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The English coast in the early Middle Ages.

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Each summer, pirates descended here.

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They were looking for children.

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Boys were sold as slaves.

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Girls, as maidservants or worse.

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Often by their own families.

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Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester,

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was one of the few to speak out against this trade in human souls.

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"You would have groaned to see the files of wretches being put up for sale.

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"An accursed deed that men should condemn to slavery their own flesh and blood."

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In the modern world we accept,

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at least in principle, that we're all equal.

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Some people may be richer or have better opportunities,

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but nonetheless equality is our ideal.

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In the medieval world, that wasn't the view at all.

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You were born and lived and died in radical inequality.

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Whatever position in life you were born to, baron or knight,

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peasant or slave, that was where you belonged.

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For centuries, this harsh system governed the medieval world.

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But a long revolution would transform relations between those with power and those with none.

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Life in the early 11th century was almost unimaginably different from our own.

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Inequality and oppression were part of the natural order,

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ordained by God.

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This was a class system of staggering extremes.

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And every class had an exact price.

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Just like an animal, a human life could be measured in pounds, shillings and pence.

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If a person was murdered, the victim's family could pursue

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the killer for compensation, known as "wergild".

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Literally, "man price".

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That price depended on the victim's status.

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It was paid in shillings.

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Five shillings was the cost of a cow.

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If you killed a mere peasant, you paid 200 shillings.

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The price of around forty cows.

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If you killed a nobleman, you paid a hefty 1,200 shillings.

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A noble's life was worth six times a peasant's.

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The value of your life was determined by the class into which you were born.

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Medieval writers divided society into three fixed classes or orders.

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There were those who pray.

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The monks and priests, about 5% of the population.

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Those who fight. Another 5%, the nobles and knights.

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And then all the rest.

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The third order. Those who work.

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A huge majority of people at the beginning of the Middle Ages

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toiled as serfs on the estates of the wealthy landowners.

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This was a rigid world in which your class was as much a part of you

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as the colour of your skin.

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If you were born a peasant, you stayed a peasant.

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And the legacy of this early apartheid survives even in the language we use today.

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The word "gentleman" comes from the same Latin root as our modern word "gene".

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It means, literally, "someone who is well born".

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Your class was literally in your genes.

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Those at the bottom of the scale were born to a life of hardship.

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Serfs had to work on their lord's land.

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They also scratched a living from the small plots he granted them.

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The 14th century poet, William Langland, described the lot of peasant women.

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"They suffer much hunger and wake at midnight to card and to comb,

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"to rub and to reel.

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"The woe of these women who dwell in hovels

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"is too sad to speak of or to say in rhyme."

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The peasant class were regarded as a sort of working breeding stock.

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A serf couldn't get married without his lord's permission.

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And nor could he leave. He belonged to the lord's estate.

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In legal terms, he was tied to the soil.

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The law even stated, "Earls and barons may sell their serfs, like oxen or cattle."

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And if you tried to escape from your lord's estate, you were punished.

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Medieval lords went to great lengths

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to recapture their runaway serfs with the full backing of the king,

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who ordered his officials to arrest them and return them.

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And lords claimed the right to put their serfs in stocks.

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Stocks have a rather comical reputation nowadays,

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but the reality was very different.

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They were a humiliating and painful punishment.

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Imagine what it would be like to be in here for two hours.

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The cramp and discomfort.

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Where, for example, did you relieve yourself?

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And what if you were in here not for two hours, but for two days?

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One Northumbrian peasant decided he couldn't take any more.

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"His lord had frequently burdened him with heavy and wrongful claims.

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"Extorting many things

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"above his yearly rent.

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"He gathered together all he had and set out with his wife and sons,

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"his oxen, sheep and lambs."

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The runaway peasant was hotly pursued by the lord and his men,

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anxious to recover what they saw as their property.

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"The cart and the cries of the herdsmen struck the ear.

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"Oxen mooed, sheep baaed, horses neighed

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"and men shouted at the animals so that the air resounded with the din."

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The fugitive finally found a safe haven on the remote island of Lindisfarne.

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But his story is a rare exception.

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For most serfs, there was no escape.

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Even in the great wildernesses of medieval England,

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inequality was enforced by law.

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In the Middle Ages, around a third of the country was forest.

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Huge swathes of land where deer and wild boar roamed.

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Wherever you lived, it was likely to be within walking distance.

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But the forest was a dangerous place.

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These ancient trees were the site of medieval class war.

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Forest didn't mean just woodland,

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but any land under the law of the forest.

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Only the king, or those he favoured, had the right to hunt here.

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If a piece of land that wasn't

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already forest caught the king's fancy, he could turn it into one.

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When William the Conqueror came across this heathland

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twenty miles from his royal City of Winchester, he was enchanted.

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Wouldn't it be a wonderful place to thunder across on horseback,

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the hounds baying, to hunt boar and chase deer?

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He turned it into his own personal pleasure ground.

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Nova Foresta.

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The New Forest.

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To create this royal playground, between thirty and forty villages

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had to be brought under the forest law.

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Inhabitants were evicted and strict laws enforced.

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The rich could buy hunting rights from the king.

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The poor couldn't even carry hunting weapons.

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The forests were policed by the king's spies - the hated Foresters.

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The Foresters had a reputation for cruel tyranny.

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"To them," wrote the monk Adam of Aylesham, "violence is law.

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"Pillage is praiseworthy.

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"Justice is hateful.

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"Innocence is guilt.

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"From their evil ferocity no rank or condition of man, save the king himself, can escape unharmed."

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The Foresters hunted down anyone who broke the law

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and brought them to trial.

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The Queen's house in the New Forest

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has been the site of a forest court for nearly 800 years.

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One surprising remnant

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from the savage forest laws of the medieval period is this stirrup.

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Its purpose was to measure the size of dogs.

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Every dog in the royal forest would have to pass through this stirrup.

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Its head and its whole body would have to get through.

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Yoyo is obviously not going to make it.

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If the dog was too big,

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its toes would be cut off to prevent it hunting the royal deer.

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For humans, it was even crueller.

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For killing a hart or a hind,

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the punishment was blinding, castration or death.

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The writer John of Salisbury

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voiced the hatred of ordinary people for the forest laws.

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"Although man is created in the image of Him,

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"kings regard the beasts of the earth more highly than man.

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"How many wretches have they hanged on the gallows

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"for taking the flesh of wild animals?

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"They do not fear to ruin a man on account of a beast."

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The brutality of these laws caused great bitterness

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amongst the thousands excluded from the forest.

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Human beings might be unequal,

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but it was still thought there was something cruelly unjust

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in this shutting out of the natural world to all except the very rich.

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In 1209, one man who had killed a deer, Hugh the Scot,

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was pursued by Foresters.

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He fled to the sanctuary of the local church.

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The Foresters wanted him to stand trial.

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If they'd succeeded, it would have meant the gallows.

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He hid there for a month.

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Then he disappeared in disguise.

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He was never seen again.

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Running away from the courts took a man into dangerous territory.

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From that moment on, he was an outlaw.

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Someone literally outside the law, a non-person.

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He was known as "wolvesheved", wolf's head.

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Because like the wolves of the forest,

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there was no punishment for taking his life.

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Outlaws turned to robbery to survive.

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Some became heroes, glorified in stories and songs.

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"Come all you outlaws,

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"come off with me to the green wood of Belregard

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"where men can live free.

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"Trees and wild animals and the cool of the shade,

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"far from the courts where the laws are made."

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The reality for an outlaw was very different.

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Trial and certain death were never far away.

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It was a severe and rigid system.

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Everyone had their place.

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The law dictated how you lived and even where you could go.

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The lives of those who worked

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had little in common with the lives of the ruling classes.

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Serfs bound to their lord's estates.

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Outlaws treated like wolves.

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Forest-dwellers killed for hunting.

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And yet there is no record of major popular insurrections or revolts at this time.

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There was a very good reason why.

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Wherever you looked, the landscape was being transformed.

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The country was a building site.

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Forbidding structures were taking shape all over Europe.

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The peasant class was being drafted to construct buildings designed to oppress them.

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From 1066, England belonged to one man, the invading Norman king,

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William the Conqueror.

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He parcelled out the country

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to the leading families who had fought for him.

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To control their enormous estates,

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they built the first stone castles in England.

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They were the power bases

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of the second order of society, the military aristocracy.

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The medieval world was studded with castles, hundreds of them.

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"The bones of the kingdom,"

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as one contemporary called them.

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They were built to be high,

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to act as giant watchtowers over the surrounding countryside.

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To see, and to be seen.

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A stone castle like this would be the biggest, most expensive

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and most threatening building you'd be likely to see in your life.

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It was a symbol of the power of the aristocracy,

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the centre of their great estates and the foundation of their military might.

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The Great Hall was the centre of aristocratic life,

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where nobles would sit in the midst of family,

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servants, entertainers and dogs,

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in surroundings of luxury unimaginable to the peasantry.

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What they were used to were houses made of mud and timber.

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Castles like Hedingham

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were visible symbols of the knight's right to rule.

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This international class of fighting men,

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the aristocracy, regarded themselves as a different breed from the peasants who served them.

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The word aristocracy means, as medieval scholars knew, "rule by the best people."

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Quite simply,

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the nobles saw themselves as a better class of being.

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If land gave them their power,

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it was their blue blood that entitled them to it.

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Binding the aristocratic fighting class was a code of honour.

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The code of chivalry.

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The origins of chivalry had little to do with gallantry and romance.

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It was a code of conduct that protected the aristocratic families

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at the expense of everyone beneath them.

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Above all, chivalry was a form of caste solidarity,

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the glue that held the warring class together.

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This is how the Catalan knight, Ramon Lull,

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describes the Chivalric Code.

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According to him, after protecting God and the king,

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the knight's next duties are to go hunting, give lavish feasts

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and fight in tournaments.

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After that, he must ensure that he terrorises the peasantry.

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"For because of the dread that the common people have of the knights,

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"they labour and cultivate the earth,

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"for fear lest they be destroyed."

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But the central duty of the knight was to go to war.

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In exchange for their castles, lands and peasants,

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this class not only controlled the population,

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but would be expected to fight for the king.

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For them, war was the natural state of life, and warfare was ennobling.

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It was in war that they could win honour, riches and even more land.

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Medieval knights lived for the glory of the battlefield.

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"I love the gay Eastertide

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"which brings forth leaves and flowers,

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"and I love the joyous songs of the birds echoing through the copse.

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"But I also love to see,

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"amidst the meadows, knights and horses in battle array.

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"And my heart is filled with gladness when I see many vassals struck

248
00:19:49,280 --> 00:19:54,160
"down together, and the horses of the dead and wounded roving at random."

249
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:04,840
Chivalry found its ideal in Edward the Black Prince.

250
00:20:10,840 --> 00:20:14,800
The Black Prince was the quintessential aristocratic knight.

251
00:20:14,840 --> 00:20:21,200
Deeply religious, a superb warrior and with, above everything, an unshakeable sense of honour

252
00:20:21,240 --> 00:20:24,560
and duty, at least to members of his own class.

253
00:20:24,600 --> 00:20:27,600
He could be merciless to anybody else.

254
00:20:27,640 --> 00:20:31,520
Some people say he got his name from his distinctive armour.

255
00:20:31,560 --> 00:20:34,360
burnished and darkened for battle.

256
00:20:34,400 --> 00:20:39,440
But according to others, it's a memory of his ruthless campaigns in France.

257
00:20:39,480 --> 00:20:43,960
There, they say, he showed that it was not his armour that was black,

258
00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:45,040
but his heart.

259
00:20:51,240 --> 00:20:56,480
The French city of Limoges had sworn allegiance to the Black Prince.

260
00:20:56,520 --> 00:21:00,880
But in 1370, the citizens went over to the king of France.

261
00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:09,200
The Black Prince was furious that they had broken their oath,

262
00:21:09,240 --> 00:21:11,520
in his eyes, a treasonable act.

263
00:21:11,560 --> 00:21:14,760
He set out with his army to exact revenge.

264
00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:23,320
The chronicler Jean Froissart described the horrific scene.

265
00:21:25,480 --> 00:21:30,800
"Pillagers ran through the town, slaying men, women and children.

266
00:21:32,800 --> 00:21:37,600
"They cast themselves on their knees before the prince, begging for mercy.

267
00:21:37,640 --> 00:21:42,520
"But he was so inflamed with passion and revenge that he listened to none,

268
00:21:42,560 --> 00:21:44,760
"but all were put to the sword.

269
00:21:47,720 --> 00:21:53,200
"Upwards of 3,000 men, women and children were put to death that day."

270
00:22:03,760 --> 00:22:06,920
What happened next highlights the startling inequalities

271
00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:09,320
that lay at the heart of the Code of Chivalry.

272
00:22:09,360 --> 00:22:12,760
While the ordinary French townspeople were butchered,

273
00:22:12,800 --> 00:22:15,920
the enemy French knights met a very different fate.

274
00:22:15,960 --> 00:22:19,600
When it was clear that they'd lost, they appealed to the Black Prince.

275
00:22:19,640 --> 00:22:21,360
"My lords, we are yours.

276
00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:22,880
"You have vanquished us.

277
00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:25,920
"Act therefore according to the laws of war."

278
00:22:25,960 --> 00:22:28,600
"By God," replied the Prince's knights,

279
00:22:28,640 --> 00:22:32,440
"We would do no otherwise, and accept you as our prisoners."

280
00:22:32,480 --> 00:22:36,000
According to the Code of Chivalry, on the medieval battlefield

281
00:22:36,040 --> 00:22:40,560
fellow knights, even on opposing sides, looked after their own class.

282
00:22:40,600 --> 00:22:44,760
It was the lower orders, the commoners, who paid the price with their lives.

283
00:22:50,440 --> 00:22:53,280
With their wealth and castles, their passion for war

284
00:22:53,320 --> 00:22:56,000
and their martial bond of chivalry,

285
00:22:56,040 --> 00:23:00,160
the medieval fighting class was a formidable force.

286
00:23:07,680 --> 00:23:11,280
Aggression and bloodlust ran in the veins of the warrior caste,

287
00:23:11,320 --> 00:23:14,840
and just as they themselves held down the peasantry, so too

288
00:23:14,880 --> 00:23:18,760
this aggressive and competitive class had to be held in check.

289
00:23:22,800 --> 00:23:25,880
The man to do this had to be unique.

290
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:31,480
Set apart from the rest of humanity.

291
00:23:33,040 --> 00:23:35,800
Chosen, in fact, by God.

292
00:23:48,520 --> 00:23:54,680
First, he had to be transformed, elevated above ordinary people.

293
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:56,920
It is here, at Westminster Abbey,

294
00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:00,880
that this extraordinary transformation has taken place

295
00:24:00,920 --> 00:24:03,560
ever since the time of William the Conqueror.

296
00:24:05,120 --> 00:24:10,000
The coronation ceremony evokes the mystical names of Jesus and Solomon.

297
00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:15,880
It turns a man into a leader touched by divinity.

298
00:24:20,040 --> 00:24:24,040
For nearly 1,000 years, every English monarch has walked down

299
00:24:24,080 --> 00:24:30,120
this aisle to be transformed by an ancient ceremony - the Coronation.

300
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:33,960
With its roots going back to the Old Testament, this was far more

301
00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:38,080
than some elaborate ritual designed to impress the population.

302
00:24:38,120 --> 00:24:41,520
To the medieval mind, this was the precise moment

303
00:24:41,560 --> 00:24:47,200
when God singles out one person, his chosen representative on Earth.

304
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:53,440
Sheltered beneath a canopy of silk borne on four lances,

305
00:24:53,480 --> 00:24:55,400
the new king made his way

306
00:24:55,440 --> 00:24:59,440
towards God's intermediary, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

307
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:04,560
The king knelt before this altar and swore a solemn oath.

308
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:10,280
He promised to protect the church, to repress wrongdoing and to administer justice.

309
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:17,240
As he rose, the choir began to sing.

310
00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:21,800
MUSIC: "Zadok The Priest" by GF Handel

311
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:30,320
The Archbishop anointed his body with holy oil,

312
00:25:30,360 --> 00:25:35,240
signifying the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the new king.

313
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:42,760
He is given the golden orb and sceptre, symbols of God's power on earth and of royal authority.

314
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:46,280
Then the crown is placed upon his head.

315
00:25:48,400 --> 00:25:51,120
The transformation was now complete.

316
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:56,480
He who had been a mere mortal emerged as the lord's anointed.

317
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:11,400
An early medieval king started his reign with some considerable advantages.

318
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:13,960
He had God on his side,

319
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:16,000
he was lord of the whole country.

320
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:21,600
He could give or take away vast tracts of land, castles and property.

321
00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:25,320
His subjects were at the mercy of his will.

322
00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:33,880
There's no doubt that for aristocrats, staying close to the king was crucial.

323
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:35,480
But not too close.

324
00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:39,600
As a contemporary wisely observed, "A king is like a fire.

325
00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:41,880
"If you're too far away, you freeze.

326
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:45,520
"If you're too close, you burn."

327
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:49,080
Controlling the aristocracy

328
00:26:49,120 --> 00:26:53,520
was the king's most important duty,

329
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:57,480
as the knight, Hubert de Burgh, discovered to his cost.

330
00:26:57,520 --> 00:27:01,440
His vast estates, stretching from Norfolk to Somerset,

331
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:04,520
made him one of the wealthiest men in 13th-century England.

332
00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:15,200
But the king blamed Hubert for the failure of his military campaigns.

333
00:27:17,600 --> 00:27:22,360
He was stripped of his possessions and threatened with the tower.

334
00:27:35,120 --> 00:27:38,960
A king might be lord of the whole country, but how could he exercise

335
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:44,720
real power over an entire kingdom at a time when nothing moved faster than a horse?

336
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:54,560
The average rate of travel, with good weather,

337
00:27:54,600 --> 00:28:00,400
healthy mounts and luck, was no more than 35 miles a day.

338
00:28:00,440 --> 00:28:04,320
To get a letter from one end of the kingdom to the other and a reply

339
00:28:04,360 --> 00:28:10,200
might take three weeks, by which time an ambitious aristocrat could have seized an entire region.

340
00:28:15,600 --> 00:28:19,800
For a king like Henry II, the challenge was immense.

341
00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:23,200
In the 12th century, his vast empire stretched

342
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:27,720
from the highlands of Cumbria to the shores of the Mediterranean.

343
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:30,200
Like many medieval kings, he travelled.

344
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:35,080
The famously energetic Henry was always on the move.

345
00:28:35,120 --> 00:28:39,240
This was a government of the roadside.

346
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:45,920
This travelling court rode from city to palace to castle, sometimes camping out in the fields.

347
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:52,680
Its purpose was not only to exercise the king's authority, but also to feed his large and hungry retinue.

348
00:28:52,720 --> 00:28:54,800
Everywhere the king's court went,

349
00:28:54,840 --> 00:28:58,480
it sucked up the food and supplies of the king's subjects.

350
00:29:11,080 --> 00:29:16,480
According to the courtier Peter of Blois, travelling with the king could be a grim business.

351
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:23,720
"The life of the court is death to the soul.

352
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:25,320
"Every day is unpredictable.

353
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:29,440
"There may be a last minute change of plan, taking the court to some

354
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:33,680
"desolate spot where there is a roof and dinner only for the king.

355
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:38,240
"So, after wandering three or four miles through unfamiliar woodland,

356
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:40,400
"often in darkness, the courtiers

357
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:46,600
"fight with their swords for lodgings unworthy for pigs to quarrel over."

358
00:29:55,840 --> 00:30:01,320
As they travelled around their kingdom, medieval monarchs were like the owners of a big family business,

359
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:04,400
keeping an eye on all the branches of the firm.

360
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:09,400
But members of a family business have a habit of falling out.

361
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:17,880
A domestic dispute in the royal household

362
00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:21,240
could bring the country to its knees.

363
00:30:21,280 --> 00:30:24,320
Few quarrels were more destructive

364
00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:29,960
than the one between Queen Isabella and her husband, Edward II.

365
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:34,640
Born in 1295, Isabella was the sister of the King of France,

366
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:38,240
and said to be "more beautiful than the rose."

367
00:30:41,120 --> 00:30:44,360
But her looks were wasted on her husband Edward.

368
00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:47,800
His tastes were unconventional.

369
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:50,640
He preferred fishing to hunting,

370
00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:52,960
banquets to battles,

371
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:55,920
and beautiful young men to Isabella.

372
00:30:57,520 --> 00:31:00,880
His contemporaries were scandalised.

373
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:06,080
"Oh, insane foolishness of the king, to be reproved by God and men.

374
00:31:06,120 --> 00:31:11,640
"He loved unlawful sex and removed from his side sweet conjugal embraces, in contempt of his nature."

375
00:31:13,560 --> 00:31:17,480
The relationship between Isabella and Edward deteriorated.

376
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:21,680
He set spies in her household, and reduced her income.

377
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:26,840
When she was sent as an ambassador to France she refused to return. "A marriage,"

378
00:31:26,880 --> 00:31:33,080
she wrote, "is a joining together of man and woman, maintaining the undivided habit of life.

379
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:37,760
"Now someone has come between my husband and me, trying to break that bond.

380
00:31:37,800 --> 00:31:43,280
"I protest that I will not return until the intruder is removed."

381
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:53,600
A medieval queen, with her wealth and connections, was a dangerous enemy.

382
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:58,520
In 1326, Isabella returned to England with a private army.

383
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:04,360
This time, her eyes were on the throne.

384
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:10,120
The population divided between supporters of the queen

385
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:13,600
and supporters of the king, rather fewer of those.

386
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:15,800
The Church became involved.

387
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:18,880
"When the head of the kingdom becomes sick and diseased,"

388
00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:22,520
preached the Bishop of Hereford, "it must of necessity be taken off

389
00:32:22,560 --> 00:32:25,880
"without useless attempts to administer further remedies."

390
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:29,400
The marital conflict had become a national crisis.

391
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:34,800
Edward fled to Wales.

392
00:32:34,840 --> 00:32:37,320
Isabella's vengeance was ruthless.

393
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:42,880
She started with the king's favourite, Hugh de Spencer.

394
00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:46,720
The chronicler Jean Froissart described his execution.

395
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:50,120
"His member and his testicles were first cut off, because

396
00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:54,920
"he was a heretic and a sodomite, even, it was said, with the king."

397
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:57,520
And the king's fate was not much better.

398
00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:08,000
Edward was imprisoned at Berkeley Castle, and in September 1327 he was attacked by Isabella's men.

399
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:14,840
A contemporary described what happened next.

400
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:24,080
"He was ignominiously slain, with a red hot spit thrust into the anus."

401
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:34,720
A king's divine authority counted for little within his own home.

402
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:38,920
What started as a dispute between man and wife ended

403
00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:43,200
in a royal murder, and took the country to the brink of civil war.

404
00:33:47,600 --> 00:33:53,600
A violent aristocracy, endless travelling, conflict within his own family.

405
00:33:53,640 --> 00:33:57,240
How was a king to keep on top of all this?

406
00:33:57,280 --> 00:34:00,160
Machiavelli gave the ruler some famous advice.

407
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:03,480
"It is best to be both feared and loved.

408
00:34:03,520 --> 00:34:07,240
"But if you can't be both, it's better to be feared."

409
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:25,040
In the 13th century, King John might have taken these words as his personal motto.

410
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:30,200
He was brutal and mistrustful.

411
00:34:30,240 --> 00:34:32,360
But to be feared was not enough.

412
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:38,840
His disastrous reign exposed the perils of unchecked royal power

413
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:41,840
and transformed our ideas of kingship.

414
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:50,880
Every medieval king had to live, however uncomfortably, with the power of the Church.

415
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:54,400
It had wealth, land and huge influence.

416
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:56,640
This so called "first order"

417
00:34:56,680 --> 00:35:00,720
of medieval society was like a state within a state.

418
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:04,720
With its own hierarchy, it was a powerful force in this world.

419
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:10,360
So the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury,

420
00:35:10,400 --> 00:35:14,640
the head of the English church, was a matter of enormous political importance.

421
00:35:14,680 --> 00:35:18,080
When the Pope overruled John's choice of Archbishop,

422
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:21,920
it led immediately to confrontation and crisis.

423
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:30,520
One chronicler described his reaction.

424
00:35:30,560 --> 00:35:32,800
"He became nearly mad with rage

425
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:36,320
"and broke forth in words of blasphemy,

426
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:41,560
"and swore by God's teeth to send all the Church clerks to Rome

427
00:35:41,600 --> 00:35:46,200
"with their eyes plucked out and their noses slit."

428
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:55,560
John was so furious at being overruled that he banished all the monks at Canterbury.

429
00:35:55,600 --> 00:35:58,360
The Pope was ready to strike back.

430
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:11,840
For the first and only time in English history,

431
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:15,000
the entire apparatus of the Christian Church came to a halt.

432
00:36:24,720 --> 00:36:28,000
The pulpits fell silent.

433
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:32,360
The parish priest sent home.

434
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:36,800
Church services were forbidden.

435
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:44,280
There were no marriages, and no burials in consecrated ground.

436
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:54,560
For six years, the churches of England were empty.

437
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:06,080
John fared no better with the other axis of medieval power, the aristocracy.

438
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:11,200
"He disinherited some without judgement,

439
00:37:11,240 --> 00:37:14,080
"and condemned others to a dire death.

440
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:17,440
"He violated their wives and daughters.

441
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:21,680
"His only law was his despotic will."

442
00:37:21,720 --> 00:37:26,960
In 1208, Matilda de Braose, the wife of a favoured courtier,

443
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:31,760
let slip in company that King John had murdered his own nephew.

444
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:33,640
John was enraged.

445
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:37,400
He seized her property, and sent an army to pursue her.

446
00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:44,160
Matilda and her son were taken to Corfe Castle in Dorset.

447
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:47,600
They were locked up...

448
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:49,920
and simply left to die.

449
00:37:56,360 --> 00:38:01,400
John's brutality was matched by his incompetence in war.

450
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:06,080
By 1213, he'd lost almost all his territories in France.

451
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:08,960
The French king was threatening to invade.

452
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:12,720
John came up with a desperate solution.

453
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:16,880
Hoping to get the Church back on his side, he recognised the Pope

454
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:22,040
as his feudal overlord, in effect granting him power over the kingdom.

455
00:38:23,080 --> 00:38:28,280
By now, King John was facing opposition from all sides, not only from the King of France,

456
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:31,680
but also from the Church and his own aristocracy.

457
00:38:31,720 --> 00:38:37,320
He had managed to alienate everyone in medieval society who mattered.

458
00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:42,520
It was a textbook lesson in how NOT to exercise power in the medieval world.

459
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:53,040
The aristocracy decided it was time to rebel.

460
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:04,640
The king's power had to be curtailed.

461
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:11,880
On the 17th May 1215, the rebel barons seized London.

462
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:15,720
They accused John of acting above the law,

463
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:19,760
seizing land and killing his subjects at will.

464
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:25,520
They demanded something quite new, a contract making the king answerable to the law.

465
00:39:25,560 --> 00:39:27,960
Magna Carta.

466
00:39:29,520 --> 00:39:34,400
For many people, this is the source and fountain of Western liberty.

467
00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:41,720
Magna Carta is one of the most famous documents in English history.

468
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:45,040
But when you actually read it, it can be rather disappointing.

469
00:39:45,080 --> 00:39:49,960
It has no stirring statements about the rights of man or all men being created equal.

470
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:55,480
In fact, it has rather more to say about fish weirs on the Thames and inheritance tax.

471
00:39:55,520 --> 00:40:01,520
But in the midst of all this detail, a few clauses still ring out a clear message.

472
00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:10,640
"No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way,

473
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:17,400
"nor shall we attack him except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land."

474
00:40:17,440 --> 00:40:19,160
Or this.

475
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:25,160
"To no-one will we sell, deny or delay, right or justice."

476
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:29,880
The reverberations of this crucial clause are with us to this day.

477
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:35,520
When we debate whether we can justify imprisoning terrorist suspects for 28 days or 56 days

478
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:42,280
or 90 days, we're referring back to the principles in this document, sealed by John in 1215.

479
00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:47,360
It was a revolutionary moment.

480
00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:52,680
Royal whim would no longer decide the fate of a subject.

481
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:08,200
Magna Carta was the beginning of an irreversible process,

482
00:41:08,240 --> 00:41:12,840
the shifting of power away from the king towards his subjects.

483
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:19,920
Inside this building is an enormous chamber, known at the time as "the most capacious room in Christendom."

484
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:25,920
It was here that the king gathered his most powerful men when he needed to discuss matters of importance -

485
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:29,280
war, inheritance, relations with the Church.

486
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:33,120
And it was these conversations that gave this new institution its name,

487
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:36,000
from the French word "parlez", to talk.

488
00:41:36,040 --> 00:41:40,240
This is Westminster Hall, the heart of the Palace of Westminster,

489
00:41:40,280 --> 00:41:43,080
the birthplace of the English parliament.

490
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:54,960
Westminster Hall has been in continuous use for 900 years.

491
00:41:55,000 --> 00:42:00,400
Medieval kings took advice here from favoured lords and clergy.

492
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:13,160
What we think of today as Parliament, a place where laws are made, evolved here.

493
00:42:15,680 --> 00:42:19,080
Not because medieval monarchs wanted democracy,

494
00:42:19,120 --> 00:42:21,200
but because they needed cash.

495
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:31,480
In the 13th century, a series of expensive wars meant the king had to increase taxes - everybody's taxes.

496
00:42:31,520 --> 00:42:37,440
To avoid open revolt, he had to open up these assemblies to others beyond earls and barons,

497
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:40,760
to those a little bit further down the social scale,

498
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:45,040
eventually including members of the emerging merchant class.

499
00:42:45,080 --> 00:42:49,360
From such prosaic necessity was democracy born.

500
00:42:55,120 --> 00:43:01,640
But it was still only the words of the wealthy that reached up into these great rafters.

501
00:43:01,680 --> 00:43:05,200
The poor remained unheard.

502
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:23,800
Despite the advances in common law, Magna Carta, the growth of parliament,

503
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:27,240
in the middle of the 14th century, one third of the population

504
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:30,720
was still living in bondage, tied to the estates of the rich.

505
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:33,560
Life had changed very little for them.

506
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:37,160
It would take an act of God to set them free.

507
00:43:47,720 --> 00:43:50,000
The seeds of this dramatic change

508
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:55,280
were sown in the southern port of Melcombe Regis in July 1348.

509
00:43:57,240 --> 00:44:02,360
They were planted silently, and at first went almost unnoticed,

510
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:07,600
but within a few days the impact was irreversible.

511
00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:10,480
The Black Death had arrived in Britain.

512
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:19,280
A Welsh poet observing a later outbreak of the plague described its symptoms.

513
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:22,920
"We see death coming into our midst like black smoke,

514
00:44:22,960 --> 00:44:27,480
"a rootless phantom that has no mercy nor fair countenance.

515
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:30,520
"Woe is me of the shilling in the armpit.

516
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:35,000
"It is terrible, seething, a painful, angry knob,

517
00:44:35,040 --> 00:44:39,280
"a white lump, a small boil that spares no-one."

518
00:44:41,120 --> 00:44:44,400
The disease scythed through the population.

519
00:44:46,680 --> 00:44:49,960
"It made its way along the coast by Southampton,

520
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:53,720
"where almost the whole strength of the town perished.

521
00:44:53,760 --> 00:44:58,560
"Few kept their beds more than two or three days, or even half a day."

522
00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:03,960
Within six months, the disease had decimated cities across the country.

523
00:45:07,720 --> 00:45:11,800
A chancellor of the university reported from Oxford.

524
00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:16,320
"The university is ruined and enfeebled by pestilence.

525
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:18,440
"30,000 scholars,

526
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:21,560
"and now only 6,000 remain".

527
00:45:21,600 --> 00:45:26,520
Within 12 months, half the population of England was dead.

528
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:43,400
The world after the plague looked dramatically different.

529
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:49,640
Entire villages lay deserted.

530
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:56,720
There was no-one to work the land.

531
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:06,840
With fewer people available, the demand for labour went up, and so did the price.

532
00:46:08,440 --> 00:46:13,480
Labourers would no longer be at the beck and call of their lords.

533
00:46:20,240 --> 00:46:24,440
Take the response of William of Cayburn, a Lincolnshire ploughman.

534
00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:28,640
William, we are told, did not want to work, except at a daily rate.

535
00:46:28,680 --> 00:46:31,960
And he did not want to eat salt meat, but fresh meat.

536
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:34,600
And on account of that, he left the village.

537
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:37,800
Such men sensed the way the wind was blowing.

538
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:44,400
The third order of medieval society, those who worked, was beginning to taste a new freedom.

539
00:46:48,520 --> 00:46:50,280
The authorities panicked.

540
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:53,560
Just a year after the plague, in 1349,

541
00:46:53,600 --> 00:46:59,480
they rushed through a law to freeze the wages of labourers.

542
00:46:59,520 --> 00:47:03,080
They passed another stopping them from travelling to look for work.

543
00:47:03,120 --> 00:47:10,800
They even brought in a law aimed at branding every person according to their status.

544
00:47:10,840 --> 00:47:14,800
This new law was designed to make the class system visible.

545
00:47:14,840 --> 00:47:19,240
It dictated, in very precise terms, what you could wear.

546
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:24,520
A peasant must look like a peasant, or face the consequences.

547
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:33,160
"Peasants to wear clothes made from cloth worth less than two marks,

548
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:37,160
"and not to wear anything of gold, silver or silk.

549
00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:46,760
"Squires and gentlemen with land worth less than £100 a year

550
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:50,360
"to wear cloth worth less than four and a half marks.

551
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:53,000
"Knights with land worth up to £200

552
00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:57,080
"to wear clothes made from cloth worth six marks."

553
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:07,680
Such desperate attempts to bind the peasants to their old way of life

554
00:48:07,720 --> 00:48:10,360
only fuelled centuries of frustration.

555
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:15,920
So when the government of the new king, Richard II,

556
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:19,560
tried to raise taxes on this diminished population,

557
00:48:19,600 --> 00:48:22,560
class tension reached breaking point.

558
00:48:24,160 --> 00:48:25,960
Rebellion broke out.

559
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:29,920
The rebels attacked hated symbols of power.

560
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:33,400
They burned piles of legal documents,

561
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:37,320
to destroy any record of their subjection.

562
00:48:37,360 --> 00:48:42,200
In Cambridge, the university archives were thrown onto a bonfire,

563
00:48:42,240 --> 00:48:47,400
while the rebels cried, "Away with the learning of the clerks! Away with it!"

564
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:50,560
Then violence came to the capital.

565
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:56,040
Word of the rebellion spread fast, and on 12th June 1381,

566
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:59,400
50,000 peasants, according to one chronicler,

567
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:02,240
descended on the fields of Blackheath,

568
00:49:02,280 --> 00:49:06,120
waiting for the order to attack the city which lay below.

569
00:49:06,160 --> 00:49:11,880
The restless crowd were roused into a murderous mood by the radical priest John Ball.

570
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:21,440
"Good people, things cannot go right in England

571
00:49:21,480 --> 00:49:25,480
"and never will until goods are held in common and there are

572
00:49:25,520 --> 00:49:29,880
"no more serfs and gentlefolk, but we are all one and the same.

573
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:34,240
"They are clad in velvet while we go dressed in coarse cloth.

574
00:49:34,280 --> 00:49:37,160
"They have wines, spices and good bread.

575
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:40,200
"We have straw and we drink water.

576
00:49:40,240 --> 00:49:45,880
"They have shelter and ease, we have hardship and toil, the wind and the rain.

577
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:50,320
"Let us go to the king and show him how we are oppressed, and tell him

578
00:49:50,360 --> 00:49:55,280
"that we want things to be changed, or else we will change them ourselves."

579
00:49:59,000 --> 00:50:01,240
The incredible was happening.

580
00:50:01,280 --> 00:50:04,920
The fundamental principle of inequality was being challenged.

581
00:50:04,960 --> 00:50:07,360
The natural order was under threat.

582
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:11,280
Nothing like this had ever been seen in England before.

583
00:50:14,720 --> 00:50:18,280
The next day 100,000 people marched on London.

584
00:50:18,320 --> 00:50:24,200
They burned down the Savoy Palace, on the site of today's Savoy Hotel.

585
00:50:26,360 --> 00:50:30,080
Then they headed for the Tower of London, led by Wat Tyler.

586
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:38,440
They were after one of the chief architects of the hated Poll Tax, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

587
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:57,560
The Archbishop had passed the previous night in confession

588
00:50:57,600 --> 00:51:00,000
here in St John's Chapel,

589
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:05,160
anxiously awaiting the arrival of the rebels, constantly asking, "When will they come?"

590
00:51:05,200 --> 00:51:09,800
He spent the time deep in prayer, chanting psalms and the holy litany.

591
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:13,840
And as he said the words, "Omnes sancti, orate pro nobis" -

592
00:51:13,880 --> 00:51:15,520
"Pray for us, all the saints,"

593
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:19,360
the rebels burst in and seized him from his prayers.

594
00:51:19,400 --> 00:51:23,040
They dragged the Archbishop through the passages

595
00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:25,680
by his arms and his hood to Tower Hill,

596
00:51:25,720 --> 00:51:30,160
where, along with the Treasurer of England, he was beheaded.

597
00:51:30,200 --> 00:51:34,880
The heads, placed on stakes, were paraded through the city.

598
00:51:44,360 --> 00:51:45,960
By the end of the day,

599
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:50,360
160 people had been beheaded, and London was in chaos.

600
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:55,840
The rebels, following their leader, Wat Tyler,

601
00:51:55,880 --> 00:51:59,400
met with the young King Richard, only 14 at this time.

602
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:04,080
In an outrageous breach of protocol, Wat Tyler offered the king his hand,

603
00:52:04,120 --> 00:52:07,480
saying "Brother, be of good comfort."

604
00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:11,680
You can imagine the waves of hatred emanating from the nobility.

605
00:52:11,720 --> 00:52:14,800
No peasant had ever spoken to a king like that.

606
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:20,840
This was a critical moment in which the power structures of the medieval world seemed about to shift.

607
00:52:20,880 --> 00:52:23,280
The king was so outnumbered by the rebels

608
00:52:23,320 --> 00:52:27,000
that he was forced to listen to Tyler's extraordinary demands.

609
00:52:27,040 --> 00:52:28,600
An end to serfdom.

610
00:52:28,640 --> 00:52:30,520
No lords except the king.

611
00:52:30,560 --> 00:52:33,960
The property of the Church to be divided amongst the people.

612
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:36,800
Even more extraordinary, the king agreed.

613
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:40,760
Fighting broke out.

614
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:47,800
Tyler was killed by the king's soldiers.

615
00:52:47,840 --> 00:52:50,960
The terrified rebels fled.

616
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:56,520
The leaders were beheaded, their heads placed on stakes on London Bridge.

617
00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:10,520
The young king told his discontented subjects just what he thought of them.

618
00:53:12,080 --> 00:53:15,360
"Serfs you were, and serfs you are still.

619
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:18,720
"You will remain in bondage as long as we live,

620
00:53:18,760 --> 00:53:21,600
"and by God's grace, rule over the realm.

621
00:53:23,160 --> 00:53:25,800
"We will strive to suppress you

622
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:30,040
"so your servitude will be an example to posterity.

623
00:53:30,080 --> 00:53:33,840
"People like you will always have your misery as an example

624
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:37,920
"before their eyes, and will fear to do the things you have done."

625
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:44,920
His words sound like the echo of a vanishing world.

626
00:53:44,960 --> 00:53:47,480
Social change was unstoppable.

627
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:52,520
The forces that had held all the classes in check for so long were weakening.

628
00:53:54,640 --> 00:53:58,080
The Black Death had cracked the foundations of the hierarchy.

629
00:53:58,120 --> 00:54:01,800
Within the 15th century, serfdom disappeared from England.

630
00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:06,280
And as new cities grew, a class made rich on business,

631
00:54:06,320 --> 00:54:09,640
law and trade, began to flex its muscles.

632
00:54:16,560 --> 00:54:19,520
This new merchant class was hungry for influence.

633
00:54:20,800 --> 00:54:24,680
Ewelme, in Oxfordshire, was the home of Alice Chaucer,

634
00:54:24,720 --> 00:54:28,440
the granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer, the writer.

635
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:31,920
Through clever marriages and contacts at court,

636
00:54:31,960 --> 00:54:35,320
this merchant family began to rise in the world.

637
00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:45,560
Alice could afford to build a manor house, a church, a school, even an almshouse for the poor.

638
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:49,640
Great charitable institutions like this

639
00:54:49,680 --> 00:54:51,920
were not uncommon in the Middle Ages,

640
00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:55,520
but they were usually the preserve of the very, very rich.

641
00:54:55,560 --> 00:55:00,720
It's a sign of how far the Chaucer family had come in just two generations.

642
00:55:12,160 --> 00:55:14,800
Just what Alice's family achieved

643
00:55:14,840 --> 00:55:17,720
can be found in the church at Ewelme.

644
00:55:20,120 --> 00:55:21,800
This wonderful alabaster tomb

645
00:55:21,840 --> 00:55:25,720
is more than a memorial to Alice and her religious devotion.

646
00:55:27,520 --> 00:55:31,080
It's a statement that the Chaucer family had arrived

647
00:55:31,120 --> 00:55:33,520
at the very top of English society.

648
00:55:38,160 --> 00:55:40,080
When Alice died in 1475,

649
00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:44,200
she had married off her son to the king's sister.

650
00:55:48,040 --> 00:55:52,120
Her once modest family had been catapulted into royal circles.

651
00:55:59,320 --> 00:56:03,200
Her tomb proudly displays this dazzling ascent.

652
00:56:04,240 --> 00:56:08,360
Crests of all the powerful families who, through marriage,

653
00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:12,200
carried the Chaucers up the social scale, are on show.

654
00:56:12,240 --> 00:56:18,720
Including the royal crest of Alice's daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Plantagenet.

655
00:56:23,280 --> 00:56:25,960
The inscription on her tomb reads,

656
00:56:26,000 --> 00:56:30,520
"Orate pro anima Serenissimae Principessae Aliciae."

657
00:56:30,560 --> 00:56:34,520
"Pray for the soul of the most serene princess Alice".

658
00:56:34,560 --> 00:56:37,640
An outrageous piece of self-promotion.

659
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:49,920
She was the granddaughter of a wine merchant's son.

660
00:56:49,960 --> 00:56:54,360
Her grandson was in line to the throne of England.

661
00:56:54,400 --> 00:56:57,760
THAT is social climbing.

662
00:57:04,120 --> 00:57:06,040
By the late Middle Ages,

663
00:57:06,080 --> 00:57:10,440
your place in society was no longer dictated entirely by your birth.

664
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:12,440
Families like the Chaucers

665
00:57:12,480 --> 00:57:16,320
were moving into places once reserved for the aristocracy.

666
00:57:16,360 --> 00:57:21,080
Blood and land were no longer the sole path to power.

667
00:57:21,120 --> 00:57:24,960
Skill and ambition could take you to the top.

668
00:57:26,960 --> 00:57:28,600
By the end of the Middle Ages,

669
00:57:28,640 --> 00:57:32,880
England was a very different country from what it had been 500 years before.

670
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:37,960
Slavery had disappeared. "Wergild", man price, was a distant memory.

671
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:39,800
The serfs were now free men,

672
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:43,840
and the power of the king was checked by law and parliament.

673
00:57:43,880 --> 00:57:46,040
A free and equal society?

674
00:57:46,080 --> 00:57:50,280
Certainly not. But one that a knight from five centuries earlier,

675
00:57:50,320 --> 00:57:52,760
or even a serf on that knight's estates,

676
00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:54,960
would scarcely have recognised.

677
00:58:07,720 --> 00:58:11,400
For a free poster featuring the medieval locations from the series

678
00:58:11,440 --> 00:58:14,320
and more about Open University programmes -

679
00:58:43,920 --> 00:58:46,920
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd