All language subtitles for BBC.The.Plantagenets.2of3.An.English.Empire.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org

Caversham Manor in Berkshire.

The year is 1219.

William Marshall is the most
powerful knight in the land

and Regent of England.

The 11-year-old boy at his bedside

is the fourth Plantagenet
king to rule England -

Henry III.

The Plantagenets were a French
Dynasty, who ruled England

and much of France for 50 years.

But Henry's father, King John, had
lost most of their lands in France.

And when Henry came to the
throne at the age of nine,

half of England was under
French occupation.

William Marshall had sworn
to protect the young king.

"Even if the whole world
abandons the boy," he said,

"I will not fail him."

William Marshall kept his word.
He defeated the French,

fought off the rebellious
English barons, and ensured

that the young Plantagenet
would hold on to his crown.

But now, William Marshall was dying

and the fate of the Plantagenets
rested on the shoulders of a child.

Many predicted disaster.

Instead, something remarkable happened.

The Plantagenet dynasty not only
survived, it grew stronger.

Under their rule, over the next 150 years,

medieval England reached its peak.

Parliament was born

and a clear sense of
national identity emerged.

Their roots were in France,
French was their language,

but the Plantagenet family helped foster

a new sense of English nationhood.

Out of their dynastic ambitions
would grow an English empire.

For the first 50 years of Plantagenet rule,

the English Channel acted as a bridge,

connecting the king and his barons
to the lands they owned in France.

But, by the reign of Henry III,

most of their ancestral homelands
in France had been lost.

The English barons were
forced to make a commitment

to one side of the Channel or the other.

The kings of England and France

presented the barons with a stark choice -

give up their lands in England and
do homage to the King of France

or give up their lands in France

and swear allegiance to
the King of England.

The Channel was no longer a bridge,

but a barrier between competing powers.

Possession of French lands always
drove the Plantagenet dynasty

but, for now, they turned
their energies to the country

they still ruled - to England.

Henry III was not by nature a warrior.

The Boy King grew up to be a pious ruler,

devoted to pilgrimage and prayer.

In 1245, he began rebuilding
Westminster Abbey,

a project that would occupy
him for the rest of his life.

The old Romanesque Basilica

was replaced with an
immense gothic structure.

This was an architecture of
light and sophistication.

The style was French

but it was dedicated to the
memory of an English king.

The majesty of Westminster Abbey today

is the result of Henry III's
devotion to Edward the Confessor

and his desire to glorify him.

Henry saw Westminster as the
centre of the Plantagenet kingdom,

and in the heart of the abbey
itself, he constructed

an elaborate new shrine to the
saintly Anglo-Saxon king.

Edward the Confessor is the only
English king to have been canonised.

Henry was aligning himself
with both God and England.

Edward's golden coffin sat
on base of Purbeck marble.

These niches were carved for
pilgrims to kneel in prayer.

But the Abbey also served
a worldly purpose.

Henry's piety hadn't extinguished
his dynastic ambition.

He wanted Westminster Abbey

to rival the great churches
of the French Kings.

His vision of the Abbey was
as the place of coronation

and burial for all future
Plantagenet kings.

Westminster Abbey would be
forever associated with Henry,

as his crowning achievement.

But Plantagenet ambition came at a price.

Its rebuilding cost more than twice
Henry's annual royal income.

And he had other expensive plans.

Like all his predecessors,
Henry was determined to expand

his Plantagenet empire, whatever the cost.

Henry wasn't a warrior
king, but he could use

the revenues of England to add
to the Plantagenet dominions.

The Pope was inviting Henry
to purchase the rights

to the Kingdom of Sicily,

and he couldn't refuse the chance
to add to the family's lands.

He accepted on behalf of
his younger son, Edmund.

The only snag was the price tag.

We know what happened next,

because of a contemporary
account of Henry's reign.

Kept at Corpus Christi College
Cambridge is a manuscript

written and illustrated by a
St Albans monk, Matthew Paris.

It's called the Chronica
Majora, The Great Chronicle.

He tells us Henry agreed to pay the Pope

three times his annual income,

for the chance to secure
Sicily as a Plantagenet land.

It was a huge sum of
money, and a great risk.

If Henry defaulted on payment,

he faced excommunication from the Church.

For a pious man like Henry,

excommunication would be unbearable,
but still he pursued the policy.

Even his own brother thought he'd gone mad.

He compared the Pope's
offer to a man saying,

"I sell you the moon, now
climb up and take it."

It was an ambitious plan to
expand Plantagenet power,

but it placed royal family interests
against those of the barons,

and it backfired badly.

The barons were the land-owning
nobility of England.

They provided the King with
armies to fight his wars.

And he needed their agreement to
raise taxes to fund his ambitions.

Yet Henry was alienating his
barons by pursuing Sicily.

And they held another
grievance against the King.

Henry had filled his court
with foreign-born relatives

from Savoy and Poitou.

The barons bitterly resented them.

French remained the language of court,

but there was a growing suspicion
of all things foreign.

Plantagenet dynastic ambitions
were still international, but

they increasingly came up against
a new force - national feeling.

You can see it in the
works of Matthew Paris.

Here he shows a French invasion fleet

being defeated by English forces.

While the bishops bless those
who are fighting, as it says,

"for the liberation of England".

And here he praises a patriotic baron,

who would struggle to
preserve Anglia Anglis.

England for the English.

National feeling was a growing
force Henry couldn't ignore.

He'd taken a huge risk in
mortgaging his kingdom

to expand a Plantagenet
empire in the Mediterranean.

But now, he was bankrupt

and the English barons were
on the point of rebellion.

Things came to a head one
April morning in 1258.

Seven barons in full
armour confronted Henry,

here in Westminster Hall.

The King was startled, "What is
this, my Lords, am I your captive?"

They reassured him that
they were not rebels,

but friends of the Crown, but
they insisted that the King

dismiss his foreign relatives and
take back their castle and lands.

The King's relatives protested noisily,

but the barons warned
them, "Know for a fact

"that you will either return the
castles or lose your head."

Henry had little choice but to agree.

The King's submission to the barons

triggered a chain of reforming legislation

that would transform the
way England was governed.

The reforms would be agreed
by a committee of 24,

12 chosen by the King and 12 by the barons.

For the first time in English history,

power would be shared by the
King with a 15-member council.

These historic reforms are known
as the Provisions of Oxford.

Medieval kings had always claimed
to rule by the grace of God,

but Henry now reluctantly swore an oath

to share power with the barons,

in the name of le Commune d'Angleterre,

the Community of England.

Provoked by Plantagenet extravagance,

the Provisions of Oxford
mark an important moment

in the history of England, and of
the limitation of royal power.

For 20 years, the assemblies
where the King consulted

with his bishops and barons

had been known by a term derived
from the French, "parler", to talk.

This gave us the name of a
new institution, Parliament.

Henry appealed to the
Pope to extricate himself

from the Provisions of Oxford.

But his own brother-in-law,
Simon De Montford,

condemned Henry as a king who
had lost touch with his people.

De Montfort saw himself
as England's saviour.

The King knew he was in danger.

He told De Montfort,

"I fear thunder and lightning
beyond measure, but by God's head.

"I dread you more than all the
thunder and lightning in the world."

He was right to be afraid.

From his base here in Kenilworth Castle,

De Montfort raised an
army against the King.

In 1264, Simon De Montfort
confronted royal troops,

led by the King and his son
Prince Edward, outside Lewes.

De Montfort's men were outnumbered,

but they inflicted a
humiliating defeat on Henry,

and took Prince Edward prisoner.

Henry remained king in name only.

For the next 15 months, England
was ruled, not by a Plantagenet,

but by Simon De Montfort.

And he did so through Parliament.

De Montfort's Parliament
of 1265 is often regarded

as the forerunner of the modern Parliament.

As always, it included barons and bishops,

who sit nowadays as the House of Lords.

But for the first time,

knights and burgesses were sent from
the Shires and from the Boroughs,

elected to Parliament by the
property owners of England.

Parliament now had the
beginnings of a second House,

later to be known as The Commons.

Henry III seemed to be a spent force,

but his son Edward was a warrior,

prepared to defend his Plantagenet
birthright to the death.

With the help of men loyal to his cause,

Edward escaped his captivity in Hereford.

He raised an army and confronted
De Montfort at Evesham.

At the battle of Evesham,

Edward re-asserted
Plantagenet rule in England.

De Montfort's supporters were slaughtered

and De Montfort himself
killed in the battle.

His hands and feet were cut off.

His testicles severed and hung
scornfully over his nose.

Then his head was sent to the
wife of one of his chief enemies.

De Montfort's rule was over.

But the English Parliament lived on,

and future Plantagenet kings
would ignore it at their peril.

Henry had had a lucky escape.

He returned to the life of
religious devotion and pilgrimage.

He'd gambled with the Plantagenet crown,

and his actions had provoked
the opening up of Parliament

to elected representatives
of the English people.

Henry's England had a growing
sense of national spirit.

But when he died, Henry revealed
his own true allegiance.

Henry's body was laid to
rest in Westminster Abbey,

to spend eternity alongside
his beloved Anglo-Saxon hero,

Edward the Confessor.

But his heart was sent to be buried
with his Plantagenet ancestors,

at the Abbey of Fontevraud in Anjou.

An English King, but a French heart,

a Plantagenet to the last.

Edward, the warrior prince,

now became King Edward I of England.

Tall and intimidating,
with a mop of curly hair,

Edward was known as Longshanks.

He inherited a country
recovering from turmoil.

Edward also inherited the
famous Plantagenet temper.

Reputedly he once frightened an
unfortunate Archbishop of York,

literally to death.

But he'd learned two things
from his father's mistakes -

to keep the barons happy, and
not to run out of money.

And he sought to find ways
to attain both those goals.

Like his ancestors, Edward
encouraged the planning

of new towns to generate wealth and taxes.

Towns like Hull and Winchelsea

nurtured a new society based on trade,

and trade became the lifeblood
of the Plantagenet dynasty.

Medieval England reached its
economic peak under Edward I.

But there was a darker side to its
growing sense of national identity.

England's Jewish population
had arrived from France

shortly after the Norman Conquest.

The Pope had decreed that lending money
at interest was a sin for Christians,

so the Jews became the
chief source of credit

for the King and his barons.

Jews were often resented, they
were frequently persecuted

and attacked. And by the reign of
Edward I, in this age of crusades,

England had become an increasingly
militant Christian nation.

The King himself was a
conventional Christian

with no sympathy for the
plight of the Jews.

At a time when English
national feeling was growing,

Edward's vision of England was
a fiercely Christian one -

this England had no place for the Jews.

With the support of his barons,
Edward decided to expel

the entire Jewish
population from his realm.

Some 2,000-3,000 Jews departed
from the shores of England.

There was to be no resident
Jewish population in the country

for the next 370 years.

Yet Plantagenet ambitions
always extended beyond England.

Edward was inspired by King Arthur,
a popular figure in folklore,

who was said to have once
ruled over a united Britain.

Edward wanted to align
the Plantagenet dynasty

with this legendary, all-conquering leader.

And he had the conquest
of Wales in his sights.

Wales had troubled the Plantagenet
kings for generations,

its rugged terrain made it
hard to conquer and control,

and they regarded its inhabitants
as little more than barbarians.

But Edward I was a man who never
gave up what he saw as his rights.

And these included, in his
eyes, overlordship of Wales.

But a rival dynasty stood in the
way of Plantagenet ambition.

The Princes of Gwynedd had
ruled here for centuries.

Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, and
his younger brother Dyfed,

were the latest in a long
line of warrior leaders

who held a crown said to be King Arthur's.

Edward's father Henry, recognised Llywelyn

as Prince of Wales, as long as he
paid homage to the English crown.

But when Edward took the throne,
Llywelyn refused to pay homage.

Edward declared Llywelyn a rebel
and a disturber of the peace.

And in 1277 set off westward from Chester

at the head of a powerful army

of 800 knights, crossbow men from
Gascony and 16,000 infantry.

Along the way, they were
supplied by a fleet of ships

sent up from the royal ports of
the south coast, like Winchelsea.

The Welsh were hopelessly outnumbered.

Edward's army captured Anglesey,
the bread basket of Wales.

At a stroke, this provided
food for his own men

and cut off supplies to the Welsh.

Llywelyn had no choice but to
surrender and pay homage to Edward.

An uneasy truce followed.

But it was broken,

when Dafydd ap Gruffydd led a new
rebellion against English rule.

For over a year, the Plantagenet
army clashed with Welsh defenders.

But in 1282, disaster struck
for the Welsh dynasty.

Llywelyn was killed in battle.

His head cut off and sent to London.

Dafydd ap Gruffydd held out
here at Dolbadarn Castle

for a few months more.

Finally he was captured
and tried by the English.

Condemned to death as the last
survivor of a family of traitors,

he was hanged and then cut
down and disembowelled,

his entrails were burned in front of him,

his body was quartered and
then his head was cut off

and sent to the Tower of London

to be displayed alongside
that of his brother.

As a final act of ritual humiliation

the Welsh surrendered to the English
King the crown of King Arthur.

Wales was now a Plantagenet dominion.

Edward had confronted a rival
dynasty, and emerged victorious.

Now, to stamp his authority,
he began building

and repairing a chain of
castles across North Wales.

These fortresses represent the
peak of medieval castle building.

Edward personally chose the
site for each of his castles,

and the most impressive of all

arose above the River Seiont at Caernarfon.

This twin-towered gatehouse,
known as the King's Gate,

was built according to the
designs of King Edward himself.

The approach to the castle
was guarded by arrow slits,

and by spy holes.

And once here, you would have been
confronted with a drawbridge,

six portcullises and five sets of gates.

This was Plantagenet military architecture

at its most intimidating.

Edward engaged the most famous
castle architect in Europe.

Master James of St George.

King Edward was keen to associate
the Plantagenet dynasty

with the glories of the
Christian Roman empire.

And so he commanded Master
James to base his designs

on the great walls of Constantinople.

This meant building many-sided towers

instead of the more usual round ones.

The walls are up to 20-feet thick,

and patterned with bands of coloured stone,

a byzantine design not previously
seen in the British Isles.

Caernarfon Castle was a bold
statement of Plantagenet domination.

For the Welsh it was a painful
reminder of conquest and oppression.

Edward was also preparing for the future,

and laying a Plantagenet
dynastic claim to Wales.

In 1284, the King's 11th child, a
son named Edward, was born here.

At the age of 16, Edward of Caernarfon

would be declared Prince of Wales,

a title stolen from Llywelyn ap Gruffydd,

which has been borne by the eldest son

of the English sovereign ever since.

It looked at one point as though
Scotland would go the way of Wales,

swallowed up by the English kingdom.

But a different dynastic
problem had arisen there.

When the King of Scotland died
in 1286, he left no male heir.

The bloodline of Scottish kings was broken.

The dead king's
three-year-old granddaughter,

Margaret of Norway, was next
in line for the throne.

Edward came up with a neat
Plantagenet solution.

Margaret would return to Scotland
to marry his own infant son.

The situation would be resolved by
diplomacy in marriage, not by war.

And Britain would be united
under the Plantagenets.

It remains one of the great
"what ifs" of British history.

No marriage took place, little
Margaret died in Orkney

on her way to Scotland, and with her,

died Edward's plan for a bloodless
Plantagenet takeover of Scotland.

After the death of Margaret,
Edward agreed to tolerate

a subordinate king in Scotland.

But as soon as he showed
signs of independence,

Edward reacted with typical
Plantagenet brutality.

His troops sacked Berwick and
defeated a Scottish army at Dunbar.

English garrisons and officials

were installed across Scotland
to intimidate and control.

For Edward, the Kingdom of
Scotland had ceased to exist.

As he handed the royal seal of
Scotland to one of his barons

he said, "A man does good business
when he rids himself of a turd."

But Scotland did not go the way of Wales.

This wasn't a battle between dynasties,

but between two countries

with a growing sense of
national identity and pride.

No-one displayed this more than one
of the Scottish resistance leaders,

William Wallace.

Wallace was a proud and charismatic figure.

He refused to pay homage to Edward.

To crush Wallace, the English army
had to cross the River Forth.

On a 13th century map of
Britain, by Matthew Paris,

Scotland is shown dramatically
divided by the River Forth.

And the only place to cross
was the bridge at Stirling.

It was here that William Wallace
confronted the English army,

to preserve Scotland's freedom.

At this time, the bridge
here was just wide enough

for the English forces
to cross two abreast.

Once half the army had crossed,

the Scots swooped down
and cut off the bridge.

The English stranded on the
Northern bank were surrounded.

The result was slaughter.

Around 5,000 English infantrymen
died at Stirling Bridge.

The battle didn't decide the issue,
but Wallace's defiance shook Edward.

International dynasties,
like the Plantagenets,

struggled to understand national feeling.

Edward underestimated the strength
of resistance it could produce.

He was riding to confront another
Scottish leader, Robert Bruce,

when he died in 1307.

Plantagenet determination to
subdue Scotland was undiminished.

But Edward II's defeat by
Robert Bruce at Bannockburn

seven years later, set the limits to
Plantagenet ambitions in Britain.

They would never conquer the Scots.

And they provoked a deepening
of Scottish national pride,

and a sense of independence
that survives to this day.

The new Plantagenet king lacked
his father's warrior instincts.

Edward II preferred gardening to fighting.

He would fail to build
on his father's legacy,

and his lapses of judgement would threaten
to destroy the Plantagenet dynasty.

Edward's reign began well.

He secured a great prize
in the marriage market,

Isabella, daughter of the King of France.

She was just 12 years old,

but already considered a beauty
of beauties and very wise.

A month after their wedding,

Westminster Abbey was the setting
for Edward's coronation.

This was his first opportunity
to show off his new Queen.

Instead, Isabella was upstaged.

As Edward and Isabella
walked down the aisle,

it wasn't the young Queen
who caught the eye.

Walking just ahead of them

and leading the procession was a
young man called Piers Gaveston.

He was dressed in clothes
of imperial purple,

studded with pearls.

And in his hands he cradled the
crown of St Edward the Confessor,

the most sacred of the royal regalia.

There was no more privileged
position in the royal procession.

Gaveston was being honoured as the
most important noble in the land.

At the banquet that followed,

Edward and Gaveston shocked the guests

with their display of
affection for each other.

Isabella's uncles walked out in disgust.

Every medieval king had court favourites,

but none had ever achieved the power

and influence Piers Gaveston
exercised over Edward II.

The King claimed he loved
him like a brother.

But the St Paul's chronicler
noted that the King frequented.

Piers's couch more than the Queen's.

We can never know for sure if
there was a sexual relationship

between Edward II and Piers Gaveston,

but we do know that there are no mentions
of homosexuality during their lifetimes,

and they had plenty of enemies
who would have brought it up.

The earliest references come
after Edward's downfall,

and from men who were
deeply hostile to him.

What can't be doubted is that Edward
was infatuated with Gaveston,

to a degree that compromised his Kingship,

and provoked the baron's hatred.

But Gaveston displayed
no fear of the barons.

Famed for his quick and sarcastic tongue,

Gaveston gave the barons nicknames.

The Earl of Lancaster was The Fiddler.

The Earl of Lincoln, Burstbelly,

And the Earl of Warwick, whose
seat was here at Warwick Castle,

was the Black Dog of Arden.

But this was a dangerous game.
The Black Dog could bite.

Once again, the Plantagenet
rule was under threat

because of foreign-born court favourites.

Once again, the barons
felt compelled to act.

Gaveston was captured

and put in the custody
of the Earl of Pembroke

who guaranteed his safety.

But in his absence, the Black Dog pounced.

The Earl of Warwick seized Gaveston.

After a token trial, he was led
out on the road to Kenilworth.

When they reached Blacklow Hill,

here on the land of the Earl of Lancaster,

Gaveston was first stabbed
and then beheaded.

His body was left on the hillside

until claimed by two Dominican friars.

"And that was the end of Piers,"
commented a contemporary chronicler,

"who had risen on high, but
now fell into nothingness."

If Edward had now concentrated
his energies on being king,

his infatuation with Gaveston might
have been quickly forgotten.

Instead, to Isabella's horror,

he began to shower favours
on another young noble -

Hugh Dispenser.

Dispenser and Edward became inseparable.

Angry barons said he
bewitched the King's mind.

But Dispenser made an enemy yet
more dangerous than the barons -

Edward's Queen, Isabella.

Isabella came to despise Dispenser,

in the words of a contemporary chronicle,
"with a more than perfect hatred".

But Edward still needed Isabella.

In 1324, the French invaded Gascony,

the last of the Plantagenet
lands in France.

Isabella's brother was
now the King of France,

so Edward asked his wife to
travel to Paris to sue for peace.

Isabella's brother welcomed her warmly,

and promised to restore Gascony

on condition that Edward
did homage for the Duchy.

With his barons threatening
rebellion at home,

Edward was reluctant to leave England,

but he sent his son in his place.

And so here, at the Chateau
de Vincennes outside Paris,

in the company of his mother,

the young Edward knelt at the
feet of Charles IV of France.

But then, instead of returning to England,

he remained in France with his mother.

When Edward requested their
return, Isabella refused.

She finally revealed her feelings

about her husband's relationship
with Hugh Dispenser.

"I feel that marriage is a joining
together of man and woman,

"and someone has come
between my husband and me,

"trying to break this bond."

Edwards's letters to his son
became increasingly violent.

"We will take such measures
that you will feel it

"all the days of your life, and all
other sons will learn what it means

"to disobey their lords and fathers."

A Plantagenet family crisis

was about to turn into
a political disaster.

News reached the king that the
rebel baron Roger Mortimer

was now Isabella's lover.

According to the Bishop of Hereford,
Edward determined to strike back

with true Plantagenet vindictiveness.

If he had no other weapon, he
would crush her with his teeth.

Isabella and Mortimer landed
on the Suffolk coast,

and quickly found support
from disaffected barons.

Edward's cause was lost.

Hugh Dispenser paid the price
for his closeness to the king.

He was tied to a ladder and
his genitals sliced off.

His entrails were removed, and along
with his heart, thrown into a fire.

The King was taken prisoner.

According to the English
chronicler Geoffrey Le Baker,

the imprisoned king was told that

if he refused to abdicate
in favour of his son,

someone other than a Plantagenet
would take the throne.

Weeping and barely able to stand,

Edward eventually agreed to
sacrifice himself for his dynasty.

He stood down in favour of his son,

the first abdication of a King of England.

But the Plantagenet bloodline
had been protected.

On the 1st of February, 1327, his
son, Prince Edward, was crowned.

He was 14 years old.

His mother, Isabella, was appointed regent.

She and Mortimer now ruled
England on Edward's behalf.

But a deposed former king
was a new dynastic problem.

Edward was brought here,
to Berkeley Castle,

and these are original documents
from the castle at that time.

Here we read about the delivery of chickens

to the kitchen of the King's father,
which is what Edward now was.

And here is a record of
his daily expenses -

£5 a day, quite a generous amount.

And here is a report of a messenger
being sent to Nottingham

to inform Isabella concerning
"morte patris regis".

The death of the king's father.

The death of Edward II solved
Isabella and Mortimer's problems.

But there were already questions
about how Edward died.

And killing a king was an offence
against God and the natural order.

The most plausible cause of death
to be suggested was suffocation,

but other, more lurid
accounts soon circulated.

Within 30 years, Geoffrey Le Baker
and other chroniclers were writing

that Edward had had a red-hot
poker inserted into his anus.

It's no surprise which version has
caught the public imagination.

No-one knows for sure, but
with either the red-hot poker

or suffocation, no mark would be visible,

when the king's body was displayed
to show that he was truly dead.

To all appearances, Edward
II died of natural causes.

The fate of the Plantagenet dynasty

now lay in the hands of
Isabella and Roger Mortimer.

But three years later, tired of
the corrupt rule of his mother

and her lover, the young King
Edward decided to take action.

One night in October 1330,

two dozen supporters of the young
King crept through a secret tunnel.

Above, in Nottingham castle, slept
Isabella and Roger Mortimer.

The leader of the conspirators
warned the young King,

"It is better to eat the dog
than to be eaten by the dog."

But Mortimer hadn't got to rule England

without a killer's instincts.

The King's supporters knew
that if their plans failed,

they would be hanged as traitors.

The young conspirators entered the castle

and made for the queen's bedchamber.

As they drew their swords and entered,

Edward stood quietly outside the room.

Suspecting her son's presence,
Isabella called out,

"Good son, good son, have
mercy on noble Mortimer."

But there was to be no mercy,

Mortimer was taken to the Tower of London,

and within a few weeks he was
hanged like an ordinary criminal.

And out of the shadow of
his mother and her lover

stepped the new Plantagenet King.
Edward III.

In the uncertain world of medieval politics

people looked to omens and
portents for guidance.

One place they found it
was in ancient prophesies

about the fates and fortunes of kings.

The prophecy of the Six Kings drew
on the legend of King Arthur.

In it, Merlin characterised the
future Plantagenet Kings as animals.

Henry III was a pious lamb,
Edward I a battling dragon,

Edward II was a lascivious goat,

but his son, who would
grow up to be Edward III,

was a glorious wild boar
with the heart of a lion,

who would conquer more than any
of his blood in this world.

The message was clear -

England once again had a
Plantagenet king to rally behind.

Edward III would not make
the mistakes of his father.

He set out to unify the
English barons around him,

and at his birthplace, Windsor
Castle, he spent a royal fortune,

transforming it into the
heart of his kingdom.

He turned it from a castle into a palace.

It became the most expensive
single building project

by any Plantagenet king,

and the perfect setting for
royal displays of chivalry.

Under Edward III, the rituals
of chivalry became central

to the Plantagenet court.

Chivalry was a code of behaviour

that proudly fused military
and Christian ethics.

The word refers to the customs
and values of the Chevaliers,

the French term for those who
rode into battle, the knights.

And it demanded that
these knights be brave,

loyal and devoted to their ladies.

Edward III understood the power
of chivalry like no-one else,

and he used it to bind
together the knights,

the nobles and the Plantagenet crown.

Like his grandfather, Edward I,

Edward was inspired by the
legend of King Arthur.

Lavish Arthurian tournaments
were held in the Quadrangle

at Windsor Castle.

With staged displays of
horsemanship and fighting skills.

Windsor castle became the
Plantagenet Camelot.

Along with Arthur,

Edward chose a Christian hero
to represent his ambition -

Saint George.

Saint George was a warrior saint

and he was the patron of knights
throughout Christendom.

But Edwards's troops were already marching

with the red cross of Saint
George at their head,

and it flew also from
the masts of his ships.

It was becoming a symbol of
England and the English King.

And Saint George would be the
war cry of the English armies

in Edwards's next great conflict.

He was determined to win back

the old Plantagenet
dynastic lands in France.

The French royal family had seen
son succeed father for 320 years.

But in 1328, Charles IV of France
died without a son to succeed him.

Edward III was the dead king's nephew.

He believed he had as strong a claim
to the French throne as anyone.

Could Edward III of England
become Edward I of France?

It wasn't so far-fetched.

Ever since King John had lost
their old lands in France

over a century before,

the Plantagenet kings had nursed
the ambition of recovering them.

To acquire the whole of France
would be an even greater glory.

Edward saw an opportunity to succeed

where his Plantagenet
forefathers had failed.

In 1340, he announced his
claim to the French throne.

This began an era of
slaughter and bloodshed

that went on for generations.

In July 1346, an army of around
10,000 men, led by Edward III,

landed in Normandy.

Edward may have claimed
to be King of France,

but this was clearly an English invasion.

The battle was no longer
just one between dynasties,

it was now a battle between nations.

The English rampaged
unopposed through Normandy.

Finally the two great armies
confronted each other

by the forest of Crecy in the Somme.

The English were drawn up on this ridge.

The French advanced from that direction.

As the battle began, a great storm broke.

Huge flocks of crows flew into
the air above the armies.

Then the English archers stepped forward.

Their longbows had a range of 200 metres

and a rate of fire three
times that of the crossbow.

The crossbowmen on the
French side were routed.

And Edward had another shock
in store for the French,

a primitive but spectacular
new weapon in his armoury.

For the first time on a
European battlefield,

the English used gunpowder to fire
cannonballs at the French forces.

The French knights now faced
volleys of thousands of arrows

amidst the crash of cannon.

They had never seen anything like it.

The King's 16-year-old son,
Edward Prince of Wales,

later known as the Black Prince...

...fought his way to the
heart of the battle.

The chronicler Froissart reports
that a man was sent back

from the Black Prince's division
to the King to ask for help.

Edward III asked him if his
son were dead or wounded,

and when he heard that he was not,
replied, "Send no more to me today,

"let him earn his spurs."

Most of the French knights
fought to the death,

they preferred the glory
of being killed in action

to the shame of fleeing the battlefield.

Fighting on the French side was John,

the blind King of Bohemia.
Despite his blindness,

he wanted to strike at least
one blow in the battle.

His knights tied the reins of
their horses to the reins of his

to guide him into the
thick of the fighting.

The Black Prince saw him ride to his death.

In order to honour the
King's reckless bravery,

the Black Prince adopted as his
own badge, the King's emblem.

That emblem was the ostrich feather,

which has been the badge of the
Princes of Wales ever since.

Around 2,000 French knights died at Crecy.

A whole generation of French noblemen.

In contrast, it's said that

as few as 40 English men
at arms lost their lives.

The battle for the French
crown would continue,

but fighting beneath the
flag of Saint George,

the English army was now
the most feared in Europe.

At the end of the battle, King
Edward embraced the Black Prince,

"My son," he said, "you have
acquitted yourself nobly.

"You are worthy to rule a kingdom."

The Black Prince returned to
Windsor an English national hero.

But he would never become King.

Like many a Plantagenet warrior, he
was later cut down by dysentery.

But Crecy marked a high point
of the Plantagenet dynasty,

and its legacy remains.

After their triumphant victory at Crecy,

the king and the Black Prince
founded the Order of the Garter.

Its origins were in a great
tournament at Windsor.

Two teams of 12 knights took
part, one headed by the King,

and one by the Prince.

The Order was to meet
here, in its own chapel,

every year on Saint George's
Day, the 23rd of April.

The structure of the Order has
remained the same to the present day -

the monarch, the Prince
of Wales and 24 knights.

One set of stalls is designated the King's,

the facing set, the Prince's.

Many of the original founding
members of the Order of the Garter

were companions of arms who
had fought together at Crecy.

Now every noble in the land
wanted to be bound to the King

in this most exclusive of clubs.

The Order of the Garter wasn't
just another show of pageantry,

it was also a shrewd Plantagenet tool.

For 200 years, Plantagenet dynastic
ambition had often clashed

with the interests of the English barons.

Now Edward III had brought the
noblemen of England behind him

in his campaign to win
the throne of France.

He had harnessed England's
growing sense of nationhood

to his own Plantagenet dynastic vision,

to create an extraordinary fighting force.

By 1360, the English army
had regained large swathes

of the Plantagenet lands in France.

Now, to dynastic ambition,

emerged the foundations
of an English empire.

In 1362, Edward celebrated
his 50th birthday.

He marked the occasion by introducing

one of the Plantagenets'
most significant reforms.

It was known as the Statute of Pleading,

and it formally changed the
language spoken in the law courts

from French to English.

In the same year, parliament
was opened for the first time,

with a speech made not in
French, but in English.

When Henry II, the first Plantagenet King,

took the throne in 1154, he spoke
scarcely a word of English.

Two centuries later,

a dynasty that had regarded
England as a possession

rather than a nation,

now saw England as its home
and English as its language.

English was no longer spoken just by
the peasants who worked the land.

The knights spoke it, the nobles spoke it,

even the King spoke it.

England and the Plantagenets
were united as never before.

In the next programme,

the death of kings,

royal bloodletting divides the dynasty

into the warring houses
of Lancaster and York.

Henry V fulfils the Plantagenets'
greatest ambition at Agincourt,

and Richard III makes the
Plantagenets' last stand.