 Hello everybody, I'm Nina Ramirez, and I'm delighted to see such a full house, my goodness. I heard some of you were here at 9am, so I really hope I can ride your ride with a decent lecture. I am here in my capacity as the course director for the Undergraduate Certificates in History of Art. Of course I'm really proud of, obviously we're all going to be telling our courses to you today, but I love this course very much, I've been the director now for a few years, and it's going from strength to strength, it's a two-year part-time course in history of art. One of the things that's designed as an introductory course, what we ask of the people who apply is passion and enthusiasm for art. Over the course of two years, we give you the vocabulary, the terminology you need to really cut it as an art historian, to stand there in a gallery and look at an image and know what it is you're looking at and how to describe it. So it is a wonderful course, there's information about it, there's leaflets in the foyer and you can find out more about it. Before I launched, since talking to you about the Hundred Years War, I wanted to flag up that that's part of the reason why I'm here. I have a second hat that I wear, it's not this. The other hat I wear is that I do some work for the BBC, I make documentaries, history and history of art documentaries for them, and I was very lucky last year to spend the summer filming a three-part series on the Hundred Years War. It was the first time that the Hundred Years War had been done properly as a subject for television, and I found out why when we started to do the logistics, getting through the locations, getting the current balance, the perspective of the French versus the English ideas of what happened in the Hundred Years War. It was a very complicated project to manage but so rewarding and I had the most amazing experience going to locations like Carcassau and Mont Saint Michel, and really getting to explore places closer to home as well at Canterbury and Gloucester Cathedral and met some wonderful people and learnt so much. I particularly remember when we were working on Joan of Arc, the insights I got both sides of the channel about who this person was, why she remains a bit of a historical anomaly. It was incredibly important to my work as a researcher and as an academic, but it was also great fun. So what I'm going to talk to you about today comes out of the work I've been doing on the Hundred Years War. I've just spent three weeks doing what I'm going to cover with you in 45 minutes, so hold on to your chairs. I'm going to talk about the Hundred Years War in 20 objects and jumping on the Neil McGregor bandwagon completely. I hold my hands up, but as an art historian I think that looking at the artefacts, the objects that were there at the time is for me the most tangible connection with the past. We tend to think about these figures from history as difficult to access. They're almost one-dimensional. You get the medieval monk, the medieval knight, the king, the queen. They become images in your heads that are very fixed and very distant from our modern day-to-day lights. I think that when you look at the objects, when you start to hold the books that they held, you stand in the locations they stood in and see the teams that they're buried within, these objects are first-hand witnesses to the events. They were there at the time and they are the most tangible connection with the past and with those people from the past. There are a lot of characters in The Hundred Years' War who've really gone down into legend, really. You've got the black prince, the black prince. I live in Woodstock and we have the black prince pub. It's a very real part of my life. But you've also got characters like Richard II, the deposed king. Henry Bolingbroke, and of course Henry V, that greatest of English monarchs. This bill has done a lot to aid our understanding of these characters. Of course, in his plays, they are characters. They are performers in a narrative. They play a role within a story. But they were real people and they shared the same human concerns that we have today. They were obsessed with the pursuit of love, power, wealth, reputation. These things carry on throughout the centuries and when you hold the books they held or hold the objects they held, you sense that common humanity that binds you across centuries. So that's what I want to do today. Look at these objects and see how these can act as windows back to this incredibly important period of The Hundred Years' War. I'm starting right back at the beginning, even before the classic date for the start of The Hundred Years' War, the reign of Edward II. Now he reigned from 1307 to 1327 and he is the father of one of our big players in The Hundred Years' War, Edward III. But his tomb is very interesting. Edward II is a complicated character and one of the things that I think is a useful frame of reference for the whole of The Hundred Years' War is that you tend to ping pong between kings that are seen as traditionally good kings and kings that are seen as traditionally bad kings. Now that is definitely up for discussion. In the Victorian way of approaching these kings, those who were good military leaders who won battles are good kings. Those who didn't fight and invested in things like education and lovely buildings, which of course I'm happy about, are the bad kings. As you can see, I'm not quite taken with this good bad dichotomy, but Edward II is seen as a bad king for a number of reasons. He does wonderful things. He's one of the first monarchs to actually found a college in Cambridge. He found Kings Hall, which is now part of Trinity College, and in Oxford he found Oriel, so really a benefactor of the colleges. But he made mistakes. In battle he made mistakes in the battle of Bannockburn. Big defeat and lots of military failures really throughout his reign. But more than that, he had problems with his political situation close to home. It's thought that he is sort of a pin-up boy for the bisexual figures of history because it's thought that he had a homosexual relationship with Piers Gaviston possibly with Hugh Dispencer, but he certainly had favourites. He rewarded these men above and beyond anyone else within the court. This favouritism alienated the mobility from him, alienated his followers from him. Regardless of whether it has a sexual aspect or not, he did not play his political cards sensibly. By favouring these people, it led to real problems within the court. So he had a problematic reign. This was not helped by his wife, Isabella of France, who at the first opportunity went to France and plotted against him with her lover, Roger Mortimer, and they then led a rebellion against his reign. He was ousted, he was imprisoned at Barclay Castle in a very eerie cell. I highly recommend it to Barclay Castle for anyone that hasn't been, but the cell in which he was kept is one of the most unsettling places I've been. Those debates, Ian Mortimer, no relation to Mortimer, he will argue that Edward II wasn't actually murdered, but the consensus is that he was imprisoned and was subsequently murdered. I think the hot poker up the backside is possibly a later addition to the story, but he fell from grace in a magnificent way. With Edward II, we get this interesting development in monarchy that plays out on both sides of the channel. Really, this is part of the motivation for the Hundred Years' War. In France, the Capatian monarchs, they have this divine right to rule. They are anointed with the oil of Clovis. They can trace their ancestry back through the Carolingians. They have this long line of blue blood, this blood royal as it's called in the French line. No matter really what the kings do, indeed, when we get on to the wonderful Charles VI, he's mad and kills members of his retinue, thinks he's made of glass. Really, he's not in a fit state to rule, but the divine right of his monarchy means he maintains his crown until his death. In England, something different is emerging. With the removal of Edward II, it sets up this attitude that English kings rule as long as they are good rulers and the people want them to rule. In some ways, the fact that we've maintained a monarchy, while the French monarchy were destroyed in the French Revolution, should be part of this idea of moderating the rule of kings. If they are bad kings, they can be removed. This is an interesting thing that underlines all of this period. But Edward II's tomb, our first object of the rattling 20 objects we're going to be covering, it's an interesting one because of the fact that it's his son Edward III that has it built. Edward II falls from grace spectacularly. In a poem that is thought to be written by himself, he describes himself as the tumble-down king all the world mocks me. He knows that by the end of his life he has certainly fallen from grace. But his son honours him with this tomb. Now, it's significant, it's not in Westminster Abbey, it's in Gloucester Cathedral. So the fact it's outside of London is significant. But the magnificence of this tomb is thought to have one of the finest Gothic canopies of any medieval tomb. It's exquisite and as you look closer you can see some of the detailing. But closer still, the alabaster that's used for the effigy on the top. It's quite unique at this time and incredibly expensive. This is a tomb that Edward has lavished money and time on. So he's clearly trying to honour the memory of his father, trying to reintroduce his father into the lineage of English kings, giving back some of the glory that he's lost. And this is important when we think what Edward III then goes on to do in his reign. So Edward III, massive character, helps by the fact he had a really long reign. He reigned for 50 years. That is pretty good, it puts him in the top six. Incidentally, Elizabeth II is now under a year away from becoming the longest reigning monarch of all time. So come on next year. Come on Elizabeth II. I want to see the list change. So that he's six on the list in terms of waiting for 50 years. So Edward III. And he is such an interesting character because of the legacy that he inherits. On the one hand he's inheriting a reputation of his father, which is not so great. On the other hand he's trying to deal with the fact that he's elevated to the kingship by his rebellious mother and her lover. So the legitimacy of his reign is in question. But he has this dual lineage. He's actually three quarters French. And this is something that we tend to get confused about with the Hundred Years' War. We tend to think about the English versus the French as two separate nations, two separate people who identify themselves as separate from one another. But that really isn't the case at this point in the 14th century. After the Norman Conquest and Henry II and the Angellfaen Empire, England and France are bound together through land holdings. So England actually holds lands in Gascony in the south of France and across the north too. There are vassals of the king of France, but they rule as king in England in their own right. So it's a complicated relationship. It's complicated because the kings of England have to swear fealty to the king of France. The king of England has to get down on his knees in front of the king of France as his vassal in Gascony and swear loyalty to him. And you can see that some kings are not going to want to play ball with that setup. Edward III is certainly one of them. The other thing that's interesting is that French was spoke with the language of the nobility. Anglo-French was the language of the nobility. The documents were written in French. Parliamentary rolls were kept in French. This idea of England for the English, speaking English, having a sense of their Englishness, it's simply not there. The upper classes were bound together by the codes of chivalry and by the shared chivalric language of French. So there is this aspect to it. Edward himself can claim to be three-quarters French, but through his sister he actually has a direct right to the throne of France. You can see this is the Capatian line. This is Philip IV, and he has these three sons, who each have brief reigns. And on the death of Charles IV, there is a succession issue, because the other direct descendant from Philip is Isabella. But Philip had a brother, Charles of Valois. And in France there's this thing called salic law, which means that the daughters, the women, cannot inherit. So that's not the case in England. There was more flexibility with regards to the female line. But in France, Edward III, although he was the next direct descendant, was not going to inherit. And particularly the fact he's King of England. The French nobility weren't going to say, I know who we can have as King of France. That chuck over the water is King of England. Let's ask him over and he can take over. So they go to the second line, and it begins a new branch of the French royal family, the House of Valois. And this really seems to bother Edward. At first he's busy dealing with his affairs at home. But as the war progresses, this becomes a bone of contention. But I'm interested in who Edward III is. Who is this character? How do we understand him better? We have an amazing document in the Royal Collection and the British Library. Again, I was so fortunate to be able to film with the Royal Collection. A series for the BBC where I spent months and months and months just me and these precious unseen manuscripts. So I feel incredibly strongly about some of these manuscripts. The tangible sense of history that comes out of their pages is difficult to describe. But this one in particular for me felt like a living document. It felt like a document that served the purpose at a certain time. And the purpose it served is it's the young Edward III. It's the young Edward III still under the watchful eye of his mother and Roger Mortimer. Being instructed on how to be a good king. It's called the Secretum Secretorum. But by bones, I'll trace back to a document that Aristotle was supposed to have given to Alexander the Great. So it has this long tradition of being what a good king needs to know. But this has been adapted and modified to suit the needs of this 14th century young king. All the way through you can see the coats of arms of his mother and Mortimer hovering there, reminding him that you've only got your throne thanks to us. So watch yourself. What we did to your father we can do to you. But there's so much in here that obviously informed Edward's understanding of how to be king. There's instructions on religion, how to manage the church, how to manage property, estates, how to train as a knight. And weirdly there is actually the earliest image of a cannon. Now you can see that this is a pretty basic cannon because it's shooting shots and it's not been fully developed into the cannon that we see later in the Hundred Years War. But the fact it is here in this very early document shows that Edward III, before the Hundred Years War had even started, was interested in military technology, interested in how he could push the English army further and introduce new things that would give him a military advantage. So this cannon gives us an insight into who he is. Something else belongs to Object III. Gosh! I hope you're not rushing anywhere. Other things that Edward did, he realised that the way his father had conducted his court was problematic. Paying too much attention to certain favourites, honouring certain noblemen above others, this had really caused the nobility in England to fracture and it led ultimately to rebellion. Edward needed to rectify that. He needed to get his noblemen back around him and loyal to him. His first idea, at this point we're dealing with the chivalric tradition, we're dealing with the idea of courtly love and chivalry. People are consuming their Arthurian legends like their mills and boons. Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are everywhere. They're incredibly popular. So he starts off by creating a great big oak round table. You can still see this in Winchester, hanging on the wall. It's been repainted by Henry VIII, but the bones of it are from Edward III's reign. He thinks he's going to have a Knights of the Round Table, but it becomes apparent that that model is not going to serve him well enough. For a start there aren't going to be enough knights to support him and to distill power and influence enough. So he develops this idea of the order of the garter. We still have it today, of course, and it is a band of brothers, really. It's a way of uniting his knightly forces behind him. At this point, up until this point, people fought for their lord. They fought under their own banners, their own heraldry. There wasn't really a sense of an English or a French army. They would go out wearing different things, and it was maybe the battle place I always think must have been very confusing place to be. Who can I shoot? Where's my book of heraldry? Are they all right to shoot? I'm not sure. Which side are they on today? And it must have been quite confusing. Edward wants to clarify a lot of that. So he launches a long campaign of creating images that would be associated specifically with him and with his reign. One of them is the image of the garter band with Oniswaki Malipol surround it. Shame on him who thinks evil of it. Fought lots of stories about how this happens. Maybe Joan the maid dropped her garter. This is one of the stories. Edward very honourably helped her. Or, more likely, that it's shame on him who thinks evil of my claim to the French throne. That seems to be another argument of it. And you can see here that there's something else Edward does quite bravely. In Ghent, right on what we could consider the initiation of the Hundred Years War he reveals his new coat of arms. And originally the coats of arms of his father of the Plantagenet line it's the red shield with the three lepards, Cuchon, lepards lying what for long ways. They are known as lepards at this stage. By the time we get to Henry V the heraldic term is shifting towards lions. But when I did the series I had about 300 emails saying you called them lepards but they're lions surely. In heraldic terms they're lepards at this stage. So the lepards Cuchon and what he does bravely in this Ghent town square is he reveals the three lepards Cuchon plotted with the Fleur de Lille of France. He's saying I have a right to the throne of France. Now this annoids the King of France no end. He actually said if he saw anyone wearing this he would kill them in the street. This was seriously provocative. But what it becomes is a banner for those who follow Edward III. Suddenly we have something to unite this nightly class behind one man. This simply hadn't been there in his father's reign. So he is creating a powerful campaign. The other thing he does very cleverly he lays claim to this character, Saint George. He declares Saint George the patron saint of England. Now the French are annoyed because they wanted George but they got in too late. So they ended up with Michael. But George becomes the patron saint of England. A random choice if you think that this is a Middle Eastern fourth century saint we're talking about. The fact he's a warrior. The fact that he kills a dragon. This was seen as a good saint for the English to unite behind. And we get the Saint George's cross. Another powerful symbol to unite people. So you can see that Edward's doing a couple of things here to write the wrongs of the previous reign and to unify the disunified nobility. Here he is, shown in all his glory. With his coat of arms. And all these symbols now that are going to become so familiar. The coat of arms of the English king, the garter and the Saint George cross on the inside. And really all of this starts with Edward III. He was an innovator in that respect. Object four. We're doing well. This is an image from such a later painting but it's from an amazing collection of texts named Fwasa's Chronicles. This is a character Jean Fwasa who records an awful lot of the Hundred Years' War. He really is the go-to man for first-hand information on what happened in a lot of the battles and who did what when. And what I've picked here is an image of the battle of Cressy. Now, Edward III, securing himself at home, decides to launch a campaign on France. He and Philip have been riling each other for a while now. They're both livid and it's going to end up in pitched battle. Just before the battle of Cressy there's the battle of Sluwi which is actually a naval battle. The French got into ships, attempted to cross the channel and land in England. If that had happened, all the places we talk about, Agincourt, Poitiers, all these locations that are in France would not have been French locations. The Hundred Years' War would have been fought out on the battlefields of England. But thanks to the English naval victory at Sluwi, that did not happen. And it set the tone for the next Hundred Years' War which meant that from that point onwards the actual battles would take place in the French countryside. And it devastated the French countryside. History would be a very different thing if Sluwi had gone the other way. But he manages to get his troops across. He moves very quickly towards Paris, reverses and goes up towards Cressy which is in an area called Pontier which he himself had grown up in and was familiar with. So he knew that the battlefield at Cressy would be a good place to meet. There's a slight ridge. It would give the English the advantage. But they were outnumbered. And the cream of French nobility were there. They were ready to take on the English. The French should have won. But, awkward, alongside all the other things he'd been doing in the early years of his reign, had also been instructing the men of England, the peasantry, the low-born men, every Sunday to go to the archery butts and practice shooting. And the fact that he started this a while before the wars actually commenced meant that he had an incredibly highly trained set of longbow archers. Now, missile warfare had been used before. There's evidence that archers were used to good effect at Bamettburg as well. But it's not until Cressy that you see the full might of the English archers. People have asked me, why didn't the French just wheel out some archers too? It's not as simple as that. The longbow men, I've tried to pull back a longbow, and it is incredibly hard. It takes years of tightening up the right muscles, developing the right muscle groups to shoot these things and constant training over years to get to the level where you can repeatedly shoot. It's not that some longbow archers shoot as many as 40 arrows in a minute. They were seriously quick, seriously fast. And the French didn't know what hit them. They went towards the battlefield as they had always done. Knights on horseback, ready for a chivalric combat with their equals on the other side, their mounted knights on the other side. And before any knights could actually smash a sword together, they were annihilated. Literally just wiped out by stream after stream of arrows. And that meant that the first line fell and created a barrier to anyone else moving forward. So when I was interviewing Ian Mortimer, he said, mounted knights have no reverse gear. And that's, I thought, was a good thing because you can't simply go, oh no, there's a load of bodies in front. Back, back, back. So they just kept plowing in. And this really gave the English the advantage. And they won a spectacular victory at Cressi. Now, the argument on the French side is this is very unshivalrous. What are you doing? I didn't even get to smash you on the head of my sword. And you just wiped out all of our wonderfully highly trained expensive knights with some poor men throwing sticks. So I think that there was a real shift in the way that warfare up until that point had been conducted. And it marks, again, another turning point that the battles move on from this point. So Cressi, image of Cressi. Regional Cobham, tomb of Regional Cobham, object five. This is in Lingfield Church and well worth a visit. Now, the reason I've brought this along is because I wanted to emphasise the changes in society that are taking place in this very important reign of Edward III. Up until this point, as I said, the mobility were bound by codes of conduct, codes of courtly love, behaviour, morality. You have to do that with men who have got hundreds of pounds worth of armour on them and could just go marauding around the countryside taking whatever they want. You've got to make them feel guilty about things or else they will just run riot. So the whole Chivalric Code was designed to contain these potentially volatile members of society, contain them and tie them to good causes. And Regional Cobham is one of these characters who seems to bridge the two worlds. On the one hand, he was an incredibly valorous and brave knight. He and the Earl of Oxford crossed the Ford at Blashtack when the English were almost annihilated on the banks of the river by the French who'd caught them up. And under a volley of crossbow fire, these two men led the troops across the river to the other side and to safety. And because of this, he's knighted. He's made a member of the Order of the Garter. Now, Regional Cobham was not of high birth. He was a minor nobleman. But really, to enter into this new brotherhood of seriously influential and important people was a huge moment for him. He served Edward III loyalty to a fault throughout his life. And when he was buried, he asked for something quite unusual to happen with his tomb. What you tend to get with tombs at this time is the deceased lying in state on the top. And then down here, the coats of arms of members of their family, daughters who they've married into influential houses, sons who've gone on to become bishops, knights, representations of members of their family. Now Cobham, his family, as I mentioned, were of minor noble rank. But what he has asked to have done on his tomb is for the coats of arms of Gartenites, his fellow Gartenites, the people he fought alongside in battle for their coats of arms to be represented around the base of his tomb. And this is the new brand of warrior elite that Edward is cultivating. This brotherhood of strong men who are bound together with the cause who assist one another. And his tomb is a really good manifestation of that. See, I thought I could catch up on a few of the objects. Now, we have another character who I mentioned at the beginning, Edward the Black Prince. His life is, he's seen as the subpinacle of nightly virtue. He was held up as the finest of knights in Christendom. But when you hear about the chevelshade campaigns he launched through the south of France, the way he would take his army for a 20-mile wave and just destroy everything, either side, all the way down to Carcassonne, he, yes, he's chivalric, yes, he can do well in tournaments, yes, he understands nightly virtue. But again, this anti-chivalric element is entering in here when someone who is the so-called flower of knighthood just in total warfare destroy people, lands, everything in France, in this very deliberate campaign against to undermine the King of France. He's an interesting character because his life spans a lot of important moments. So Battle of Croissie, Battle of Poitiers when the King of France is actually captured. And we're going to come back to the Black Death, but keep that in your minds. Now, tragically, despite being the flower of knighthood, he dies before his father. A lot was invested in him as the first born son. It was thought that he would rule very well, would carry on the strength of his father's reign in terms of military achievements. But he dies. And actually, when we get to the end of the Hundred Years War and we get the Wars of the Roses, this really is why the Wars of the Roses happened, because Edward the Black Prince died. And the House of York and the House of Lancaster, they are his brothers. They are Edward the Black Prince's brothers and all the infighting, all the family trees that feed out of this all goes back to Edward the Third and Edward the Black Prince. And his Tim, you can see how much more magnificent it is than Reginald Cobbums. But you can also see here he's got his coat of arms, it's the Royal Coat of Arms, but because he is the son, it has this pendant on the top to indicate that he's the Prince of Wales. And his banner, his coat of arms, the Three Ostrich Feathers Against the Black Backgrounds, possibly where he gets his name, the Black Prince from. And the Ostrich Feathers come from a story on the battlefield at Cresce where the Duke of Bohemia, who was blind at this stage, was led onto the battlefield towards the end of the battle. He knew that the battle was lost, he was blind, he knew he couldn't do an awful lot, but he had full of his retainers' chain to him and they led him onto the battlefield and he fought to his death, in a warrior's death, a valiant death. And the Black Prince apparently went over to the dead body of the Duke of Bohemia and picked up an Ostrich Feather that had come off his helmet. He took the Feather to his father, Edward the Third, and said, Ich Dean, I serve. And from that point onwards, the Ostrich Feather became the emblem of the Prince of Wales. And it's still on our coins, on the two pence coin. But this becomes his symbol. And again, it's another one of these legends that grow up around these important historical figures. So the other things that are displayed above his tomb in Canterbury are his funerial achievements. His coat, his gloves, helmet and shield. And I said, okay, forward. Again, you can see, this family are united behind this banner of the coat of arms. It gives them a sense of identity. We've got to the end of Edward the Third's reign. Bear with me. Edward VII, now, this is an effigy that was made for Edward's tomb in Westminster Abbey. But strangely, unlike the other tomb effigies, this was taken from a death mask. So a death mask was made of the dead king's face. Innovative development, again, death masks really don't start to get used in sculpture till the Italian Renaissance. But at this point, they're using death masks. And what's interesting here is you can see his mouth slopes down to the side. Now, Edward the Third's reign was seen to decline in his late years. His court was a place of corruption. Alice Perez was taking land whenever she could. People were really ripping the king off. And they said that he was mad or inept. But what it seems is he actually suffered a stroke or a sequence of strokes. And this object really moves me. When I see this, I feel this sadness for a king who is still trying to carry on a long and successful 50 years reign when he is not able to do so. And he's being ripped off by the people around him. So Edward the Third dies. And he has succeeded by the son of the black prince, Richard II. And you'll see from this breakdown of the Hundred Years' War that there is a hiatus. There is a gap in the war, if you like. It doesn't stop. People like this character, Bertrand de Gaecla, they are trying to fight the English on French territory. They're launching guerrilla attacks on the English soldiers abroad. There's lots of infighting. There's lots of squabbling. France meant wealth for the English. And as much as they could hold on to, meant they could get more money. So Bertrand de Gaecla is fighting. The king in France is now, Charles V, is a much more sensible, militarily minded king. But socially, lots of things are changing. I mentioned that the black death, 48, 49, afflicted the population of England. And sometimes as much as three-quarters of the population were wiped out. It totally redrew the structure of society. Up until this point, they'd been quite a rigid feudal system, king, mobility at the top, peasants and people at work for them below. But the black death meant that the peasantry and the mobility were wiped out. And with this lack of people capable of working the land, the labourers started to demand more. Okay, you haven't got any serfs to till the land. If you pay me, I'll come and do it for you. You still need to eat. You still need someone to till the land. So they start to recognise their value, recognise their worth. And this leads to increasing unrest. Edward III ignores it in no royal document as the black death mentioned or depicted directly. He seems to want it to be business as usual. Let's not admit too much about the black death because it's going to really screw with our system. So they put us a blanket over the royal accounts of it. But it's happened and it has a lasting effect. And the lasting effect culminates under Richard II's reign. He's only a young boy at this point when we have the peasants revolt. I think a hugely important event and something that doesn't often appear as much in the history books as it should. But this is an organised uprising by one noble people against the ruling class of England. The peasants converge on London under what tyler? They attack the tower of London and they are not sporadic. It's not crazed madness rioting. It's organised. They organise, they send letters. They're not these illiterate mobs. They go and they target one individual in particular, Simon of Sudbury, the chancellor. Good person to go to if you're annoyed about money, I think. So they're annoyed with the chancellor and they drag Simon Sudbury from the tower, cut his head off, put his head on the tower bridge. And I had a very eerie experience when I was taken to this church of St Gregory in Sudbury where in a small box in the wall is this mummified head. And I didn't know it was there and they handed it to me and I had to hold the thing. I felt very odd about holding this skull because you can see all the tendons. You can see behind the eye sockets. It's a very odd thing. And his head has been reconstructed. A lot of work has been done on it. But this object, I think, is a part of a person. But this really spoke to me about the power of the peasants revolt. Just how annoyed the people were that they rose up and organised themselves and attacked London. This could have gone much further. We could have had a democratic parliament far earlier. But for one person, Richard II, now the young king hadn't really been tested yet in his reign. He'd been protected by the other relatives of his father. But he walked out in Sniffer. He took the initiative of addressing the peasants directly. And I don't know exactly what he said. But purely the majesty of his persona, I think, meant that the peasants did actually disperse. He promised them they could have what they wanted. He promised them everything they were asking for. He didn't deliver any of it. But it was enough to get them to go. And in the meantime, behind the scenes, what Tyler, the leader of the peasants revolt, was killed by the mayor of London. So it would be the equivalent of Boris Johnson taking out an angry protester. But the mayor of London takes that what Tyler. And this leads to the end of the peasants' revolt. It doesn't lead to the end of Upris, unless, but it does bring this important moment to a close. Richard was a different sort of king. He was the first king to ask himself to be referred to as Majesty. He believed in the majesty of his reign. And this is his own personal diptych, the Wilton Diptych. You can see here, he is in personal communion with the Virgin and Child. All the angels of the Virgin wear his livery badge of the white heart. I mean, they're working for him. Heaven is on his side. And backing him up, he's chosen John the Baptist, Edward the Confessor, the English sainted king, and Edmund the Martyr, another English saint. So you can see he has an attitude towards his role that's different to his father's. He is about permanent stability, divine right, ruling in a majestic way. And this is reinforced by, hang on, I'll come back to that one, by this, the treasure role. This is a 28-metre-long role documenting the things that Richard II had in his court. There are 1,206 objects listed on there. And the value of that, the everything adding up, it comes to £209,000 at that time. Now, if you think a labourer had to work 40 days for £1, it tells you how much wealth is in this treasury of Richard II. It is astonishing. One object we know survives from it, which is this crown. And this is one of the smallest crowns that were recorded, and yet it is still but absolutely burgeoning with jewels. This is a laddish court. Richard II wants an exciting and vibrant court, and he invests in courtly life. He invests in this chap, Chaucer. So Chaucer's works would have been recited in the court. The sound of English, the vernacular. This is a court on the ascendancy, a court that's proud of itself. As we know, it all goes wrong for dear Richard II. He gets above himself. When his cousin Henry Bollingbrook is exiled, he seizes the lands of his uncle, John of Gaunt. And this really upsets the nobility. He's going down the same range as Edward II. He's taking his favourites. He's taking too much power and wealth to himself. So Henry Bollingbrook, in again, a remarkable historical coup takes the throne. This is what happens to bad kings. They get their throne taken away from them. The wheel of fortune comes full circle and spins them off. And so begins the line of the Lancastrians. The Lancastrians, because John of Gaunt was the Duke of Lancaster. So this is the Lancastrian line. Henry IV has a rough time. He doesn't really find it easy. There's too much to deal with at home. Too many things to sort out. During his reign, he really can't think about military conquest because he's just too busy fighting his own illegitimacy. But his son is seen as the next beacon, the one who can change that, who can remove the stain of illegitimacy from the new Lancastrian kings. Henry V has a lot on his shoulders. And we have this amazing book surviving. This is Thomas Hockleave writing a book called The Regiment of Princes. A bit like the Secretum Secretorum, but this is directed at Henry V. It tells him what he needs to do to hold on to his throne. This is how amazingly uncertain the monarch he was at this point. Henry goes down in legend as one of the greatest of English monarchs because of his victories at Agincourt and his conquest of so much of France. And we have just this one portrait of him. Interestingly, it's shown in profile because early on in his military career, he got an arrow in the face. And the medical records survive of how this arrow had to be removed. Prongs had to be inserted to get around the barbs and to actually lever out this arrow. It took hours of surgery to get this thing out of his face. So it is without a doubt that he had an enormous scar on his face. So the fact that the only surviving portrait is in complete profile makes sense really. He's obviously hiding something on the other side. And a very famous and important set of objects, his funerary achievements. That these hung above his team in Westminster Abbey and tourists would go and visit them as an important pilgrimage site, particularly after Shakespeare writes his Henry V play, where this rousing speech in English to the English, united behind the English cause, he becomes a poster boy for all that is great in English. And his funerary achievements would have represented that greatness. I haven't got time to go into one of my favourite historical characters, Joan of Arc. But suffice to say, the tide is turning. Henry V gets so far. He does incredibly well under the Treaty of Trois. He is technically declared the heir to the throne of England and of France. The mad King Charles gives his daughter over in marriage to Henry. And upon that King's death, Henry V will be King of England and of France. In a sad twist of fate, Henry V dies very young of dysentry just two months before the King of France, who is so much older than him. And it's a sad twist of fate. And his son inherits the throne. He is nine months old, woe to a country with a baby at its head. This is a very fearful situation to have a baby on the throne of England and France for the first time ever. France is also rallying and not prepared to be stamped down by the English anymore. The dofan, the son of the mad King, has the support of this remarkable young woman, Joan of Arc, just a peasant girl, a teenager, and yet she manages to turn the tide of the victories in France. She starts to lead the army herself, incredible woman, and she brings about this turn in the tide and the change for the fate of France. She also unites the French behind a common cause, gives them a sense of who they are. The English are getting a very good sense of their English identity, but the French, until Joan comes along, really doesn't have that. So I wanted to show you where we've gone. We've gone through, out of the third, down into the Lancastery in line. And what is going to come is all of this infighting between the houses of York and Lancaster. Because of the failed reign of Henry VI, he really is seen as bringing about the decline of the Hundred Years War and the demise of the English monarchy. And this is my final object, a beautiful book, the Shrewsbury book, enormous. The last ditch attempt to say that everything is OK in the Hundred Years War, that the English are still on top. You see here the young prince Henry VI. He's just gone through his marriage to Margaret of Anjou. He's receiving the book here. And this is a family tree. This is showing how this young prince Henry VI is the rightful heir to the thrones of England and the thrones of France. Back here, the French line, back to the sainted King Louis. And back here, the English line, through and over the second and back. He is the direct heir. He is meant to be King of England and France. And he's supported by the two brothers of Henry V who hold him up in his position. This is fantasy. Already by this stage, this was not going to remain the status quo. The Hundred Years War was coming rapidly to an end. Henry VI was handing over land in France. He hands over main in order to secure his marriage to Margaret of Anjou. He's not interested in fighting. He's not interested in keeping the lands in France. His nobilities, they're livid because they lose their income. But he wants to sponsor King's College in Cambridge. He wants to start eating school. They're his concerns. The last object is a fantastical image of what could have happened if Henry VI had been a different king, if he'd ruled differently. But ultimately, the Hundred Years War draws to a close and opens up into the next war, the Wars of the Roses, which I'll have to come back and hear me talk about it another time. Thank you so much. I'm sorry we've overrun slightly, but I really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you.