“The eagle of the broken covenant shall rejoice in her third nesting”—thus ran one of the predictions in the so-called “prophecy of Merlin,” which in the latter half of the twelfth century was generally regarded as shadowing forth the destiny of Henry Fitz-Empress and his family. “The queen,” said those who interpreted the prophecy after the event, “is called the eagle of the broken covenant because she spread out her wings over two realms, France and England, but was separated from the on...

The fifth son, the eighth and last child, of Henry II. of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine was born at Oxford, in the “King’s manor”—that is, the palace of Beaumont—on Christmas Eve 1167. Of their six other surviving children, the three younger were daughters; the last of these, Joanna, was then two years old. The eldest living son, Henry, was nearly thirteen; Richard was ten, and Geoffrey nine. The boy Henry had, when an infant, been acknowledged by the barons of England as heir to the cr...

John Lackland, the original title of Kate Norgate's biography of King John, reflects how the luckless king's derisive nickname, given to him as a toddler by his father, came back to haunt him at the end of his life. by then John had lost most of his continental lands, as well as half of England to A rebellion and invasion.Norgate did not set out to write a "Bad King John" book. She let the record of his day and age speak for itself, giving her work a timeless quality and p...

The Complete Works of Kate NorgateThis Complete Collection includes the following titles:--------1 - The Minority of Henry the Third2 - John Lackland3 - England under the Angevin Kings, Volume I4 - England under the Angevin Kings, Volume II5 - England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II6 - Richard the Lion Heart

Evolution of the English Medieval Monarchy – 3 Classic English History Texts offers a sweeping exploration of the profound transformations within the English monarchy from its nascent stages through the Middle Ages. This anthology features authoritative accounts that dissect various epochs and milestones, seamlessly melding narrations of political shifts, territorial consolidations, and royal chronicles. With meticulous detail, readers are invited to traverse the intricacies of medieval go...

On the 19th of October, 1216, King John lay dead in Newark castle. Nearly half of his realm, including the capital, was in the hands of a foreign invader who was supported by a numerous and powerful section of the English baronage as well as by the citizens of London; and the sole surviving male representatives of the royal house of England were two boys, the elder of whom was but nine years old. The King had been cut off suddenly, at a moment when not one of his English counsellors was at...

“When History drops her drums and trumpets and learns to tell the story of Englishmen, it will find the significance of Richard not in his Crusade or in his weary wars along the Norman border, but in his lavish recognition of municipal life.” It may well seem strange to begin by quoting these words of the master who inspired my earliest venture—and thereby, indirectly at least, all my later ventures also—into the field of history, the preface to a book on Richard the First in which that so...

England under the Angevin Kings (Vol. 1&2) is a substantial Victorian history of twelfth-century England, tracing the formation, reach, and strains of the Angevin dominion from Henry II through the age of Richard I and John. Norgate combines political narrative with institutional analysis, attending to royal justice, feudal obligation, ecclesiastical conflict, and England's entanglement with Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine. Her prose is learned, orderly, and confident, situated within the n...

There are, at first glance, few stranger things in history than the revival thus prefigured:—a national revival growing up, as it seems, in the most adverse circumstances, under the pressure of an alien government, of a race of kings who were strangers alike to the men of old English blood and to the descendants of those who had come over with the Conqueror: at a time when, in a merely political point of view, England seemed to be not only conquered but altogether swallowed up in the vast ...