position. Within longbow range of
the French, his archers began firing.
The overconfident French men-
at-arms responded by charging
across the wet, freshly plowed field.
Slogging through the mud under a
hail of arrows, the men in the front
line were pushed and trampled by
their fellow soldiers from behind.
Most fell before even reaching the
English line. Thousands of French
were killed or captured, prompting
the remainder to flee the field.
THE ENGLISH LINE
108
This remarkable victory led to a second
campaign in which Henry subdued
much of northern France by 1420, the
high point of English success in the
war. Following King Henry V’s death in
1422, the French slowly regained the
advantage and eventually drove the
English out of France in 1453.
—Dr. Gilbert Bogner
109
First Battle of
St Albans
O
n May 22, 1455, as King Henry VI of
Lancaster traveled from London to
Leicester, his retinue was attacked
in the town of St Albans by the retinues
of Richard, Duke of York, and his allies,
the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick.
Richard had a claim to the throne, and
some people thought he would be a
better king than Henry.
Henry had about 2,000 men with him,
and the Yorkists had about 3,000.
1455
112
A skirmish, rather than a pitched
battle, took place in the town’s streets.
Although the fight lasted just a few
hours, the encounter is considered the
beginning of the Wars of the Roses.
The white rose was the emblem of the
Duke of York and the red rose became
an emblem of the House of Lancaster.
King Henry VI was wounded in the
neck and captured by the Duke of
York. Henry’s kinsman and chief
minister, the Duke of Somerset, and
several other nobles were killed.
The Duke of York took charge of the
kingdom and controlled the king’s
government for a time.
This bloodshed created new family
feuds among the nobility and
deepened the dynastic hostility
between Lancaster and York. The
First Battle of St Albans began a
period of many fierce battles pitting
King Henry VI against Richard, Duke
of York.
—Professor Ralph Griffiths
113
Battle of Towton
T
he Duke of York’s victory at the
First Battle of St Albans gave him
a short-term grip on power. But his
success brought a more deadly foe to
the fore in Henry VI’s queen, Margaret
of Anjou.
1461
114
In 1459, full-scale civil war erupted
between the Houses of Lancaster
and York. Seven battles of increasing
ferocity took place between the
two armies, culminating in Towton
in March 1461. Fought in the most
appalling conditions of sleet and
snow, it was the bloodiest battle
ever fought on English soil.
The Battle of Towton ended as a
decisive Yorkist victory. The Duke of
York had been killed three months
before, but his son was now crowned
as Edward IV.
—George Goodwin
FOOTMEN RUNNING FROM THE CAVALRY
HENRY TUDOR GOES TO WAR
117
Battle of
Bosworth Field
I
n 1483, few expected that the young
Henry Tudor would become king of
England by 1485. His connection with
England’s royal family was distant, and he
had no training as a future king. Because
he was a Lancastrian and a York king was
in power, he lived for many years in the
northwest of modern France, in Brittany.
1485
118
For decades, the Houses of Lancaster
(the red rose) and York (the white
rose) had fought over the throne. In
1483, it was held by King Richard III
of the House of York, who was hated
by many. So Henry Tudor took his
chances and led the Lancastrians in
a rebellion against Richard.
On August 7, 1485, with the French
king’s aid, Henry landed in Milford
Sound in southwest Wales. As he
marched through Wales to the
English midlands, he attracted
support, in part because of his Welsh
ancestry. Then near Market Bosworth,
a town west of Leicester, Thomas
Stanley, Earl of Derby, provided
crucial forces.
The battle of Bosworth Field on
August 22, 1485, was the last
decisive battle of the Wars of
the Roses. After only a few hours,
Henry’s English, French, and
Welsh soldiers, reinforced by
artillery, defeated Richard’s much
larger army. They triumphed when
Richard charged Henry’s lines and
was slain.
Richard’s body was buried in the
Franciscan friary in Leicester, now
long gone. In 2012, a skeleton
was discovered beneath a parking
garage. The evidence suggests
that it is King Richard’s, and he
has been reburied in Leicester
Cathedral.
119
The Yorkist dynasty of English kings—
the shortest in English history—ended
with the death of King Richard III. The
victorious Henry Tudor became King
Henry VII, and his direct descendants
ruled England until 1603. Henry would
be the last English king to attain the
throne through battle.
The Battle of Bosworth Field is
considered by some to mark the
end of the Middle Ages in England.
It helped to restore political
stability, marking the end of a
truly fascinating era.
—Professor Ralph Griffiths
120
PROFESSOR PHILLIP C. ADAMO
is Associate Professor
of History and Director of Medieval Studies at Augsburg College
in Minneapolis. He has published articles and books on medieval
monasticism and church history. He is also an award-winning teacher,
most recently the recipient of the CARA Award for Excellence in
Teaching, given by the Medieval Academy of America, the oldest and
largest association of medievalists in the world.
Battle of Falkirk
PROFESSOR JOHN ARNOLD
is Professor of Medieval History
at Birkbeck, University of London and has held that position since
2008. He has worked at Birkbeck, University of London since 2001,
and before that was a lecturer at the University of East Anglia. He
primarily works on aspects of medieval religious culture but has also
published on issues in historiog
raphy and public history.
Roger Bacon,
William Wallace, and The Great Famine
PROFESSOR ROBERT BARTLETT
, FBA, FRSE, is Bishop
Wardlaw Professor of Mediaeval History at the University of St
Andrews, Scotland, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His
publications include
The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and
Cultural Change 950–1350
(Princeton University Press, 1993), which
won the Wolfson History Prize;
England under the Norman and Angevin
Kings 1075–1225
(Oxford University Press, 2000); and
Why Can the
Dead Do Such Great Things?: Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the
Reformation
(Princeton University Press, 2013). He has presented three
television series for the BBC.
Death of William Rufus, The Captivity of Richard
the Lionheart, The Founding of the University of Oxford, and Treaty of York
DR. GILBERT BOGNER
teaches medieval history at Saint
Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he has been a
member of the faculty for sixteen years. He earned his PhD in 1997
from Ohio University, where he met and married his lovely wife, Elyse.
Dr. Bogner’s research interests lie in 15th-century English knighthood,
about which he has published several articles. His hobbies include
toy collecting and reading comic books. His son, Harry, loves all
things LEGO.
William the Conqueror, Battle of Crécy, and Battle of Agincourt
PROFESSOR D’ARCY JONATHAN DACRE BOULTON
was
born in Toronto, Canada, in 1946, and educated at the University of
Toronto (Honors BA, 1969); the University of Pennsylvania (PhD in
medieval studies, 1978); and the University of Oxford, England
(DPhil in medieval history, 1976). He has taught at Davidson College,
Harvard University, and, since 1985, the University of Notre Dame,
where he is a Professor of Medieval Studies and History. His field of
specialization is the nobilities of France and England.
First English
Prince of Wales
PROFESSOR DAVID D’AVRAY
is a medievalist who has
worked on medieval marriage, preaching, attitudes to kingship and
death, and rationalities. He has written countless publications on
medieval topics. His most recent book is
Dissolving Royal Marriages: A
Documentary History, 860–1600
(Cambridge University Press, 2014). He
is Professor of History at University College London and a Fellow of
the British Academy.
Eleanor of Aquitaine
PROFESSOR JOHN FRANCE
is a medievalist and a longtime
member of the History Department at Swansea University in the
United Kingdom who served as Visiting Professor at West Point. His
specialties are warfare and crusading, on which he has published
extensively. His latest book is
Perilous Glory: Understanding Western
Warfare
(Yale University Press, 2011), a history of war from the earliest
times to the present day.
Siege of Jerusalem and Siege of Acre
PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER GIVEN-WILSON
is Professor
Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of St Andrews,
Scotland. He is the author or editor of nine books and around thirty
• Scholars •
121
articles on 14th- and 15th-century British history, and general editor
of
The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England 1275–1504
(Scholarly Digital
Editions, 2005). He specializes in the political and social history
of the Late Middle Ages. At St Andrews he teaches advanced-level
courses on the Peasants’ Revolt, the Hundred Years’ War, and Inca
Civilization.
Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, The Black Death, Peasants’
Revolt, and Treaty of Windsor
GEORGE GOODWIN
is the author of
Fatal Colours: Towton 1461 -
England’s Bloodiest Battle
and of
Fatal Rivalry: Henry VIII, James IV and the
Battle for Renaissance Britain
(both published by W.W. Norton). He is a
graduate of Cambridge University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Arts and the Chartered Institute of Marketing. His next book,
Benjamin
Franklin in London: The British Life of America’s Founding Father
, will be
published in 2016. (georgegoodwin.com)
Battle of Towton
PROFESSOR RALPH GRIFFITHS
was formerly Professor of
Medieval History at Swansea University, United Kingdom. His main
fields of research and writing are political and social history of the
British Isles from the 13th to the 16th century. His books include
The
Principality of Wales in the Later Middle Ages
(University of Wales Press,
1972),
The Reign of King Henry VI
(The History Press, 2005),
The Oxford
Illustrated History of the British Monarchy
(Oxford University Press, 1998),
and
The Making of the Tudor Dynasty
(The History Press, 2005).
First Battle of St Albans and Battle of Bosworth Field
HARRIET HOWES
is a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University
of London. She received her BA in English Literature from Cambridge
University in 2011 and her MPhil in Medieval Literature from the
same institution in 2012. She is researching late medieval devotional
prose texts. Her work focuses on recurring tropes of water, frequently
implemented in these texts to allegorize and explore spiritual
Christian life.
Geoffrey Chaucer
DR. STEVEN ISAAC
teaches at Longwood University in Virginia.
He has published chapters and articles on medieval military history in
books, encyclopedias,
Journal of Medieval Military History, and Les Cahiers
de Civilisation Médiévale.
His current projects are threefold: the role of
mercenaries, the impact of being besieged on urban populations, and
the War of 1173–74. He manages the Haskins Society website (http://
www.haskinssociety.org/). In addition, he co-organizes a student research
conference at Longwood (http://www.longwood.edu/medieval/).
Battle of the Standard
PROFESSOR STEPHEN KNIGHT
is a Research Professor
in English Literature at the University of Melbourne, Australia. A
graduate of Oxford and Sydney, he has worked at universities in
Australia, England, and Wales and has written widely on medieval
and modern literature, specializing in crime fiction (
The Mysteries
of the Cities
, McFarland, 2012) and Robin Hood (
Reading Robin Hood:
Content, Form and Reception
, Manchester University Press, forthcoming).
Robin Hood
DR. ANNE LAWRENCE-MATHERS
is Associate Professor in
Medieval History at the University of Reading, where she teaches on
medieval culture and society, and especially on medieval magic. She
studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at Cambridge before doing a
PhD on English monastic manuscripts at the Courtauld Institute of
Art (London). Anne has published books and articles on manuscripts
in Northumbria, Merlin the Magician, medieval magical texts, women
and education, and history-writing in medieval England.
Matthew Paris
DR. STEPHEN MORILLO
(Harvard AB, Oxford DPhil) specializes
in world history, medieval history, and military history, combining the
three in various ways in his teaching and research. He is the author
of a number of books and articles on these topics, most recently
Frameworks of World History
(Oxford University Press, 2013), a world
122
history textbook. He teaches at Wabash College in Indiana, and is
currently working on a graphic history book with his wife, Lynne Miles.
Battle of Hastings
DR. KATHLEEN NEAL
teaches history at the Centre for Medieval
and Renaissance Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
She does research on the history of England in the 13th century,
especially political events and how they influenced people’s lives.
Interestingly, she has been fascinated by Magna Carta since she
was eight years old. Every day, she can’t believe how lucky she is to
have a job as a historian and think about the medieval world all day.
Excommunication of King John, Signing of Magna Carta, and First English
Parliament
The author would like to thank
PROFESSOR JUDITH M.
BENNETT
of the University of Southern California for her help
with the
Anne of Bohemia
and
Margery Kempe
entries.
• Builders •
Photographs provided by the builders of their respective models. All
copyrights retained by the individual copyright holders. Additional
photographs and models by the author.
MICHAEL AND NATHAN FEIST
are brothers who grew up
in Briarcliff Manor, New York. Michael is a college student whose
interests include history, Latin, photography, astronomy, and
linguistics. Nathan is studying food science at Cornell University.
His interests include television, films, music, and languages.
Battle of Crécy (p. 82)
Medieval LEGO Page 5