Also by Robert Lacey ROBERT, EARL OF ESSEX THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HENRY VIII THE QUEENS OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC SIR WALTER RALEGH MAJESTY: ELIZABETH II AND THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR THE KINGDOM PRINCESS ARISTOCRATS FORD: THE MEN AND THE MACHINE GOD BLESS HER! QUEEN MOTHER LITTLE MAN GRACE SOTHEBY’S: BIDDING FOR CLASS THE YEAR 1000 THE QUEEN MOTHER’S CENTURY ROYAL: HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II Copyright Copyright © 2003 by Robert Lacey All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Little, Brown and Company Hachette Book Group 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com First published in Great Britain by Little, Brown, 2003 First eBook Edition: June 2004 The author gratefully acknowledges permission to quote from Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Penguin Classics, 1995; revised edition, 1968), translation copyright © Leo Sherley-Price, 1955, 1968; The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978), translator Marjorie Chibnall, © Oxford University Press, 1978; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (J. M. Dent, 1996), translator M. J. Swanton, © J. M. Dent, 1996; Piers the Ploughman by William Langland (Penguin Books, 1966), translation © J. F. Goodridge, 1959, 1966. Illustrations and maps © 2003 by Fred van Deelen ISBN: 978-0-7595-1161-3 FOR SASHA Contents Anglo-Saxon and Norman England England's Norman and Angevin, or Plantagenet, Kings The Angevin Empire of Henry II Also by Robert Lacey Copyright Introduction: Storytelling Cheddar Man Pytheas and the Painted People The Standard-Bearer of the 10th And did those Feet? Jesus Christ and the Legends of Glastonbury The Emperor Claudius Triumphant Boadicea, Warrior Queen Hadrian’s Wall Arthur, Once and Future King Pope Gregory’s Angels St Augustine’s Magic King Oswy and the Crown of Thorns Caedmon, The First English Poet The Venerable Bede Alfred and the Cakes The Lady of the Mercians Ethelred the Unready Elmer the Flying Monk King Canute and the Waves Edward the Confessor The Legend of Lady Godiva The Year of Three Kings The Death of Brave King Harold Hereward the Wake and the Norman Yoke The Domesday Book The Mysterious Death of William Rufus Henry I and the White Ship Stephen and Matilda Murder in the Cathedral A King Repents The RiverBank Take-Away Richard the Lionheart John Lackland and Magna Carta Hobbehod, Prince of Thieves Simon De Montfort and His Talking-Place A Prince Who Speaks No Word of English Piers Gaveston and Edward II A Prince Wins His Spurs The Burghers of Calais The Fair Maid of Kent and the Order of the Garter The Great Mortality The Bedside Manner of A Plague Doctor The Dream of Piers The Ploughman The ‘Mad Multitude’ Bibliography and Source Notes Exploring the Original Sources Acknowledgements Anglo-Saxon and Norman England Simplified family tree of England’s Norman and Angevin Kings France and Normandy, showing the Angevin possessions of King Henry II (Henry Plantagenet) around 1174 STORYTELLING T HE FIRST HISTORY BOOK THAT I REMEMBER reading with pleasure was a stout, blue, exuberantly triumphalist volume, Our Island Story - A History of England for Boys and Girls by H. E. Marshall. It had a red and gold crested shield embossed on the cover, and it told tales of men, women and often children whom it dared to describe as ‘heroes’ and ‘heroines’. It was accompanied by a companion volume, Our Empire Story, which was still more politically incorrect, relating the sagas of the heroes and heroines who adventured ‘across the seas’ to paint much of the globe pink. I must confess that I loved it still more - even though I discovered, at the beginning of the second chapter, that the author had a vivid imagination. John Cabot’s ship the Matthew was described by Marshall as sailing out from Bristol harbour one bright May morning in 1497, ‘followed by the wishes and prayers of many an anxious heart . . . until it was but a speck in the distance’. Old H. E. - who, I later learned, was an Edwardian lady, Henrietta Elizabeth, living and writing in Australia - was clearly not aware that the port of Bristol is several muddy miles inland from the Bristol Channel. As a pupil at Clifton National Infants School, a few hundred yards from the Bristol docks, I could have told her that if there had been a crowd waving goodbye to Cabot in 1497, they would have lost sight of the doughty mariner as he tacked round the first corner of the Avon Gorge. It was my first lesson in the imperfections of history. There may be such a thing as pure, true history - what actually, really, definitely happened in the past - but it is unknowable. We can only hope to get somewhere close. The history that we have to make do with is the story that historians choose to tell us, pieced together and handed down, filtered through every handler’s value system and particular axe that he or she chooses to grind. In fact, I was never that disillusioned by H. E. Marshall’s mistake. I was in thrall to the tales that she told - and in our postmodern age it could even be considered healthy to have realised that I was reading not the truth, but someone else’s imperfect version of it. ‘History’ and ‘story’ derive from the same