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November 13, 1002:  A Memorable Way to Celebrate St. Brice’s Day

If you are not fluent in medieval English puns, the name of Aethelred the Unready sounds rather endearing. The Angle-Saxon English king might seem a vacillating, knee-knocking fumbler.   In fact, Aethelred was an assertive, bold catastrophe. Whatever his royal ancestors had built and achieved over 150 years, Aethelred sabotaged and destroyed. Had he anticipated his great-great grandson, Alfred the Great would have had a vasectomy. Alfred had saved a ravaged England from the Vikings, and created the foundation of a prosperous kingdom; Aethelred did exactly the opposite.

Names do have meaning; no one thought of Aethelred for its lilting sound. In Olde Anglische, Aethelred means “well-counselled” , prudent or wise. So, as any medieval Englishman could tell you, “unready” means uncounselled or reckless. Adding the epithet of Unready to Athelred was an editorial pun. (It also demonstrates why English humor is best left to the Irish.)

Aethelred ascended the English throne in 978 at the age of ten, over the body of his half-brother. Aethelred’s mother had arranged that assassination; after all, he was only a stepson. (In posthumous compensation, the late king received a complimentary sainthood; the evil queen mother was also a generous benefactor to the Church, so presumably everyone benefited from the regicide.)

At the time, England was a prosperous country. The same could not be said of Denmark. Its King, Sweyn Forkbeard, had to pay tribute to the Holy Roman Emperor. Sweyn’s father, Harald Bluetooth, was unique among Viking raiders in that he actually lost battles. After some disastrous campaigns in Germany, Bluetooth could save his skin only by converting to Christianity and coughing up annual compensation to the Kaiser. Sweyn may have inherited better teeth but he was stuck with his father’s debts. So to pay the German tribute, Sweyn decided to extort tribute from England.

Beginning in 980 what would become an annual tradition, the Danish fleet would arrive in England, brushing aside the always inadequate defense, and rampaging until a satisfactory ransom was paid. Young Aethelred was no military prodigy; his attempts at battles were invariably defeats. He found it easier to amass tax collectors than an army. Gouging England to pay the Vikings’ tribute did not endear Aethelred to his subjects. So he took the precaution of hiring Danish bodyguards. (Of course, that required even more taxes.)

In 1002, however, Aethelred finally decided to free his kingdom from this Danish subjugation. On November 13th–St. Brice’s Day—he undertook this liberation by ordering the massacre of every Dane in England. The Vikings fleet had already returned home, so the Danes remaining in England were just merchants, artisans and tourists. At least Aethelred found Danes whom he could defeat. Hundreds were slaughtered. This certainly was Aethelred’s greatest victory, but was it really that decisive?

To put it in a modern context, imagine if the United States decided to solve our trade imbalance with China by ordering an attack on every P.F. Chang’s. Would the prospect of hundreds of dead waiters really force China to capitulate? Aethelred’s strategy actually did make an impression on Sweyn Forkbeard. One of the massacred Danes happened to be his sister. Sweyn now was determined to overthrow Aethelred.

It took 11 years but the next king of England was named Knut, a nice Danish name. Knut–alias Canute–was Sweyn’s son. As for Aethelred, he was spending his exile with in-laws in Normandy, a family connection that would assert itself in 1066. Any English resistance was left to his son, Edmund Ironside. Aethelred died of natural causes in 1016; his son managed to regain the English throne for a few months while Knut was busy in Denmark seizing that throne. Of course, upon Knut’s return, so did the English habit of losing. Edmund soon died; and very few think that it was from a natural cause. (One prurient theory postures that he was killed in a privy; apparently, his ironside did not extend all the way down.)

And for the happy ending, Canute proved an excellent king.

Fortunately, King John was Anti-Semitic; so it was unlikely that he would have married Ayn Rand. She would never have let him sign the Magna Carta on this–or any other day–in 1215.

You could imagine their conversation at Runnymede.

John: Well, I’ve lost another war. This never happened to Richard. Perhaps heterosexuals don’t belong in the army. In any case, the barons are demanding that I sign this charter guaranteeing them all sorts of rights and protections.

Ayn: Only a weakling wants anything in writing. If these barons want their rights, they must seize them.

John: If I don’t sign, they’ll kill me.

Ayn: Only a weakling dies.

But John did sign–and immediately reneged on the terms. The barons decided to oust the little weasel and invited the French crown prince Louis (what else) to be king of England.

John, who had the remarkable ability of being both unscrupulous and incompetent, was losing this war, too. England seemed likely to be ruled by King Louis I. But John took the initiative and actually did something decisive that completely undermined his opposition: he dropped dead. The death was suitably ridiculous: a surfeit of peaches and ale. Yet, it effectively ended the rebellion.

The barons realized that John’s heir, his nine year-old son Henry, would make a much more malleable king than an adult French prince. In return for the barons’ allegiance, the regency of Henry III un-reneged the Magna Carta. And it has been in effect ever since.

June 14, 1381: The Chancellor of England Overestimates His Popularity

Simon of Sudbury really was an innocuous, well-meaning sort. In our day, he would have found fulfillment as a vice president of human resources. Unfortunately, he did not live in an innocuous, well-meaning time. The 14th century was anything but. However, Simon’s ineffectuality was his charm.

John of Gaunt liked the hapless and affable English cleric. The Duke was a critic of the Church, practically a Proto-Protestant, and it suited his heretical proclivities to have the passive Simon as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Simon also seemed the Duke’s ideal candidate for Chancellor of England. The compliant Simon would do the bidding of his royal patrons, levy another poll tax (the third) on the peasantry and try to reestablish a strict application of serfdom. But the serfs were not as compliant as Simon was.

The Bubonic Plague had turned out to be quite a liberal development. Half of the peasantry had died, and the survivors realized that their luck also extended to supply and demand. The supply of labor was now limited, so it could exact greater demands from the nobility. The peasants might now expect to be treated as well as the livestock. Some even demanded the end of serfdom. Of course, the nobility resisted. It tried to reimpose the legal shackles on the peasantry. The monarchy thought that additional taxes might restrain the peasants’ upward aspirations. Instead, those taxes incited a peasant revolt in 1381.

A peasant horde terrorized the nobility, swept aside the barely organized resistance and marched on London. Ransacking the capital, the peasants destroyed government offices and killed any bureaucrats they captured. Simon of Sudbury was among them. Being an Archbishop, he thought that the mob might show some deference to him. His head was ripped off. (Would I be so cruel as to call that deed a head tax?)  

The mob demanded an audience with the young king, Richard II. In what turned out to be the high point of an otherwise abysmal reign, the royal youth confronted the mob and demonstrated a majesty and courage that impressed his subjects. He addressed the peasants, representing himself as their advocate and leader, and promising to fulfill their demands. Awed and gratified, the mob dispersed and returned to their homes. Richard really had no intention of honoring those promises but he didn’t have the power to reestablish the status quo either. For all practical purposes, serfdom had ended in England.

On this day in 1485, Henry Tudor Sr. ascended to the English throne–climbing a few corpses on the way.

Prior to the victory at Bosworth Field, the Tudor family crest might have been a leek with a bar sinister. In other words, the Tudors were Welsh bastards. They were related to Henry VI through his mother’s indiscretions with a Welsh knight. (The widow of Henry V was bored and French–so what else could you expect?) Henry VI made his half-brother Edmund the Earl of Richmond. In the Tudors’ further social ascent, Edmund married Margaret Beaufort who was the heiress of John of Gaunt’s illegitimate family with his favorite mistress. They had a boy named Henry; he later earned himself the VII.

However Margaret and her descendants also were technically barred from the throne. But they were all that was left of the Lancasters. Henry IV had four sons and only one grandchild: Henry VI. He didn’t survive the War of the Roses; neither did his alleged son. (The wife of Henry VI was also bored and French–and impatient as well.)

For lack of a legitimate alternative, the Welsh half-nephew/half-second cousin was all that the Lancastrians could scrounge. As the current Prince Edward described his ancestor’s lineage, “Henry VII’s claim to the throne was tenuous beyond belief.”

Fortunately, King John was Anti-Semitic; so it was unlikely that he would have married Ayn Rand. She would never have let him sign the Magna Carta on this–or any other day–in 1215.

You could imagine their conversation at Runnymede.

John: Well, I’ve lost another war. This never happened to Richard. Perhaps heterosexuals don’t belong in the army. In any case, the barons are demanding that I sign this charter guaranteeing them all sorts of rights and protections.

Ayn: Only a weakling wants anything in writing. If these barons want their rights, they must seize them.

John: If I don’t sign, they’ll kill me.

Ayn: Only a weakling dies.

But John did sign–and immediately reneged on the terms. The barons decided to oust the little weasel and invited the French crown prince Louis (what else) to be king of England.

John, who had the remarkable ability of being both unscrupulous and incompetent, was losing this war, too. England seemed likely to be ruled by King Louis I. But John took the initiative and actually did something decisive that completely undermined his opposition: he dropped dead. The death was suitably ridiculous: a surfeit of peaches and ale. Yet, it effectively ended the rebellion.

The barons realized that John’s heir, his nine year-old son Henry, would make a much more malleable king than an adult French prince. In return for the barons’ allegiance, the regency of Henry III un-reneged the Magna Carta. And it has been in effect ever since.