Professor Robert Bartlett continues the remarkable story of the Plantagenets. England's longest-reigning royal dynasty fights to expand their power across the British Isles and win back their lands in France. In this golden age of chivalry, a clear sense of English nationhood emerges and parliament is born.
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00:00Cavisham Manor in Berkshire.
00:22The year is 1219.
00:27Leo Marshall is the most powerful knight in the land and regent of England.
00:34The 11-year-old boy at his bedside is the fourth Plantagenet king to rule England, Henry
00:41III.
00:46The Plantagenets were a French dynasty who'd ruled England and much of France for 50 years.
00:55But Henry's father, King John, had lost most of their lands in France.
01:01And when Henry came to the throne at the age of nine, half of England was under French
01:06occupation.
01:10William Marshall had sworn to protect the young king.
01:15Even if the whole world abandons the boy, he said, I will not fail him.
01:22William Marshall kept his word.
01:24He defeated the French, fought off the rebellious English barons, and ensured that the young
01:29Plantagenet would hold on to his crown.
01:36But now William Marshall was dying, and the fate of the Plantagenets rested on the shoulders
01:42of a child.
01:47Many predicted disaster.
01:51Instead, something remarkable happened.
01:58The Plantagenet dynasty not only survived, it grew stronger.
02:03Under their rule, over the next 150 years, medieval England reached its peak.
02:12Parliament was born, and a clear sense of national identity emerged.
02:21Their roots were in France, French was their language, but the Plantagenet family helped
02:26foster a new sense of English nationhood.
02:29Out of their dynastic ambitions would grow an English empire.
02:51For the first 50 years of Plantagenet rule, the English Channel acted as a bridge, connecting
03:03the king and his barons to the lands they owned in France.
03:09But by the reign of Henry III, most of their ancestral homelands in France had been lost.
03:17The English barons were forced to make a commitment to one side of the Channel, or
03:21the other.
03:25The kings of England and France presented the barons with a stark choice.
03:32Give up their lands in England and do homage to the king of France, or give up their lands
03:36in France and swear allegiance to the king of England.
03:40The Channel was no longer a bridge, but a barrier between competing powers.
03:46The return of French lands always drove the Plantagenet dynasty, but for now they turned
03:51their energies to the country they still ruled, to England.
04:03Henry III was not by nature a warrior.
04:07The boy king grew up to be a pious ruler, devoted to pilgrimage and prayer.
04:16In 1245 he began rebuilding Westminster Abbey, a project that would occupy him for the rest
04:23of his life.
04:29The old Romanesque basilica was replaced with an immense Gothic structure.
04:39This was an architecture of light and sophistication.
04:43The style was French, but it was dedicated to the memory of an English king.
04:56The majesty of Westminster Abbey today is the result of Henry III's devotion to Edward
05:01the Confessor and his desire to glorify him.
05:05Henry saw Westminster as the centre of the Plantagenet kingdom, and in the heart of the
05:10abbey itself he constructed an elaborate new shrine to the saintly Anglo-Saxon king.
05:26Edward the Confessor is the only English king to have been canonised.
05:33Henry was aligning himself with both God and England.
05:44Edward's golden coffin sat on a base of purbeck marble.
05:49These niches were carved for pilgrims to kneel in prayer.
05:56But the abbey also served a worldly purpose.
06:04Henry's piety hadn't extinguished his dynastic ambition.
06:07He wanted Westminster Abbey to rival the great churches of the French kings.
06:12His vision of the abbey was as the place of coronation and burial for all future Plantagenet
06:18kings.
06:23Westminster Abbey would be forever associated with Henry as his crowning achievement.
06:29But Plantagenet ambition came at a price.
06:34Its rebuilding cost more than twice Henry's annual royal income, and he had other expensive
06:41plans.
06:43Like all his predecessors, Henry was determined to expand his Plantagenet empire, whatever
06:49the cost.
06:54Henry wasn't a warrior king, but he could use the revenues of England to add to the
06:58Plantagenet dominions.
07:00The Pope was inviting Henry to purchase the rights to the kingdom of Sicily, and he couldn't
07:05refuse the chance to add to the family's lands.
07:08He accepted on behalf of his younger son, Edmund.
07:12The only snag was the price tag.
07:22We know what happened next because of a contemporary account of Henry's reign.
07:32Kept at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is a manuscript written and illustrated by
07:37a St Albans monk, Matthew Parris.
07:40It's called the Chronica Maiora, the Great Chronicle.
07:46He tells us Henry agreed to pay the Pope three times his annual income for the chance to
07:52secure Sicily as a Plantagenet land.
07:56It was a huge sum of money and a great risk.
08:01If Henry defaulted on payment, he faced excommunication from the church.
08:10For a pious man like Henry, excommunication would be unbearable.
08:14But still he pursued the policy.
08:16Even his own brother thought he'd gone mad.
08:18He compared the Pope's offer to a man saying, I sell you the moon, now climb up and take
08:23it.
08:25It was an ambitious plan to expand Plantagenet power, but it placed royal family interests
08:30against those of the barons, and it backfired badly.
08:38The barons were the land-owning nobility of England.
08:42They provided the king with armies to fight his wars, and he needed their agreement to
08:47raise taxes to fund his ambitions.
08:52Yet Henry was alienating his barons by pursuing Sicily.
08:58And they held another grievance against the king.
09:03Henry had filled his court with foreign-born relatives from Savoy and Poitou.
09:09The barons bitterly resented them.
09:13French remained the language of court, but there was a growing suspicion of all things
09:18foreign.
09:22Plantagenet dynastic ambitions were still international, but they increasingly came
09:26up against a new force, national feeling.
09:30You can see it in the works of Matthew Parris.
09:33Here he shows a French invasion fleet being defeated by English forces, while the bishops
09:40bless those who are fighting, as it says, for the liberation of England.
09:47And here he praises a patriotic baron who had struggled to preserve Anglia Anglis, England
09:57for the English.
10:01National feeling was a growing force Henry couldn't ignore.
10:06He'd taken a huge risk in mortgaging his kingdom to expand the Plantagenet empire in the Mediterranean.
10:14But now he was bankrupt, and the English barons were on the point of rebellion.
10:24This came to a head one April morning in 1258.
10:32Seven barons in full armour confronted Henry here in Westminster Hall.
10:35The king was startled.
10:37What is this, my lords?
10:38Am I your captive?
10:40They reassured him that they were not rebels but friends of the crown, but they insisted
10:44that the king dismiss his foreign relatives and take back their castles and lands.
10:50The king's relatives protested noisily, but the barons warned them, no for a fact,
10:56that you will either return the castles or lose your head.
11:04Henry had little choice but to agree.
11:08The king's submission to the barons triggered a chain of reforming legislation that would
11:13transform the way England was governed.
11:19The reforms would be agreed by a committee of 24, 12 chosen by the king and 12 by the barons.
11:30For the first time in English history, power would be shared by the king with a 15-member council.
11:38These historic reforms are known as the Provisions of Oxford.
11:47Medieval kings had always claimed to rule by the grace of God, but Henry now reluctantly
11:52swore an oath to share power with the barons in the name of le commune d'Angleterre,
11:57the community of England.
12:00Provoked by plantagenet extravagance, the Provisions of Oxford mark an important moment
12:05in the history of England and of the limitation of royal power.
12:09For 20 years, the assemblies where the king consulted with his bishops and barons had
12:14been known by a term derived from the French parler, to talk.
12:19This gave us the name of a new institution, parliament.
12:32Henry appealed to the pope to extricate himself from the Provisions of Oxford.
12:38But his own brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, condemned Henry as a king who had lost touch
12:43with his people.
12:47De Montfort saw himself as England's saviour.
12:55The king knew he was in danger. He told de Montfort, I fear thunder and lightning beyond
13:00measure, but by God's head I dread you more than all the thunder and lightning in the
13:05world.
13:08He was right to be afraid.
13:11From his base here in Kenilworth Castle, de Montfort raised an army against the king.
13:22In 1264, Simon de Montfort confronted royal troops led by the king and his son Prince
13:28Edward outside Lewes.
13:32De Montfort's men were outnumbered, but they inflicted a humiliating defeat on Henry and
13:38took Prince Edward prisoner.
13:44Henry remained king in name only.
13:47For the next 15 months, England was ruled, not by a Plantagenet, but by Simon de Montfort.
13:56And he did so through parliament.
14:02De Montfort's parliament of 1265 is often regarded as the forerunner of the modern parliament.
14:08As always, it included barons and bishops, who sit nowadays as the House of Lords.
14:13But for the first time, knights and burgesses were sent from the shires and from the boroughs,
14:19elected to parliament by the property owners of England.
14:23Parliament now had the beginnings of a second house, later to be known as the Commons.
14:31Henry III seemed to be a spent force, but his son Edward was a warrior, prepared to
14:44defend his Plantagenet birthright to the death.
14:51With the help of men loyal to his cause, Edward escaped his captivity in Hereford.
14:58He raised an army and confronted de Montfort at Evesham.
15:10At the Battle of Evesham, Edward reasserted Plantagenet rule in England.
15:15De Montfort's supporters were slaughtered and de Montfort himself killed in the battle.
15:23His hands and feet were cut off.
15:27His testicles severed and hung scornfully over his nose.
15:31Then his head was sent to the wife of one of his chief enemies.
15:35De Montfort's rule was over, but the English parliament lived on and future Plantagenet
15:41kings would ignore it at their peril.
15:49Henry had had a lucky escape. He returned to the life of religious devotion and pilgrimage.
15:57He gambled with the Plantagenet crown and his actions had provoked the opening up of
16:05parliament to elected representatives of the English people.
16:13Henry's England had a growing sense of national spirit, but when he died, Henry revealed his
16:19own true allegiance.
16:26Henry's body was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey to spend eternity alongside his beloved
16:31Anglo-Saxon hero, Edward the Confessor.
16:35But his heart was sent to be buried with his Plantagenet ancestors at the Abbey of Fontevraux
16:41in Anjou.
16:42An English king, but a French heart. A Plantagenet to the last.
16:56Edward, the warrior prince, now became King Edward I of England.
17:11Tall and intimidating, with a mop of curly hair, Edward was known as Longshanks.
17:19He inherited a country recovering from turmoil.
17:27Edward also inherited the famous Plantagenet temper. Reputedly, he once frightened an unfortunate
17:33Archbishop of York literally to death.
17:36But he'd learned two things from his father's mistakes. To keep the barons happy and not
17:41to run out of money. And he sought to find ways to attain both those goals.
17:49Like his ancestors, Edward encouraged the planning of new towns to generate wealth and taxes.
17:59Towns like Hull and Winchelsea nurtured a new society based on trade. And trade became
18:06the lifeblood of the Plantagenet dynasty.
18:13Medieval England reached its economic peak under Edward I.
18:21But there was a darker side to its growing sense of national identity.
18:29England's Jewish population had arrived from France shortly after the Norman Conquest.
18:35The Pope had decreed that lending money at interest was a sin for Christians. So the
18:42Jews became the chief source of credit for the king and his barons.
18:50Jews were often resented. They were frequently persecuted and attacked. And by the reign
18:56of Edward I, in this age of crusades, England had become an increasingly militant Christian
19:03nation.
19:07The king himself was a conventional Christian, with no sympathy for the plight of the Jews.
19:11At a time when English national feeling was growing, Edward's vision of England was a
19:16fiercely Christian one. This England had no place for the Jews.
19:26With the support of his barons, Edward decided to expel the entire Jewish population from
19:32his realm. Some 2,000 to 3,000 Jews departed from the shores of England. There was to be
19:38no resident Jewish population in the country for the next 370 years.
19:53Yet Plantagenet's ambitions always extended beyond England.
20:02Edward was inspired by King Arthur, a popular figure in folklore who was said to have once
20:09ruled over a united Britain. Edward wanted to align the Plantagenet dynasty with this
20:15legendary all-conquering leader. And he had the conquest of Wales in his sights.
20:32Wales had troubled the Plantagenet kings for generations. Its rugged terrain made it hard
20:36to conquer and control, and they regarded its inhabitants as little more than barbarians.
20:42But Edward I was a man who never gave up what he saw as his rights, and these included,
20:48in his eyes, overlordship of Wales.
20:56But a rival dynasty stood in the way of Plantagenet ambition. The princes of Gwynedd had ruled
21:08here for centuries. Llywelyn ap Griffith and his younger brother, Dafydd, were the latest
21:17in a long line of warrior leaders who held a crown said to be King Arthur's.
21:25Edward's father, Henry, recognised Llywelyn as Prince of Wales, as long as he paid homage
21:31to the English crown. But when Edward took the throne, Llywelyn refused to pay homage.
21:42Edward declared Llywelyn a rebel and a disturber of the peace, and in 1277 set off westward
21:48from Chester at the head of a powerful army of 800 knights, crossbowmen from Gascony and
21:5416,000 infantry. Along the way, they were supplied by a fleet of ships sent up from
22:00the royal ports of the south coast, like Winchelsea. The Welsh were hopelessly outnumbered.
22:10Edward's army captured Anglesey, the breadbasket of Wales. At a stroke, this provided food
22:17for his own men and cut off supplies to the Welsh.
22:25Llywelyn had no choice but to surrender and pay homage to Edward. An uneasy truce followed.
22:40But it was broken when Dafydd ap Griffith led a new rebellion against English rule.
22:47For over a year, the Plantagenet army clashed with Welsh defenders.
22:55But in 1282, disaster struck for the Welsh dynasty. Llywelyn was killed in battle.
23:07His head cut off and sent to London. Dafydd ap Griffith held out here at Dolbadon
23:15Castle for a few months more. Finally, he was captured and tried by the English.
23:20He was burned to death as the last survivor of a family of traitors. He was hanged and
23:24then cut down and disembowelled. His entrails were burned in front of him. His body was
23:29quartered and then his head was cut off and sent to the Tower of London to be displayed
23:35alongside that of his brother. As a final act of ritual humiliation, the Welsh surrendered
23:41to the English king, the Crown of King Arthur. Wales was now a Plantagenet dominion.
23:51Edward had confronted a rival dynasty and emerged victorious. Now, to stamp his authority,
24:06he began building and repairing a chain of castles across North Wales. These fortresses
24:13represent the peak of medieval castle building. Edward personally chose the site for his castle
24:20for each of his castles and the most impressive of all arose above the river Siont at Carnarfon.
24:37This twin-towered gatehouse, known as the King's Gate, was built according to the designs
24:42of King Edward himself. The approach to the castle was guarded by arrow slits and by spy
24:49holes. And once here, you would have been confronted with a drawbridge, six portcullises
25:01and five sets of gates. This was Plantagenet military architecture at its most intimidating.
25:20Edward engaged the most famous castle architect in Europe, Master James of St George.
25:32King Edward was keen to associate the Plantagenet dynasty with the glories of the Christian
25:36Roman Empire and so he commanded Master James to base his designs on the great walls of
25:41Constantinople. This meant building many-sided towers instead of the more usual round ones.
25:47The walls are up to 20 feet thick and patterned with bands of coloured stone, a Byzantine
25:53design not previously seen in the British Isles.
26:01Carnarfon Castle was a bold statement of Plantagenet domination. For the Welsh, it was a painful
26:09reminder of conquest and oppression.
26:19Edward was also preparing for the future and laying a Plantagenet dynastic claim to Wales.
26:26In 1284, the King's eleventh child, a son named Edward, was born here. At the age of
26:3216, Edward of Carnarfon would be declared Prince of Wales, a title stolen from Llywelyn
26:39at Griffith, which has been borne by the eldest son of the English Sovereign ever since.
26:47It looked at one point as though Scotland would go the way of Wales, swallowed up by
27:05the English Kingdom. But a different dynastic problem had arisen there.
27:17When the King of Scotland died in 1286, he left no male heir. The bloodline of Scottish
27:24kings was broken. The dead king's three-year-old granddaughter, Margaret of Norway, was next
27:33in line for the throne. Edward came up with a neat Plantagenet solution. Margaret would
27:41return to Scotland to marry his own infant son.
27:51The situation would be resolved by diplomacy and marriage, not by war, and Britain would
27:56be united under the Plantagenets. It remains one of the great what-ifs of British history.
28:04No marriage took place. Little Margaret died in Orkney on her way to Scotland, and with
28:10her died Edward's plan for a bloodless Plantagenet takeover of Scotland.
28:19After the death of Margaret, Edward agreed to tolerate a subordinate king in Scotland.
28:27But as soon as he showed signs of independence, Edward reacted with typical Plantagenet brutality.
28:38His troops sacked Berwick and defeated a Scottish army at Dunbar. English garrisons and officials
28:46were installed across Scotland to intimidate and control.
28:56For Edward, the kingdom of Scotland had ceased to exist. As he handed the royal seal of Scotland
29:02to one of his barons, he said, a man does good business when he rids himself of a turd.
29:08But Scotland did not go the way of Wales. This wasn't a battle between dynasties, but
29:14between two countries with a growing sense of national identity and pride.
29:22No one displayed this more than one of the Scottish resistance leaders, William Wallace.
29:30Wallace was a proud and charismatic figure. He refused to pay homage to Edward.
29:40To crush Wallace, the English army had to cross the river Forth.
29:48On a 13th century map of Britain by Matthew Parris, Scotland is shown dramatically divided
29:55by the river Forth, and the only place to cross was the bridge at Stirling.
30:05It was here that William Wallace confronted the English army to preserve Scotland's freedom.
30:13At this time, the bridge here was just wide enough for the English forces to cross to abreast.
30:20Once half the army had crossed, the Scots swooped down and cut off the bridge.
30:27The English, stranded on the northern bank, were surrounded. The result was slaughter.
30:43Around 5,000 English infantrymen died at Stirling Bridge.
30:52The battle didn't decide the issue, but Wallace's defiance shook Edward.
31:04International dynasties like the Plantagenets struggled to understand national feeling.
31:12Edward underestimated the strength of resistance it could produce.
31:18He was riding to confront another Scottish leader, Robert Bruce, when he died in 1307.
31:28Plantagenet determination to subdue Scotland was undiminished.
31:33But Edward II's defeat by Robert Bruce at Bannockburn seven years later set the limits to Plantagenet ambitions in Britain.
31:41They would never conquer the Scots, and they provoked a deepening of Scottish national pride
31:47and a sense of independence that survives to this day.
31:59The new Plantagenet king lacked his father's warrior instincts.
32:04Edward II preferred gardening to fighting.
32:09He would fail to build on his father's legacy, and his lapses of judgment would threaten to destroy the Plantagenet dynasty.
32:25Edward's reign began well.
32:28He secured a great prize in the marriage market – Isabella, daughter of the King of France.
32:35She was just 12 years old, but already considered a beauty of beauties and very wise.
32:44A month after their wedding, Westminster Abbey was the setting for Edward's coronation.
32:51This was his first opportunity to show off his new queen.
32:56Instead, Isabella was upstaged.
33:01As Edward and Isabella walked down the aisle, it wasn't the young queen who caught the eye.
33:07Walking just ahead of them and leading the procession was a young man called Piers Gaveston.
33:13He was dressed in clothes of imperial purple, studded with pearls,
33:17and in his hands he cradled the crown of St Edward the Confessor, the most sacred of the royal regalia.
33:23There was no more privileged position in the royal procession.
33:28Gaveston was being honoured as the most important noble in the land.
33:40At the banquet that followed, Edward and Gaveston shocked the guests with their display of affection for each other.
33:48Isabella's uncles walked out in disgust.
33:53Every medieval king had court favourites,
33:57but none had ever achieved the power and influence Piers Gaveston exercised over Edward II.
34:04The king claimed he loved him like a brother,
34:08but the St Paul's Chronicler noted that the king frequented Piers' couch more than the queen's.
34:16We can never know for sure if there was a sexual relationship between Edward II and Piers Gaveston,
34:22but we do know that there are no mentions of homosexuality during their lifetimes,
34:27and they had plenty of enemies who would have brought it up.
34:30The earliest references come after Edward's downfall and from men who were deeply hostile to him.
34:46What can't be doubted is that Edward was infatuated with Gaveston,
34:52to a degree that compromised his kingship and provoked the baron's hatred.
34:58But Gaveston displayed no fear of the barons.
35:07Famed for his quick and sarcastic tongue, Gaveston gave the barons nicknames.
35:13The Earl of Lancaster was the Fiddler, the Earl of Lincoln Burst Belly,
35:18and the Earl of Warwick, whose seat was here at Warwick Castle, was the Black Dog of Arden.
35:23But this was a dangerous game. The Black Dog could bite.
35:32Once again, Plantagenet rule was under threat because of foreign-born court favourites.
35:38Once again, the barons felt compelled to act.
35:44Gaveston was captured and put in the custody of the Earl of Pembroke, who guaranteed his safety.
35:51But in his absence, the Black Dog pounced.
35:58The Earl of Warwick seized Gaveston.
36:01After a token trial, he was led out on the road to Kenilworth.
36:07When they reached Blacklow Hill, here on the land of the Earl of Lancaster,
36:11Gaveston was first stabbed and then beheaded.
36:19His body was left on the hillside until claimed by two Dominican friars.
36:28And that was the end of peers, commented a contemporary chronicler,
36:32who had risen on high, but now fell into nothingness.
36:42If Edward had now concentrated his energies on being king,
36:46his infatuation with Gaveston might have been quickly forgotten.
36:56Instead, to Isabella's horror, he would have been killed.
37:02He began to shower favours on another young noble, Hugh Dispenser.
37:12Dispenser and Edward became inseparable.
37:15Angry barons said he had bewitched the king's mind.
37:19But Dispenser made an enemy yet more dangerous than the barons, Edward's queen, Isabella.
37:25Isabella came to despise Dispenser, in the words of a contemporary chronicle,
37:30with a more than perfect hatred.
37:36But Edward still needed Isabella.
37:40In 1324, the French invaded Gascony, the last of the Plantagenet lands in France.
37:51Isabella's brother was now the king of France.
37:54So Edward asked his wife to travel to Paris to sue for peace.
38:01Isabella's brother welcomed her warmly,
38:04and promised to restore Gascony on condition that Edward did homage for the duchy.
38:09With his barons threatening rebellion at home, Edward was reluctant to leave England,
38:14but he sent his son in his place.
38:16And so here, at the Château de Vincennes outside Paris,
38:19in the company of his mother, the young Edward knelt at the feet of Charles IV of France.
38:31But then, instead of returning to England, he remained in France with his mother.
38:41When Edward requested their return, Isabella refused,
38:45and she finally revealed her feelings about her husband's relationship with Hugh Dispenser.
38:51I feel that marriage is a joining together of man and woman,
38:55and someone has come between my husband and me, trying to break this bond.
39:03Edward's letters to his son grew increasingly violent.
39:09We will take such measures that you will feel it all the days of your life,
39:13and all other sons will learn what it means to be a woman.
39:17You will feel it all the days of your life,
39:19and all other sons will learn what it means to disobey their lords and fathers.
39:30A Plantagenet family crisis was about to turn into a political disaster.
39:36News reached the king that the rebel baron, Roger Mortimer, was now Isabella's lover.
39:48According to the Bishop of Hereford, Edward determined to strike back with true Plantagenet vindictiveness.
39:54If he had no other weapon, he would crush her with his teeth.
40:02Isabella and Mortimer landed on the Suffolk coast, and quickly found support from disaffected barons.
40:11Edward's cause was lost.
40:15Hugh de Spencer paid the price for his closeness to the king.
40:21He was tied to a ladder, and his genitals sliced off.
40:25His entrails were removed, and along with his heart, thrown into a fire.
40:32The king was taken prisoner.
40:36According to the English chronicler Geoffrey le Baker,
40:39the imprisoned king was told that if he refused to abdicate in favour of his son,
40:44someone other than a Plantagenet would take the throne.
40:47Weeping and barely able to stand, Edward eventually agreed to sacrifice himself for his dynasty.
40:53He stood down in favour of his son, the first abdication of a king of England.
40:58But the Plantagenet bloodline had been protected.
41:03On the 1st of February 1327, his son, Prince Edward, was crowned.
41:09He was 14 years old.
41:12His mother Isabella was appointed regent.
41:16She and Mortimer now ruled England on Edward's behalf.
41:23But a deposed former king, Hugh de Spencer,
41:27was a new dynastic problem.
41:34Edward was brought here to Barclay Castle,
41:37and these are original documents from the castle at that time.
41:41Here we read about the delivery of chickens to the kitchen of the king's father,
41:47which is what Edward now was.
41:49And here is a record of his daily expenses,
41:53And here is a report of a messenger being sent to Nottingham
41:57to inform Isabella concerning Morte Patris Regis.
42:06The death of the king's father.
42:14The death of Edward's father was a tragic event.
42:19The death of Edward II solved Isabella and Mortimer's problems.
42:24But there were already questions about how Edward died.
42:29And killing a king was an offence against God and the natural order.
42:38The most plausible cause of death to be suggested was suffocation,
42:42but other, more lurid accounts soon circulated.
42:45Within 30 years, Geoffrey de Baker and other chroniclers were writing
42:49that Edward had had a red-hot poker inserted into his anus.
42:53It's no surprise which version has caught the public imagination.
42:57No-one knows for sure, but with either the red-hot poker or suffocation,
43:01no mark would be visible when the king's body was displayed
43:05to show that he was truly dead.
43:07To all appearances, Edward II died of natural causes.
43:16The fate of the Plantagenet dynasty
43:19now lay in the hands of Isabella and Roger Mortimer.
43:25But three years later, tired of the corrupt rule of his mother and her lover,
43:30the young King Edward decided to take action.
43:35One night, in October 1330,
43:39two dozen supporters of the young king crept through a secret tunnel.
43:44Above, in Nottingham Castle, slept Isabella and Roger Mortimer.
43:52The leader of the conspirators warned the young king,
43:55it is better to eat than die.
43:59The leader of the conspirators warned the young king,
44:02it is better to eat the dog than to be eaten by the dog.
44:09But Mortimer hadn't got to rule England without a killer's instincts.
44:14The king's supporters knew that if their plans failed,
44:17they would be hanged as traitors.
44:21The young conspirators entered the castle
44:24and made for the queen's bedchamber.
44:27As they drew their swords and entered,
44:30Edward stood quietly outside the room.
44:39Suspecting her son's presence, Isabella called out,
44:42Good son, good son, have mercy on noble Mortimer.
44:46But there was to be no mercy.
44:48Mortimer was taken to the Tower of London
44:50and within a few weeks he was hanged like an ordinary criminal.
44:54And out of the shadow of his mother and her lover
44:57stepped the new Plantagenet king, Edward III.
45:17In the uncertain world of medieval politics,
45:21people looked to omens and portents for guidance.
45:25One place they found it was in ancient prophecies
45:29about the fates and fortunes of kings.
45:34The prophecy of the six kings drew on the legend of King Arthur.
45:39In it, Merlin characterised the future Plantagenet kings
45:45as animals.
45:49Henry III was a pious lamb, Edward I a battling dragon.
45:53Edward II was a lascivious goat.
45:56But his son, who would grow up to be Edward III,
45:59was a glorious wild boar with the heart of a lion,
46:02who would conquer more than any of his blood in this world.
46:06The message was clear.
46:08England once again had a Plantagenet king to rally behind.
46:15MUSIC
46:20Edward III would not make the mistakes of his father.
46:24He set out to unify the English barons around him
46:28and at his birthplace, Windsor Castle,
46:31he spent a royal fortune
46:33transforming it into the heart of his kingdom.
46:37He turned it from a castle into a palace.
46:45It became the most expensive single building project
46:50by any Plantagenet king
46:52and the perfect setting for royal displays of chivalry.
47:01Under Edward III, the rituals of chivalry
47:04became central to the Plantagenet court.
47:07Chivalry was a code of behaviour
47:09that proudly fused military and Christian ethics.
47:14The word refers to the customs and values of the chevaliers,
47:18the French term for those who rode into battle, the knights.
47:22And it demanded that these knights be brave, loyal
47:26and devoted to their ladies.
47:28Edward III understood the power of chivalry like no-one else
47:33and he used it to bind together
47:35the knights, the nobles and the Plantagenet crown.
47:39MUSIC
47:43Like his grandfather, Edward I,
47:45Edward was inspired by the legend of King Arthur.
47:56Lavish Arthurian tournaments were held
47:59in the quadrangle at Windsor Castle...
48:04..with staged displays of horsemanship and fighting skills.
48:10Windsor Castle became the Plantagenet Camelot.
48:17Along with Arthur, Edward chose a Christian hero
48:20to represent his ambition, St George.
48:26St George was a warrior saint
48:28and he was the patron of knights throughout Christendom.
48:31But Edward's troops were already marching
48:33with the Red Cross of St George at their head
48:36and it flew also from the masts of his ships.
48:39It was becoming a symbol of England and the English king.
48:43And St George would be the war cry
48:45of the English armies in Edward's next great conflict.
48:48He was determined to win back
48:50the old Plantagenet dynastic lands in France.
48:58The French royal family had seen son succeed father
49:02for 320 years.
49:05But in 1328, Charles IV of France died
49:08without a son to succeed him.
49:14Edward III was the dead king's nephew.
49:17He believed he had as strong a claim
49:19to the French throne as anyone.
49:25Could Edward III of England become Edward I of France?
49:29It wasn't so far-fetched.
49:31Ever since King John had lost their old lands in France
49:34over a century before,
49:36the Plantagenet kings had nursed the ambition of recovering them.
49:40To acquire the whole of France would be an even greater glory.
49:50Edward saw an opportunity to succeed
49:53where his Plantagenet forefathers had failed.
49:57In 1340, he announced his claim to the French throne.
50:03This began an era of slaughter and bloodshed
50:07that went on for generations.
50:14In July 1346, an army of around 10,000 men,
50:17led by Edward III, landed in Normandy.
50:21Edward may have claimed to be king of France,
50:24but this was clearly an English invasion.
50:27The battle was no longer just one between dynasties.
50:30It was now a battle between nations.
50:37The English rampaged unopposed through Normandy.
50:44Finally, the two great armies confronted each other
50:48by the forest of Crecy in the Somme.
50:53The English were drawn up on this ridge.
50:56The French advanced from that direction.
51:01As the battle began, a great storm broke.
51:07Huge flocks of crows flew into the air above the armies.
51:13Then the English archers stepped forward.
51:16Their longbows had a range of 200 metres
51:19and a rate of fire three times that of the crossbow.
51:23The crossbowmen on the French side were routed.
51:28And Edward had another shock in store for the French,
51:31a primitive but spectacular new weapon in his armoury.
51:40For the first time on a European battlefield,
51:43the English used gunpowder to fire cannonballs at the French forces.
51:47The French knights now faced volleys of thousands of arrows
51:51amidst the crash of cannon.
52:03They had never seen anything like it.
52:10The French had never seen anything like it.
52:13They had never seen anything like it.
52:28The king's 16-year-old son, Edward, Prince of Wales,
52:32later known as the Black Prince,
52:35fought his way to the heart of the battle.
52:39The Chronicle of Hwasa reports that a man was sent back
52:42from the Black Prince's division to the king to ask for help.
52:46Edward III asked him if his son were dead or wounded,
52:49and when he heard that he was not, replied,
52:52''Send no more to me today. Let him earn his spurs.''
52:58Most of the French knights fought to the death.
53:01They preferred the glory of being killed in action
53:04to the shame of fleeing the battlefield.
53:09EXPLOSION
53:15Fighting on the French side was John, the blind king of Bohemia.
53:19Despite his blindness, he wanted to strike at least one blow in the battle.
53:23His knights tied the reins of their horses to the reins of his
53:27to guide him into the thick of the fighting.
53:30The Black Prince saw him ride to his death.
53:33EXPLOSION
53:37In order to honour the king's reckless bravery,
53:40the Black Prince adopted as his own badge the king's emblem.
53:44That emblem was the ostrich feather,
53:47which has been the badge of the Princes of Wales ever since.
53:53Around 2,000 French knights died at Crecy,
53:57a whole generation of French noblemen.
54:00In contrast, it's said that as few as 40 English men-at-arms lost their lives.
54:10The battle for the French crown would continue.
54:14But fighting beneath the flag of St George,
54:17the English army was now the most feared in Europe.
54:23At the end of the battle, King Edward embraced the Black Prince.
54:27My son, he said, you have acquitted yourself nobly.
54:31You are worthy to rule a kingdom.
54:39The Black Prince returned to Windsor an English national hero.
54:45But he would never become king.
54:48Like many a Plantagenet warrior, he was later cut down by dysentery.
54:54But Crecy marked a high point of the Plantagenet dynasty,
54:59and its legacy remains.
55:07After their triumphant victory at Crecy,
55:09the king and the Black Prince founded the Order of the Garter.
55:13Its origins were in a great tournament at Windsor.
55:16Two teams of 12 knights took part,
55:19one headed by the king and one by the prince.
55:22The Order was to meet here in its own chapel every year
55:26on St George's Day, the 23rd of April.
55:35The structure of the Order has remained the same to the present day.
55:38The monarch, the Prince of Wales and 24 knights.
55:42One set of stalls is designated the kings,
55:45the facing set, the princes.
55:48Many of the original founding members of the Order of the Garter
55:51were companions of arms who had fought together at Crecy.
55:55Now, every noble in the land wanted to be bound to the king
55:59in this most exclusive of clubs.
56:06The Order of the Garter wasn't just another show of pageantry.
56:11It was also a shrewd Plantagenet tool.
56:16For 200 years, Plantagenet dynastic ambition
56:19had often clashed with the interests of the English barons.
56:23Now, Edward III had brought the noblemen of England behind him
56:27in his campaign to win the throne of France.
56:30He had harnessed England's growing sense of nationhood
56:33to his own Plantagenet dynastic vision
56:36to create an extraordinary fighting force.
56:45By 1360, the English army had regained large swathes
56:49of the Plantagenet lands in France.
56:54Out of dynastic ambition emerged the foundations of an English empire.
57:05In 1362, Edward celebrated his 50th birthday.
57:10He marked the occasion by introducing
57:13one of the Plantagenet's most significant reforms.
57:18It was known as the Statute of Pleading
57:21and it formally changed the language spoken in the law courts
57:25from French to English.
57:32In the same year, Parliament was opened for the first time
57:36with a speech made not in French but in English.
57:41When Henry II, the first Plantagenet king, took the throne in 1154,
57:46he spoke scarcely a word of English.
57:49Two centuries later, a dynasty that had regarded England
57:53as a possession rather than a nation
57:56now saw England as its home and English as its language.
58:00English was no longer spoken just by the peasants who worked the land.
58:04The knights spoke it, the nobles spoke it, even the king spoke it.
58:08England and the Plantagenets were united as never before.
58:18In the next programme, The Death of Kings,
58:22royal bloodletting divides the dynasty
58:25into the warring houses of Lancaster and York.
58:29Henry V fulfils the Plantagenet's greatest ambition at Agincourt
58:35and Richard III makes the Plantagenet's last stand.
58:48Exploring the incredible life of our greatest knight
58:51who saved England from a French revolution,
58:54a rip-roaring adventure, Wednesday at nine, here on BBC Two.
58:58Juggling parish life with parenthood, the Rev is back next
59:01with his own bundle of joy and some explosive nappies.
59:04Stay with BBC Two.