Plantagenet

  • 1170: Thomas Becket is killed at Canterbury

    On 29 December 1170, Thomas Becket was killed inside Canterbury Cathedral. The murder was carried out by four knights, but it grew out of a longer conflict between Becket and Henry II. Becket was not a distant critic of the king. He had been Henry’s chancellor, a close royal servant and a man trusted with…

  • 1199: King John is crowned at Westminster Abbey

    John was crowned king of England at Westminster Abbey on 27 May 1199. His brother Richard I had died the previous month after being wounded in France. John now took the crown. The ceremony gave him public recognition in England, but his claim was open to challenge. John was Richard’s younger brother. Arthur of Brittany,…

  • 1216: Prince Louis lands in Kent to challenge King John

    On 21 May 1216, Prince Louis of France landed at Thanet in Kent with an army. He came into a kingdom already broken by civil war. Less than a year earlier, King John had agreed to Magna Carta at Runnymede. The agreement had not restored peace. John rejected the limits placed on him, the rebel…

  • 1217: Second Battle of Lincoln helps secure Henry III’s cause

    On 20 May 1217, royalist forces relieved Lincoln Castle and defeated a French-backed rebel army during the First Barons’ War. The battle came two years after Magna Carta, but England was still unsettled. King John had died in 1216, leaving his nine-year-old son, Henry III, as king. That changed the war. The quarrel over John’s…

  • 1337: Philip VI confiscates Guyenne from Edward III

    On 24 May 1337, Philip VI of France declared Edward III’s lands in Guyenne forfeit. The act was legal in form, but political in effect. Edward was king of England, yet he held land in south-west France as Duke of Aquitaine. For that land, he owed duties to the French king. The arrangement left him…

  • 1381: Peasants’ Revolt begins at Brentwood

    On 30 May 1381, resistance to the poll tax broke out in Brentwood, Essex. The government was trying to raise money for the war with France. The poll tax had already caused anger because it was difficult to avoid and fell on many ordinary people. When officials came to investigate unpaid taxes in Essex, they…

  • 1400: Richard II dies in captivity

    Richard II is usually said to have died at Pontefract Castle on or about 14 February 1400. The year before, his cousin Henry Bolingbroke had deposed him and taken the throne as Henry IV. Richard was now a former king. He was still dangerous. Henry IV’s rule began with force, ceremony and argument. Richard had…

  • 1420: Treaty of Troyes makes Henry V heir to France

    On 21 May 1420, Henry V of England and Charles VI of France agreed on the Treaty of Troyes. The treaty made Henry regent of France and heir to the French throne. He was also to marry Charles’s daughter, Catherine of Valois. On paper, it was an extraordinary settlement. Henry had turned military success into…

  • 1431: Joan of Arc is executed at Rouen

    On 30 May 1431, Joan of Arc was executed at Rouen. Rouen was under English control at the time, and the execution took place during the later stages of the Hundred Years’ War. Joan had been captured the year before and put through a trial process that served English political interests as well as church…

  • 1455: First Battle of St Albans opens the Wars of the Roses

    On 22 May 1455, a Yorkist force defeated the royal army at St Albans. Henry VI was captured. Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was killed. The battle was small beside later fighting in the Wars of the Roses, but its consequences were serious. It showed that the king’s government could no longer contain the rivalries…