9781422275801

In 1066, a force of Normans from what is currently Northern France, under the command of William the Conqueror, defeated the ruling Danish king and took control of what is now England. For almost 200 years, English kings of Norman descent would rule with increasingly absolute power. In 1215, a group of barons and high-ranking nobility forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, or “The Great Charter.”Among other things, the Magna Carta established limits on the power of the monarch and created a council of lords to advise the king in the creation and enforcement of all laws. This, in a sense, was the first legislature in England and the early precursor to Parliament. Various acts of this Parliament whittled down the power of the king, until the English Bill of Rights established the supremacy of Parliament in government affairs in 1689. During the Middle Ages, the Black Death, or bubonic plague, devastated England’s population and sparked the dismantling of the feudal system. Cities like London grew in size and prominence, and as the Renaissance reached England in the 1500s, the economy of the country grew and diversified. Meanwhile, the lengthy Hundred Years’War,a series ofwarswithFrance,eventually resulted ina battle for control of the English throne between two powerful families, the Lancasters and Plantagenets.The so-calledWar of the Roses ended with the ascension of the first Tudor king. The rule of the House of Tudor lasted from 1485 until 1602, and during that time,Englandunderwent several changes in government and society. Art, science, and literature flourished,with such notable contributors as playwrightWilliamShakespeare, and England’s role in the Age of Exploration began in earnest. The first attempt at an English colony proved a failure, and the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke continues to engage historians and archeologists. King HenryVIII, having been denied by the pope a divorce from Queen Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, split from the Catholic Church and established the Church of England. An act of Parliament made the monarch the head of the Anglican Church. An ideological battle between Roman Catholics and Protestants would tear the country apart for decades; Henry’s oldest daughter, Mary I, herself a devout Catholic, reestablished Catholicismas the official religion of the realm.Elizabeth I reverted

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