VIII.
8 The Normans spoke …and it was the language of the upper classes.
a) English;
b) German;
c) French;
d) Russian.
9 What is the most mysterious monument of the British past?
a) Ben Nevis;
b) Stonehenge;
c) Hadrian Wall;
d) Big Ben.
10 What was Robin Hood famous for?
a) He was a very handsome man.
b) He was the Norman’s leader.
c) He helped poor people.
d) He was one of the British kings.
Exercise 3 Complete the gaps in the text with the appropriate forms of the verbs given on the right.
Within four years of invading Britain in AD 47, the Romans had built over 1,000 miles of roads!
Exercise 4 Read the text and answer the questions:
1. List the reasons why the Roman Army built roads.
2. Which of these reasons do you think is the most important?
3. Explain in your own words what a Groma was and how it was used to build straight roads.
4. Why were Roman roads quick and safe to travel on?
5. Why was the surface of a Roman road curved?
Roman engineers used an instrument called a Groma. This was a pair of boards fastened together into a cross shape. Lines with weights were hung from each corner so that they could get a straight line by lining up the weights with a pole a hundred meters or so away. In forest areas they built fires in a straight line and used the smoke as markers for the Groma.
Once the road had been planned the Roman soldiers dug two ditches on either side of the road to act as drains. The earth from these ditches was piled into the centre and rammed down. Stones were then gathered from the local area and laid down in different layers until they formed a hard surface that could take the weight of heavy carts. The surface of a Roman road was shaped into a camber so that rain water would run off into the ditches.
Roman roads were very quick and safe to travel large distances. The Roman soldiers were not the only people to use them. Merchants used them to carry goods all over the Roman Empire. The Romans built Britain's first proper roads. After the Romans left they were allowed to decay because people forgot how to rebuild and repair them. People continued to use the roads the Roman Army had built until 1745. Many modern roads are built along the original routes planned out by the Romans.
Did you know?
– Silburry Hill, in the English county of Wiltshire, is the largest man-made earthen mound in Europe. It was built about 4750 years ago.
– The stone circle at Avebury is the largest in the world. It was built between 5300 and 4600 years ago and covers 11 ha (28 acres). The outer circle is surrounded by a bank and ditch long of 1,5 km (1 mile).
– The so-called British Imperial system of measurement (English units in the USA) has its roots in Roman units. The Romans also counted in feet, which they divided in 12 inches (unciae in Latin, from which the English word is derived). 5 feet made a pace, and 1000 paces (mille passus) became a mile in English. The Roman gallon was the congius (worth 0,92 U.S. gallons). The word pint comes from Latin picta ("painted"), via the Old French pinte, and corresponded to a painted mark on a vessel indicating this measure. Other units like the pound only evolved in the Middle Ages.
– Colchester in Essex is the oldest recorded town in Britain, as well as the first Roman town and Roman capital of Britain. Colchester Castle has the largest keep ever built in Europe, having a land area 50 % bigger than the Tower of London.
– The Fossdyke, connecting the River Trent at Torksey to Lincoln, is the oldest canal in Britain. It was built by the Romans around 12 °CE and is still navigable today.
3 History of Britain: from the Middle Ages to the Modern Times
3.1 The late Middle Ages (13th – 15th century)
The fourteenth century was disastrous for Britain as well as most of Europe, because of the effect of wars and plagues (Black Death). Probably one-third of British population died of plague. Whole villages disappeared, and some towns were almost completely deserted until the plague itself disappeared. Plagues killed sheep and other animals in the century. It resulted in years of famine and by the end of the 13th century the population in Britain decreased from 4 mln. people to 2 mln. It only began to grow again in the second half of the fifteenth century.
Britain and France suffered from the damages of war. In the 1330s England began a long struggle against the French Crown. In France villages were raided or destroyed by passing armies. The war between England and France lasted for 100 years and is known as the Hundred Years War. England fought with Scots and wanted to control Ireland and Wales, both of which were trying to become independent.
During the fourteenth century, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there was a continuous struggle between the king and his nobles. The first crisis came in 1327 when Edward II was deposed and cruelly murdered. Towards the end of the fourteenth century Richard II was the second king to be killed by ambitious lords. He had made himself extremely unpopular by his choice of advisers. Richard II had no children. There were two possible successors. One was the earl of March, the sevenyear-old grandson of Edward III’s second son. The other was Henry of Lancaster, son of John of Gaunt (the 3d son of Edward III). It was difficult to say which had the better claim to the throne. But Henry was stronger. He won the support of other powerful nobles and took the crown by force. Richard died mysteriously soon after. Henry IV spent the rest of his reign establishing his royal authority. But although he passed the crown to his son peacefully, from that time and half a century later the nobility was divided between those who supported his family, the ‘Lancastrians’, and those who supported the family of the earl of March, the ‘Yorkists’.
During the fifteenth century the throne of England was claimed by representatives of two rival groups. The Lancastrians, whose symbol was a red rose, supported the descendants of the Duke of Lancaster, and the Yorkists, whose symbol was a white rose, supported the descendants of the Duke of York. The struggle for power led to the ‘Wars of the Roses’ between 1455 and 1485. They ended when Henry VII defeated and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field and were followed by a period of stability and strong government.
With the spread of literacy, cultural life in Britain naturally developed also. In the cities, plays were performed at important religious festivals. They were called ‘mystery plays’ because of the mysterious nature of events in the Bible, and they were a popular form of culture.
The language itself was changing. French had been used less and less by the Norman rulers during the thirteenth century. After the Norman Conquest
