Earliest Times
• stone age (central core of flint, flakes of flint)
• neolithic people (farming, pottery)
• 3000 BC – henges
• 2400 BC – “beaker” people (bronze)
• 700 BC – the Celts (iron, tribes, druids, Boadicea (AD 61))
• Romans – reading and writing, Hadrian’s wall, roads, villas)
• AD 430 – Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes)
- Bede
- King Offa of Mercia
- witan, shires, strips of land, manor, class system
- monk Augustine (archbishop of Cantenbury (601))
- Alfred (monasteries, system of law, AD 878 battle with Vikings)
• AD 856 – the Vikings – treaty with Alfred
• AD 950 – Danish Vikings – Ethelred A-S (regular tax system (paid Vikings to stay away)
- Cnut D-V
• Edward the Confessor – Norman (church, manor)
• Harold – AD 1066 – defeated the Danes in Yorkshire
- William landed in England – battle near Hastings

The Early Middle Ages
• William the Conqueror – feudalism
- the Domesday Book
- sons : Robert (Normandy), William Rufus (England, †hunting accident), Henry (after Rufus’s death took the crown)
• Henry – defeated Rober, united Normandy & England
- daughter Matilda /+ Geoffrey Plantagenet (Henry quarreled with him)/
- nephew Stephen of Blois – after Henry’s death raced to England to claim the crown
> Matilda attacked England what caused civil war> 1153 Matilda’s son Henry will succeed the throne
• Henry II. – manor again became the centre of administration & life
- /+ Eleanor of Aquitaine/ - later on he quarreled with her and his sons Richard & John took their mother’s side and fought against their father
- 1170 Thomas Becket
- conquered Ireland
- trial by jury
- †1189
• Richard I. Lionheart – went to Holy Land to fight the Muslims – on his way back was captured by duke of Austria (England had to pay)
- † 1199 in France
• John – greedy (king’s court, payments of nobles, taxes)
- 1204 French king invaded Normandy> nobles lost their lands
- 1209 quarreled with Pope on who will be the Archbishop of Cant.> closed churches> John gave in in 1214
- 1215 hoped to recapture Normandy – lords did not trust him & together with merchants marched to London> Magna Carta + committee, paid fighters
- †1216
• Henry III. – expensive Pope wars
- Simon de Montfort – 1258 took over government – Parliament, defeated and killed in 1265
- †1272
• Edward I. – House of Commons (mixture of gentry and merchants)
- 1242 Llewelyn ap Gruffydd
- 1282 united Wales and England> baby son becomes the Prince of Wales
- drained Ireland – “the Pale”
- 1290 – Scotland – John de Balliol
- invaded Scotland against rebels – William Wallace’s people’s army 1297 (†Wallace – Scottish nationalism)
+ Robert Bruce – freed Scotland 1314
-†1307
• Edward II. – defeated by Bruce at Bannockbury 1314
- †1327 murdered