Foundation

Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors by Peter Ackroyd

Foundation: The History of England from its earliest beginnings to the Tudors.  By Peter Ackroyd

Life in medieval England was nasty, brutish and short.  Mr. Ackroyd does not spare on the horrid details of daily life in very old England. In the beginning, people, mostly Celts lived in mud huts with their livestock. If you got sick, there were the leaches and the bloodletting followed by a poultice of cattle dung applied to the affected area.  There were constant wars between competing factions and soldiers were easily expendable. And this was before the “100 years war”, which actually lasted 114 years.  If you got into trouble, really bad trouble, like William Wallace who dared to defy Edward Longshanks (see the movie Braveheart) you could be hanged, then dis-emboweled while you were still alive, then drawn and quartered which meant that your head and limbs were severed and put on display. If you were a heretic, which there were not many, you would be burned at the stake.   If you were a King and were deposed by an opposing faction you could die by having a red hot poker shoved up your backside.

Here is Richard the Lionheart, who was not so noble, but was really good with a sword.  King John was so bad that the barons teamed up and presented him with the Magna Carta, the basis of all western law.

Here too is the Battle of Hastings in 1066 which some people still regard as the end of true English civilization, with England being overrun by Normans.  The Author shows through archaeological data that long before the “Norman Conquest”, the Celts were being infiltrated by a constant stream of Danes and Vikings, who intermingled with the population.”

The Black Death shows up in the 1300’s and a third of the population dies.  The author postulates that it was not Bubonic Plague but instead was Anthrax, Influenza, or a form of Haemorrhagic Fever.

Regarding the Jews “The history of the Jews in medieval England is an unhappy and even bloody one.  Since Christians were not allowed to lend money at interest, some other group of merchants had to be created.  The Jews became moneylenders by default, as it were, and as a result they were abused and despised in equal measure.”

The last part of the book is devoted to the Wars of the roses; the house of Lancaster vs. the house of York, the white rose vs. the red rose.

In conclusion Ackroyd says : “when we look over the course of human affairs we are more likely than not to find only error and confusion.  There is in fact a case for saying that human history, as it is generally described and understood, is the sum total of accident and unintended consequence.”  I guess some things never change.     There is a volume 2 to this history, “Tudors the history of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I, which will be published in October of  2013.

Joel