This page is an ongoing work. My start date of 1066 is an arbitrary one in that I could, if I’d wanted to, have started with pre-history and move forward. Who knows, in time, I might add in some earlier dates. I’m adding to my time line as I find information and as I need it. I am also having a ‘spring clean’ so adding information from my notes somewhat randomly as I go.
Click on the images to open a new page detailing the events for the century represented by the image. Select ‘open new tab’ so that you can move between the different centuries easily – I’m not trying to teach anyone how to suck eggs here, its just that this is all a bit of a learning process for me, so I’m guessing that there’re others out there like me who haven’t quite got this whole intuitive thing yet and prefer some instructions.
The Eleventh Century was dominated by the Norman Conquest and the key year that everyone knows is 1066.
5 Jan 1066: King Edward the Confessor dies.
1100
The Twelfth Century saw civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda followed by the rule of the Plantagenets and the ascent of the Angevin Empire. They reigns of King Richard the Lionheart and King John are most closely associated with the legend of Robin Hood.
1200
The Thirteenth Century saw Magna Carta and the beginning of the Wars of Independence between England and Scotland.
1300
The Fourteenth Century saw the start of The Hundred Years War and the Black Death. Chaucer started out on his political career and in Europe there was a papal schism.
1400
The Fifteenth Century saw the deposition of Richard II, the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses. Double click on a the image to open a new window.
1500
The Sixteenth Century is the Tudor century with the Dissolution of the Monasteries; the Reformation and Counter-Reformation; Henry VIII and his six wives; the Spanish Armada and Shakespeare.
1600
The Seventeenth Century sees the Stuarts on the throne; the union of the Scottish and English crowns; ship tax; the English Civil War; the Commonwealth, the restoration; the Great Fire of London and the Glorious Revolution.
1700
The Eighteenth Century brings two Jacobite uprisings and the Industrial Revolution and that’s just a start.
1800
The Nineteenth Century sees the expansion of Britain’s Empire and the reign of Victoria as well as the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Waterloo.
1900
The Twentieth Century saw the mechanisation of war and changing concepts of society and the individual as well as the decline of empire and Britain’s traditional industries.