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In the last decades of the 13th century, the nations of Britain found their voices -

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loud confident and defiant - and they were raised against England.

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"The people of Snowdon assert that even if their Prince gave over lordshipment to the English King,

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"they would refuse to do homage to any foreigner of whose language, customs and law they were ignorant."

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"On account of the endless perfidy of the English and to recover our native freedom,

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"the Irish are compelled to enter a deadly war."

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"For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, we will yield in no least way to English dominion.

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"We fight not for glory, nor riches, nor honour, but for freedom."

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We know these voices. They have been with us a long time now.

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All the same, it is a shock to hear them this early,

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to discover the politics of birthplace uttered with such passion and such pain.

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Once said, they could not be unsaid.

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When the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish acted on their words,

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the bloody wars of the British nations became inevitable.

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And these would not just be battles about territories,

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they were battles for ideas.

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Ideas of what a sovereign nation should be -

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an extension of the rule as will or something wider,

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something involving the people as well as the Prince, something called "the community of the realm".

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Those battles would be fought between the peoples of Britain - Welshmen would die in Scotland,

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Scotsmen would perish in Ireland, the English would kill and be killed everywhere.

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For the fight to the death between princes and principles,

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the battle for the making of a nation would begin in the very heart of England.

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One man was responsible for provoking the peoples of Britain into an awareness of their nationhood

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and he was England's own, home-grown Caesar, Edward I.

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In 1774, those made curious by his fearsome reputation opened his tomb.

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The man they found inside was every bit as awesome as contemporaries had recorded -

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dressed in the purple robe of a Roman emperor, an impressive six foot two tall,

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fully justifying his nickname, Long Shanks.

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Upon that stark marble tomb, the only ornamentation reads,

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"Edwardus Primus, Scottorum Malleus Hic Est.

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"Hammer of the Scots."

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After a century of rule by kings who were essentially Frenchmen,

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Edward can be called the first truly English King, given an old Anglo-Saxon name

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and imbued with a certainty that it was England's imperial mission

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to take its rule to the four corners of the British Islands.

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His many enemies compared him to one of the big-cat predators.

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"Perhaps he will rightly be called a Leopard.

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"Leo - brave, proud and fierce. The pard - wily, devious and treacherous."

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The Leopard Prince was born to splendid, impossible expectations.

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His father Henry III had named his son for England's royal saint, Edward the Confessor,

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the paragon, so it was then thought, of kingly perfection.

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Though the Confessor had been dead for almost 200 years, Henry ate, drank and worshipped him

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and finally created for the long-dead King a shrine of unparalleled magnificence.

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Of course, such a shrine would need a home that equalled its splendour -

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the new Westminster Abbey.

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Henry demolished the old basilica at Westminster and replaced it with an immense Gothic abbey,

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a building that now fitted his vision of an awe-inspiring English monarch.

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From now on, Westminster would be the symbolic heart of the kingdom,

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the place where all English monarchs would be crowned and buried.

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His father, King Henry III, reigned for 56 years.

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He is not remembered for any stirring achievement or blood-soaked conquest,

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but Henry's time on the throne was driven by a magnificent obsession -

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he wanted to turn the monarchy into England's dominant power.

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Henry's great gift to the nation was more than just a fine new church.

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Across the way, its secular counterpart

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was the great hall of the Palace of Westminster.

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The palace was seat of government AND a residence for King Henry

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one like his Angevin ancestors didn't much like being in the saddle.

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And the hall was a court in both the senses the word suggests -

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a place of judgement and a theatre of ceremony.

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At Westminster, the King had to be seen to be magnificent.

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But the King had also to be seen to be just.

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Westminster may have been the creation of the monarchy,

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but it also belonged to England, a nation of laws,

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the nation of Magna Carta.

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Henry had grown up with the charter, signed by his father King John in 1215,

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which put real limits on the power of the King - a bit of a blow for a king who wanted absolute authority.

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Kings could no longer ignore the complaints of their subjects

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that they could be forced to submit to a council of the barons.

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That council thought of itself as the voice of the community of the realm

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and even now began to be called Parliament.

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Its role would be to hold the King to his contract.

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Since Henry had become King as a boy of nine, he had no choice but to swallow this bitter pill.

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However, as he grew older, Henry burned with frustration, becoming determined to escape its shackles,

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to restore the unchallenged authority of the Crown.

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Knowing that this couldn't happen without a fight, Henry accepted a compromise position for many years

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that the King was not free to govern through pure royal will.

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But Henry III was also a Plantagenet and Plantagenets dreamed dangerous dreams,

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expensive dreams of campaigns far abroad, which no-one in York or Canterbury could see the point of.

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And when Plantagenets thought they might get unwelcome advice, they stopped listening...

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until, that is, they were made to.

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In 1258, in the very hall that defined his majesty, Westminster,

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seven of the most powerful barons confronted the King.

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Fully armed, they paused only to leave their swords outside.

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They demanded that Henry meet them at a parliament in Oxford

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and stop trying to turn his European dreams into reality.

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The barons were led in all but name by the most improbable revolutionary in all of British history -

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Simon de Montfort. Here at Kenilworth,

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he presided over a little empire of culture.

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A French aristocrat who inherited the Earldom of Leicester,

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Simon became convinced that he was more English than the English.

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What was good for de Montfort was good for the nation. Love him or hate him, everyone knew

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that Simon de Montfort was a man with a mission.

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That mission, embarked on with his fellow barons,

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was to bring the wayward, self-glorifying monarchy to book,

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to make it the servant, not the master, of the realm.

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At Oxford, amidst wildfire rumours, a camp of soldiers and the growling hunger of a famine,

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Henry III was treated to the emasculation of his sovereignty.

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A document was drawn up for the King to sign - not discuss, just accept.

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And what it said was so startling, so genuinely revolutionary,

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that 1258 ought to be one of those dates engraved on the national memory.

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The Provisions of Oxford were at least as important as Magna Carta.

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In effect, the Crown had been replaced by a new council of nobles and clergy.

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That council now virtually ruled England - foreign courtiers were made to disappear.

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"It has been ordained that there are to be three parliaments a year to view the state of the kingdom.

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"It is provided that, from each county, there are chosen four loyal, worthy knights

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"to hear all complaints for the common benefit of the whole kingdom."

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When the community of the realm, including the King and Prince Edward, swore to uphold the Provisions,

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they could have been in no doubt about the significance of the moment for the fate of the nation.

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And so Henry III's facade of omnipotent rule had come crashing down around his ears.

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But he was not the only royal with a stake in events.

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How did the 19-year-old Edward feel about the drastic shrinkage in the power of the Crown, his crown?

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There is no doubt that, for some time, even the Prince was dazzled

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by the intense magnetism of Simon de Montfort's personality.

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And for a while, Edward went along with it.

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But, inevitably, divisions opened up between the reformers.

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It was all very well to make the King and his officers answerable to the barons,

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but ought the barons to be answerable to THEIR inferiors?

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De Montfort thought yes, the earls thought no.

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And as those divisions opened wider,

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the Leopard Prince began to change his spots and sharpen his claws.

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Now it became increasingly clear that the struggle over who was to rule England and how they would do it

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centred on two men - Simon and Edward.

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Neither could prevail without the other's total defeat.

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Over five years, Henry and Edward manoeuvred against de Montfort for power until finally words ran out.

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For this was no three-month paper revolution, like the original signing of the Magna Carta.

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The issue could now only be settled on the field of battle. For the first time since the Norman conquest,

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the political fate of England was completely fluid, its eventual outcome uncertain.

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In 1264, de Montfort won the first round at the Battle of Lewes on the Sussex Downs.

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King Henry and Edward were both taken prisoner.

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The year which followed, with de Montfort in charge,

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was the closest England came to a republic until the days of Oliver Cromwell.

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And in Parliament, not just aristocrats and bishops, but ordinary knights of the shire

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and even burgesses from the towns presumed to discuss the fate of their superiors, a prince and a king.

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But like the later republic, this one quickly gained the attributes of a dictatorship.

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With power going to his head, Simon seemed more vainglorious adventurer than messianic reformer.

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In the end, he simply repelled more people than he attracted.

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With the impotent Henry III firmly under lock and key,

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the Crown's future lay with Edward, who outwitted his captors

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and made a dashing horseback getaway.

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Even at this stage, it was obvious that there was something extraordinary about Edward.

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He radiated the kind of charisma that drew confused responses of both fear and adoration.

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He purposely kept his signals mixed, the better to convert them into loyalty.

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Edward led his following to Evesham in Worcestershire

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where de Montfort's now outnumbered army camped near the abbey.

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Under stormy skies, the battle was a slaughter.

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Told his son had been killed, Simon replied, "Then it is time to die."

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He charged into the fray and was slain on foot, his devoted knights falling with him.

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Edward ignored the rules of war.

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The wounded were stabbed where they lay.

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Simon's head, hands, feet and testicles were cut off...

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..the genitals hung around his nose.

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The Crown had won, but only after overcoming Kenilworth's mighty defences

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in a siege that lasted nine months.

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But Edward had been given a serious early lesson in the political realities of England.

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He wouldn't cringe before the barons, but he had to make them his allies.

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As partners, they'd go on to create an English empire of their own -

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the reincarnation of Roman Britannia.

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In 1274, Edward I's coronation finally took place

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in a magnificent sanctuary created by his father.

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The Westminster in which he was crowned would,

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if Edward had anything to do with it, be the capital not just of England but of Britain.

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It was in Wales that Edward first made the seriousness of his ambitions crystal clear.

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Here, the dominant Prince was Llewelyn ap Gruffydd,

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ruler of the mountainous kingdom of Gwynedd, Greater Snowdonia.

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Knowing that the almost impossible terrain of his country had been the graveyard of English armies,

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Llewelyn was determined to resist their attempts to subdue central Wales.

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Here, the native Welsh clung on to their language, customs and laws,

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lords in their own lands, but still subjects of the English King.

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By the 13th century, Wales was divided into the principality of Gwynedd,

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the disputed centre and the encroaching English baronial and Crown lands.

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Encroaching, that is, until 1258, when Llewelyn was strong enough to have himself declared

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"princeps wallie", Prince of Wales.

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Exploiting the Civil War in England, and making an alliance with de Montfort,

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Llewelyn's armies overran the now undefended centre,

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but he then overreached himself, marrying de Montfort's daughter,

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an offence Edward was unlikely to forgive or to forget.

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Years later, Llewelyn handed Edward the perfect pretext for retribution -

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he failed to show up at Edward's coronation

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and ignored a total of five summonses to pay homage to his new king.

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Edward, who needed no tutorials on the connections between ceremonies and power, immediately took this

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as a slap in the face, an act of virtual rebellion.

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In 1276, a huge army - the biggest in Britain since the Norman conquest -

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invaded Gwynedd, penetrating right to its furthest corners, to Snowdonia and to Anglesey.

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Faced with this invasion, Llewelyn was forced to surrender.

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But, as so often in these years, humiliation bred defiance.

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In 1282, the Welsh launched a surprise attack on an English garrison.

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Edward now bore down again with an even bigger army,

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but this campaign was far from being a walkover.

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Realising this, the Archbishop of Canterbury attempted to conciliate between the warring factions,

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offering Llewelyn land and title in England if he would renounce his rights in Wales.

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And the answer to this offer was blunt.

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"That they must stand by their laws and rights in defence of all Wales.

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"The people preferred to die rather than to live under English rule.

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"They would not do homage to any stranger of whose language, manners and laws they were ignorant.

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"They would fight in defence of 'nostra natio' - our nation against the English.

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When the war was renewed,

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it was with fresh and unsparing savagery.

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No quarter was given by either side.

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The Welsh exploited their land, ambushed the slow-moving companies of knights

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and then disappeared off again into the hills and forests.

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FEROCIOUS SHRIEKS

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Then, in a minor skirmish in central Wales, Llewelyn was killed by an anonymous English spearman.

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The final annihilation of resistance took another six months

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before the King could claim Wales to be pacified.

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However, the subjugation of Wales was far more subtle than the surgical application of brute force.

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Edward had the chilling, uncannily modern knowledge

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that to break your enemy you must first strip him of his cultural identity.

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Before this place was called Conway by the English, it was Aberconwy.

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It was a monastery housing the tomb of the most powerful of all Welsh princes and home to a sacred relic

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that the Welsh believed to be a piece of the true cross.

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Naturally, then, the monastery became a fortress

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and the cross was taken to London along with Llewelyn's crown.

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The lords called themselves Princes of Wales - fine.

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From 1301, THEY will be the most English of the English,

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the first son of the King, the heir to the throne, the emperor in waiting.

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But the most titanic of all the visible signs of the English empire were its castles,

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a granite ring of fortresses stretching from Builth to Hope,

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most supplied from the sea, depriving the Welsh of any hope of liberation.

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For the Welsh of Snowdonia, the great stone fortresses in their midst were what one of them called

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the magnificent badges of our subjection.

223
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The symbol not of imperial grandeur, but of crushing national annihilation,

224
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a permanent, daily, wounding reminder of conquest and humiliation.

225
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The most colossal exercise, in fact, in colonial domination anywhere in medieval Europe.

226
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Beneath the lion standard of Edward Plantagenet, the Welsh inhabitants

227
00:22:48,200 --> 00:22:52,640
had now become second-class citizens in their own country.

228
00:22:54,240 --> 00:22:59,520
Those natives were treated for the most part like naughty children,

229
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not allowed to bear arms, of course, but even forced to ask permission

230
00:23:04,320 --> 00:23:08,600
if they wanted strangers to stay at their house overnight.

231
00:23:08,600 --> 00:23:13,240
Worst of all, I think, the Welsh were doomed by English superiority

232
00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:16,520
to become objects of terminal quaintness -

233
00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:22,040
the quaint language, quaint songs, those amusing choirs and chants.

234
00:23:24,040 --> 00:23:29,080
It could have been worse, and for the Jews of England, it was.

235
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:34,920
The Welsh wars cost ten times the King's annual revenue

236
00:23:34,920 --> 00:23:42,480
and the price of victory and castle building had so bled the Jews, the usual source of loans and taxation,

237
00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:49,320
that they had nothing left to yield and so could be dispensed with altogether.

238
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:57,680
Early in his reign, Edward, perhaps acting from religious conviction, outlawed moneylending

239
00:23:57,680 --> 00:24:01,920
and so put most of England's Jews out of business.

240
00:24:03,040 --> 00:24:08,680
He then forced them to wear yellow felt badges of identification

241
00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:15,320
and so be recognised as the subspecies of humanity he undoubtedly believed they were.

242
00:24:15,320 --> 00:24:19,120
A year after his first Welsh invasion,

243
00:24:19,120 --> 00:24:23,720
Edward arrested all the heads of the Jewish households

244
00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:27,200
and hanged nearly 300 in the tower.

245
00:24:31,280 --> 00:24:36,000
Not satisfied with this, he expelled the entire community,

246
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:38,880
perhaps 3,000 people, in 1290 -

247
00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:43,920
an act so overwhelmingly popular, especially with the church,

248
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:47,160
that it awarded him a huge tax grant.

249
00:24:49,040 --> 00:24:51,760
So it's Edward's England

250
00:24:51,760 --> 00:24:58,320
which became the first country to perform a little act of ethnic cleansing on its Jews -

251
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:03,520
the violent uprooting of entire communities in York, Lincoln and London.

252
00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:14,840
It was not plain sailing for the Jews aboard one deportation boat in the Thames.

253
00:25:14,840 --> 00:25:21,320
At Queenborough, the captain encouraged his Jewish passengers to stretch their legs

254
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:28,040
as the ship beached on the receding tide. As it returned, he barred them from getting back aboard,

255
00:25:28,040 --> 00:25:34,480
challenging them to call on their God to part the waves as He had with the Red Sea.

256
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:38,840
But there was no miracle this time - they all drowned.

257
00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:56,080
In Lincoln Cathedral lie the entrails of Eleanor of Castile, Queen to Edward I.

258
00:25:56,080 --> 00:26:00,800
She died within months of the expulsions, leaving her husband,

259
00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:07,120
normally so thick-skinned and emotionally coarse, distraught, plunged into grief.

260
00:26:07,120 --> 00:26:14,120
Edward's devotion is best reflected in the monument unique in medieval kingship -

261
00:26:14,120 --> 00:26:21,160
twelve crosses he built to mark the points where Eleanor's body lay en route to Westminster Abbey,

262
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:25,240
the most famous being Charing Cross in London.

263
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:40,320
Eleanor's death seemed to transfer Edward's reserve of passion to what now became the real love of his life,

264
00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:44,440
the single-minded pursuit of imperial power.

265
00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:52,480
It was Scotland that was destined to be on the receiving end of Edward's deadly power games,

266
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:57,880
which began, as always, by converting accidents into opportunities.

267
00:26:59,920 --> 00:27:06,960
The accident was the death in 1290 of the last surviving direct heir to Alexander III,

268
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:09,160
King of Scotland.

269
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:13,600
With her gone, the Scottish nobles were lining up for the throne.

270
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:18,560
Someone was needed to judge the contestants. Well, guess who?

271
00:27:20,360 --> 00:27:27,440
The strongest claimants led the two most powerful family factions in Scotland -

272
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:32,520
the Bruces and the Comyn-Balliol Alliance. They hated each other.

273
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:40,640
Both were determined to have their man made King, and as they pushed their rival claims fully,

274
00:27:40,640 --> 00:27:45,520
their conflict would cause civil war across all of Scotland.

275
00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:51,680
Edward came north to decide which of the two rivals would be King.

276
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:58,600
The competitors met him on either side of the River Tweed near a place called Norham.

277
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:03,240
Of course, Edward being Edward, he had a price on his mind

278
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:08,280
in return for being adjudicator/godfather to the Scots.

279
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:15,280
And that price, needless to say, was homage, the bent knee, the kiss on the ring of the devoted sword,

280
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:21,640
the acceptance by whoever got the job that henceforth he would be Edward's man,

281
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:26,120
deeply in his debt, his soldiers at the King's command.

282
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:33,600
To prove his point, he gathered an army at Norham - an army of monks, scholars and antiquarians.

283
00:28:33,600 --> 00:28:38,200
Their heavy artillery were ancient charters and chronicles,

284
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:43,240
their job to find the historical proof of English overlordship.

285
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:48,520
But they failed, so the King threw the problem right back to the Scots.

286
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:57,480
Edward asked the guardians of the realm to find documentary evidence why he was NOT their feudal overlord.

287
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:03,800
To which he got a wonderfully canny contradiction - not at all what he wanted to hear.

288
00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:09,920
"Sire," they said, "the bona gentes, the responsible men who have sent us here, know full well

289
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:16,520
"you couldn't possibly make so great a claim unless you actually believed you had a right to it.

290
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:19,400
"But of this right we know nothing."

291
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:26,000
Which is like saying, "You can't be completely off your head to come up with this sovereignty stuff,

292
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:32,560
"but actually it is all news to us, chum, since the Scottish realm on this side of the river

293
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:38,160
"is held tribute to no-one but God. We don't have to prove a thing.

294
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:45,640
"It's for you to come up with the super-monk with the perfect charter. Let us know when you have it."

295
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:52,200
In the end, all those who thought they were still in with a chance of winning the Scots throne

296
00:29:52,200 --> 00:30:00,440
paid homage to Edward, but the rest of the Scots community of the realm held their noses and stood aloof.

297
00:30:00,440 --> 00:30:07,000
Was this, as some Scottish historians have always insisted, an Edwardian trap?

298
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:11,240
Was he already thinking of turning Scotland into Wales north,

299
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:16,000
the next territory to be gobbled up by his imperial appetite?

300
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:20,040
Well, I think the appetite grew with the eating.

301
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:23,600
A year later, when the final verdict came through,

302
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:30,160
Balliol did prove to have the better claim and was the clear choice of Scotland.

303
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:33,200
Edward did not force him on anybody.

304
00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:37,880
For his part, once Balliol had acknowledged Edward's overlordship,

305
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:44,000
the English King agreed to keep the separate identity of Scottish institutions.

306
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:48,520
Only if their interest crossed would there be trouble.

307
00:30:48,520 --> 00:30:53,400
Alas, they did and trouble there certainly was.

308
00:30:55,080 --> 00:31:01,840
Edward wasted no time in humiliating Balliol on every occasion over the next five years,

309
00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:08,120
driving the Scots community of the realm - the nobles, clergy, gentry and burgesses

310
00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:11,120
to stand against their own King.

311
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:15,600
When war with France coincided with another Welsh rebellion,

312
00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:22,200
Edward exercised his overlordship of Scotland and summoned their nobility to fight for him.

313
00:31:22,200 --> 00:31:26,720
They refused and then went one stage further.

314
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:31,800
They signed a formal treaty with France against England.

315
00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:36,560
To Edward, it was self-evidently a declaration of war.

316
00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:41,920
The army he raised in 1296 put even the Welsh campaign in the shade.

317
00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:51,240
First to fall was Scotland's wealthiest city port - Berwick-upon-Tweed.

318
00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:57,480
The siege lasted only hours... the massacre that followed, days.

319
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:05,120
"The King of England spared no-one...

320
00:32:06,280 --> 00:32:09,080
"..whatever the age or sex.

321
00:32:09,440 --> 00:32:14,920
"And for two days, streams of blood flowed from the bodies of the slain.

322
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:21,120
"So that mills could be turned round by its flow."

323
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:29,200
At Dunbar, the Scots Royal Army were swept aside.

324
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:33,960
Now Edward turned imperial conqueror in deadly earnest.

325
00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:40,280
King John Balliol's arms were torn from his coat like a court-martialled subaltern.

326
00:32:40,280 --> 00:32:43,880
English officials took over Scottish government.

327
00:32:43,880 --> 00:32:50,600
And just as he'd ripped the heart from the Welsh sense of independence by carrying off their sacred relics,

328
00:32:50,600 --> 00:32:57,160
Edward now took the Stone of Scone, symbol of the independent Scottish crown, to Westminster,

329
00:32:57,160 --> 00:33:02,400
where a magnificent coronation chair was custom-designed to hold it.

330
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:09,480
And when Edward was given the broken Scottish royal seal, he set it aside, commenting...

331
00:33:10,520 --> 00:33:15,320
"A man does good business when he rids himself of a turd."

332
00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:19,920
One by one, a host of Scots came to do homage to Edward,

333
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:24,320
including the Bruces, but there was one who did not -

334
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:28,920
Malcolm Wallace... and this Malcolm had a brother.

335
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:39,600
Here he is - the standard-issue freedom fighter of the imagination,

336
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:44,080
the give-'em-hell whiskers, the save-me-Jesus eyes,

337
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:46,840
the hamstrings from hell.

338
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:51,960
We haven't a clue, of course, whether William Wallace looked like this,

339
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:59,040
any more than we know if he could have been a stuntman for Mel Gibson who immortalised him in Braveheart.

340
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:06,360
But Wallace IS one of those larger-than-life figures whose epic romance refuses to go away.

341
00:34:06,360 --> 00:34:13,800
It just grows to match this extraordinary monument to him dominating the Stirling skyline.

342
00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:19,520
There is no doubt, of course, that Wallace DID count.

343
00:34:19,520 --> 00:34:27,280
His brief, dramatic intervention in the wars between England and Scotland did change British history -

344
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:32,320
if only to show that the armies of Edward I were not invincible

345
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:35,240
at all times and in all places.

346
00:34:35,240 --> 00:34:40,960
Beyond that, Wallace was one of the few Scots who never at any stage

347
00:34:40,960 --> 00:34:46,680
paid homage to Edward, remaining loyal to King John Balliol.

348
00:34:46,680 --> 00:34:51,440
More gentleman-turned-outlaw than peasant man of the glens,

349
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:54,440
Wallace wasn't a one-man war either.

350
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:58,920
By mid 1297, all Scotland was on the boil.

351
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:06,040
North of the Forth, Andrew Murray matched or surpassed him by leading a wild and brilliant guerrilla war.

352
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:11,720
When Murray marched south and Wallace moved north

353
00:35:11,720 --> 00:35:16,200
to meet here on the Forth at Stirling, the key to Scotland,

354
00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:21,280
the chaotic, wildfire uprising turned into a major military campaign.

355
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:30,800
On the eve of the Battle of Stirling Bridge, Wallace told the English, "We are not here to make peace,

356
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:35,280
"but to do battle and to liberate our kingdom."

357
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:42,120
The Scots gathered on the Abbey Craig ridge.

358
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:47,440
Below, a narrow wooden bridge led to the castle and to the English.

359
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:56,320
Wallace allowed half of them to cross the fragile structure, enough for his forces to deal with.

360
00:36:01,040 --> 00:36:07,480
And so they did, rushing down from their perch, through the woods and into the English ranks.

361
00:36:14,200 --> 00:36:21,080
"Wallace on foot, with a great sharp sword, goes amongst the very thickest of his foes.

362
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:30,640
"The Scots vanquished the savage English, whom they put into mourning for death.

363
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:37,280
"Some had their throats cut by swords, others were taken prisoners, others drowned."

364
00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:43,520
One, the hated English taxman Cressingham, was skinned,

365
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:48,160
his fat body made into a belt for Wallace's victorious sword.

366
00:36:52,320 --> 00:36:59,880
And yet, as so often in Scottish history, defeat quickly followed victory down the Forth at Falkirk.

367
00:37:01,920 --> 00:37:05,800
Wallace's warriors died by the thousand.

368
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:12,800
"They fell like blossoms in an orchard when the fruit has ripened.

369
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:17,480
"Bodies covered the ground as thickly as snow in winter."

370
00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:22,760
Wallace himself managed to escape the slaughter,

371
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:25,840
only to be captured years later...

372
00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:32,040
..betrayed by a Scotsman, possibly even the Bruce himself.

373
00:37:33,720 --> 00:37:40,520
After a mock trial, Wallace endured the most appalling death that the King's rage could devise -

374
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:43,320
a live disembowelment.

375
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:53,960
In the intervening six years, Scotland suffered almost as badly by Edward's hand,

376
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:59,520
as the Scots drew inspiration from Wallace and fought on.

377
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:04,640
Edward came back from 1297 to 1304.

378
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:10,680
The war became a murderous academy of siege warfare.

379
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:16,720
Edward came from the south west to Caerlaverock Castle,

380
00:38:16,720 --> 00:38:21,520
took it and left, with its defenders hanged from the walls.

381
00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:28,840
North to Bothwell, where a huge siege tower overcame its mighty battlements, and on and on...

382
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:35,080
Not even Scotland's Westminster was saved from his fury.

383
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:43,400
Dunfermline Abbey is one of those places where you can almost smell tragedy in the stonework.

384
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:50,120
Pretty much everything you see here was built, or rather rebuilt, after 1303.

385
00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:55,640
In that year, Edward I, in one of his murderously vindictive tantrums,

386
00:38:55,640 --> 00:38:59,880
torched the place, burnt it to the ground.

387
00:38:59,880 --> 00:39:03,440
He was, as usual, making a point.

388
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:11,600
To smash up a royal mausoleum was to strike directly at Scotland's sense of independent history.

389
00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:17,360
The greatest symbol of that independence, as always, was Stirling.

390
00:39:18,720 --> 00:39:23,640
Its surrender took the fight out of the Scots.

391
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:27,680
In 1304, they submitted to Edward.

392
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:35,200
"Well," he must have thought, "that was that. Done with, peace."

393
00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:37,560
A mistake.

394
00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:43,840
For what Edward couldn't possibly have predicted was the emergence of a Scottish lion

395
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:47,560
even more ruthless than the Leopard himself.

396
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:50,600
And he was, of course, the Bruce.

397
00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:57,080
Strangely, when you catalogue the strengths of Robert the Bruce -

398
00:39:57,080 --> 00:40:04,360
his political cunning, his military ingenuity, his steely resolution, even his intermittent fits of rage -

399
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:11,800
they all begin to sound rather like the attributes of the man whose work he had sworn to undo - Edward I.

400
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:19,240
If he had read the book of Edward's life, he would have known that lesson one was not "beat the foreigner",

401
00:40:19,240 --> 00:40:23,960
it was "first, win your battles at home."

402
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:28,520
And so, in 1306,

403
00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:35,560
Bruce, the most politically intelligent and militarily successful figure in medieval Scottish history,

404
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:37,760
did just that.

405
00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:42,520
He met with John Comyn, his main rival, and ended up

406
00:40:42,520 --> 00:40:48,040
stabbing him before the alter of Greyfriars Church in Dumfries.

407
00:40:53,800 --> 00:41:00,800
The murder is neither explained nor justified by it being the case of a patriot knocking off a quisling,

408
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:07,080
for Comyn had been a lot more consistent in his opposition to the English than Bruce.

409
00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:13,440
He remained loyal to King Balliol, who still lived and so had to be removed.

410
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:20,480
Barely six weeks after he had murdered Comyn, Bruce had himself inaugurated King at Scone.

411
00:41:21,200 --> 00:41:25,400
Instead of unifying the Scots behind a single leader,

412
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:31,600
Bruce's actions only intensified what was already a Scottish civil war,

413
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:34,720
one that he initially lost.

414
00:41:39,400 --> 00:41:45,920
He fled Scotland and so created a vacuum of knowledge filled by heroic mythology -

415
00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:52,600
the fable of the cave and the spider, whose patience gave Robert the resolution to persevere.

416
00:41:54,040 --> 00:42:00,320
There was no cave, no spider, but there was something much more extraordinary,

417
00:42:00,320 --> 00:42:04,840
the polished noble turning himself into a guerrilla captain.

418
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:10,320
For Robert the Bruce, not Wallace, wrote the book on partisan warfare.

419
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:18,280
On his return, four months later, adversity now made him a great general,

420
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:21,800
attacking his Scots and English foes alike.

421
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:30,440
In the end, Robert the Bruce simply outlived the old King, who breathed his last fearing the worst,

422
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:37,400
should ever his son Edward of Caernarvon have to meet Robert the Bruce on the field of battle.

423
00:42:39,160 --> 00:42:41,760
Eventually, Edward died,

424
00:42:41,760 --> 00:42:45,200
here, near Carlisle, in 1307,

425
00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:48,680
en route to deal with Bruce himself.

426
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:51,800
Ironically, at the end of his life,

427
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:56,400
Edward turned thoughtful, even writing that he wanted to promote

428
00:42:56,400 --> 00:43:00,600
"pleasantness, ease and quiet for our subjects."

429
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:06,720
Well, if he really believed this, he must have died a truly disappointed man.

430
00:43:06,720 --> 00:43:14,160
A story says the King ordered his bones to be boiled from his flesh and carried before his son's army,

431
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:21,280
believing that as long as his bones marched north, the Scots would never be victorious.

432
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:30,640
But Edward junior was going to need more than his father's shinbone if he was to have any chance of success.

433
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:37,000
He was certainly not the incarnation of the community of the realm.

434
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:43,360
Neither was he the true heir of the Caesar of Britain, the monarch of all he surveyed.

435
00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:45,960
He was just a loser.

436
00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:54,760
Bruce, on the other hand, was still a winner. Over seven years, he regained his kingdom.

437
00:43:54,760 --> 00:44:00,880
So, by 1314, the English only controlled Bothwell, Berwick, Jedburgh

438
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:05,560
and the key, Stirling Castle, now besieged by the Scots.

439
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:14,000
Faced with complete humiliation in Scotland, Edward II finally acted and marched north.

440
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:20,160
He met his nemesis in a muddy field along the banks of the Bannock Burn.

441
00:44:21,720 --> 00:44:27,240
It was not to be the usual story of charge, arrows away, slash, victory,

442
00:44:27,240 --> 00:44:30,400
but a relentless, two-day affair.

443
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:35,520
Outnumbered three to one, Bruce did get to choose the boggy battlefield,

444
00:44:35,520 --> 00:44:41,720
knowing that even Plantagenet war machines don't work well on wet ground.

445
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:49,400
However, it was almost all over before it had begun.

446
00:44:49,400 --> 00:44:54,760
Young English knight Henry de Bohun caught Bruce unawares and unarmoured

447
00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:59,160
on his little mount, some way off from his soldiers.

448
00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:07,360
"So Henry missed the noble King and he, standing in his stirrups with an axe that was both hard and good,

449
00:45:07,360 --> 00:45:13,800
"struck him a blow with such great force that it cleaved the head to his brains."

450
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:18,480
The shaft of the axe left broken in Robert's fist.

451
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:25,520
Skirmishing followed as the short June night fell, Bruce reminding the Scots,

452
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:32,200
"The English are bent on obliterating my kingdom, nay, our whole nation."

453
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:36,480
The English knights charge.

454
00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:40,760
The sodden ground and schiltrom -

455
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:46,080
hedgehogs of 1,500 men, each holding a 12-foot spear - defeat them.

456
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:08,280
Ranks of infantry meet head on.

457
00:46:09,760 --> 00:46:14,680
"Such a smashing of spears that men could hear it far away."

458
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:19,000
English archers are now swept away by Scots cavalry

459
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:24,640
or blocked by the four schiltroms, which unite and push forward.

460
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:30,760
"Many a splendid, mighty blow dealt there on both sides

461
00:46:30,760 --> 00:46:37,680
"until blood burst through the mail coats and went streaming down to the earth."

462
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:46,760
Edward II fled the field with 500 knights.

463
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:54,760
The English force broke behind him and was slaughtered. The burn becomes so choked...

464
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:59,960
"Men could pass dry foot over it on drowned horses and men."

465
00:47:03,120 --> 00:47:07,720
Edward II left his shield, his seal, his honour

466
00:47:07,720 --> 00:47:11,960
and perhaps 4,000 English and Welsh dead.

467
00:47:19,640 --> 00:47:24,480
Having won the victory on the battlefield, if not the war itself,

468
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:30,760
the Scots now sought international recognition of their newly-won liberty.

469
00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:36,320
The occasion was a letter sent to the Pope

470
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:43,360
giving reasons why Scotland's independence ought to be recognised by the Church as itself sacred.

471
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:48,680
The letter was written here in Arbroath Abbey

472
00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:52,760
and more than anything ever produced south of the border

473
00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:59,640
represented a perfect fusion between the two ideas of sovereignty we have seen in action -

474
00:47:59,640 --> 00:48:02,480
the Nation and the Prince.

475
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:11,680
At the heart of what we call the Declaration of Arbroath is something much more powerful and deeply moving.

476
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:18,400
It is the insistence that the nation lived on beyond and outside the person of the Prince,

477
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:22,440
who for a time happened to claim its government.

478
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:28,720
We heard something like this earlier, at the very beginning of our story - in Oxford, in 1258.

479
00:48:28,720 --> 00:48:32,960
But here in Scotland, it is much more eloquent -

480
00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:39,680
the image of the free patriot, drawn not as a desperado like Wallace or a mighty Prince like Bruce,

481
00:48:39,680 --> 00:48:43,960
but as one of a band of brother survivors...

482
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:50,720
"For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, we will yield in no least way to English dominion.

483
00:48:50,720 --> 00:48:56,160
"We fight not for glory, nor riches, nor honour, but for freedom,

484
00:48:56,160 --> 00:49:00,760
"which no good man gives up except with his life."

485
00:49:02,280 --> 00:49:08,880
The real lesson of the Battle of Bannockburn was that the Scottish King commanded loyalty

486
00:49:08,880 --> 00:49:12,840
in ways that just never occurred to Edward II.

487
00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:21,240
Robert the Bruce knew that he could only be successful if he could be the personification of Scotland,

488
00:49:21,240 --> 00:49:25,000
the incarnation of the community of the realm.

489
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:31,560
That's why he was not Scotland's Edward I, he was Scotland's Simon de Montfort.

490
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:42,760
Like de Montfort, Bruce had pinned his personal cause to the flag and to the passions of his country.

491
00:49:47,800 --> 00:49:54,400
Unlike Edward I, Robert was not just a warlord who hammered the country to his will,

492
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:58,960
he had managed to forge a true alliance with the people -

493
00:49:58,960 --> 00:50:05,920
a community of the realm that, when united and led by King Robert I, could win its freedom.

494
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:17,440
And so the emboldened Scots take the war to the English.

495
00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:26,720
For 22 years, the Scots raided huge areas of northern England,

496
00:50:26,720 --> 00:50:29,760
reaching as far south as Yorkshire.

497
00:50:31,720 --> 00:50:36,760
Abbeys and castles fell, cities paid the Scots off to avoid destruction.

498
00:50:39,320 --> 00:50:42,240
Villages were trashed.

499
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:48,280
Border raids on a weakened enemy were what you would expect,

500
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:53,360
but what Robert the Bruce did next was utterly unexpected.

501
00:50:54,760 --> 00:51:03,080
In May 1315, Robert Bruce's brother Edward landed here in north-east Ireland near Carrickfergus Castle

502
00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:08,160
with a formidable Scots army of many thousands of men.

503
00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:14,760
What the Bruces were doing, in effect, was opening a second front against the English empire.

504
00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:21,080
Robert had written a remarkable letter. "The Scots would come," he said,

505
00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:25,280
"not as an invader, but as liberators." For...

506
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:30,440
"Our people and your people, free in times past,

507
00:51:30,440 --> 00:51:36,400
"share the same national ancestry and common custom."

508
00:51:39,560 --> 00:51:46,000
The rhetoric was stirring and in part it found resonance with the native Irish.

509
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:52,880
For nearly a century and a half, there had been an entrenched English colony in north and eastern Ireland,

510
00:51:52,880 --> 00:51:56,840
often safe only in castles like Carrickfergus,

511
00:51:56,840 --> 00:52:01,120
which Edward Bruce now besieged for a year.

512
00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:04,080
But the timing was unfortunate,

513
00:52:04,080 --> 00:52:08,720
for 1315 also saw the worst famine in living memory.

514
00:52:09,920 --> 00:52:16,600
Very soon, Edward Bruce's army became indistinguishable from any other disorderly gang of knights

515
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:22,680
using force to extract the provisions they desperately needed for their men and animals

516
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:29,200
and not choosing to distinguish with any care between Gaelic friends and English foes.

517
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:35,880
Famished and desperate, the Scots soldiers took what they needed from Irish villages, finally resorting,

518
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:42,040
so it was said, to digging up fresh graves and eating the decayed bodies.

519
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:51,400
Month by month, the Bruces' war of liberation turned into something remarkably like an occupation.

520
00:52:53,040 --> 00:52:58,080
Ambitious Edward Bruce also wanted to be a king - a king in Dublin -

521
00:52:58,080 --> 00:53:03,200
and he didn't much care what taking the throne would cost the Irish.

522
00:53:03,200 --> 00:53:09,800
It was the usual story - a victory over the Ulster English, then a march south towards Dublin.

523
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:16,480
There, many of the population tore down their own houses to use as walls against the Scots

524
00:53:16,480 --> 00:53:19,200
rather than surrender the city.

525
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:25,720
Not all the Irish nobility and kings opened their arms to embrace their Scots liberators.

526
00:53:25,720 --> 00:53:30,880
A bitter civil war broke out between Irish supporters of both sides.

527
00:53:30,880 --> 00:53:37,880
A climactic battle in the west took, according to contemporaries, no fewer than 10,000 lives.

528
00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:47,320
In 1318, Edward Bruce was himself killed. Before the end of the year, the Scots had left.

529
00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:53,600
Perhaps the experiment of collaboration across the North Channel deserved to fail

530
00:53:53,600 --> 00:54:00,560
because, from the beginning, Robert the Bruce had his own rather than his Irish brothers' interests at heart,

531
00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:07,520
needing a second front to divert critical English military resources from Scotland to Ireland.

532
00:54:10,640 --> 00:54:16,040
Not for the last time, the Irish were being used in someone else's quarrel.

533
00:54:17,880 --> 00:54:21,920
As grim as the story of the Scots in Ireland was,

534
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:26,880
they did leave behind something other than widows and tragic ballads.

535
00:54:26,880 --> 00:54:32,920
The Anglo-Norman colony stopped expanding from its base in Ulster and Leinster.

536
00:54:32,920 --> 00:54:37,760
The idea of the unstoppable English empire of the Plantagenets

537
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:42,560
had the shine knocked right off its myth of invincibility.

538
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:52,400
And, not least, the Bruces gave Irish leaders their voice of resistance -

539
00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:55,680
an expression of national identity.

540
00:54:56,800 --> 00:55:00,880
"To recover our native freedom, the Irish..."

541
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:07,240
"For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, we will yield in no least way to English dominion..."

542
00:55:07,240 --> 00:55:11,840
"The people preferred to die rather than live under English rule.

543
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:18,640
All these startlingly modern-sounding declarations of national community come together

544
00:55:18,640 --> 00:55:23,840
as the epitaph of the idea of the Plantagenet empire of Britain.

545
00:55:24,920 --> 00:55:30,960
You hear this language - eloquent, fierce, righteously belligerent -

546
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:37,960
and you hear a voice which, for better or worse, would shout, roar and lament down through the ages.

547
00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:45,000
Robert the Bruce outlived both Edwards, and while war would continue with England for generations,

548
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:50,720
the Scots HAD won English recognition of their truly independent kingdom.

549
00:55:53,960 --> 00:56:00,960
This is not what Long Shanks imagined when he had been crowned before his namesake the Confessor's tomb

550
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:06,200
or when he had seated himself upon the Stone of Scone.

551
00:56:07,760 --> 00:56:13,640
Edward's attempt to pound the nations of Britain into a united superstate

552
00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:19,000
ended up just reinforcing their acute sense of difference.

553
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:23,120
The hammer that Edward had taken to the Scots

554
00:56:23,120 --> 00:56:28,400
had rebounded fatally against his dream of a reborn Britannia.

555
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:36,160
For the cost of all those endless marches and mile upon mile of castle walls

556
00:56:36,160 --> 00:56:38,840
was political as well as financial.

557
00:56:38,840 --> 00:56:45,040
It meant that Parliament was more, not less, necessary to the government of England.

558
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:52,000
It was Parliament which had to agree on how to foot the bills and how big those bills ought to be.

559
00:56:53,040 --> 00:56:59,720
Edward II, of course, completely failed to bring any attention to this new reality.

560
00:56:59,720 --> 00:57:02,560
Falling back on rule by favourites,

561
00:57:02,560 --> 00:57:06,600
Edward made himself an alien in his own land.

562
00:57:06,600 --> 00:57:11,400
The nobility failed to remove him, but his wife succeeded.

563
00:57:11,400 --> 00:57:18,280
Legend has it that he was killed in Berkeley Castle from a hot iron thrust up his rectum.

564
00:57:22,280 --> 00:57:28,720
Edward's murder was proof that the King could be removed, even physically disposed of,

565
00:57:28,720 --> 00:57:31,560
if he betrayed the community.

566
00:57:32,640 --> 00:57:38,880
But England would get a new King, more the heir to Edward I than Edward II.

567
00:57:40,440 --> 00:57:47,960
But Edward III knew he couldn't achieve anything simply by acts of brutal, imperial will.

568
00:57:47,960 --> 00:57:53,000
He'd learned something from the long wars of Plantagenet Britain.

569
00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:58,480
He'd learned that his power depended not just on force, but on consent -

570
00:57:58,480 --> 00:58:02,240
on the consent of his barons and his churchmen,

571
00:58:02,240 --> 00:58:08,520
on the consent of Parliament, on the consent of the English community of the realm.

572
00:58:08,520 --> 00:58:11,520
Not for the first or the last time,

573
00:58:11,520 --> 00:58:18,240
it would take the rest of Britain to teach England just how to be a nation.

574
00:58:33,720 --> 00:58:40,760
There is much more to discover and debate about the history of Britain on the BBC history website.

575
00:58:51,080 --> 00:58:55,160
Subtitles by Roger Young BBC - 2000