It Happened In A Town Near Me

[caldrail]

The study of history is a misleading pursuit. It really is. Sooner or later you reach the point when you begin to believe you know something about it. Sooner or later, something crops up that reminds you that you don't.

 

browsing through the records of the Wiltshire Archaeological Society Magazine from the late 1930's, I hit upon an article about Marlborough Castle. According to the tentative plan, it was essentially a motte and bailey built from stone and round towers. I never knew the town had a fortification. It isn't there now.

 

Marlborough is known to me. it's onlyten or twelve miles south of where I live and on my longer hikes I've walked through there. Cunetio, a fortified roman town, lies on the south bank of the Kennet River just to the east. Merlin is supposed to buried here.

 

The nearby forest is no less historic. Roman potteries litter the forest of Savernake to the immediate south. Henry the 8th sent a man to Savernake to find out how big it actually was. A memorial column commerates the return to sanity of mad King George. "Mary" had her name carved in a tree in 1938. A man from Chicago carved his a few months before D-Day as he worked among the vast munition stores there, keeping the buildup to invasion safe from prying German reconnaisance.

 

On the face of it, I have a smattering of knowledge about this area. Or so I thought. yet in the description of the castle, it says the place was surrendered to the french in 1216. What the...??

 

I was on the case. Names and places were dug up from the libraries collections, and connections made. What an interesting tale there is.

 

Marlborough was one of fifteen royal castles of King John's reign. Not only a castle, but also one of his wine cellars. An audit of 1201 lists his wine stocks at 700 tuns, great casks of 252 gallons each, spread among the royal castles.

 

Marlborough was clearly an important defensive position. During Johns unsuccesful rebellion in 1194, the redoubtable Hubert De Burgh had persuaded it to surrender to Johns forces in a few days Hugh De Neville was established as the castle constable and chief forester of Savernake. John's man.

 

Eventually the barons had enough of the kings rule. The Magna Carta was forced upon the king, and although he signed it, clearly he was not intending to honour the document. Pope Innocent tried to annul the Magna Carta, claiming it denied John his rights and honour, but it was too late. The barons rebelled.

 

On the face of it, the rebellion was not certain of victory. They had little support. A council of twenty-five barons gave the aggressive Alexander II of Scotland, who hated John, swathes of northern England as rightfully his. Worse still, the french king, Louis, landed 1200 knights in Kent with supporting arms on the basis that his claim to the english throne rested on proving that the Magna Carta had fortfeited Johns own. A chaotic civil war ensued.

 

Arms and armour had changed little since the Norman invasion, with perhaps only the intrudction of the great helm for knights as anything significant. However, the english longbow was already proving a valuable military asset. A thousand partisan archers harried the french invaders in southeast england. Also, the crossbow had established itself as the sniper rifle of its day, especially when dealing in assaults and sieges where the slow rate of fire from protected points was not a disadvantage.

 

John obviously had in mind to defend his royal castles. We know he ordered 10,000 quarrels (crossbow bolts) of various sizes to be sent to Marlborough. As it transpired, the french invasion pushed into southern england and conquered important castles like Arundel. At Marlborough, Hugh De Neville surrendered to the french. Worse still, he remained the constable. He had committed treason. A turncoat.

 

According to the rolls of Savernake, the french occupation 'wasted an entire bailiwick', and made a princely

Edited June 28, 2011 by caldrail

[Guest ParatrooperLirelou]

Interesting. I think a friend of minespoke of something like this before:

There was a rebellion in England and unknown in general history, the French actually invaded England around the same time.The English people actually welcomed and aided the French as the English monarch was corrupt and unpopular

 

Perhaps this is the event he's refering to?I can't remember what time he said it was specifically, but I do recall him stating it was around the 13th century.

 

Its amazing how little we actually know and how much you can actually learned by visiting the local library of an area(provided the library dates back centuries ago).

 

 

And yet it goes on, because I discovered that norman and continental french had, by the 1200's, become seperate dialects. And Marlborough French was a recognised variant form for many years to come.

This is really funny considering from what I hear, English general history books tend to equate Norman=French and tend to associate the bitter rivalry between France and England that took place for centuries as the French's fault because of the Norman invasion.Well in fact French and Norman are two different dialects,cultures, and ethnic groups(despite people from parts of Northern France being of Norman descendent).

 

Marlborough French, is that a local dialect in the region you visited?

 

Anyhow, its so wierd and funny how what actually happened in history contradict nation's propoganda such as no foreign enemy army ever having set foot on the British Isle ever since William's conquest.Well in reality there were several occasions such as the unknown incident where a small Spanish group landed in an obscure English province and sacked several towns before leaving-this took place during an obscure war between Spain and England after the Spanish Armada was destroyed(contrary to popular belief, Spain rebuilt her fleet and waged a war against England that lasted for about 10+ years IIRC despite general history books stating the collapse of the might Spanish armada marking the end of Spanish naval supremacy).

Edited June 29, 2011 by ParatrooperLirelou

[caldrail]

There are a lot of interesting aspects to history that get ignored, misinterpreted, or forgotten. There was the dutch takeover of Britain in 1688 by William III of Orange for instance.

 

French as spoken in medieval england was essentially the norman dialect having been brought across by the invasion of 1066 and set up as the language of the upper class. Marlborough French is is an oddity, inherited from the language spoken by the ferench occupiers of 1216, and who knows? Maybe some frenchmen settled there when the war ended?

 

It is true that from our modern view the Normans are seen as Frenchmen. I agree they were viking descendants who had adopted cultural influences of the region (including language), but such is the traditional 'competitiveness' between France and Britain, it tends to overlook details when dealing with invasions across the Channel.