2. Story of England: Medieval Invaders
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2023
⏱️ 60 minutes
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Summary
Great Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, bloodshed at the battle of Hastings, Bubonic Plague and Roland the celebrity flatulist. As dawn breaks, Dan walks the beach at Pevensey where William the Conqueror and his Norman Invaders landed in 1066, but not before getting a quick lesson from Medieval Historian Dr Levi Roach in what’s always been called the ‘Dark Ages'. Next, Dan swings by Dover Castle to Dover castle to learn about courtly life, clashing knights, princesses and jesters and travels east to the Hastings Battlefield, where Dan narrates a dramatic play- by -play of the most famous fight on English soil.
In the 14th century, the invaders didn’t arrive in festooned long-boats but on the backs of rats on merchant ships. Dan ambles through York’s iconic medieval streets and with the help of medical historians Susie Edge and Kevin Goodman, they tell the grisly story of how the plague gripped the city and the nation in the worst pandemic the world had ever seen.
Produced by Mariana Des Forges, edited and sound designed by Dougal Patmore. Artwork by Teet Ottin.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On the morning of the 28th of September 1066, William Duke of Normandy looked out over |
| 0:15.4 | the bow of his ship. It was called Mora, it was a gift from his wife, Matilda of Flanders. |
| 0:21.6 | It was festooned with a multi-coloured sail, had a papal banner of white golden blue, it |
| 0:28.6 | had been consecrated in Rome blessed by the hand of the Pope himself. The ship's figurehead |
| 0:34.2 | was a child pointing its right hand towards William's target across the channel. England, his |
| 0:43.8 | fleet of 700 ships, an army of maybe around 7,000 men, ready for a full invasion of the British |
| 0:53.0 | Charles. They landed here on this beach, I'm standing now, on what was then a peninsula, |
| 0:59.8 | Pevenze on Sussex coast, and it was a bay peppered with old Roman fortifications. William the |
| 1:07.5 | conqueror, as he was on his way to becoming known, had an idea of the country he was invading. |
| 1:13.4 | After all, he'd been related to King Edward the Confessor, who'd reigned as England's monarch |
| 1:18.1 | from 1042 to 1066, the year of William's arrival, and his death is what prompted his cousins' invasion. |
| 1:29.0 | He'd probably visited once or twice before, one chronicle dates William's first visit to England in |
| 1:33.9 | 1051, saying Count William came from overseas, and the King Edward received him, and as many of his |
| 1:40.6 | companions as suited him. William leapt off his ship into the shallows on this beach and immediately |
| 1:47.9 | fell over. But he still up again, and making the best of a bad situation, he claimed that he'd |
| 1:53.4 | grasped England with both of his hands, and the earth had proved willing. After he landed on the |
| 1:59.4 | shore, William and his army built a temporary shelter within the walls of an old Roman stronghold. |
| 2:06.6 | They fortified it even further by cutting a ditch along a small peninsula, making themselves |
| 2:13.0 | more secure from a surprise attack. The next day, the Norman Army marched east on this coast to |
| 2:20.2 | Hastings, which are going to see over there in the distance, and it was there that they awaited |
| 2:23.8 | the arrival of Harold Godwinson, the reigning King of England, knowing that he would head down from |
| 2:29.7 | the north. William's men entertained themselves by pillaging and burning the surrounding countryside, |
... |
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