Events

  • 685: Battle of Dun Nechtain checks Northumbrian power

    On 20 May 685, a Pictish force led by Bridei defeated a Northumbrian army led by King Ecgfrith at the Battle of Dun Nechtain, also known as Nechtansmere. Ecgfrith was killed in the fighting. That made the battle more than a failed expedition. Northumbria was one of the strongest kingdoms in northern Britain, and Ecgfrith’s…

  • 1043: Edward the Confessor is crowned at Winchester

    Edward the Confessor was crowned king at Winchester on 3 April 1043. The ceremony made the kingship public. It did not remove every difficulty. Edward had already been king for months when he was crowned at Winchester on Easter Day, 3 April 1043. Harthacnut, his half-brother, had died in 1042, and Edward had succeeded him…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 1533: Cranmer declares Henry VIII’s first marriage invalid

    On 23 May 1533, Thomas Cranmer’s court at Dunstable declared Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon invalid. The judgment was brief, but it carried more weight than a private ruling about a failed royal marriage. Henry had already married Anne Boleyn. Catherine was still widely regarded as queen. Anne was pregnant. Henry’s marriage case…