Hello and welcome to the History of England, Episode 31, Normandy and the Successure.

Last week we set the scene for the major struggle that was to drive so much of Henry's

reign that drove his taxation, his justice, the development of his administration, that

is the constant struggle he had to maintain his grip on Normandy and the resulting

burden that they put on his resources. But before we start the episode proper,

let me make just a little digression about something that occurred to me while I was writing

this episode and actually has occurred to me a few times over the whole length of the

history of England. One of the things that absolutely amazes me was just how amazingly

young people had to take on responsibility. Just in the last episode, Matilda was betrothed

at the age of 7, married at 12 and widowed by 21. The conqueror was knighted at age 15

and was leading armies by the age of 19. Edgar the Peaceful was king at 16, Edmund the

magnificent leading armies at 17 and so on. Of course one of the reasons for this was

the relative shortness of life, as we all know infant mortality was painfully high by

modern standards in the Middle Ages. Obviously it's difficult to have any real level

of accuracy, but there are estimates I've seen as high as 50%, although 30% is a much

more normal figure. Childbirth itself was also dangerous to the mother, although the incidence

of the mother's death for each birth was probably a lowish sounding 1 to 2%. Given

the number of children each woman had, that gave them about a 15 to 20% chance of dying

from childbirth in her life. Unbaptized children went to hell, so it was strongly suggested

that mothers have water by their side when they were giving birth, not for medicinal purposes

but so that the baby could be baptized before it died. And after the perils of birth came

the perils of childhood, so for example abandonment and babies was common enough for there to

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