Chapter 3: A Long and Illustrious History

The Middle Ages

Проверено: 15 July 2026

These are the testable facts for this section, written in our own words (the handbook text itself is Crown copyright — and reading facts twice beats re-reading prose anyway). Work top to bottom, then drill the section below.

What you need to know

The Middle Ages (medieval period) runs from the Norman Conquest (1066) to about 1485 — a period of near-constant war.
English kings fought wars at home against the Welsh, Scottish and Irish, and abroad against France.
In 1284 King Edward I of England annexed Wales to the Crown of England by the Statute of Rhuddlan.
Edward I built huge castles in Wales, including Conwy and Caernarvon, to maintain English rule.
Welsh rebellions continued; by the middle of the 15th century the last Welsh rebellions had been defeated, and English laws and language were introduced.
In Scotland the English kings failed: Robert the Bruce defeated the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and Scotland remained unconquered.
At the start of the Middle Ages Ireland was an independent country; the English first went there as troops helping an Irish king, then settled.
The area of Ireland under English rule, around Dublin, was known as the Pale.
England fought a long war with France called the Hundred Years War — it actually lasted 116 years.
At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, one of the most famous battles of the Hundred Years War, King Henry V's vastly outnumbered army defeated the French.
The English left France in the 1450s.
The Black Death — a form of plague — reached Britain in 1348 and killed about one third of the populations of England, Scotland and Wales.
Effects of the Black Death: labour shortages, peasants demanding higher wages, people moving to towns, and the growth of a new social class of large landowners — the gentry.
In Ireland the Black Death killed many in the Pale, and the area of English control shrank.
In 1215 King John was forced by his noblemen to agree to Magna Carta (the Great Charter).
Magna Carta established the principle that even the king was subject to the law; it protected the rights of the nobility and restricted the king's power to collect taxes or change laws without consultation.
The word "parliament" comes from the French word "parler" (to speak).
Early parliaments developed from the king's council of advisers — nobles and church leaders.
By the end of the Middle Ages (the 15th century), the English Parliament had two Houses: the House of Lords (nobility, great landowners, bishops) and the House of Commons (elected knights of the shire and wealthy townspeople) — though only a small part of the population could vote.
Scotland developed its own Parliament with three Houses, called Estates: the lords, the commons and the clergy.
In England, judges developed the "common law" by a process of precedent (following earlier decisions) and tradition.
In Scotland the legal system developed differently: laws were "codified" — written down.
By 1400 English had become the preferred language of the royal court and Parliament, and official documents were being written in English — a mixture of Norman French and Anglo-Saxon.
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales — a series of poems about pilgrims travelling to Canterbury; it was one of the first books printed by William Caxton, the first person in England to print books using a printing press.
In Scotland, John Barbour wrote The Bruce, a poem about the Battle of Bannockburn.
Castles were built across Britain and Ireland in the Middle Ages; some, like Windsor and Edinburgh, are still in use today.
Great cathedrals were built, e.g. Lincoln Cathedral; many had beautiful stained glass — York Minster is a famous example.
England was an important trading nation; wool was a major export.
Skilled foreign workers came to England: weavers from France, engineers from Germany, glass manufacturers from Italy, canal builders from Holland.
The Wars of the Roses (1455–1485) were a civil war for the English throne between the House of Lancaster (symbol: red rose) and the House of York (symbol: white rose).
The Wars of the Roses ended at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485: King Richard III (York) was killed; Henry Tudor became King Henry VII.
Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, uniting the two families; the Tudor symbol was a red rose with a white rose inside it.

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