О.М.Елина, Н.С.Маринчук - Методическая разработка к фильму The History of Britain - Part 2 (О.М. Елина, Н.С. Маринчук - Методическая разработка к фильму The History of Britain), страница 3

He seized the crown. The question now was for how long would he keep it?Then, in the April sky, the hand of God showed itself as a comet, a hairy star, and everyoneknew this was no blessing but an evil omen.The year was 1066.Segment 200:02:23,030 -->Historians like a quiet life and usually they get it. For the most part, history moves at a glacialpace, working its changes subtly.In Britain we like to think there's something about our history, like our climate, our landscape,that's naturally moderate, not given to earthquakes and revolutions.

But there are times andplaces when history, British history, comes at you with a rush, violent, decisive, bloody - atruckload of trouble knocking you down, wiping out everything that gives you your bearings:Law, custom, loyalty and language. And this is one of those places.I know it doesn't look like the site of a national trauma. These days it looks more suitable for acounty fair than a mass slaughter.

But this is the battlefield of Hastings, and here one kind ofEngland was annihilated and another kind of England was set up in its place.Some historians say that for most people of England Hastings didn't matter that much, that 1066was mostly a matter of replacing Saxon lords with Norman knights. Peasants still ploughed theirfields and paid taxes to the king, prayed to avoid poverty and pestilence and watched the seasonsroll round.1But the everyday can rub shoulders with the catastrophic. The grass grew green again, but therewere bones beneath the buttercups and an entire governing class of the English had beendispossessed, their men, land and animals taken from them and given as spoils to the victoriousforeigners. You could survive and still be English but now you belonged to an inferior race, theconquered.

You lived in England but it was no longer your country.Segment 3.00:04:47,630 -->Anglo-Saxon England was no stranger to invasions. Viking raids had been part of life for acentury, but since the days of Alfred the Great, it was a country stable enough to soak them up.Longboats came and went but still the king's law ran the shires. His churches and abbeys werebuilt more beautifully than ever, and a town that would one day be called London was beginningto grow and prosper on the banks of the Thames.

Then one invasion succeeded where the othershad failed, and there was a Viking on the throne. His name was Canute, the man we rememberfor trying to hold back the tides. While he turned Anglo-Saxon England into part of his vastmaritime empire, he went out of his way to change nothing. He even chose as his closest advisorone of the most powerful Anglo-Saxon nobles, Godwine, Earl of Wessex. A scheming, ruthlessman, Godwine became virtual co-ruler with Canute over what was still recognisably AngloSaxon England.But with Canute's death in 1035 began a chain of events that would culminate in the one invasionthat Anglo-Saxon England would be unable to swallow. And what a saga it was.

It started with abloody and unsparing fight for Canute's throne amongst the surviving elite. Treachery, murderand mutilation were par for the course.Segment 4.00:06:25,710 -->The last man standing with any kind of claim to the throne was a descendant of Alfred the Great,a prince of the Saxon royal house.

Called Edward, he would become forever known as TheConfessor. He was crowned on Easter Day, 1043. He inherited more than just the crown. Healso got Earl Godwine, in no mood to lose power just because there was a new king. UnlikeCanute, Edward had good reason to hate the right-hand man forced on him. For Godwine hadarranged his older brother's murder.There was nothing he could do about his bloodstained rival, not yet anyway. He knew thatGodwine held the keys to the kingdom. When Godwine offered Edward his daughter inmarriage, what could he do but take her?Godwine was not Edward's only problem.He'd also to learn how to govern a country he knewlittle about.

For he'd grown up in exile in a very different world across the English Channel inNormandy.2We tend to think of Edward the Confessor as the quintessential Anglo-Saxon king. In fact, hewas almost as Norman as William the Conqueror. After all, his mother Emma was a Norman andhe'd lived here in Normandy for 30 years, ever since she'd brought him as a child refugee fromthe wars between the Saxons and the Danes.But Normandy was not just an asylum for Edward, it was the place which formed him politicallyand culturally. His mother tongue was Norman French. His virtual godfathers were theformidable Dukes of Normandy. The Normans were descendants of Viking raiders, but had longsince traded in their longboats for powerful war-horses.

The Duchy of Normandy was in nosense just a piece of France.Though the Dukes did formal homage to the kings of France, they were fiercely independent,possessed of castles, patrons of churches. These warlords were constantly in the saddle imposingtheir will on vassals, fighting off revolts and forging shaky coalitions.But the duchy was also humming with energetic piety. In the 11th century, handsome stonemonasteries and churches with Romanesque arches began to appear. Grandiose stone castles, astough as the Norman lords who'd built them, became part of the landscape.So until the throne of England tempted him back across the Channel at the age of 36, this wasEdward's home, and while he was here a child was growing up who would change the course ofBritish history.It was at the site of this castle at Falles in 1027 that William, known to his contemporariesthough not to his face as William the Bastard, was born.

He was the illegitimate son of the Dukeof Normandy and the daughter of a tanner called Ellave. And in the cut-throat world of feudalNormandy, it was important that he learn, and quickly, how to survive. He was only a child whenhis father died on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, leaving William, just eight years old, as hisheir. A lamb thrown to the wolves.Segment 5.00:10:23,150 -->Certainly Edward would have known the young William. There were even suggestions that hewas one of the hand-picked companions entrusted by William's father, Duke Robert, withkeeping an eye on the vulnerable young boy.

So Edward would have seen how William survivedthe traumas of his childhood, narrowly escaping assassination attempts; how William wasforced, aged just ten, to witness the brutal murder of his beloved steward in his bedchamber,before his very eyes. Edward must have marveled at the way the stripling boy grew into a steelyand ruthless young man, eventually triumphing in battle over a formidable league of rebelnobles.While William was securing absolute power in Normandy, Edward was, by now, in the middleof a nervous reign, continually having to look over his shoulder at his biggest threat, EarlGodwine.

But in 1051, Edward seized his chance to rid himself of his rival.3Edward brought over Norman allies, established them in castles, made one Archbishop ofCanterbury. Feeling his moment had now come, he confronted Godwine with the crime of hisbrother's murder and threw him out of the country.His bid to rid himself of his sworn enemy failed miserably. In exile, the Earl of Wessex was justas dangerous as at home, and sailed back with a fleet to humiliate the king.Out went Edward's Norman cronies, back came the Godwines stronger than ever.Edward was now little more than a puppet king.

He turned to the religious life, spending days inmeditation and prayer, becoming at last, The Confessor, devoting himself to the foundation ofhis Benedictine abbey upstream of London, his "West Minster".Impotence though, has its uses. Godwine clearly had ambitions for the future. He'd foisted hisdaughter Edith on Edward to get a young Godwine as the next King of England.But Edward had his own ideas. Yes, he'd married Edith but he'd never sleep with her. Hisrevenge would be her childlessness.Now Edward had an even more mischievous thought: "All right, if Godwine wants an heir to thethrone of England so badly "I'll give him one but one more to my liking."It's at this point, Norman chroniclers claimed, that Edward apparently promised the succession tothe Duke of Normandy, William the Bastard.Of course, nobody knew anything about this in England, least of all Godwine, who in 1053 diedsuddenly of a stroke while at dinner with the king.There were plenty of other Godwines ready to step into the Godfather's place.

His sons now tookover where he left off, controlling England virtually unchallenged. And presiding over the familyempire was the eldest son, Harold.Harold Godwineson seemed to have everything: Land, power, riches, charisma, an aristocraticwife and a supporting troop of loyal and clever brothers. He even managed to make himselfpatron of churches, like this one at Bosham in Sussex. And though he didn't dare make toobrazen a move, any dispassionate observer arriving in England in the early 1060s would have toconclude that once Edward was gone the throne was Harold's for the taking.

And then all at oncean ill wind blew away this fair-weather vision.Segment 6.00:14:31,990 -->It all started with a voyage that no one can explain, even to this day. In 1064, Harold and a groupof men set sail across the Channel for Normandy. Maybe it was to rescue his younger brother,Wulfstan, who had been taken hostage by William. For the Norman chroniclers, the journeycould only have one purpose. Harold was confirming Edward's offer of the crown.4Why would Harold do something so against his own best interests? Perhaps that's why it makesup the first bit of the story of the most grandiose piece of Norman propaganda, the 70-metre longBayeux Tapestry. The tapestry was commissioned by William's half-brother, Bishop Odo ofBayeux, a few years after the conquest.It may have been made by English embroiders in Canterbury, who were regarded as the mostskilled stitchers in Europe.