Summary of Thomas Asbridge's The Greatest Knight

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 William Marshal, the boy who was executed by King Stephen of England in 1152, began his life as the hostage given over to the crown as surety for his father’s word. He was a pawn in the great game of power and politics then being played out within a realm wracked by civil war.
#2 The English kingdom was in the grips of a ruinous fifteen-year conflict between King Stephen and his cousin Empress Matilda. With the collapse of crown authority, local warlords were left to impose some semblance of order, and this was often abused.
#3 The Norman invasion of England was successful, and the Anglo-Saxon society was not as uniform as it seemed. The ruling elite had a wealth of resources, and the country was ripe for exploitation.
#4 The night of 25 November 1120, William Ætheling, the seventeen-year-old heir to the throne of England, threw a raucous, wine-soaked party. The next morning, two planks in the starboard hull shattered, and the princely craft began to take on water. Within minutes, everyone had drowned.

Sujets

• Medieval
• Histoire
• Edad Media
• Middle Ages
• History
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822544741
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Thomas Asbridge's The Greatest Knight
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

William Marshal, the boy who was executed by King Stephen of England in 1152, began his life as the hostage given over to the crown as surety for his father’s word. He was a pawn in the great game of power and politics then being played out within a realm wracked by civil war.

#2

The English kingdom was in the grips of a ruinous fifteen-year conflict between King Stephen and his cousin Empress Matilda. With the collapse of crown authority, local warlords were left to impose some semblance of order, and this was often abused.

#3

The Norman invasion of England was successful, and the Anglo-Saxon society was not as uniform as it seemed. The ruling elite had a wealth of resources, and the country was ripe for exploitation.

#4

The night of 25 November 1120, William Ætheling, the seventeen-year-old heir to the throne of England, threw a raucous, wine-soaked party. The next morning, two planks in the starboard hull shattered, and the princely craft began to take on water. Within minutes, everyone had drowned.

#5

The sinking of the White Ship was so calamitous because it deprived Henry I of his only legitimate male heir. The king had never had a problem fathering offspring, but his voracious sexual appetite prompted one contemporary to conclude that he was enslaved by female seduction.

#6

The Anglo-Norman aristocracy was extremely sexist, and did not want a female monarch. Empress Matilda’s claim was supplanted by Stephen of Blois, a grandson of William the Conqueror through the female line.

#7

Stephen, the brother of Empress Matilda, was crowned king of England in December 1136. He quickly gained control of the royal treasury and the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the English Church, crowned and anointed him king.

#8

The first test of Stephen’s leadership abilities came in 1136, when a rebellion broke out in the far south-west of England. Stephen moved quickly to quash the insurrection, but his leniency was criticized by the king’s supporters.

#9

The conflict between Stephen and Matilda was a destructive and intractable internecine conflict that lasted for fourteen years. It was marked by some extraordinary twists in fortune, and punctuated by acts of fortitude and folly.

#10

The History of the Abbey of Wherwell states that John Marshal fought on behalf of Matilda’s forces near the nunnery at Wherwell in 1141, and when overwhelmed by enemy numbers, took sanctuary within its abbey church. King Stephen’s supporters set fire to the entire structure, and John was burned alive.

#11

The author of the History of William Marshal, who did not like John, wrote that he built castles and used them to impose his own tyrannical authority over the land, extorting money and property from the Church.

#12

Robert FitzHubert, a mercenary, was captured by John Marshal and his men. He was thrown in a narrow dungeon to suffer hunger and tortures, and was hanged like a common criminal.

#13

John, however, was not the hero of the civil war. He was merely an ambitious minor nobleman who was willing to exploit the turmoil around him to climb the ladder. He had a wife in Adelina, but he was able to divorce her and marry Earl Patrick’s sister Sybil.

#14

The medieval world was a dangerous place, and parents were aware of this. They knew that their children might die before adulthood, and they used this to their advantage by not caring about them.

#15

The emotional landscape of the Middle Ages is difficult to reconstruct, as the sources we have are biased towards dealing with the more dramatic events in life. However, it seems that parents experienced a deeper and more profound sense of sorrow at the loss of an only or sole surviving child.

#16

The blind man was avenged when the castle’s castellan cut off his own testicles. The castellan had mutilated the prisoner’s only son, and the blind man vowed he would never have another son.

#17

The story of the father who threw himself over the battlements to save his son is a example of how much parents would sacrifice for their children in the Middle Ages. It was believed that the father’s love for his son was so great that he would do anything to save him, even if it meant death.

#18

In 1152, at the age of five, William was violently interrupted in the last gasp of the civil war. The ferocity of the conflict had abated in the late 1140s, as it became clear that the deadlock between Stephen and Matilda would not be broken by force alone.

#19

John Marshal, the second Earl of Pembroke, overstepped his mark and came into direct conflict with the faltering king. He built a new fortified outpost, and King Stephen marched on Newbury to lay siege to it. The lightly provisioned castle was under the command of its constable, John’s son William.

#20

The author of the History of William Marshal, who was writing many years after the events he described, said that John had no time for the idea of peace and that this put the child’s life in danger. But he still stated that John did not care about the child since he still had the anvils and the hammers to forge even finer ones.

#21

The boy, William Marshal, was the sole survivor of the siege of Newbury. He was returned to his family after the war, but John Marshal avoided capture and escaped to France. The History of William Marshal, which was written by his son, noted that his mother was overjoyed to see him.

#22

John Marshal looms large in the memory of his son, William. He is remembered as a father who was distant, but there is a sense that he left an imprint on the boy. His image was seared into the verses of the History of William Marshal, a text which often relied on William’s own memories.

#23

The first years following William’s release from captivity passed in relative peace, as England moved beyond the destructive era of civil war. The truce agreed at Winchester held and, for a brief time, King Stephen was able to reassert some semblance of royal authority within his realm.

#24

William was the second son of a minor Anglo-Norman noble, and was expected to live a relatively comfortable life but achieve little distinction. He did take the title Marshal, which would be his brother’s for decades to come.

#25

John’s son, William, traveled to France to seek an honorable reputation. He left his family behind, and they were extremely distressed. His future lay in Normandy, 150 miles to the south.

#26

William Marshal came to Normandy to join the Tancarville household. He had come to acquire skill at arms, and eventually join the ranks of Europe’s new military elite by becoming a knight.

#27

Knights were a crucial part of the Middle Ages, and they were central to the popular conception of the period. However, the concept of knighthood only began to emerge in the second half of the eleventh century and it remained in its infancy even as William Marshal grew towards manhood.

#28

Themesn was the retinue of knights who gathered around a lord. In many cases, the knights in a noble’s mesnie became like members of his extended family. The sense of an intimate community was conveyed by the word mesnie because it derived from the Latin term mansio.

#29

The concept of the mesnie, which was a group of knights who were in the pay of a single lord, was crucial in shaping William’s idea of knighthood. The preudhomme was the ideal warrior, and William wanted to be like that.

#30

The life of a knight was largely influenced by the Christian faith in the medieval era. Knights were prone to anxiety, being forced to fight and shed blood, yet they were aware that this violence was inherently sinful in the eyes of the Church.

#31

The crusades had a profound effect on the concept and practice of knighthood, and this impact was still being felt in the 1160s. Knights were expected to participate in a crusade, mirroring the achievements of their forbears.

#32

The medieval legend of King Arthur was constructed in the 1130s by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a monk of Celtic-Norman birth. His History of the Kings of Britain blended thin traces of reality with a fantastical, romanticized vision of the past.

#33

William Marshal spent his time at Tancarville in training to be a knight. He developed many of the skills that would set him apart in later life, such as the abilities that enabled him to rise through the ranks to become a distinguished warrior.

#34

The hub of any aristocratic community was the great hall, where they would gather each day for a communal meal. Young William participated in these assemblies, and was seated at the top table.

#35

William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, and the Normans shaved a large section of their hair back then. By the 1160s, the new Angevin royal dynasty was setting the pace, and Henry II preferred a simple, close-cropped hairstyle.

#36

The art of war was William’s first passion, and he spent six years at Tancarville training to be a professional warrior. He had to learn to deal with the brutish rigours of combat, as well as the three essential skills of martial horsemanship, hand-to-hand combat, and fighting in medieval armor.

#37

The horse was a primary marker of knightly status, and knights were typically expected to own at least three different types of horses. The best stock was deemed to be Arabian, and mounts of this type were carefully reared and conditioned.

#38

The sword was the most important of these weapons, and it played a central role in the ritual of knighting. It was a symbol of knighthood, and the ability to use it well came to be associated with the elite warrior class.

#39

The equipment used by knights in the 1160s was unique, a