英国主要历史事件

英语介绍英国历史上主要事件

Main historical events in England

1.The Great Charter

On June 15th, 1215, the King accepted the program of demands embodied by the barons in Magna Charta.

Some of its most important provisions may be stated as follows.

(1) The King must promise to observe the rights of his vassals and the vassals in turn must observe the rights of their men.

(2) The merchant is not to be deprived of his goods for small offenses, nor the farmers of his wagon and implements. No tax should be levied in the Kingdom without the consent of the Great Council.

(3) No free man shall be imprisoned or banished or punished in any way, unless convicted by a jury of his fellow citizens.

(4) The Great Charter provides that the King should permit merchants to move about freely and should observe the privileges of the various towns, which were growing in number and size. Magna Charta has been rightly regarded as a turning point in English history. It was not a ‘constitutional' document. It did not embody the principle of no taxation without representation. It did then exist. It did not establish the right to trial by jury, since, in fact, the jury was a piece of royal machinery to which the barons had the strongest objections.

During the long days of history, the principles of the Charter came to be accepted as the basis of the law. In the following centuries Magna Charta was solemnly reaffirmed by every king from Henry II to Henry VI.

The view of the Charter as the cornerstone of democratic rights persisted through the greater part of the Nineteenth Century. It is only within the last fifty or sixty years that historians have examined it critically as a feudal document and discovered its real meaning and importance. Just because it marks the highest point of feudal development and expressed most precisely the nature of feudal class relations, Magna Charta marks also the passing of society beyond those relations. It is both a culmination and a point of departure.

2.The Hundred Years' War

The war started over the dispute of succession to the French throne. When Edward III (1327 - 1377) ruled England, the old French line of King died out. Edward declared that he should become the French King because his mother was a sister of the last French King. The French nobles denied his claim and a distant relative of the last French king was put on the throne. Then in 1346 Edward 11[ landed in Normandy with an English army. The war broke out.

The war continued intermittently for 100 years with ups and downs for both sides, though during the early stage the English were on the offensive and once captured Paris and a French king. As time wore on, guns and gunpowder appeared in the war and this greatly reduced the effectiveness of the English bows and arrows, and the guarantee of any English victory. In addition, the French peasants also came in under the famous peasant girl Joan of Arc who was a national heroine in French history. The English began to lose ground step by step until they were driven out of France in 1453. The war ended in failure for the Anglo-Normans.

The Hundred Years War deprived the English king of his possessions on the Continent. But it

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