Who Made England? E-Book

Chip Colquhoun

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 151

Beschreibung

Did you know English people were around before the country of England was invented? It's true: just over 1,000 years ago, English people lived in several smaller countries all over the island of Britain. A Saxon king called Alfred is famous for starting to bring these countries together – but who finished the job? Another Saxon king? A monk? Or was it... a Viking? In this fantastically illustrated book, storyteller Chip Colquhoun explores fact and folklore to see what they tell us about the birth of a country. After enjoying these tales of deadly battles, singing kings and miraculous queens, can you work out Who Made England??

Leseprobe

WHO MADE ENGLAND?

For Willow and Layla-Rose,my beautiful nieces.

Chip

For my gorgeous wife, Vicki,and our beautiful daughter Polly.

Dave

First published 2017

This edition published 2020

The History Press

97 St George’s Place,

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Chip Colquhoun, 2017

Illustrations © Dave Hingley, 2017

The right of Chip Colquhoun to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 8301 3

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Great Britain by TJ International, Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

About the Author

About the Illustrator

Thank Yous for the Second Edition

Foreword for the First Edition

Foreword for the Second Edition

Introduction

Where did the English Come From?

Bede

Alfred the Great

Ethelfled

Edward the Elder

Elfweard

Ethelstan

Edmund

Eadred

Edwy the Fair

A Brief Break from Britain

Edgar the Peaceful

Edward the Martyr

Ethelred the Unready

A Few More Monks

Edmund Ironside

Knut the Great

What Happened Next?

Bibliography

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHIP COLQUHOUN began storytelling professionally in 2007, co-founding Epic Tales (formerly Snail Tales). He’s since performed in eight countries, represented the Oxford Reading Tree online and written the EU’s guide to storytelling for schools (available free from the Cambridgeshire Race Equality and Diversity Service). His first book for children was Cambridgeshire Folk Tales for Children (also published by The History Press), and his most recent was The First King of England in a Dress (published by Epic Tales). He lives in Cambridgeshire with Emma and Tito.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

DAVE HINGLEY has always loved drawing and comic books. Since studying animation at the University of South Wales, Dave has worked in and around animation for the last eighteen years. He has recently produced illustrations for Cambridgeshire Folk Tales for Children and the stage show The First King of England in a Dress.

THANK YOUS FORTHE SECOND EDITION

Once again, I am deeply indebted to Nicola Guy, my commissioning editor at The History Press. Not only did she inspire the first edition of this book by inviting me to write Cambridgeshire Folk Tales for Children, but she lit the fire for this second edition to steam ahead. I couldn’t have asked for a better editor to introduce me to the world of publishing!

The existence of this edition, though, also owes a lot to Dr Charles Insley, M.J. Trow and Carol. Over our long discussions prompted by the first edition, they helped me see where the book could be even more accurate. This may be written in a style that we hope all ages can access, but I never wanted that to be an excuse for it to be under researched! So big thanks to them all.

That same research was greatly helped along by Dr James Freeman, Dr Suzanne Paul and Prof Simon Keynes, each based at the University of Cambridge. Great thanks to them all for their prompt assistance in my hours of need!

Thanks also to Berenice Mann, who helped me increase the accuracy of our reference to the Jewish nation.

Huge thanks again to Dave Hingley, for adding yet more illustrations to enliven the stories within these pages.

And finally, mahoosive thanks to my own Queen Emma, my kitten Tito and my father Paul – for their love, support and ice cream during my passions, projects and occasional panics.

FOREWORD FOR THEFIRST EDITION

How do you find out what’s happening in the world?

You could ask your mum or dad. But how do they know what’s happening? They may get the news from TV, websites or newspapers. And, of course, you can do the same.

Now imagine a world with no TVs, no computers, no newspapers. If you lived 1,000 years ago it would be very difficult to find out what was happening in the world. Your mum and dad wouldn’t know any more than you, and chances are that none of you would be able to read or write.

That is the world that Chip writes about in this book. Studying history is like going on a journey with no satnav or map. All we have are a few clues to help us find our way. We have facts: information written long ago by the few people who could write. And we have folklore: stories told around the home fire as entertainment.

Chip has taken these two sources – fact and folklore – to tell us fascinating stories of the place we came to know as England. In this book you will meet people on your journey through time that you’ve never heard of before. They looked like us, although we don’t know exactly what they looked like; they spoke a language we’d find hard to understand (although the word ‘hard’ is one we’d all recognise); and they had the same hopes and fears we still have today.

Because the most important people 1,000 years ago were the kings, Chip has written about them. What they did still matters, even after all this time, because they helped build the England we can see today.

M.J. Trow,

Historian and author

M.J. Trow wrote a biography of King Knut entitled Cnut: Emperor of the North. You can watch M.J. and Chip looking at some of King Knut’s letters in videos on www.Kingdom1000.com

FOREWORD FORTHE SECOND EDITION

I wonder what it would be like to meet an English person from 1,000 years ago. We speak a language that was once like theirs, but I don’t think we’d understand them today.

Some of the things they said, though, we might understand. They lived in a place that, by the year AD 1000, they called ‘Engla Land’ – not very far from our own ‘England’ – and some of the words and names around today are still very similar to what they would have been 1,000 years ago. If you’re called ‘Edward’, that is a name that has not really changed in a millennium. Other Old English names, like ‘Oswald’ and ‘Edmund’, were common up until seventy years ago.

This was a world without radio, television or social media, where we have to piece together what happened from a few sources: documents written by the very small number of people who could write, and the things they left behind that archaeologists dig up for us. But we also have lots of stories that were told at the time, and which have come down to us as ‘folklore’.

In this book, Chip has put together these sources to tell the exciting story of how England came to be one country, and the people – from England and from outside England – who made it.

Dr Charles Insley

Dr Insley is the Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Manchester. You can see him and Chip looking at some of the documentary evidence in videos on www.Kingdom1000.com

INTRODUCTION

Happy birthday!

Is it your birthday? If not, why not celebrate anyway? You were born on a day, right? So why not be as glad about it today as you would any other day?

A birthday means two things. First, it’s a chance to celebrate! We hope to see our friends and family, get presents, and maybe even have a party.

But the second thing is something we can’t escape (even though some people try): birthdays tell us our age.

Like birthdays, history has two meanings. The first is known as folklore. This has other names too – like legend, custom, or oral tradition – and it’s partly why the subject is called history. It can be quite fun, like presents and parties.

We also have historical facts. These are things that can’t change – like the date of your birthday.

Even so, facts can be hidden. Also, some things that look like facts can actually be lies – making it hard to find the truth.

Normally, history books look at only one type of history: fact or folklore. Most choose facts, perhaps because they think that’s the best way to know the truth.

But is it really? Let’s think about birthdays again. What’s the best kind of present? Isn’t it one where the person giving you the present has really thought about what you like?

In the same way, folklore can tell us about the characters in history, and what people thought of them. A story about someone may not be true. But if the story was told again and again by lots of different people, it shows us what they thought of that person. Someone popular would probably be a good character. Somebody no one likes, though, could become a bad guy.

For example, take King John. If you know any Robin Hood stories, you’ll know that John is one of the bad guys. No one knows if Robin actually existed, but John certainly did. And the fact that John became a baddie for Robin shows that few people liked him.

Sometimes, facts and folklore say the same thing. For instance, facts say that John took English armies into battles they didn’t win, and that English nobles forced John to make a Magna Carta (which simply means ‘big agreement’) saying that he wouldn’t be such a bossy king. But the facts also tell us that John took armies to fight those nobles just a short while later – he didn’t really care about that Magna Carta one bit.

But if we only had facts, how would we know what ordinary people thought about John? For many centuries, ordinary English people couldn’t read or write, so they couldn’t leave any facts for historians to know what they thought.

The only clues they could leave were the stories they told each other, again and again – until, many years later, someone did write them down.

So fact and folklore can both be useful for helping us make sense of history. That’s why this book gives you both.

WHAT THIS BOOK’S ABOUT

This book is about England’s ‘birthday’. England has been an important country in history. Some of the world’s most famous writers were born in England, such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen. England played a big part in stopping men who tried to take over the world, like Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. And people from England helped to build other countries like Australia and America.

But where did England come from? If we can find out, we could learn the secrets of its success – and avoid repeating some of its mistakes...

For a long time, though, England’s birth was surrounded in mystery – partly because historians concentrated too much on facts. This meant that, instead of a proper history, we only had part of the picture.

Let’s think about your birthday one more time. Imagine four friends come to your party, but only one of them gives you a present: a framed photo of you and them at a funfair.

Now imagine it’s a few years later, and you haven’t spoken to those friends in all that time. You’ve probably forgotten what they look like. But then you find that framed photo – so at least you can remember that friend. Wouldn’t this make you think that they must have been your best friend, since they gave you something?

England’s history was a bit like that. People knew there were many invasions – Romans, Saxons, Vikings, etc. But for a long time, one invasion was seen as the most important of all...

1066

In October 1066, a Norman duke called William invaded England. The English people had chosen someone called Harold to be their king, but William’s army killed Harold at the Battle of Hastings.

William became King William I – though he’s more often called ‘William the Conqueror’. Maybe that name suits him better, because he didn’t stop attacking the English even after beating Harold. He took his army east to attack ordinary English people there, and also marched north – setting fire to the farms and homes of ordinary people as he went.

But William and his Normans weren’t just good at attacking. They were also good at writing things down. William’s most famous book (though he didn’t write it himself) is known as the Domesday Book, and it’s the first book to record facts about what was going on in England at the time it was being written.

Maybe that’s why the Norman invasion was, for a long time, considered the most important invasion of all: this was when facts from English history began to get written down properly.

However, as we said a few pages ago, there is a problem with concentrating too much on facts: things can get hidden. And a good example is the Domesday Book.

You see, this was written to let William know exactly where to find all the money in England. That way, he could prove just how rich and powerful he was.

We don’t have that proof for the kings before William. Perhaps some of those kings were richer and more powerful than William. But we can’t know for sure, because the only king with a detailed book about his power is William.

So, for a long time, people who thought history was all about facts believed that the history of England only really began from 1066.

This also meant that, for just as long a time, a lot of people (including history teachers in schools) believed that William was the first important king of England. And in some ways he was – he’s the ancestor of nearly every king and queen of England since then. Even Queen Elizabeth II is William’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter!

That’s why schools used to teach the kings and queens of England in a poem that began with William:

Willie Willie Harry Stee,

Harry Dick John Harry three;

One two three Neds, Richard two

Harrys four five six... then who?

Edwards four, five, Dick the bad,

Harrys twain and Ned the lad;

Mary, Bessie, James the Vain,

Charlie, Charlie, James again...

Will and Mary, Anna Gloria,

Georges four, Will four, Victoria;

Edward seven next, and then

George the fifth in nineteen ten;

Ned the eighth soon abdicated

Then George the six was coronated;

And if you’ve not yet lost your breath,

Give a cheer for the second Elizabeth!

But hold on. Do we really want William the Conqueror to be the first king we remember? True, he was a successful invader. But isn’t it dangerous to call him the first important king, when he also killed a lot of ordinary people in the years after his invasion?

You see, other men tried to copy what William did. We’ve mentioned a couple of them already: Napoleon and Hitler. I’m sure you know what happened to at least one of them...

William may have actually been a bit of a bully. He attacked England when it was weak, then tried to make it turn completely Norman – getting rid of anything that was ‘different’.

But England only became strong enough to beat Napoleon and Hitler when its rulers tried bringing people together instead. For example, Queen Elizabeth I brought Catholics and Protestants together, and her England beat the Spanish Armada. King Charles II brought the Royalists and Parliamentarians together, and his England produced some of the world’s most important scientists, like Sir Isaac Newton. Queen Anne brought England and Scotland together to make Great Britain, and that soon became one of the world’s richest countries.