Fact-check log

Historic England lists Medieval as 1066 to 1540 when it dates monuments, buildings and other historic places in England.⁠¹

On the same list, Early Medieval runs from AD 410 to 1066.⁠¹

Historic England also lists a Tudor period of 1485 to 1603, which overlaps the later part of its Medieval span.⁠¹

After Medieval, its Post Medieval period runs from 1540 to 1901.⁠¹

English Heritage's Story of England treats Medieval as 1066–1485.⁠²

It then starts the Tudors in 1485, running to 1603.⁠²

Duke William of Normandy's resounding triumph over King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, English Heritage says, marked the dawn of a new era.⁠²

Henry VII's victory against Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, it says, ended the turbulent Wars of the Roses and began the Tudor dynasty.⁠²

William and his knights, and the castles they built, transformed England and helped impose Norman rule.⁠³

Norman clergy dominated the Church, and monasteries and churches were constructed in the new Romanesque or Norman style of architecture.⁠³

William's survey of England, Domesday Book (1086), recorded a land governed by feudal ties.⁠³

Every level of society was under an obligation of service to the class above.⁠³

Punitive forest laws protected the royal hunting preserves, and reinforced the new regime.⁠³

The country descended into chaos and civil war when Henry I's nephew Stephen (r.1135–54) was crowned king, despite the rival claim of Henry's daughter Matilda.⁠³

Order was restored by Matilda's son, Henry II (r.1154–89), the first of the Angevin or Plantagenet kings.⁠³

St Thomas Becket was murdered in his cathedral by Henry's knights in 1170.⁠³

English Heritage says John's barons forced him to sign Magna Carta, which was intended to limit his powers, in 1215 — but ultimately he ignored it.⁠³

John died in October 1216, with his nine-year-old son, Henry, assuming the throne in the midst of French invasion.⁠³

Louis conquered almost all of south-eastern England (though not Dover Castle), but retreated in 1217 after defeats in the Battle of Sandwich and in the streets of Lincoln.⁠³

Henry III's later reign saw baronial unrest headed by Simon de Montfort, who died at the Battle of Evesham (1265).⁠³

Edward I (r.1272–1307) united his barons behind the conquest of Wales (1277–84) and his attempts on Scotland.⁠³

Edward II's defeat at Bannockburn (1314) was followed by Scots raids far south of the border.⁠³

Edward III won victories in France at Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356) during the early years of what was later known as the Hundred Years War (1337–1453).⁠³

His armies included archers using longbows, which became the dominant English weapon of the later Middle Ages.⁠³

English began to replace Norman French as the dominant language.⁠³

Commerce developed, helped by better coinage and the growth of the wool trade.⁠³

In 1348–9, English Heritage says, the Black Death killed between a third and a half of England's population.⁠³

The most immediate of its many effects was an acute labour shortage. Survivors demanded higher wages and bond men refused to do unpaid 'service' for feudal masters.⁠³

In 1381 simmering grievances erupted into the Peasants' Revolt.⁠³

For the first time in English history, the doctrines as well as the actions of the Church were being attacked, by John Wycliffe and the Lollards.⁠³

Henry V won a startling victory over the French at Agincourt in 1415, achieved largely thanks to the all-conquering English longbow. By the time of his premature death he was ruling half of France.⁠³

The Wars of the Roses, in English Heritage wording, were a series of short campaigns fought at intervals between 1455 and 1485, during which the Crown changed hands six times.⁠³

Richard III was defeated and killed at Bosworth (1485) by the Lancastrian heir, Henry Tudor.⁠³

English Heritage's teaching guide also marks the Middle Ages as 1066–1485.⁠⁴

During this period, it says, the Church dominated everyday life. In the 14th century one in every 15 Englishmen was clergy of some kind.⁠⁴

For more than a century after the Battle of Hastings, all substantial stone buildings in England were built in the Romanesque style, known in the British Isles as Norman.⁠⁴

That style was superseded from the later 12th century by a new style — the Gothic.⁠⁴

The Norman Conquest, the same guide says, was achieved largely thanks to two instruments of war previously unknown in England: the mounted, armoured knight, and the castle.⁠⁴

It dates the Battle of Bosworth to 22 August 1485, after which Henry Tudor was crowned king, the first Tudor monarch.⁠⁴

Domesday Book, The National Archives says, is a detailed survey and valuation of landed property in England at the end of the 11th century.⁠⁵

The survey was ordered by William the Conqueror at Christmas 1085 and undertaken the following year.⁠⁵

It is not a census of the population, and the individuals named in it are almost exclusively land-holders.⁠⁵

The survey does not cover London (city), Winchester, Northumberland and Durham or much of north-west England; the only parts of Wales included are certain border areas.⁠⁵

Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex are in a separate volume, known as Little Domesday because of its smaller size.⁠⁵

Commissioners asked how land had been held on the last day of the reign of Edward the Confessor (5 January 1066) — abbreviated in Domesday as TRE — when it was granted by King William, and as it was in 1086.⁠⁵

The National Archives says Magna Carta was sealed by King John in 1215, and that its emphasis on liberty — and the principle that the ruler is subject to the law — has resonated down the ages.⁠⁶

After losing the duchy of Normandy to the French in 1204, John tried and failed to regain it. This provoked a rebellion by his barons that destabilised the kingdom.⁠⁶

King John and the barons famously sealed their agreement, later known as Magna Carta, at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. Four days later its terms were published.⁠⁶

Among the liberties conceded, no free man would be arrested, imprisoned, outlawed or exiled without the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.⁠⁶

After agreeing the charter, King John quickly disowned these written rights.⁠⁶

By 1225, Henry III, ruling in his own right, reissued a slightly revised Magna Carta. The 1225 Magna Carta became the definitive version.⁠⁶

The 1297 Magna Carta is the version which was placed onto the Statute Book.⁠⁶

Between 1315 and 1322, the Great Famine, brought about by unusually prolonged periods of heavy rainfall and cold spells, killed 10-15% of the population.⁠⁷

The Black Death reached the shores of England at Melcombe Regis (now Weymouth) in Dorset in June, The National Archives says, perhaps carried by a ship which had crossed from Gascony to Bristol.⁠⁷

By 1349 it had killed around a third of the population.⁠⁷

With land prices low and wages high, many who survived the plague experienced a higher standard of living.⁠⁷

The Norman Conquest, Britannica says, was primarily effected by William's decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings (October 14, 1066).⁠⁸

Edward, from his deathbed, named Harold his successor on January 5, 1066, and Harold was crowned king the following day.⁠⁸

At Stamford Bridge (September 25) Harold won a smashing victory in which both Harald III and Tostig perished.⁠⁸

By August 1066 William had assembled a force of 4,000–7,000 knights and foot soldiers.⁠⁸

Landing in Pevensey on September 28, he moved directly to Hastings.⁠⁸

Harold, hurrying southward with about 7,000 men, approached Hastings on October 13.⁠⁸

Late in the afternoon, Harold was killed (by an arrow in the eye, according to the Bayeux Tapestry), and by nightfall the remaining English had scattered and fled.⁠⁸

William was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1066.⁠⁸

Sporadic revolts continued until 1071. The most serious, in Northumbria (1069–70), was suppressed by William himself, who then devastated vast tracts of the north.⁠⁸

William revolutionized the upper ranks of English society by dividing the country among about 180 Norman tenants-in-chief.⁠⁸

Written English, Britannica says, hardly reappeared until the 13th century, after the vernacular was superseded in official documents by Latin and then increasingly by Anglo-Norman.⁠⁸

William founded only a small number of monasteries, including Battle Abbey, in honour of his victory at Hastings.⁠⁸

Britannica calls Magna Carta a charter of English liberties granted by King John on June 15, 1215, under threat of civil war and reissued, with alterations, in 1216, 1217, and 1225.⁠⁹

By declaring the sovereign to be subject to the rule of law and documenting the liberties held by “free men,” it provided the foundation for individual rights in Anglo-American jurisprudence.⁠⁹

On June 15, 1215, the document known as the Articles of the Barons was at last agreed upon, and to it the king's great seal was set.⁠⁹

The final version of the Magna Carta was accepted by the king and the barons on June 19.⁠⁹

There still exist four original copies of the charter of 1215, two of them held by the cathedral churches in which they were originally deposited — Lincoln and Salisbury — and the other two in the British Library.⁠⁹

The Black Death, Britannica says, ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351. It is estimated that 25 million people died.⁠¹⁰

It is widely believed to have been the result of plague, caused by infection with the bacterium Yersinia pestis.⁠¹⁰

Other scientific evidence has indicated that the Black Death may have been viral in origin.⁠¹⁰

A ship from Calais, Britannica says, carried the plague to Melcombe Regis, Dorset, in August 1348.⁠¹⁰

The French chronicler Jean Froissart's statement that about one-third of Europe's population died in the epidemic may be fairly accurate, Britannica says.⁠¹⁰

The population in England in 1400 was perhaps half what it had been 100 years earlier.⁠¹⁰

In England alone, the Black Death certainly caused the depopulation or total disappearance of about 1,000 villages.⁠¹⁰

The Peasants' Revolt, also called Wat Tyler's Rebellion (1381), was the first great popular rebellion in English history.⁠¹¹

Its immediate cause was the imposition of the unpopular poll tax of 1380.⁠¹¹

Probably the main grievance of the agricultural labourers and urban working classes was the Statute of Labourers (1351), which attempted to fix maximum wages during the labour shortage following the Black Death.⁠¹¹

The revolt began in Essex in May 1381, taking the government of the young king Richard II (then just 14 years old) by surprise.⁠¹¹

On the 13th the Kentish men, under Wat Tyler, entered London.⁠¹¹

On the 14th Richard met the men of Essex outside London at Mile End, where he promised cheap land, free trade, and the abolition of serfdom and forced labor.⁠¹¹

The king met Tyler and the Kentishmen at Smithfield on the following day. A disturbance broke out, and Tyler was cut down in Richard's presence by the lord mayor of London, William Walworth.⁠¹¹

The rebellion lasted less than a month and failed completely as a social revolution. King Richard's promises at Mile End and Smithfield were promptly forgotten.⁠¹¹

It succeeded as a protest against the taxation of poorer classes insofar as it prevented further levying of the poll tax for more than 250 years.⁠¹¹

Britannica dates the Wars of the Roses to 1455–85: dynastic civil wars between the houses of Lancaster and York for the English throne.⁠¹²

They were named many years afterward from the supposed badges of the contending parties: the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster.⁠¹²

The first battle of the wars, at St. Albans (May 22, 1455), resulted in a Yorkist victory and four years of uneasy truce.⁠¹²

Henry defeated and killed Richard at Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485, bringing the wars to a close, in Britannica's traditional dating.⁠¹²

By his marriage to Edward IV's daughter Elizabeth of York in 1486, Henry united the Yorkist and Lancastrian claims.⁠¹²

Henry defeated a Yorkist rising supporting the pretender Lambert Simnel on June 16, 1487, a date which some historians prefer over the traditional 1485 for the termination of the wars.⁠¹²

Henry VII, born 28 January 1457, died 21 April 1509 at Richmond, Surrey, and was king of England from 1485 to 1509. Britannica says he succeeded in ending the Wars of the Roses and founded the Tudor dynasty.⁠¹³

In 1485 Henry landed at Milford Haven in Wales and advanced toward London.⁠¹³

He was crowned on October 30 and secured parliamentary recognition of his title early in November. He married Elizabeth of York on January 18, 1486.⁠¹³

When he died, his only surviving son, Henry VIII, succeeded him without a breath of opposition.⁠¹³