Medieval women’s family lives varied widely, as did the work they carried out daily. Rank in society was a factor, as was whether they lived in a town or the country, but the most important influence on their lives was their position in a family, the historian Catherine Hanley explains. Family was the concept and […]
Philip of France, medieval England’s greatest enemy
England’s greatest enemy during the medieval period was (of course!) French: King Philip II, also called Philip Augustus. Astute and cunning, he played his Plantagenet rivals against one another and, as the historian Catherine Hanley says, became Europe’s most powerful monarch. France was one of the great power-houses of medieval Europe, and much of the […]
Joanna Plantagenet, the lionhearted woman
Joanna Plantagenet, Queen of Sicily, later Countess of Toulouse, was every bit as lionhearted as her more famous brother Richard I. As her biographer, Catherine Hanley, says, she “led an extraordinary life full of adventure and danger”, the more so because she was a woman. Joanna’s eventful life also illustrates many of the major issues […]
1217 and the ideals of chivalry
In 1217 a man known as ‘the greatest knight’ broke a treaty to, as he saw it, save England from French rule. Catherine Hanley asks: did he go against the ideals of chivalry? “What, then, is chivalry?” This question is posed in the History of William Marshal, a 13th-century biography of a man who is […]
The personal and the political in the Middle Ages
In the Middle Ages, when both England and France were ruled by personal monarchy, the king’s (and they were all kings) personality, preferences and relationships had a significant influence on political decisions, as the historian Catherine Hanley shows in her new book, Two Houses, Two Kingdoms. In January of the year 1200, a woman in […]
Matilda: The greatest king England never had
Catherine Hanley writes for Historia about Empress Matilda, the greatest king England never had.
England’s First Great Naval Victory
On the anniversary of the Battle of Sandwich, Catherine Hanley tells all about England’s first great naval victory. When we think of battles at sea between England and France, our minds tend to be drawn to the Georgian era and the victories of Nelson’s navy. But it is a little-known fact that the first great […]
The Battle That Saved England
Catherine Hanley on the 800th anniversary of the Battle of Lincoln. In May 1217 the realm of England was in chaos. A year previously Louis, heir to the throne of France and a renowned warrior, had invaded; he had been invited by English nobles unhappy with King John’s broken promises. He declared that the crown […]