quickly marched north and massacred the resistant local population. It was said that all the land between York and Durham was left uninhabited. He took a similarly brutal approach to any sign of unrest elsewhere. Coupled with his desolation of the English nobility, England was almost a fresh canvas upon which to place a new political and social order. That new order was feudalism, a much stricter hierarchy than the Anglo-Saxon system. William granted land to his vassals who swore loyalty to him in exchange for their title as baron. Baronss would themselves have vassels in the form of knights who were obligated to serve in battle when called upon in exchange for their own parcel of land. Beneath them were the regular folk of England. All of England and its inhabitants were parcled out to baronss and knights in this feudal structure with every English

### Segment 12 (55:00 - 60:00) [55:00]

peasant owing obedience, service and produce to their respective lord. The feudal system was designed for the extraction of taxes and organization of marshall obligations. To get a better sense of the resources at hand, William ordered an indepth survey of all of England's land. its owners, its value, and its use. The resulting doomsday book provides a detailed look at England at this time and shows how quickly the Normans displaced the English. Virtually every bit of land was in Norman hands by 1086 with the native English virtually wiped out from the nobility. The Doomsday Book was a remarkable feat of administration, reflecting the scale of Norman control over England. For the common people, this was a far more total and demanding lordship than had existed under the Anglo-Saxons. William and his successors extracted much heavier taxes, and the baronss asserted great control over affairs in their thiefs. A peasant depended upon his lord for everything. He could not grind his grain unless it was in the lord's mill, nor bake his bread oven. The common people were usually referred to as villains, but in time this became synonymous with the Latin term for slave, servous, and from there they came to be known as surfs. Aside from heavier taxes though, life did not change much for the average surf. Agricultural life was still as hard and fragile as ever. Life was made a little easier with the introduction of windmills to grind grain in the later 12th century and with the gradual supplanting of oxen with horses as the primary agricultural drought animal. But the basic rhythm of medieval farming life dragged on. Arguably the biggest intrusion on daily life were land restrictions. Norman nobility loved to hunt and with the king claiming ownership of all the land, he reserved the right to restrict its use. By 1200, between a quarter and a third of England was designated as a royal forest where surfs could be punished for hunting. Urban life flourished under the Normans with 21 new towns chartered by 1100, although around 90% of the population remained rural. The iconic part of a Norman town, and often the nucleus around which it formed was the castle. There were over 80 of them across England and Wales by 1100. Larger, more important castles were built in stone like Windsor, Dover, and Warick. Most were wooden with a fortified keep known as a moat sitting upon a natural or artificial mound overlooking an enclosed bailey containing the amenities needed for the ruling baron and his family. The castle was typically surrounded by a moat, which may or may not have been filled with water. While the castles were places of shelter for the local people in times of war, they were just as much a protection against the locals as they were protection for them. The Normans were ever suspicious of the natives. The growing Norman towns often had schools or libraries, usually attached to cathedrals, which encouraged education and cultural production. By the middle of the 13th century, England had rediscovered the classic Greek and Latin texts and reintegrated them into education. Oxford became home to England's first university, beginning sometime in the 11th century and more sprung up in the following years. There was no town without trade and market was another defining feature of Norman urban life. The Normans brought one of the most advanced currency systems in the world with them. So commerce was a major focus. Towns people would go to market every week to buy whatever they needed but did not make themselves. Annual fairs were grand occasions where merchants would come from across the country and beyond to sell their wares. With Norman control easily connecting England to the continent, this trade flourished. It was no surprise then that merchant guilds emerged by the 12th century. These merchant guilds were powerful institutions and in some cases like reading formed the ultimate authority in the town. Merchant guilds were soon joined by

### Segment 13 (60:00 - 65:00) [1:00:00]

guilds for other specialty occupations including smiths, stonemasons, and most powerfully of all the weavers upon whom the great wool trade rested. The other pillar of any Norman town was the church. With both England and the Normans thoroughly Christian, the practice of religion did not change much with the conquest. The main difference was organizational. Church land could be integrated into the feudal system with bishops as a sort of vassel and William made sure to fill top level church offices with Normans. Williams control of the church antagonized the pope and the debate over royal versus papal control of the church in England would continue to cause issues for centuries to come. The later Norman kings. William the conqueror died in 1087. He left Normandy to his son Robert and England to his other son William. William II was a cruel, greedy, and extravagant ruler who worsened the already heavy tax burden on the English people to pay off his brother in order to seize control of Normandy. His subjects resented him, and the nobles despised him, so few shed a tear when he was killed in a convenient hunting accident in 1100. His brother, Henry I claimed power the very same day. He imposed similarly high tax demands on his people to fund his obsession with retaking Normandy, which he ultimately did in 1106. Upon his death, Henry named his daughter Matilda as his heir. But the nobles resisted the idea of a female ruler and instead backed Steven of Blua, a powerful landowner and grandson of William the Conqueror. Steven was a dreadful king. He lacked the charisma or ruthlessness necessary for the crown and England descended into a period known as the anarchy. The baronss noticed Steven's weakness and asserted their authority in defiance of royal control, ignoring his orders and ruling almost independently. In 1139, Matilda invaded England to claim her promised throne while her husband targeted Normandy. The Scots also invaded simultaneously and the Welsh rebelled too, forcing Steven into a war on multiple fronts. In 1141, Steven was defeated by his cousin at the Battle of Lincoln and taken captive. He was released a few months later when his wife, also named Matilda, defeated his cousin at Winchester. Still, fighting stretched on for years with no end in sight until 1153 when Matilda's son Henry arrived with a fresh army. At almost the same time, Steven's son and heir Eustace died unexpectedly. With the realm exhausted, the king wallowing in grief, and no heir to speak of, Steven was forced to make peace. He signed the humiliating treaty of Westminster which forced him to accept Henry as his successor. Steven finally died on December 19th, 1154, passing the fractured Norman realm to the Plant Jane Anjan dynasty. The Anjan Empire. Henry II's reign brought most of France and England together under the same crown and ended the 15-year long anarchy. His ane empire stretched from the borders of Scotland down to the Pyrenees. His marriage to Eleanor of Aquitane added that valuable kingdom to his realm too. And a formidable woman to serve as queen. With such a vast and wealthy realm, Henry II was the greatest monarch in Europe for a time. However, he was clearly more French than English and spent most of his reign in Normandy. Henry's biggest contribution to England was in matters of law. The growing power of the king and the conception of the realm as all being in his possession made all matters of justice his concern. Most crimes had come to be offenses against the king's peace. And thus Henry tackled legal issues by introducing juries, reducing trial by ordeal, and expanding the court system with both a new royal court and traveling courts known as heirs to dispense justice across the realm. Henry's reforms of the court system to hammer out local inconsistencies and create a more

### Segment 14 (65:00 - 70:00) [1:05:00]

standardized legal landscape are regarded as the start of English common law. Henry II's reign is well known for his dispute with Archbishop Thomas Beckett. Henry wanted to reassert powers over the church that were lost in the anarchy, but Beckett resisted. Beckett fled into exile where he remained for 6 years. In his absence, Henry had his son known as Henry the Young King crowned as co-regent. Coronation was a unique privilege of Canterbury, and this infuriated Beckett. Beckett returned from exile in 1170 and excommunicated the bishops who had done the coronation. When Henry heard the news, he was exasperated. "Oh, will no one rid me of this turbulent priest? " He supposedly said some of his knights took that as an order. On December 29th, 1170, four of those knights slew Beckett inside Canterbury Cathedral. Europe was shocked at the murder and Henry became a pariah. He was forced to pay penance by sending knights to Jerusalem, building multiple monasteries and accepting papal control of most church affairs. But his reputation never recovered. Conquest and rebellion in the Anjivven Empire. There was still much work to be done to repair the damage of Steven's reign. In 1153, England reclaims Durham, Northumberland, and West Morland from Scotland, securing England and Scotland's modern borders. Henry was much less successful in reclaiming Wales. The Welsh princes bent the knee only briefly at the start of his reign before launching a great uprising in 1165 that left Wales independent once again, albeit with tribute obligations to England. Much more success was seen in Ireland. When the Irish king Dermat Mcmura of Linster sought Henry's aids to reclaim the throne, Henry allowed his nobles to sail over and aid him. This included Richard of Clare, nicknamed the Strongbo, who married Dermit's daughter and helped him retake Dublin. But when Dermit died in 1171, Richard of Clare claimed the crown, which caused Henry to rush over and reign in his powerful vassel. Richard agreed to surrender his Irish lands over to Henry, marking the start of English rule over the Irish. Henry and his vassels plundered Ireland for several years, and English rule soon fell upon the entire island. The greatest military tests of Henry's reign came from within. In 1173, Henry's unpopularity provoked a great revolt led by his own sons, wife, and powerful baronss. It enjoyed support from France and Scotland, the latter of whom invaded England under William of Lion. Henry defeated the invaders and rebels on the field, but spared his sons and his wife Eleanor. However, it was a dire sign of Henry's low popularity and insecure rule in the years after the Beckett scandal. He got only a few years of reprieve until 1183 when his designated heir, Henry the Young King, died. His second son, Richard, wanted the throne. But Henry favored the younger John in a dramatic move. Richard appealed to the energetic new King Philip Augustus of France to pressure Henry to appoint Richard as the heir at a meeting in November 1188. When Henry refused, Richard fell to his knees before Philip and pledged feelalty to him instead. A brief war followed where Henry was thoroughly routed. Richard was far more popular and with France's support, Henry had no hope of victory. He retreated to Anju where he died in the summer of 1184, leaving Richard to inherit his kingdom. Richard to Magna Carta. King Richard I spent more time on the Third Crusade than he did in England and never even learned the language. His exploits in Sicily, Cyprus, and the Holy Land earned him the title of Lionheart. But they were of little relevance to England itself. More relevant was the breakdown in Richard's relationship with fellow European rulers, especially the king of France and the Holy Roman Emperor, which led to Richard's capture and imprisonment in

### Segment 15 (70:00 - 75:00) [1:10:00]

1193. His mother and his vassels imposed a heavy tax upon the English people to raise enough money to pay off his ransom, only for Richard to be shot dead by a child in 1199. The throne should have passed to his young nephew Arthur, but his brother John was the favorite of the nobles and the aging Eleanor. Jon was an unpopular and often reckless ruler. Skilled in administration, but disastrous in diplomacy and in war. Within a few years, he had reopened hostilities with the king of France, which resulted in Jon losing all of the French territory, but not before blackening his reputation with the capture and murder of his nephew Arthur. Left isolated in England, John got himself excommunicated by the Pope in a dispute over the Archbishop of Canterbury, he tried and failed to retake his territory in France, leading to his defeat at the Battle of Bovine in July of 1214. The fact that Jon had heavily taxed his realm to pay for these failed campaigns didn't help, and endless stories of Jon's cruel, abusive, and arrogant character led to open rebellion. In 1215, the great baronss of the realm marched on London. And soon the church, lesser nobles, merchants, and towns people along with other sectors of society tired of Jon's awful rule joined them. Jon met them to negotiate at Runny in June, where a landmark new document was drawn up. Magna Carta was a response to Jon's disastrous rule, seeking to limit royal power and protect feudal rights. Initially, it was a peace treaty that failed, but later reissues helped establish lasting principles of law. The king was no longer allowed to raise certain taxes without the approval of the king's council, and his powers in other matters were greatly limited. Magna Carta also guaranteed the right to a trial and offered numerous protections for the interests of baronss, the church and merchants. Initially, these protections existed only for the elites. But in time, the principles of Magna Carta would expand to the common people. Above all, Magna Carta asserted the supremacy of law over that of the king and placed clear limits on his power. Magna Carta introduced the idea that the king was subject to law, though English monarchs continued to wield significant power for centuries. Jon was not pleased, and neither was the pope, who also condemned Magna Carta. Jon and the baronss resumed their war, but the king's death in 1216 ended the fighting. The 9-year-old Henry III took the throne with less land and less power than his predecessors. However, between its towering castles and powerful knights, its peasant villages and thriving towns, its newfound common law and Magna Carta, its antagonistic relationship with its Celtic neighbors, and its avowed hostility to France, many of the iconic pieces of the English nation and identity were securely in place. In this video, we'll see how medieval England contended with many of its great enemies, including France, Scotland, the Black Death, and with itself. Power struggles, foreign conflicts, and civil wars would drag England to some of its greatest heights and bloodiest lows. As the medieval period came to a close, late medieval England, life for the average English person was simple, if a bit dull. The medieval masses toiled away on the fields with little hope of improving their lot in life. The monotony of agricultural toil was broken by religious holidays and feast days. The various guilds were now wellestablished and powered thriving industries in the towns and cities of England. Town residents traded the instability of agricultural life for the opportunities that urban living opened up through taking up a specialist trade, becoming a merchant or a servant to the urban elite. As for the nobility, when they weren't out on the battlefield, they would be hunting, participating in tournaments, or enjoying the relaxing life that their high social status gave them. Baronss and lords similarly grew fat off the revenues of their manurial estates.

### Segment 16 (75:00 - 80:00) [1:15:00]

At the royal level, the 13th century was dominated by two longived kings in Henry III and Edward I whose long reigns had a formative impact on England and its neighbors. Parliament Henry III was an only child when he came to power which made it easier for the baronss and lords to establish the limitations imposed upon the monarchy under Magna Carta. Henry's 56-year reign provided plenty of time to test these limits and contribute to the development of England's most significant political institution, Parliament. Parliament grew out of the king's great council. The council consisted of the king, his baronss and earls, his top ministers along with the bishops and abbotts of the realm. The addition of Knights of the Shire and Town Burgesses reflected a changing England and the evolution into Parliament as we recognize it. This parliament had been slowly becoming more important since Magna Carta. But Henry III's long minority and then Edward's legal reforms both gave opportunities for it to grow. Edward passed extensive legislative measures that established the principle of statute law. This simplified and codified the existing common law system and Edward leaned upon parliament to approve it and guarantee its support. Edward used this statute law to rein in local privately controlled courts, simplified the feudal system by ending subimpudation, and passed several laws tackling local government corruption. Like many things in government, the biggest issue in Parliament's rise was taxation. Feudal dues and land rents had once been the main source of the king's income. But by the late 13th century, changes in the feudal economy and the growth of the tax system had reversed the relationship. Taxes now made up most of the king's revenue, and that money was needed more than ever to fund the spiraling cost of the king's main expense, war. Ongoing wars with Scotland and France in the 13th and 14th centuries forced kings to go begging to Parliament for permission to raise taxes more often than ever before. In 1297, Edward I's expensive wars with Scotland and France caused him to raise taxes without Parliament's permission. Furious, Parliament passed the confirmation of the charters which forbade the king raising taxes without its consent. By 1307, Parliament had developed two houses. The houses of lords composed mostly of hereditary peers and a house of commons drawn from a more representative sway of the population including knights of the Shire and town burgesses. Although they primarily represented property owning and affluent classes throughout the 14th century, Parliament became more assertive, it insisted upon being summoned more often and put up more of a fight over taxation. Parliament used its tax powers as a way to push forward its own agenda, threatening to withhold taxation unless the king agreed to its usually modest legislative demands. It was still a long way from the parliament we know today, but it was on its way there. The 13th century was also crucial for England's relations with its closest neighbors. Wales under Prince Llewellyn the last rebelled against England first in 1277 and again in 1282. Edward I waged an effective campaign in North and South Wales simultaneously leading to the battle of Orwin Bridge in December 1283 where Prince Llewellyn was slain. As the name implies, Llewellyn the last was the last independent ruler of Wales which now became fully subjugated to England. Wales's distinct language, culture, and people meant it was never fully English. English law was imposed from the larger urban centers, but most of Wales remained rural and Welshspeaking. As the Normans had done before, Edward secured his control of Wales with a number of impressive castles, including the famous castles at Harle and Kernarven, which are among the finest examples of medieval castle construction anywhere in Europe. England's relationship with Scotland was even more turbulent. When the Scottish crown was left vacant with no clear air

### Segment 17 (80:00 - 85:00) [1:20:00]

in 1290, Edward offered himself as a neutral arbitrator, much to the relief of the Scottish nobility. However, it was soon clear that Edward's chosen candidate, John Baleiel, was nothing more than a puppet. In 1295, the Scots conducted a secret alliance with the French, which was all the justification Edward needed to march north and seize the throne for himself. It was a bloody and brutal conquest, which in 1297 led the Scottish rebel William Wallace to rise up against him. The first Scottish war of independence raged on for years. The Scots initially had the upper hand with a victory at the Battle of Sterling Bridge. But in time, their momentum failed. With a fresh army drawn from recently conquered Wales, the English defeated the Scottish at the Battle of Falerk in 1298. Wallace remained at large until 1305 when he was captured and handed over to Edward who charged him with treason and atrocities. Wallace was then hanged, drawn, quartered, and beheaded. However, the Scots already had a champion in waiting. In 1306, Robert the Bruce asserted himself as king of Scots and Edward's death on route to Scotland delayed the English response. The Scots finally got their setpiece battle at Banakburn in June 1314 where they crushed the English army and killed several leading English nobles. Banak burn functionally ended English control of Scotland for several centuries and Scottish independence was formally recognized with the treaty of Edinburgh Northampton in 1328. Banak burn helped spell the end of Edwards II's reign too. The loss of Scotland, coupled with mounting crown debt and a power-hungry nobility, led Parliament to denounce Edward and demand his abdication. The powerful noble, Roger Mortimer, allied with Edward's own wife, Isabella, to orchestrate his removal from power, and the abdicated king died in captivity in 1327, most likely murdered. He would not be the last medieval English monarch to suffer such a fate. Encounters with Scotland and Wales helped define English identity. But perhaps no country was more important to that identity than France. The H 100red Years War. After eliminating Roger Mortimer and forcibly retiring his mother Isabella, Edward III seized full power and set his sights on conquest across the channel. Since the disastrous reign of King John, the English monarchs had disputed with the king of France over control of French territory. In 1293, for example, the French seized control of Gaskiny for several years. And although Edward I recovered it, relations with the French remained tense, Edward III would not just seek to recover lands, but claim the throne of France itself. Thus began the 116y yearlong period of hostilities known as the 100red years war. These conflicts were long and complicated as their effects on England were more indirect since it occurred entirely in France. The conflict with France still became a landmark moment in English national identity and offered some of the most iconic moments in English history. In 1346, Edward's outnumbered army met the French at the Battle of Cressy, where English and Welsh longbow men annihilated the French knights. A similarly tremendous victory came to his son, Edward the Black Prince, at the Battle of Poier in 1356. By 1360, France was forced to sue for a truce with England now in control of much of France. But aided in part by the French unity, the tide turned against England. Black Death. A major reason for the break in the fighting was the arrival of a much worse enemy, plague. The Black Death first reached England in late 1348, probably arriving via refugees from the continent. Carried by the fleas that lived on rats, the plague devastated the English population. The cities that had been marks of progress in recent centuries were the perfect environment for the disease to spread. England's pre-plague population

### Segment 18 (85:00 - 90:00) [1:25:00]

sat at around 6 million. By the time the first wave died down in late 1349, 40% of that population was dead. One monk described the desolation. Towns once packed with people were emptied of their inhabitants, and the plague spread so thickly that the living were hardly able to bury the dead. Entire villages were wiped out, and some towns lost most of their population. The first wave was the worst, but the plague returned numerous times throughout the rest of the medieval and early modern period. Another wave in 1361 killed a further 20% of the population. But later waves had generally decreasing mortality. The devastation caused by the plague triggered profound social shifts. Everyone in England would have lost someone and the cumulative psychological effect was obvious. Depictions and descriptions of death became more prominent and more graphic. such as in churches or art. As society wrestled with the horror they'd lived through, this art became harder to make, though, as the mass of loss and population took with it countless skilled masons, painters, architects, smiths, and other talented craftsmen. The survivors found themselves with more land and more demand for their labor than ever before. The plague proved to be the deathnell for the feudal manorial system as desperate landlords struggled to find laborers willing to work for measly rewards. Over the course of the 14th century, manners declined as peasants bought up or leased land under fairer terms, marking one of the largest redistributions of land ownership in English history. By 1400, the income for a typical peasant household was around double where it had been in 1300. This manorial collapse didn't go unopposed. The statute of laborers passed in 1370 attempted to cap wages across the country to stifle the power of the peasants. And tax reforms in the 1370s to support the resumption of the H 100red Years War also fell heavily upon the peasantry. It wasn't that the peasants were worse off than they were in the past, but that they felt that they were entitled to more. So, in May 1377, a wave of peasant uprisings broke out across southeast England before spreading elsewhere. The great peasants revolt descended upon London where the cobbled together crowds besieged King Richard II at the Tower of London. They demanded an abolition of feudal lordship, surfdom, and villainage to create a more equal English society beneath the king. Although he initially agreed to some demands, he later reversed course, ordering the execution of Watt Tyler, the London rebels dispersed, although minor local rebellions simmered away for months elsewhere in England. The ongoing wars with France contributed to these social and economic changes. The common soldier during the Hundred Years War drew a steady wage which increased the circulation and use of money back in England. Artisans and craftsmen faced huge demands to outfit these armies which stimulated economic development at home. Then of course there were taxes. The Hundred Years War helped to confirm Parliament's power over the purse as cashstrapped kings constantly sought its permission to raise more funds for the war efforts. The balance of power between king and parliament had shifted decisively. A more subtle social change was also occurring across England at this time. As a symbol of the nation, the English language gained additional status and protections. In 1362, it was made the official language of law, replacing the Norman introduced French and became the language of court and politics. In 1382, John Wlcliffe finished the first complete English translation of the Bible, further cementing English's legitimacy and popularity. This English translation also inspired the Lard movement which challenged church authority and called for religious reform. Then in the 1390s, Jeffrey Choser's Canterbury Tales did for English what Dante's Divine Comedy had done for Italian, creating a landmark work that legitimized the use of English for

### Segment 19 (90:00 - 95:00) [1:30:00]

literature and became a cultural touchstone for generations to come. Gathering storms. Richard II's rejection of the peasants revolt was just one of the many things that made him deeply unpopular. He spent most of his reign locked in battle with Parliament and his nobility over his exercise of royal power. Eventually, one of those nobles, Henry Ballingroke, Duke of Lancaster, rose up against him. The nobility quickly flocked to his banner and in 1399 he deposed Richard II who died in prison a few months later. Henry IVth's assession was welcomed at the time, but it would cause long-term problems. It established the precedent of deposing the monarch and taking the throne by the sword. Although Henry IV had royal blood via descent from Edward III, the competing claims of multiple distant royal heirs from the cadet branches of the Plant Jane line, those being Henry's House of Lancaster and later the House of York would plunge England into chaos. Hints of that chaos already manifested in Henry's reign. He spent much of it suppressing rebellions in his realm that indicated his tenuous legitimacy. A Wayne Glendor's rebellion in Wales marks the last great Welsh uprising which lingered into Henry V's reign. Meanwhile, a rebellion by the powerful House of Percy led by the popular Sir Henry Hotspur Percy was a bitter blow to his support and those problems faded into the reign of his son Henry V. Much like Richard I, his reputation as a fearless warrior overshadows the fact that he spent much of his reign outside England and did not have a domestic impact to match his battlefield one. Still, Henry V's military accomplishments cannot be denied. On October 25th, 1415, Henry's outnumbered forces met the French at Ajinort. Instead of a crushing defeat, Agent Court became one of the greatest victories in English history. Trapped by the mud and showered with arrows from the English longbows, a massive chunk of the French nobility, including three dukes, six counts, 90 barons, and almost 2,000 knights were slain. Ainort and Henry V's name were forever enshrined in the annals of English history. Ajin court marked the peak of England's success in the hundred years war. Henry V died of dissentry in 1422 and his successor Henry V 6th lacked the grit or ambition to be an effective king. The war in France became the affair of lesser nobles while domestic affairs were increasingly dominated by parliament and the nobility. Meanwhile, the French rallied against the English and undid virtually all of their gains on the continent over the following years. By 1453, the English retained only cal. 1453 traditionally marks the end of the 100red years war, but England was not about to enjoy peace. Henry V 6th's weak reign proved to be England's undoing. Powerful nobles without royal oversight and outof work troops home from France found enemies in each other. There were several sizable battles between nobles in England and in the late 1440s and early 1450s and a serious uprising known as Cad's rebellion in 1450 against corrupt and ineffective government. There was also an increase in banditry and local governmental abuses. Meanwhile, there was a sharp economic downturn caused by the chaos in the countryside and interruptions to foreign trade. To make things worse, Henry V 6th suffered a serious mental breakdown. Power uphors a vacuum and the two great noble families of York and Lancaster aimed to fill it. Richard, Duke of York, petitioned to be named the king's heir. However, the House of Lancaster, led by Edmunds, Duke of Somerset, and Queen Margaret, who wanted to secure her infant son Edward's inheritance, fiercely opposed it. In 1455, after Henry experienced a recovery of his faculties, Richard raised a Yorkist army to capture the king and kill Edmund, which he did at the Battle of St. Albins's marking the start of the Wars

### Segment 20 (95:00 - 100:00) [1:35:00]

of the Roses. Richard installed himself as royal protector, effectively keeping Henry as a puppet, but his power was short-lived. Richard and the Yorkists soon fell from favor and in 1459 were denounced as traitors by Parliament. Fighting reignited with Henry being captured again at the Battle of Northampton in 1459. Yorkist fortunes were reversed with Richard's death at the Battle of Wakefields the following year, leaving the Yorkist claim in the hands of his son Edward. Edward marched on London, which threw open the gates to him and accepted him as Edward IVth. Edward then went north where he crushed the Lancastrians at the Battle of Talon. With almost 30,000 men killed in a single day, it was the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil. With the victory at Toutton and with Henry V 6th fleeing to Scotland, it seems that the Yorkist grip on the throne was secure. However, after Edward's marriage to the minor noble Elizabeth Woodville, one of his allies, the Earl of Warick, betrayed him and restored Henry V 6th to the throne in 1470. Edward fled to France only to return the next year to reclaim his crown. He killed the Earl of Warick at the battle of Barnett in April and then slew Henry V 6th's son and heir at the battle of Tukesbury in May. Edward ordered most of the Lancastrian leadership to be executed, and Henry V 6th's convenient death a few days later was probably ordered by him, too. Edward IVth was a competent king who restored stability over a decade and began repairing the crown's dismal finances. England was exhausted by this point and welcomed his peaceful rule. It seemed the wars of the roses were over. However, Edward died suddenly in spring 1483, leaving the crown to his 12-year-old son, Edward V. Whether due to ambition or fear of a weak ruler, Edward V was never formally crowned and was declared illegitimate by his own uncle Richard, Duke of Gloster, who installed himself as Richard III. The young Edward along with his brother were imprisoned in the Tower of London where they disappeared a few months later. It is widely believed that Richard III had them killed. The murder of the princes in the tower permanently stained Richard's reputation. Even fellow Yorkists turned against him. It was the perfect time for the Lancastrian claims to be resurrected. Henry Chuder, a distant scion of the House of Lancaster, who had fled to France after the Lancastrian defeat at Tukesbury in 1471, seized his chance. Backed by the king of France, he landed in Wales in 1485. The remaining Lancastrians flocked to his banner, as did the Welsh, for he had been born in Wales, and so did many others across England, who despised the child murdering Richard. Henry and Richard met at the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22nd, 1485, where Richard III became the last English king to fall in battle. Henry seized power as Henry VIIIth and married Elizabeth of York to unite the two houses, bringing a final end to the Wars of the Roses through the creation of the House of Tudtor. England was about to embark on one of its most exciting and dangerous chapters that would open its path to global domination. England's journey into the Renaissance would be helmed by its most famous royal dynasty. These monarchs with their personal beliefs, biases, and neurosis would change the lives of their subjects in dramatic ways. They shaped England more than most royals ever did and enshrines themselves as some of the most famous and infamous names in English history. In this video, we will follow England during the reign of the tutors as court scandals, foreign invasions, and earthshaking religious reforms changed England forever. The Winter King. Henry VIIIth faced an uphill battle. Having spent most of his life in France, he had few connections in England and was more culturally French than English. He cleared the board of many potential enemies by cleverly dating his reign to the day before Bosworth, retroactively making any allies of Richard III guilty of

### Segment 21 (100:00 - 105:00) [1:40:00]

treason, allowing him to seize their lands and titles. His weak claim to the throne proved a constant menace. Henry had to fight off two major pretenders to his throne. First Lambert Simnel in 1487 who claims to be a nephew of Richard III and then Perkin Warbeck in 1491 who claims to be one of the missing princes in the tower. Most historians agree both claimments were frauds, but they showed how tenuous Henry's reign was at the start. In the latter case, Henry's own Chamberlain Sir William Stanley secretly conspired to help Warbeck, which earned him an execution. However, by the late 1490s, things had settled. Henry had two sons to serve as heirs and secured England's foreign relations with strategic marriages. He married his eldest son, Arthur, to Catherine of Aragon, hoping to bind England and Spain through marriage into an anti-French alliance. Arthur's sudden death in 1502 came as a shock, but Henry salvaged the alliance by offering the hand of his second son and new heir, also named Henry instead. He also repaired relations with Scotland by marrying off his daughter Margaret to King James IVth. Through it all, one of Henry's main aims was to fix the country's finances. This he did with meticulous care, pouring over his accounts every day and carefully tracking everything he was owed. Henry redirected funds into his personal treasury to keep a close eye on things. But aside from his occasional extravagance in courtly ritual, he was something of a penny pincher. His uncompromising will to squeeze out every penny he was owed and not waste it didn't earn him love. He was quite unpopular by the time he died, but it did heal England's finances. When he died in 1509, Henry left the crown wealthier and more financially secure than it had been in decades. Enclosures. The picture for England at large was not so simple. By 1500, England's population had recovered from the effects of the Black Death. wages and the availability of land was no longer growing as they had during the 15th century and in some places they were starting to shrink. One of the hot button issues of the age was enclosures. This was the process of a land owner buying up a large area of land and enclosing it with a hedge or fence to prevent its public use. This denial of land to the Commons angered many regular Englishmen and limited their ability to farm. The end of the feudal system meant landlords no longer saw their land as a means to provide for their military obligations, but as something to be exploited for maximum profit. Therefore, many landlords were happy to evict farmers to use the land to pasture animals, especially sheep for wool. Several laws were passed under Henry VIIIth to try tackling enclosures, but these laws had little effect. Between 1485 and 1500, for example, some 16,000 acres of land was enclosed across Northamptonshire, Warikshere, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshshire, and Burkshere, most of which went to pasture. The effects of enclosure were not felt equally everywhere. While enclosures were a non-issue in some shiers, others faced huge challenges like Leicester where some 40 villages were totally enclosed and had to be abandoned between 1485 and 1530. Managing pasturage took much less labor per acreage than farming, leading to unemployment that drove more and more rural people into the cities. Urban life was not much easier. It was common for people to work 12-hour days or more, and the average laborer would have very little of his wages left after paying for the main expenses of rent, food, drink, fuel, and clothes. However, when harvests were good and work available, the urban Englishman enjoyed a quality of life above that of any commoner before him. Life was still hard, but it was probably easier than it had been for any generations before him. This urbanization was a continual trend of the tutor era. In London alone, the urban population rose from around 50,000 when Henry VIIIth took power to 200,000 when Elizabeth died in6003. Henry VIII. Life was changing in England, but few

### Segment 22 (105:00 - 110:00) [1:45:00]

people could have expected the changes that began during the reign of Henry VIII. History knows Henry as a tyrannous glutton who tore apart the church to satisfy his lust for a woman to give him a son. At the start of his reign, at least Henry was nothing like this. Handsome, active, and intelligent, Henry spent his early reign basking in the wealth his father had left him. Fond of sports, music, and hunting, Henry's court was a thriving hub of Renaissance culture and royal ceremony that ranked among the finest in Europe. A devout Catholic, Henry satisfied his faith and desire for glory with wars in France and Spain. Although he never achieved any great victory worth retelling. By the late 1520s though, two serious problems had emerged. First, Henry's extravagance was depleting the crown's treasury. Secondly, Catherine of Aragon had failed to produce a son, and she was getting too old to bear him anymore. By now, the king's eyes had begun to wander to Anne Berlin, who promised Henry an heir, if only he could marry her. In 1527, Henry failed to secure an anulment of his marriage to Catherine from the Pope, which left him furious. But Anne Berlin was more than just a pretty face. She was a Protestant. By now, the Protestant Reformation was well underway in Europe, and it was probably Berlin who led Henry to embrace it. Henry began appointing other Protestants to powerful positions, such as Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury and Thomas Cromwell as his chief minister. The sincerity of Henry's conversion has always been questioned. Did he only do it to marry Anne? Possibly. Was it a power grab? Henry was hardly the first king of England to butt heads with Rome over church authority. Either way, in April 1533, Parliament declares the king the supreme authority on religious matters in England and Wales. Henceforth, the Church of England would not submit to papal authority. Ignoring the excommunication that came his way, Henry enulled his marriage with Catherine to marry Anne, who was already pregnant with what she promised would be a son, only for her to deliver him a daughter, Elizabeth. The English Reformation. For the people of England, Henry's break with Rome was mostly procedural and did not directly affect their daily lives. Worship continued under what some historians have labeled Catholicism without the pope. More significant for England at large was the subsequent dissolution of the monasteries. Seen as bastions of papal power and a bounty of wealth and land for the cash-trapped crown. Henry ordered every monastery in England to be closed in 1536. Almost 1,000 years of English monastic tradition was ended by royal decree. The monasteries had been centers of charity and shelter for many in England. Coupled with the uncertainty from the break with Rome, as well as spiraling food prices thanks to poor harvests in 1535, a massive rebellion known as the pilgrimage of grace erupted in 1536. Described as the greatest internal threat ever posed to the Tudtor dynasty, the pilgrimage was both a religious and economic protest against the consequences of Henry's government. Although they did not target the king himself, most of their eyeire fell upon his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, as a scapegoat to avoid the crime of criticizing the crown. Despite mass sympathy for the rebels, Henry refused to accept the insults to his authority. The pilgrims lacked the desire to violently oppose the crown and were mostly helpless when Henry ordered their leaders to be rounded up and executed. Concerned about further rebellion, Henry passed the Crown of Ireland Act in 1542 to formalize his title as King of Ireland. And he also tightened his grip on Wales with two laws in Wales acts that sought to simplify English administration while stamping out the use of the Welsh language in government there. Both laws came to be resented by the nations they were imposed upon, but rebellion was avoided in both nations. Aside from the monasteries, the other consequential religious change for the

### Segment 23 (110:00 - 115:00) [1:50:00]

English people was the English Bible. English translations had existed before, but from 1539, Henry ordered a copy of the William Tinale English translations to be placed and read aloud in every church. Opening access to the faith for the common people was one of the more popular Protestant reforms and probably helped people accept the new religious system. the later reign of Henry VIII. Back in the royal court, Anne Bolin's time in the spotlight was short-lived. Henry grew tired of her and in 1536 she was accused of adultery and incest, which earned her a spot beneath the headsman's ax. It's unlikely she'd done anything more than lose Henry's interest. Henry had already turned his attention towards Jane Seymour, who he married less than 2 weeks after Anne's death. It was Jane who finally granted him the male heir he'd always wanted, giving birth to Prince Edward in October 1537. It was a bittersweet moment, though, as Jane died of complications from the pregnancy a few days later. She might have been the only wife who Henry still loved when the marriage ended. He would marry three more times. To Anne of Cleves, who he divorced 6 months after marrying her for being too ugly, to Catherine Howard, who was beheaded less than a year later for adultery. And finally, Catherine Parr, an intelligent and compassionate woman who remained married to Henry until his death in 1547. Henry knew he would die before Edward would come of age. He appointed a 16-man Regency council under the leadership of Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset and Edward's maternal uncle to manage the realm until then. As Lord Protector, Somerset dominated Edward's early reign. Edward was raised to be a devout Protestant and his government was controlled by men of a similar mind. Unlike his father, Edward's reign saw aggressive Protestant reforms that reached down to the daily lives of English people. In line with Protestant beliefs, all images and relics in English churches were torn down and England's chanteries which offered prayers to the departed were also closed. The dissolution of the chanteries also dissolved many related institutions including schools, poor houses and hospitals which had provided necessary support to the common people. The forcible introduction of a new Protestant book of common prayer in 1549 proved to be a step too far. Edward's brief reign saw two serious rebellions. The first in Cornwall in 1549 against the Book of Common Prayer was put down with much brutality. A second erupted in the same year in Norfolk, but this time the primary complaint were the enclosures which had been a nuisance for decades at this point. Kat's rebellion demanded royal limits on enclosures and numerous other reforms targeting abuses and exploitation relating to rents and tithes. This too was put down with tremendous slaughter. This disorder reflected badly on the Lord's protector who was soon deposed and replaced by the Duke of North umberland. Northumberland continued to advance the Reformation with a revised prayer book and mandatory church attendance to Protestant services in 1552. These were sweeping changes that reached into the daily lives of regular people, but they were halted in their tracks in 1553 when King Edward fell ill and died. This was a disaster for the Protestants for their only heir was Edward's eldest halfsister, the devout Catholic Mary. North umberland and the dying Edward hastily passed a law to declare his Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Gray, as his successor, but it was a pointless endeavor. Lady Jane Gray had little support and the nation rallied towards Mary as the legitimate tutor heir. Bloody Mary. On October 1st, 1553, Mary I became the first sovereign queen of England. Mary's agenda was clear from the start to restore Catholicism. Immediately, she rolled back her half-brother's reforms. She allowed the Catholic mass to be celebrated again, restored icons and decorations to churches, and began to refound the monasteries her father had destroyed. Seeking to secure her foreign alliances

### Segment 24 (115:00 - 120:00) [1:55:00]

and restore England to the Catholic fold, she announced her intention to marry King Philip II of Spain. This marriage was deeply controversial. Englishmen, both noble and commoner, hated the idea of a foreign king who might seize England for himself. In 1554, there was even a minor uprising known as Wyatt's rebellion, which aims to halt the marriage and oppose the Catholic restoration, but it failed to achieve anything significant. The marriage went ahead, but not without parliament passing strict laws limiting Philip's power. Like any monarch, Mary sultanire, but she was already in her late30s when she took the throne, and her husband showed little interest in staying in England. Twice Mary thought she was pregnant, and twice she was wrong. Mary's desperation to have an heir as an alternative to her Protestant halfsister Elizabeth was never alleviated. Mary's Catholicism dominated her reign and it seemed clouded her judgment. In 1555, as part of her campaign to undo the Protestant Reformation, Mary began dispensing the ultimate punishment to Protestant heretics, burning. Around 300 Protestants were burned at the stake across England and Wales. Far from restoring Catholicism, the burnings horrified the populace and allowed the Protestants a martyr's death. Most famously, Thomas Cranmer, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who had engineered Henry's divorce from Mary's mother, was burned in Oxford in 1556, making him one of the most famous martyrs in English history. It was all for not since Mary's Catholic Counterreformation ended with her death in 1558. What she thought was a pregnancy turned out to be cancer. Unable to secure an heir, the throne passed to Elizabeth I. Young, educated, and moderate, Elizabeth faced the immense task of settling England's chaotic religious affairs. Her approach was a middleway between hardline Protestantism and the trappings of old Catholicism. In the first 2 years of her reign, she passed acts of supremacy and uniformity to assert her place as head of the church and mandate the use of a revised book of common prayer. In 1563, her government passed the 39 articles to outline the beliefs of the Church of England. While more moderate than Edward's Protestantism, it was still undeniably Protestantism. But Elizabeth was more interested in stability than zealatry. She did not wish to make windows into men's souls. And so long as people outwardly conformed to the new religion, they faced no punishment for what they might believe in private. Many Catholics were still unhappy. And the most radical Puritan Protestants felt she didn't go far enough. She spent the rest of her reign trying to deal with these more radical fringes, passing laws restricting the activities of Catholic missionaries and appointing church officials to root out radical Puritans. Ultimately though, her middle ground approach satisfied the majority of the population and her reforms were the foundation of the Anglican church that stands to this day. One thing Elizabeth refused to do though was marry, probably fearing that her husband would take her power. Elizabeth never tied the knot, claiming to be married only to England. Despite her epitet of the Virgin Queen, she definitely had lovers. But she remained unwed, much to the frustration of Mary's widow, Philip II, who tried marrying Elizabeth to resecure the English Spanish alliance. This lack of an heir or the means to acquire one was a constant security concern, which only became graver as Catholic Europe arrayed against her. In 1586, a Catholic plot to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots, a descendant of Henry VIIIth, was foiled, and Elizabeth had Mary executed. The execution of a Catholic monarch and potential heir was all the justification Philip needed to invade England and depose Elizabeth. Philip assembled a Spanish armada carrying tens of thousands of troops to sail against England in 1588. With the most powerful empire in the world bearing down on her, Elizabeth's days seem numbered. But three factors saved England from defeat.

### Segment 25 (120:00 - 125:00) [2:00:00]

First, Elizabeth herself, whose steady leadership and rousing speeches to the troops restored hope in the face of certain defeat. Secondly, and most importantly, a tremendous storm hit the Armada on route, sinking and damaging many of the ships. Finally, the quick thinking of English captains like Sir Francis Drake and John Hawkins, who sent fire ships into the battered armada that inflicted devastating damage. Had Spain successfully landed, they probably would have won. But against all odds, England prevailed. The Elizabethan Age. The defeats of the Spanish Armada was a high point in English history. England had fended off the greatest power in the world and was embarking on its own path to claim that title. The riches of the Americas had made Spain powerful and Elizabeth was keen to do the same. English explorers at first reached the Americas during Henry VIIIth's reign with the king commissioning John Kat to conduct the first modern European exploration of the North American coast. Elizabeth intensified these exploration and colonization efforts such as through Sir Walter Raleigh who sailed out on her commission and named the territory of Virginia in her honor. Her reign also saw England's first attempt at an American colony at Rowanoke Island in modern North Carolina. Although the colony disappeared and its fate remains a mystery to this day. More consequential for England's future was her chartering of the East India Company in 1600 to manage trade in Asia. In time, the East India Company would become one of the most powerful arms of British imperialism. With religious stability, foreign rivals kept at bay, and English explorers entering new lands, it is no wonder that Elizabeth's reign is often seen as a golden age for England. It was a golden age felt at many levels. On a government level, Elizabeth ruled efficiently and modestly. She avoided the extravagant spending of her father and as a result only called Parliament to session 13 times in her 44-year reign. She also expanded Parliament, particularly the House of Commons, with dozens of new seats to provide opportunity for the growing gentry. Despite hostility with some Catholic powers, trade flourished, and Elizabeth passed laws to protect and expand key economic sectors like the wool trade. This wealth was funneled into a vibrant wave of artistic and architectural expression. Elizabeth and England was a true Renaissance nation where extravagant houses and dazzling works of art were more common than ever before. At the same time, new goods from distant lands flowed into England, like tobacco and potatoes, which were quickly available even to regular English people. All of this depended upon a thriving merchant class who were some of the biggest beneficiaries of the tutor age. And of course there could be no discussion of Elizabeth and England's flourishing without discussing William Shakespeare. Born in Stratford upon a in 1564, Shakespeare began his career as an actor before becoming renowned as a poet and playwright. Shakespeare's extensive bibliography of plays, sonnetss, and other works include many of the most famous stories in the English language. Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet and McBth to name a few. His inventive use of idioms and rich portrayals of historical figures in his historical plays had an influence far beyond the stage. Shakespeare's popularity and influence demonstrates the thriving cultural environment of the Elizabethan age where great artists could enjoy fame and fortune while the masses could enrich themselves with the finest cultural productions of the era. For all of her successes though, Elizabeth's final years were marked by economic hardship caused by lingering hostilities with Spain and an Irish rebellion in 1595. Inflation suppressed wages, especially towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, and there was a serious problem with vagrancy. The 1598 poor law provided for the relief and support of the poorest Englishmen, depending heavily on private philanthropy and cooperation of the parish churches to tackle the problem. This poor law would remain in effect until the 19th century. Elizabeth died in6003 after an impactful 44-year reign. With

### Segment 26 (125:00 - 130:00) [2:05:00]

no heir, the crown passed to James V 6th of Scotland, who became James I of England, uniting the two historic antagonists under the same crown. The Tudtor age was over. But the story of religious change, global exploration, and England's rise to true power were only just beginning. The ascension of the House of Stewart in6003 was the dawn of a new uncertain age for England. Elizabeth had offered stable rule for so long that the vast majority of people had known no other monarch. Changes in the religious, economic, and political landscape left James I facing an entirely new set of challenges during his reign. Ones that would soon throw England into turmoil. In this video, we will see England wrestle with civil war and revolution while it establishes the foundations of its global empire. The rise of Parliament. First, we have to begin with Parliament. Parliament had been getting more powerful for centuries. From its days of butdding heads with the crown over taxes for the H 100red Years War, it had become an integral part of the government. The Tutors had leaned on it to support their major policies like Henry's break with Rome and Elizabeth's religious reforms. Even if the increasingly Puritan membership of Parliament wished she'd gone further into Protestantism, the ascension of the Stearts was a chance for Parliament to assert and expand its growing authority. With few prior connections or loyalists to call upon to control Parliament, James I found himself constantly at odds with the institution. Parliament was disproportionately Puritan compared to the population. So the more moderate James already had his work cut out for him. The brief unity they experienced in response to the gunpowder plot in November6005 where a group of Catholic conspirators headed by Guy Fox plans to blow up Parliament while the king was still in attendance did not last. James' lavish spending demanded money that Parliament was not eager to give him. James tried to circumvent them by raising customs duties, forcing loans, and granting monopolies to chosen private individuals or companies. Parliament considered these actions illegal and protested. James dissolved Parliament in 1610 and 1614 over the dispute, but they were not easily cowed. In 1624, Parliament passed the Act of Monopolies to end the king's power to grant them to whoever he wanted. It was the first time that Parliament had directly legislated away a power from the king, and it was not going to be the last. But it was under James's son, Charles I, that issues with Parliament would boil over to consume the country. Much like his father, Charles frustrated Parliament with his attempts to raise money without its permission. The crown retained power over war and peace. But Charles's decision to go to war with France and Spain simultaneously did not please Parliament who resisted his attempts to raise taxes to pay for it. Charles responded with forced loans where wealthy men, many of them MPs, were compelled to give him money or face imprisonment. Dozens of powerful wealthy men were treated this way. But Charles angered the common people too, especially in the south where he effectively declared martial law and seized people's homes to house the militia he was raising for the war. In 1628, Parliament responded directly to his actions with the petition of right. It declared that no one should be forced to pay a tax, loan, or gift that had not been voted by Parliament. No one would be imprisoned without knowing the charges that soldiers should not be forcibly billeted in people's homes and martial law will not be declared. The petition of right was a landmark moment in political thought and defines the fundamental aspects of the English idea of freedom and liberty. It was the freedom from an arbitrary and unaccountable government that could abuse its citizens without care for their rights. This didn't deter Charles who dissolved parliament the following year. For the next 11 years, Charles ruled by royal prerogative without the nuisance of parliament. his raising of custom duties, reinstitution of medieval forest laws, implementation of a nationwide ship tax, and his imprisonment of those who refused to pay it turned Charles from a typical monarch butting heads with Parliament to an absolutist king who posed a direct danger to the rule of law.

### Segment 27 (130:00 - 135:00) [2:10:00]

the Civil War. Parliament wasn't summoned again until 1640 when Charles needed them to fund the suppression of a rebellion in Scotland. But now, Parliament was out for blood. They forced Charles to accept a parliament meeting at least once every 3 years and began impeachment proceedings against several of Charles's ministers. Most importantly, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Straford, who was tried and ultimately executed for abuses of power in Ireland. Charles reluctantly agreed to sign the death warrant, a decision he came to regret. Charles's moderate religious views were also intolerable to the Puritanical Parliament. Charles was an Armenian who revered the ceremony and grandeur of the Church of England and favored the continued existence of bishops. Parliament mostly disagreed and came to see Charles as little better than a Catholic. In 1641, Ireland broke out into rebellion. Charles and Parliament both insisted on controlling the militia raised to put it down, each fearing the other would use it to secure their own power. By now, the relationship between the two was unsalvageable. Parliament declared its control of the militia under Lord General, but Charles responded on January 4th, 1642 by marching into Parliament with armed men, demanding the arrest of five leading MPs. All of them had already fled and Parliament would not have surrendered them even if they were there. This naked display of royal power and parliamentary resistance was the proverbial Rubicon. There was no solution but war. Charles fled to York where he began raising an army of his own. Parliament too formalized its control of the militia and called up troops. The first English civil war was fought between royalists, nicknamed the cavaliers for the high number of cavalry officers and the parliamentarians, also known as round heads for the rounded haircuts popular with their troops. Generally speaking, the north and west of England plus Wales were royalist, while the south and east rallied to Parliament. Charles seems to have the upper hand at first, winning the first major battle at Edge Hill in October 1642, but he failed to press his advantage onto London. The next year, the Royalists won more victories at Bristol, Newbury, and elsewhere, but the tides turned against them in 1644 when a Scottish army arrived to help Parliament. The royalists suffered a grave defeat at the battle of Marston Moore in July 1644. But it was at the battle of Nazisby in June 1645 that delivered an irreoverable defeat upon the royalists. Most of the royalist army was destroyed. Momentum shifted fully to Parliament who proceeded to capture the Royalist headquarters at Oxford. The following year, Charles fled north where he surrendered to the Scots, who then delivered him over to Parliament. Some 300,000 people had been killed by the time fighting stopped. The capture of Charles ended the first civil war, but Parliament was uneasy at the rising power of the army used to defeat him. Led by Oliver Cromwell, the army faction was more aggressively Puritan even than Parliament and had gained much power through the war. Still the king, Charles remained under house arrest for almost 2 years as Parliament decided what to do with him. Then in 1648, a fresh wave of royalist uprisings broke out. Cromwell crushed them in months, but the experience proved to him that Charles's mere existence posed a threat to any new order Parliament hoped to build. In December 1648, Cromwell and his allies forcibly seized control of Parliament, drove out the moderates, and brought Charles to trial for treason. In abusing his royal power, they argued Charles had committed an offense against God, the law, and the nation. all three of which he was supposed to serve. The trial was a farce. Parliament's legal arguments were new and undeveloped. The conclusion foregone, and Charles did not even dignify the court with a response to the charges. On January 26th, 1649, Charles was condemned to death for high treason. 4 days later, the king of England lost his head on a scaffold outside Whiteall Palace. the Commonwealth. With Charles's execution, England was declared a Commonwealth with Parliament as the sole authority. Cromwell spent the next few years dealing with

### Segment 28 (135:00 - 140:00) [2:15:00]

remaining royalists. First in Ireland, where Cromwell's brutality towards the Catholics included massacres and the mass seizure of Irish land to be given to his allies. He was gentler to the Protestant Scots who he marched against in 1650 after they declared Charles's exiled son Charles II as king. By 1653, Cromwell found Parliament to be ineffective and frustrating, so dissolved it and declared himself Lord Protector. With financial independence and the loyalty of the army, there was little Parliament could do to stop him. Cromwell proceeded to implement an aggressive puritanical order in England. His regional major generals acted as the morality police for his regime, instituting sweeping moral laws, including a ban on gambling, fines for drunkenness and obscenity, and punishments for anyone who worked on the Sabbath. He was effectively a military dictator, albeit a pious one. However oppressive and unpopular Charles I had been, almost everyone in England agreed that Cromwell was worse. Parliament despised him, as did most average Englishmen. The absurdity of some of his laws, such as the banning of Christmas decorations and women's cosmetics, made him a figure of mockery as much as fear. So awful was his reign that even committed parliamentarians found themselves longing for the old monarchy. When Cromwell finally died in 1658, his son Richard was quickly sidelined by the unthinkable. Parliament invited the exiled Charles II, whose father they'd executed barely 10 years earlier to return to the throne. Charles II returned to London in triumph on May 29th, 1660. However, the country and the monarchy would never be the same. Parliament had forever secured its supremacy over the crown. The ideals of a limited government responsible to its people and accountable to the higher principles of common law and the rights of men was there to stay. colonization and the Americas. Reforms at home occurred alongside dramatic expansion abroad in what historians label the first British Empire. In Ireland, English and Scottish colonization of Olter at the Initiative of the Crown preceded the mass seizure and redistribution of Irish land by Cromwell. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the first lasting colony in the Americas was set down in Virginia. Despite the challenges of settlement, a steady stream of colonists followed, and the start of tobacco cultivation in 1612 made the colony economically profitable. In 1620, English Puritans, dissatisfied with the religious climate at home, landed at Plymouth Rock aboard the Mayflower. By the time the Civil War broke out, more than 50,000 English people had traveled to the Americas. English colonization of the Americas was not a coordinated central process. It was a peacemeal effort, mostly from private individuals who migrated for a variety of reasons. For the pilgrims, it was a religious venture to escape religious restrictions at home and build a deeply Protestant society of their own. The same arguments against government tyranny and freedom from taxation that had contributed to the Civil War also sent English men to a frontier life in the Americas. Similarly, frontier life offered the promise of land which was in scarce supply for regular people in England. The economic success of the American colonies only drew in more settlers eager to make their fortune across the Atlantic. Administering these colonies was also not a uniform thing. Royal colonies like Virginia and New York were managed by the crown and their appointed officials. Proprietor colonies, meanwhile, like Pennsylvania and Maryland, were privately owned and typically elected their own leaders. Charter colonies were a middle ground where the crown granted private settlers or companies the right to settle in an area. England relied on colonial officials in these colonies to collect taxes and upon its soldiers to maintain order. However, England's influence on daily affairs was limited by simple distance if nothing else. This freedom from English oversight allowed the American colonies to develop their own culture that emphasizes freedom, autonomy, and minimal government intervention that would come back to

### Segment 29 (140:00 - 145:00) [2:20:00]

bite the English. Maintaining these colonies led to conflict with several parties. Firstly, the Native Americans who already inhabited the land. Native settler relations vary hugely based on which native group and which settlers were talking about and when. In the early years, the small number of colonists favored trade and cooperation with the native groups. However, by the late 17th and early 18th century, the rapidly growing settlements became more aggressive in displacing and destroying Native communities. English law did not recognize native land claims, and so new colonists had no qualms about clearing the Native Americans off their desired land. This led to several conflicts such as the Peekquat war of the 1630s and King Phillip's war of the 1670s. So named after Metacom, the Poconoet chief fighting the English who took the English name of Philillip. Then there were other European powers, chiefly France, who were attempting to colonize the Americas as well. Conflicts in Europe often played out in the colonies, and wars over resources and land were common. Native Americans found themselves caught between these waring European powers. Most famously, the Irakquoy Confederacy, who allied themselves with the English after decades of conflict with the French, known as the Beaver Wars. Aside from the continental colonies, the Caribbean colonies were also a crucial part to England's new empire. The production of valuable goods, especially sugar, from these colonies, mostly by slave labor, made them some of the most lucrative colonies of the crown. Protecting these colonies and the shipments coming back from Spanish and French competitors encouraged mass investments in the navy and improvements in naval tactics that allowed the Royal Navy to dominate the sea. Unfortunately, it also resulted in a great many skilled sailors who turned to piracy to prey upon the rich colonies and ships of the area. The golden age of piracy raged from the 1650s to the 1730s, powered by the riches on offer from England's Caribbean colonies, the English in Africa and Asia. But there's no talking about the colonization of Americas without talking about England's role in the slave trade. The new colonies needed more laborers than it had settlers. And with naval technology advanced enough to make trips to Africa reliable, England had its labor source. The Portuguese were the first to open the Atlantic slave trade, but the British became one of its major players. The weak native states along Africa's west coast were easy pickings for slavers. Most of the time, the British traded with native Africans to do the slave catching for them, offering guns and wealth in exchange for human beings. Those human beings then had to endure the several week-long ordeal of the Atlantic Passage before settling in for a miserable, unfree life on a distant land with little to no hope of escape. The slave trade stayed distant from most English people. Slavery on English soil had been banned for centuries, but plenty of African slaves found their way there as domestic slaves or in some cases during transit. An Englishman would not walk down the street and expect to see a slave, nor see one working in the fields. However, as the products of slave labor in the colonies, such as sugar and tobacco, flowed into England during the Stewart period, slavery had an indirect impact on people's lives, whether they thought about it or not. Beyond the Atlantic, the Stewart period saw England make its first inroads into India. In6008, Captain William Hawkins arrived in the court of the Mughal Emperor Jiangir as the first official envoy for England in the subcontinent. Relations were warm at first. The Mughals were happy to trade with the English, and England's displays of strength in musling out rival European powers like the Dutch and French convinced the Mughals to grant them special privileges. The East India Company was granted trading posts known as factories, starting with Serat in 1612, but got many more over the following decades. Wealthier Englishmen with stock in the East India Company made a lot of money off trade with India over the coming years, and access to that most precious commodity of all, tea, was welcomed. When tea arrived at the court of Charles II, it was a luxury available only to the elite. But it soon spread to other

### Segment 30 (145:00 - 150:00) [2:25:00]

levels of society too. A new England. Charles II was wellliked as a monarch by the masses for his affable and sense of return to normaly. But his role in English history and of all monarchs after him was less than had been by his predecessors. To understand English history from here on out, we need to look even further beyond the palaces and parliament. A great place to start are the intellectuals. The same curiosity that was driving the English to travel the world drove them to understand it. Centuries of dominance by the classical thinkers was broken by an English scientific revolution. In medicine, for example, William Harvey revolutionized understanding of the human body with his insights into the heart and blood circulation. The true icon of the English scientific revolution was Isaac Newton. A mathematical genius, Newton's ideas on gravity and the laws of motion became the cornerstone of humanity's understanding of the world. He also developed calculus, a landmark moment in the story of mathematics. England was also experiencing an agricultural revolution through the 17th century. With improved plows, the introduction of winter crops like turnips, new field rotations, and the introduction of fertilizers, English agricultural productivity soared. By 1720, England's agricultural output was five times what it had been in 1420. Famines were now a thing of the past. Instead, the average Englishman could expect to enjoy meat regularly, and if he lived in the cities, might find tobacco, tea, and coffee a regular fixture of his day. We should also address the financial revolution going on with England embracing joint stock companies and modern banking that would make it the commercial hub of the world. The Bank of England was founded in 1694, signaling a new level of interest and complexity in the financial landscape. A more individualistic capitalistic economy was emerging where the absolute freedom of man to sell his labor and land free from duty or obligation to any other was now the rule. Now the social elites were not defined by the men at their command or even the lands that they owned but by the profits their companies rad in. The government aggressively supported these traders keen to establish a favorable balance of trade with the rest of the world. By 1700 England had overtaken the Dutch to become the greatest trading power in the world by volume. The Glorious Revolution. The other revolution that hit England was a glorious one. Charles II's popular reign ended in 1685 to be replaced by his much less popular brother James II. James was the worst thing 17th century England could think of as a monarch. He was Catholic. Parliament had tried barring him from the succession, but Charles had taken advantage of parliamentary disunityity to secure his brother's succession. James ruled for only 3 years, during which time he tried appointing Catholics to positions of power and quite fairly rolled back the persecution of Catholics. This wouldn't do for Parliament, but this wouldn't be a repeat of 1642. Instead, Parliament secretly contacted James's daughter, Mary, who was married to the Dutch ruler, William of Orange. The letter signed by leaders of both parties in the Commons and several other powerful Englishmen begged William and Mary to come to England and replace the unpopular James. Eager to bring England into the ongoing war with France, William agreed. On November 5th, 1688, William and Mary's army landed in southern England. James scrambled to raise his army to withstand the invasion. But when people realized what was happening, they abandoned James in droves. There was no battle, and James could only try to flee. As William and Mary peacefully proceeded to London to replace him, James was caught by fishermen and delivered to the new monarchs who allowed him to retire peacefully and without a fuss. The Glorious Revolution had ended the last Catholic monarch of England without firing a shot. The Glorious Revolution shows how far England had come. Only a century before, religious differences could lead to open rebellion and mass persecution. Now the institutions of parliament and the crown were strong enough and people's faith in them also strong enough that they could contain an issue that might have destroyed an

### Segment 31 (150:00 - 155:00) [2:30:00]

earlier England and resolve it without a drop of blood. What's most remarkable about this is that the full workings of England's political system were never clarified. England is one of the few nations that operates on an unwritten constitution. There is no single document that outlines, say, the specific powers of the crown or of parliament. England's political constitution is instead drawn from a mix of statute law, documents like Magna Carta, legal decisions, common law, and unwritten traditions and conventions. Constitutions usually emerge out of revolutions or major political disruptions. But despite the unrest of the 17th century, England never decided to create one. As historians, this can be difficult as ideas and offices just pop into existence with no clear beginning. For example, there's no agreed upon moment where prime ministers became a thing. But for England itself, the unwritten system allowed for natural evolution and flexibility. After the glorious revolution, the relative powers of the crown and parliament would continue to evolve on this unwritten basis. Into the 18th century, as the 18th century dawned, things were relatively stable for England, at least at home. The assession of Queen Anne in 1701 went smoothly and the great disruption of her reign, the acts of union in 1707 were generally wellreceived. consolidated the crowns of England and Scotland into the new kingdom of Great Britain. Ireland remained a separate kingdom and Wales was counted under England, hence the absence of Irish and Welsh symbolism on the Union Jack. The major domestic disturbance of the early 18th century were the Jacobites, Catholic supporters of the deposed James II, who wanted to restore the Catholic branch of the Steuart family. The ascension of the German King George of the Hanover dynasty following Anne's death in 1714 caused two failed uprisings by the Jacobites in 1714 and 1719. The danger they posed came more from foreign backing than any serious threats to England's internal order. In Parliament, politicians had coalesed into two political informal parties. The Tories, a nickname drawn from Irish horse thieves, represented the more traditional and conservative attitude with respect for the monarchy and Anglicanism. They were against the wigs, taking their name from Scottish rebels who were more associated with parliamentary power, limited monarchy, anti-atholicism, and nonconformism. The wigs dominated politics in the early 18th century with no figure representing that better than Sir Robert Walpole, whose dominance over government affairs from 1721 to 1742 has earned him the title of Britain's first prime minister. Although technically no such office existed yet. That's the unwritten constitution we mentioned at work. England's greatest struggles occurred away from its shores. In 1740, they were roped into the war of Austrian secession. The shifting alliances and convoluted claims of the participants aren't really relevant to us. And like many wars, its greatest impact on England was the increased tax burden needed to fund it. It did however provide an arena for the British to sharpen their military and naval tactics that would serve them well elsewhere. In 1743, George II became the last king to witness these firsthand at the Battle of Dingham, where he was the last English monarch to lead his armies into battle. With the troops occupied abroad, the Jacobites tried one last attempt to seize the throne in 1745 for James II's grandson, the Bonnie Prince Charlie, but it failed dramatically, ringing the death nail for the Jacobite cause. Hot on the heels of the war of the Austrian secession was the 7 Years War fought against France from 1756. It was a war far from British soil, playing out in various colonies across the globe in what some historians have described as the first truly world war. There were two important consequences of this war. One, the immense cost that almost bankrupted Britain, which it would try to cover by taxing its American colonies, which backfired to say the least. Second was the extension of the fighting to India. By now, the East India Company had dozens of

### Segment 32 (155:00 - 160:00) [2:35:00]

factories and thousands of private troops supporting its trade, enough to pose a serious threat to Indian rulers. British efforts against the French in India as part of the war angered the ruler of Bengal in 1756, prompting a war. Britain crushed the Bengali army at the battle of Placi and installed a puppet over Bengal. The age of England's Indian Empire had arrived. England had come through civil wars, revolutions, and religious strife. The experience had hardened it, inspired it, and propelled its ships and settlers around the world, and raised its flag from Boston to Bengal. The sun had truly risen on the British Empire. Heading into the second half of the 18th century, Britain was tremendously powerful. With colonies on several continents and a booming economy at home, Britain was poised for a global ascendancy the likes of which history had never seen. In this video, we'll see Britain at the apex of its glory with a worldspanning empire and a worldchanging industrial revolution securing its place as the most powerful nation on earth. The 7 Years War and its consequences. continued to rage on, especially in the American colonies. A direct cause of the war had been disputes over British and French claims to American land, especially in the Great Lakes region. The French and their native allies initially got the better of the British, winning key victories at Manongila in 1755 and Fort William Henry in 1757. But in 1758, British blockades and a smallox epidemic among French Indian allies undermined their strength. Leaning on their own allies in the Irakquoy Confederacy, Britain renewed its offensive and put France on the back foot. Their main goal was Quebec. In 1759, British forces sailed up the St. Lawrence River and laid siege to Quebec City, which surrendered on September 18th, 1759. The capture of Montreal the following year effectively gave control of French Canada to the British. Things were going equally well for the British in India with crushing victories over the French in Wanderash and the capture of the French Indian capital of Pondicherry in 1761. In 1763, the exhausted French were forced to make peace. The Treaty of Paris recognized British gains in Canada, India, and elsewhere, securing England's position as the unchallenged European power in these regions. It was however a costly war costing the British around 161 million. Britain racked up huge debt as it spent more on its military than it collected in taxes and interest payments in the following years crippled the country's finances. We'll get on to the consequences the war had in America in a minute. But in India, the consequences were also significant. The defeats of the nwab at Bengal at Placi in 1757 worried other Indian rulers including the Mughal Emperor who feared the danger posed by the unchecked British. In 1764, the Mughal emperor along with several other Indian rulers including the Nab of Avad joined forces to oppose the newfound British supremacy. Despite outnumbering the invaders 2 to1, the Mughal coalition was soundly defeated at the battle of Buksar, the Mughal Emperor was forced to make terms that handed the British control of taxes and revenues from the states of Bengal, Bahar and Orisa. In one fell swoop, Britain seized a sizable chunk of India and had proven itself the dominant military power on the subcontinent. The American Revolution. The British would find new opposition in the Americas, too, after the Seven Years War. But this did not go in their favor. By now, Britain's American colonies were thriving with a population approaching 2 million that was both armed and educated. After 1763, Parliament implemented a suite of taxes on sugar, molasses, tea, and more goods, as well as a stamp duty on all business exchanges to recoup the money spent on the 7 Years War. Seeing the colonies as a rightful subject of the crown and Parliament, England

### Segment 33 (160:00 - 165:00) [2:40:00]

thought this was a perfectly reasonable decision. Not so for the American colonists who founds themselves facing a heavier tax burden with no effective political representation to oppose it. The politically active society of colonial America was soon a buzz with outrage. Town meetings began criticizing British rule and pamphlets were circulated around the colonies questioning the justifications for crown control of such distant land. Unrest grew with each new tax implemented through the 1760s. By 1770, tensions had reached a boiling point. On March 5th, 1770, British troops fired upon a crowd of protesting colonists in Boston. In an act known as the Boston Massacre, their deaths were a turning point, radicalizing colonists against the British and making a peaceful solution. almost impossible. In 1773, the British passed the Tea Act to grant the East India Company a monopoly of the tea trade, which harmed American tea merchants. In response, a group of colonists boarded English ships in Boston Harbor and dumped the tea into the water. The British did not appreciate this Boston Tea Party and ordered a massive crackdown on unrest in the Massachusetts colony. Arbitrary detention, suspension of the law, the shutting of the Boston Harbor, and more outrages proved too much for the colonists. In September 1774, American representatives gathered at the First Continental Congress to declare the formation of a militia and boycott of all British goods. King George III considered this open rebellion. In April 1775, he sent his troops to arrest the rebel leaders in Lexington and Concord. On April 19th, the colonial militia and British troops opened fire. The shots heard around the world marked the start of the American War of Independence. The British faced humiliating defeats at the hands of the colonists at Bunker Hill in June and at Boston in March 1776. On July 4th, 1776, the Continental Congress declared its full independence from Britain. And another bold victory by the colonists at the Battle of Trenton on Christmas 1776 under George Washington painted a dire picture for the British. The entry of France into the war in 1777 tips the balance even further in the colonist's favor. The British were able to secure victories in the American South in 1779 and 1780, but the more valuable northern colonies continued to be an area for British defeat. By September 1781, the last British forces under General Cornwallis were besieged in Yorktown by Washington and his French allies. On October 19th, 1781, Cornwallis offered his surrender. Another treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 formally recognizing the independence of the United States. The irony of the American Revolution is that it was a repetition of the issues that had led to the English Civil War. An overbearing government that refused to listen to its people and impose taxes without its consent shouldn't be surprised when people turn against it. It was at this point a British tradition. It marked the end of what historians label the first British Empire. Although it still held Canada and Britain's imperial focus now shifted towards South Asia and then Africa. The American Revolution was a landmark event in world history. But for England, the downturn in morale and loss of revenue from the colonies was a relatively minor interruption in the grand scheme of things. Britain's growing empire in India and Africa offered alternative sources of income that the British government expected would make up for the loss of the American colonies in time. The sun had set on the first British Empire, but it had only just begun to rise on the second into the 19th century. After a lapse in confidence in the government through the 1780s, Britain shook off the negative consequences of the revolution with the steady leadership of William Pit or Pit the Younger who helms the government for

### Segment 34 (165:00 - 170:00) [2:45:00]

almost 20 years. What Pit lacked in charisma, he made up for in a sharp administrative mind and a steady dedication of public service. As prime minister, he repaired the nation's dismal finances through new taxes and ruthless cuts to needless expenditure. He was similarly ruthless in the rooting out of political enemies within Britain, especially in the wake of the French Revolution. Pit's government also presided over the response to the Irish rebellion in 1798 and formulated the 1801 act of union to tighten control of Ireland. The act also officially renamed the country from Great Britain to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish Rebellion had been inspired by the French Revolution of 1789. The consequences of the French Revolution continued to be felt for years as Britain was drawn into a series of wars with France. First with its revolutionary government and then the man who rose to supplant them, Napoleon. Britain defeated Napoleon while he was still serving the revolutionary government in Egypt. A victory that began over a century of English colonial influence in the country and led to them taking an interest in then outright taking the archaeological remains of ancient Egypt. After Napoleon became emperor, his authoritarian power and military genius allowed him to dominate European affairs for a decade, prompting Europe to join together in a series of coalitions to oppose him. With most of Britain now literate and newspapers in wide circulation, the people of Britain could follow the story of Napoleon as it unfolded in real time. With such tremendous military success, Britain feared that Napoleon might invade. Multiple forts were built along the southern coast, although they were never needed. This new awareness of world affairs was grounds for mythmaking, too. Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson's victory over the French fleet at Trafalgar in October 1805 joined Hastings and Ajinort as one of the great battles of English history and Nelson's death turned him into a martyr hero the likes of which England had not seen outside of Saints. Similar adoration fell upon the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Welsley, who led the coalition forces to a final victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterlue in June 1815. Napoleon's defeat brought in a new age of European politics. Warfare had dominated European affairs for centuries, but the scale of the slaughter now possible with new technology was unprecedented. With social status and prosperity now won through trade with the world rather than by fighting the rest of Europe, Britain was keen to keep European affairs in order. The concert of Europe was the informal arrangement of mutual respect for territory and a focus on maintaining a balance of power on the continent that avoided major wars for the rest of the 19th century. Even Britain's ancient animosity with the French was set aside in hopes of long-term peace. The industrial revolution, but war and politics would not change life in Britain nearly as much as technology would. In 1769, Scottish inventor James Watt filed a patent for a functional steam engine, which used coal fire to produce pressurized steam to power an engine that had seemingly limitless applications in industry and transportation. Watt's engine opened up a new wave of innovation. From driving factory machinery to powering ships, from the invention of the steam train to more effective water pumps for mining and agriculture, the industrial revolution had arrived. A few factors allowed the industrial revolution to happen in England. Ready access to raw materials like coal and iron, the availability of capital for investment in expensive machinery thanks to its sophisticated financial system. a limited government that left plenty of room for private innovation to keep powering the revolution and an abundance of labor thanks to the population explosion brought on by the agricultural revolution of the 17th and early 18th century all played their role. The empire helped provides the capital for the revolution but the labor and resources that powered it were almost

### Segment 35 (170:00 - 175:00) [2:50:00]

entirely British. The industrial revolution combined with the earlier agricultural revolution shifted Britain from a primarily rural society to a primarily urban society. High agricultural yields meant a smaller number of farmers could feed a large non-aggricultural population. People flock to the cities to find work in new factories or to the mining regions like Northern England and South Wales where there was always work for more miners. The beating heart of this revolution was powered by coal. England had been using coal for fuel since the medieval period. But the invention of steam power turned it into one of the most important resources on the planet. Mining coal was backbreaking work where miners toiled for long hours in the dark underground. Miners faced terrible risks from gas leaks and mine collapses. And even those who avoided such immediate dangers faced long-term health consequences from inhaling coal dust for years on end. Even children worked in the mines, often running messages or supplies between miners or operating the doors to allow minecarts through the underground tracks. Despite how tough the work was, though, there was never a shortage of miners. People flocked to North England and South Wales to seek the steady work the mines promised. These coal communities were fertile grounds for social reformers and socialists to find support with both Wales and the North becoming strongholds for left-wing and socialist movements on the backs of the mining communities. The shift to urban life brought with it its own host of problems. Disease, crime, and cramped living in the cities, which were often dirty and clouded with smoke from thriving industry, are the dominant images of industrial era city life. While city life certainly had its problems, expressed so vividly in the work of Charles Dickens and countless other contemporaries, people moved to the city because the life it offered was ultimately better. Yes, hours were long and living conditions could be grim, but this was true of rural life as well. The cities simply offered more opportunities and better ones at that in terms of income than clinging to rural life. Much like in the years after the black death, the industrial revolution did not lead to a decline in people's quality of life in real terms, but rather a rise in their expectations. A wealthier, more literate, better educated population of the world's economic and technological powerhouse demanded more from their lives than ever before. More political power for the masses, greater protections as workers, and demands for a fairer share of the economic bounty were common place. The chartist movement of the 1830s,4s, and 50s was the most famous expression of this. It demanded universal male suffrage and various parliamentary reforms to allow regular people to serve as MPs rather than just the landed elite. While the chartist movement failed largely thanks to the fallout from a violent uprising in South Wales in 1839 that undermined its image with regular people. Its existence represented a new politically conscious and politically active Britain produced by and in reaction to the industrial revolution, the Victorian age. Through these events, you'll have noticed the relative absence of the monarchy. With the restoration and glorious revolution bringing heavy limits on royal power, the kings and queens of England had been shrinking in importance for a while. The earlier handover kings of George II were a far cry from the plant or tutors in how active they were in political events. George III similarly exercised less power over domestic affairs, although his collapse into insanity towards the end of his reign didn't help matters. George IV, an unpopular and unpleasant man whose death in 1830 was met with little mourning, wasn't much better. Even the defeat of Napoleon during his reign had practically nothing to do with him. But after the brief reign of the competent but unremarkable William IV, Britain received one of its most legendary monarchs in Queen Victoria. Compared to her much older predecessors, Victoria's influence on affairs in

### Segment 36 (175:00 - 180:00) [2:55:00]

England was minimal. The role of the monarch was now one of a figurehead. Victoria correctly realized that the monarchy needed to evolve in an age of rapid societal change where Britain commanded the largest empire in the world and new technology was coming faster than ever. Victoria served as a symbol of stability and sentimental attachment over her long 63-year reign. The Victorian age was Britain at the apex of its power. Its empire reached its greatest extent. Its economy and industrial lead over its rivals was at its strongest. And Britain had a unique confidence in its place as the supreme nation on earth. Technological innovation continued to push the bounds of possibility. Ismbard Kingdom Brunell pioneered the massive expansion of Britain's rail industry and developed advanced steam ships to connect the world more quickly and more efficiently than ever before. Britain was the scientific capital of the world. From smallox vaccines to identifying chalera to discovering dinosaurs, British scientists led the world in their discoveries. Standing tall among them was Charles Darwin. Darwin's voyages aboard the HMS Beagle allowed him to develop the theory of evolution by natural selection. His groundbreaking book on the origin of species marked a revolution in scientific thought and the understanding of life on Earth while posing a serious challenge to the religious explanation of creation. Britain and the Empire. All of this occurred in the context of Britain's globe spanning empire which at its peak covered a quarter of the world's landmass and a similar share of its population. It has been said that the British conquered the world almost accidentally. It is true that Britain never set out with some detailed plan for world conquest. Conquests often came peacemeal achieved over many decades with no preconceived plan but they were encouraged by an imperialist attitude that Britain had adopted. Britain came to see itself as divinely ordained with a special responsibility to spread civilization to the rest of the world. Trade and conquest were unavoidable realities, sure, but to the average Britain, the empire's existence was justified as a moral project. Whether through stamping out paganism or the slave trade, creating new Christian communities or spreading liberal ideas, most Britons justified the empire as a project that uplifted its subjects, whether they wanted it or not. Of course, non-Britains didn't always feel that way, but the relatively small number of non-Britans within Britain, their minimal political representation and a lack of interest in anything they had to say that might counter the dominant imperial propaganda meant their feelings were unheard. The idea that the empire was one giant Christian mission secured a lot of support for religious circles, even if those religious people had things to say about the profit-seeking and abuses of imperial rule. Tales of famous missionaries like David Livingstone were known to everyone in Victorian society and tens of thousands of other missionaries went to all corners of the empire and beyond. Late 19th century Britain was a golden age for missionary work. As both Anglican and nonconformist religious communities rallied to the imperial cause on religious grounds, an eager religious press at home popularized the travels of missionaries. While the churches, which were still a major center of social life for the English people, preached their accomplishments at services and Sunday schools, hoping to inspire new generations of missionaries to contour the empire. But of course, empires weren't built on faith alone. Settlers were needed to push the empire further. Canada was a favorite for English settlers with Australia and New Zealand also becoming popular from the early 19th century. The relatively small native populations there had either already been removed or were easily overpowered to clear the way for settlers. Between 1815 and 1914, an estimated 10 million immigrated from Britain and Ireland, primarily to destinations within the empire or to the

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United States. But settlement generally wasn't the rule in India, where British administrators and soldiers never numbered more than 100,000 at any one time. British power was mostly achieved through the annexation or subjugation of smaller Indian kingdoms and princetons that fell at a steady rate after 1757. With the defeat of the seek empire in 1849, Britain seized control of virtually every inch of the Indian subcontinent. Similarly, in Africa, British imperialism in the age of the second empire was more focused on resource extraction, missionary work, and moral crusading than implanting new settler colonies, with the notable exception of South Africa. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1804, thanks to an impressive public morality campaign, and during the 19th century was a zealous opponent of slavery. The Royal Navy hunted down slavers in the Atlantic, and Britain used its diplomatic might to force slavery abolition in places like the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately for Africa, where the British had once encouraged slavery, they now used it as justification to intervene on the continent. The scramble for Africa of the late 19th century between Britain and other European powers was framed as a Christian moral crusade where slavery along with paganism, savagery, cannibalism were used to justify the conquest and control of large chunks of the continent. Gathering storm. The 19th century was undoubtedly a British century, but problems were gathering that would pose challenges in the 20th. Victoria's death in January 1901 was an ominous beginning to a century that would bring even more change to Britain. The meteoric rise of Germany following its unification in 1871 challenged British industrial and military supremacy in Europe and destabilized the delicate balance that had existed there since 1815. There were hints of trouble farther a field with nationalist movements beginning to take root in India, Egypt, and elsewhere that threatens Britain's imperial control. But there were problems closer to home, too. The Boer War between 1899 and 1902 pitted the British against the Dutch Boowers of South Africa, who opposed British rule. Despite being the world's most powerful empire, Britain struggled with these disorganized farmers. And a big reason for that was the quality of its troops. A huge percentage of the men who tried to enlist had to be turned away because they were sick, disabled, or malnourished to the point that they just couldn't serve. At least 40% of the recruits during the war had to be denied on health grounds. And in some towns, this percentage was much higher. It was an unpopular war abroad with Britain being harshly criticized in Europe and the US for the brutal scorched earth methods they employed. The British use of concentration camps where thousands of Boer civilians died from disease also reflected badly. Although Britain won the Boer War, the difficulty it had in doing so and the hit it took to its image of strengthened morality was significant. It was the Boer War that provided the catalyst for a crop of new laws to address poverty when a liberal government came in 1906. The liberal social reforms of the next few years created the modern British welfare state and changed the role of government in British life. From 1906, free school meals and medical checks were implemented for schools, hoping to address the dismal state of health revealed by the Boore War recruits. In 1908, the Old Age Pensions Acts was passed to help the elderly, while the sick and unemployed were helped with the National Insurance Act of 1911, which provided unemployment benefits and a range of other provisions. Other reforms addressed things like working conditions and union rights. The Boer War also raised another concerning question. If Britain struggled to defeat a bunch of farmers, how would it fare against a truly modern army? In a few short years, they would find out. World War I and its aftermath. The long 19th century truly came to an end in 1914. The assassination of

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Archduke France Ferdinand in Sievo on June 28th that year triggered a cascade that culminated in the First World War that changed the world forever. Like many of its allies, Britain entered the war under the delusion that it would be over by Christmas. But the fears of military inadequacy raised since the Boer war seemed to play out as Germany won a series of early victories. Of course, the war was not over by Christmas and by early 1915, a grizzly stalemate descended upon the war in Europe. Some 6 million men would serve in the British army over the next four years from the trenches of Belgium to the shores of Gallipoli. Both Britain and her empire saw firsthand the devastation that a new age of war brought. Britain squeezed her empire for every man and resource it could to fight a modern war. But victory remained out of grasp. For the first time in centuries, a foreign war came to British soil. Zeppelin raids and gas attacks brought terror to London, and on several occasions, British coastal towns were bombarded by the German Navy. No land invasion ever came, but the war's effect at home was profound. The entire society was oriented towards war. Women were pressed into the workforce to fill the gaps left by conscripted men. And social life in every city, town, and village was transformed by the disappearance of most of its fighting age men. Many, of course, would never return. British and colonial soldiers served valiantly, even if that valor was rarely rewarded. The drudgery of the trench stalemate was broken infrequently by bold offensives that usually lost steam within a few days. Battles like Epra, the Psalm and Gallipoli earned their way into the annals of British military history. But rather than glory, they represented tragedy. On the first day of the psalm alone, Britain lost almost 20,000 men. Even the victories were hollow given how many thousand usually died for a few meters of land. The First World War was a very different conflict. War had always had its misery, but during the long 19th century, British wars had been relatively smallcale affairs where victory was easy and glory was plentiful. The Boer War had challenged that trend, but it was the first world war that rewrote Britain's relationship with war. War was no longer a source of glory, but of tragedy, where innocent men were sent away to die for causes that meant nothing to them by leaders who cared nothing for them. The end of the war in November 1918 brought huge celebrations, but the world and Britain would never be the same. Britain had lost almost a million. Many more were physically or mentally broken. The economy had been completely wrecked. Europe was decimated. Britain had mustered the entire might of its empire and had only prevailed by the skin of its teeth with help from its many allies. Ultimately, it had pushed itself too far. The interwar years. The First World War left Britain exhausted, its economy was in ruins, its armies depleted, and its people shattered and traumatized by the horrific scale of the conflict. The psychological and emotional impact of this was written in the landscape. Almost every town or village in Britain raised a memorial to the men they'd lost on the battlefield. Every family in the country had someone to mourn. Bitterness, alienation, and anger were the rewards for the survivors. With so many men lost and women having to pick up the slack in their absence, it was inevitable that women's suffrage would follow closely upon the war's end. The representation of the People Act of 1918 gave women over 30 the vote, and in 1928, it was given to all adults over 21. Women's political emancipation came with greater social and economic freedom as more women entered the workforce. The economic hardship of the interwar years prevented England enjoying the same roaring 20s that the US saw. Instead, the US's economic boom out competed Britain's industry, leading to industrial decline and unemployment.

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This downturn contributed to strikes and unrest through the 1920s. It was this dissatisfaction with current affairs among working people that catapulted the Labor Party into prominence. The dissatisfaction with the political order among former soldiers and the new wave of female voters helped a party that challenged the old political order. A young party achieving its first MP only in 1906. Labor formed its first government in 1924. Its rise eclipsed the old Liberal Party, which after leaving government in 1915 was condemned to the sidelines of British politics. But one only needs to look at Britain's empire to see the writing on the wall. Britain no longer had the money, the power, and even seems to lack the desire to keep it together. Ireland resumed its push for independence after the war with Irish nationalists waging the Irish War of Independence against Britain until 1921 when the AngloIrish Treaty recognized the functional independence of the Irish Free State. While still technically part of the British Empire, Ireland would only slip further out of Britain's grasp in the coming years, establishing its own constitution in 1937. Egypt went independent in 1922, removing another major piece of the empire. Then there was India. Despite its peaceful push for greater independence, the Amritzer massacre on April 13th, 1919 left almost 400 people dead when British troops opened fire on protesting crowds. The massacre galvanized the Indian independence movement and catapulted Mahatma Gandhi into the role of the movement's figurehead. The momentum in India shifted decisively towards independence. It was no longer a question of if but when. The Great Depression did nothing to improve things. Unemployment hit 3 million at the peak of the depression in 1932 and a deep sense of pessimism gripped the nation through the decade. The Jerro March of 1936 became the most potent symbol of the British experience of the depression. Thousands of out of work men and women marched from Jarro near Newcastle down to London in a peaceful display of discontent with the government's failure to tackle the depression. It is this economic hardship and bitter experience of the previous war that explains Britain's reluctance to confront the rising fascist threat. Britain wished to avoid another war at any cost, so turned a blind eye to Hitler's rise in 1933 and his expansionism in the years after. There were critics of this, most famously Winston Churchill. But Britain had been too traumatized by the last war in Europe and too weakened by economic hardship since then to want another war. It was this attitude that led Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to try appeasing Hitler with the Munich Agreement of 1938. By the time Britain had realized its error, Hitler had already taken Czechoslovakia and was marching into Poland. The Second World War. Honoring a prior agreement made with Poland, Britain declared war on Germany on September 4th, 1939. After a few months of minimal action known as the phony war, Britain was shell shocked by rapid German victories. This was not to be a repeat of the previous war. Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium fell in a matter of weeks. British troops were cut off from France and forced back to the evacuation point at Dunker while the bulk of the German army marched directly into the heart of France. Hundreds of British civilians hopped aboard their ships to sail over the channel and bring the trapped men home. It was an inspiring show of spirit, but a dismal military defeat. By the end of June 1940, Britain and her empire stood alone against the Nazis. Nevertheless, the new prime minister, Winston Churchill, assured the world that Britain would never surrender. Hitler attempted to clear the way for an invasion by destroying the Royal Air Force in the skies. The resulting Battle of Britain was a desperate attempt by a small handful of pilots and even fewer planes to deny the Germans the air superiority they needed for an invasion. Dog fights erupted over the hills and fields of southern England as outnumbered RAF pilots supplanted with volunteers and exiles from several

### Segment 40 (195:00 - 200:00) [3:15:00]

conquered European nations narrowly fended off the German invaders. By the thinnest of margins, the RAF's resistance stopped the Germans in their tracks. By winning the Battle of Britain, they denied the Nazis a total victory and kept Britain in the fight. In the legendary words of Winston Churchill, "Never had so much been owed by so many to so few. " German night bombing of British cities continued through the Blitz. Starting in September 1940, the Luftwafa began systematic bombing of most of England's major cities. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed in these raids and entire city blocks were burned to the ground. Civilian defiance in the face of this terror became known as the Blitz spirit. The slogan of keep calm and carry on captured the steely determination of the British people as they continued their lives under the constant threat of bombs. On the home front, Britain was subject to rationing, blackouts, and the mass evacuation of children from major cities. German hubot made it risky to import food. So Brittons were encouraged to grow their own victory gardens to supplement the governmentordered rations. As in the First World War, women were again called upon to till the fields and work the factories in the absence of men. For those men who were unsuited to frontline duty, roles in the home guard or as air raid wardens militarized virtually every able-bodied man in the country. British troops continued to see action in Asia and Africa after fighting in the European theater died down after the US entered the war in December 1941. Britain was relieved and worked closely with the Americans to coordinate the Western Allied assault on the Nazis. British forces contributed to a series of victories starting at El Alamine in North Africa in 1942 and continuing on to join Allied invasions into Sicily and Italy in 1943. On June 6th, 1944, British, American, and Canadian forces launched from Britain on D-Day for the invasion of Normandy. From there, British troops helped liberate France and ultimately defeat Germany in April 1945. Victory was bittersweet. Half a million British people were dead, and entire cities had been hollowed out by German bombs. Britain's economy was in ruins, and it had racked up immense debt to cover its expenses. It was also clear by the end of the war that the United States and the Soviet Union had eclipsed Britain in power. With larger armies, larger economies, more resources, and greater international influence, the US and the USSR ensured that Britain's days as the world's leading power were long gone. Postwar Britain. Both world wars had encouraged nationalism in the colonies while undermining British attitudes for the empire. What remained of the British Empire was eager to assert its independence when peace came. Nowhere was this more true than India. Indian nationalists demanded a rapid transition to independence and the British largely agreed. The interest and ability to rule a global empire was gone. Britain withdrew from newly created India and Pakistan in August 1947 and the rest of Britain's colonies would slip away over the coming years. Nothing symbolized the end of Britain's role as a superpower like the Suez crisis of 1956 when newly independent Egypt nationalized the Sewish Canal in spite of British protests. Britain launched a joint invasion with France and Israel to reopen it. It was a bizarre attempt to resurrect the old assertive foreign policy of a global empire. However, this was no longer the 19th century. Britain was condemned by the international community, including both the Soviet Union and its supposed ally, the United States. The US believed that the intervention harmed its interests in the region and risked pushing the Middle East towards communism. Britain was forced to withdraw in a humiliating conceit, the embarrassment of which led Prime Minister Anthony Eden to offer his resignation. No longer could Britain assert its will as it pleased on the international stage. From here on out, it was a second tier power that could not act without the approval of the true global power in Washington. But it would be wrong to say post-war

### Segment 41 (200:00 - 205:00) [3:20:00]

Britain was only a place of collapse and despair. Obviously, winning the war was a major morale boost, even if the arrival of the Cold War tempered those feelings a bit. There was plenty to celebrate in 1948 when the National Health Service or the NHS was established to provide free health care to any and all people in Britain. The NHS has been beset by controversy and criticism, but it has consistently been one of the most popular institutions in British life since its inception. Today, public opinion polls show greater support for the NHS than exists for the monarchy, the church, or the armed forces. The relatively amicable decolonization process and maintenance of relations through the Commonwealth also encouraged immigration to Britain by people of the former colonies. Postwar Britain saw a steady rise in immigration, especially from the Caribbean, West Africa, and South Asia seeking opportunity in the former imperial center. Then, as now, immigration was a controversial issue. But it shows that even though Britain was no longer a superpower, it remained a land of prosperity and opportunity that attracted people from all over the world. To lead this commonwealth in 1953, Britain received a new queen in Elizabeth II. A figure head with no real political power, Elizabeth nevertheless became a symbol of stability and unity for most of Britain during her long 70-year reign. The 60s and 70s. The unraveling of Britain's old empire continued through the 1960s with independence coming for most of the remaining colonies, especially in Africa. It was a foregone conclusion by this point and the question was not whether the colonies should go but how the process would unfold. With the end of the empire and Britain's role as a worldleading power, Britain found itself seeking a new identity. The swinging 60s provided Britain a new way to influence the world through culture. The 60s was the age of the British invasion where British music like that of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones achieved global success. The wave of social change that began in the United States in the 60s swept Britain as well. The feminist movement, the sexual revolution, and anti-racist policies gained popularity, especially with young people. If the 60s was a decade of optimism, then the 70s was one of pessimism. Economic difficulties caused by the massive expansion of the welfare state at home and fluctuations in the economy abroad, such as in the 1973 oil crisis, produced economic hardship and unrest in Britain. Protest movements and worker strikes were a common feature of 70s life. Both labor and conservatives proved inept at handling the problems with the Heath, Wilson, and Callahan governments all struggling and ultimately collapsing in failure. The winter of discontent from 1978 to79 saw massive protests as entire industries took to the streets to protest for better pay and express dissatisfaction with the incumbent labor government. Also troublesome was the issue of Northern Ireland. Catholic and Republican opponents of British rule in Northern Ireland were pushing for independence and Irish reunification. The British government's response to these protests was strong and led to violence. Bloody Sunday on January 30th, 1972 saw British police gun down 26 unarmed protesters in Derry, which was internationally condemned. The Irish Republican Army used examples like Bloody Sunday to justify a campaign of bombings that claimed the lives of almost 3,000 British people, most of them civilians, during a period known as the Troubles. For example, the Birmingham pub bombings of November 21st, 1974 killed 21 people at two pubs. The IRA's willingness to bomb any target anywhere made them a source of constant fear for regular British people through the 1970s and 80s. The Thatcher years. After a decade of dissatisfaction, the 1979 election saw Labor replaced with a conservative government under Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher was a staunch free marketeteer much like Ronald Reagan who entered office in the US in 1980.

### Segment 42 (205:00 - 210:00) [3:25:00]

Thatcher tackled the economic hardships of Britain by slashing regulations and privatizing industry. This made her a divisive figure in British politics. Her attacks on trade unions provoked serious opposition and there were mass strikes especially from minors throughout the early and mid 1980s. Many of Britain's coal mines were now unprofitable, and Thatcher believed it was better to close underperforming mines and import coal instead. For the communities in North England and South Wales that depended on those mines, this was unacceptable. From 1974 to 75, the minor strike halted the nation's industry. Scenes of fierce clashes between the police and protesters polarized the nation. the heavy hand of an uncaring state or the radical rowdiness of entitled union workers. In the end, Thatcher won. 60 mines were closed, decimating what remained of Britain's coal industry. Although it should be acknowledged that the previous Wilson Labor government had closed 253 during their tenure. Former coal mining communities remain some of the poorest areas of Britain and the hatred for her was still intense when Thatcher died in 2013. Thatcher's economic policies resulted in an economic boom, but one whose benefits did not fall equally across society. Still, the 1980s was a decade of relative strength and optimism for Britain. Thatcher's hardline foreign policy saw Britain emerge victorious when Argentina invaded the Faulland Islands in 1982, and her uncompromising attitude earned her the nickname of the Iron Lady from her communist opponents in the USSR. Thatcher stayed in power long enough to see the end of the USSR, but dissatisfaction with her leadership forced her resignation in 1990. Enthusiasm for the Conservative Party ebbed away over the '90s, and by 1997, British voters were eager for change and ushered in Tony Blair's Labor Party to power. New labor and the new millennium. Blair's new labor distanced itself from the more left-wing policies of the past to embrace a centrist businessfriendly approach. It was a sign of the conservatism that had overtaken the country since the 1970s. Blair's government disappointed the party's leftwing with its close partnerships with businesses, but the result was relatively sustained economic growth into the new millennium. The Blair years brought significant changes to Britain. Devolution saw the government grant legislative assemblies to the constituent nations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland that gave the other countries of the UK more power to govern their own affairs. Blair's government also rolled back immigration controls to encourage migrants. With Britain seeing a rapid rise in its immigrant population into the 2000s, Britain joins the US in its invasion of Iraq in 2003 and in the war on terror. In 2005, Britain felt firsthand the impact of terror attacks when the 77 bombings in London left 52 people dead and over 700 injured. Much like the US though, the UK's involvement in military action in the Middle East was highly criticized for its harm it inflicted upon civilians and the unclear nature of its military goals. The 2008 financial crash hit Britain hard. Being so closely tied to the American economy, the British economy suffered a serious contraction. The Northern Rock Bank collapsed and other banks teetered on the edge. Inflation and unemployment soared. The Great Recession spelled the end of the Labor government and the rise of the Conservatives again from 2010. The Conservative government was characterized by austerity measures and cuts to public spending that proved widely unpopular. Scotland, Brexit, and the future of Britain. The Blair government's approach to devolution and immigration foreshadowed the hot button political topics of the 2010s and 2020s. Devolution was a recognition of the growing nationalism in the constituent countries of the UK, especially in Scotland. In 2014, Scotland held its first referendum on independence, threatening to break up the UK and dissolve a union that had stood since 1707. The no vote to independence narrowly won, but support for independence has remained high and demands for a second referendum grow louder by the year. But

### Segment 43 (210:00 - 212:00) [3:30:00]

the biggest and most controversial referendum came in 2016 when Britain voted to leave the European Union. Brexit was a culmination of many trends. Britain had long been the odd one out in Europe, but the decision to leave was a significant blow to the post-war European order. Arguments of sovereignty and refusal to bow down to foreign rules recalled the ancient disputes between kings and popes, but it was immigration that is seen as the main issue. By 2016, the pace of immigration into Britain was the highest it had ever been in centuries. Brexit is believed to be a reaction to that from a population unhappy with the changes immigration brought. Since 2016, Britain's economy and politics have floundered as multiple short-lived conservative governments struggled to manage Brexit. The COVID pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine posed their own challenges. Although it still might be too soon to fully assess their impact, and the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 only increased questions about the survival of the monarchy itself. More recently, Kier Starmer's Labor Party ended over a decade of Conservative rule in 2024. But within months, Starmer's government has become just as unpopular as the Conservatives before them. What's next for England and Britain as a whole is anyone's guess. Although the days of England's global dominance are over, its long history is unlikely to end anytime soon. What that history will look like is far from certain. Since we started this channel, we have been obsessed with historical maps. Since some of you might like maps as well, we created a few products for you. Highresolution downloads and museum quality prints. Go to knowledgeia. co co and have a look. If you want to own one, use my code in the description below.