- •Contents
- •Предисловие
- •Методическая записка
- •Britain in ancient times. England in the Middle Ages.
- •1. The Earliest Settlers
- •Celtic borrowings in English
- •Latin borrowings in English
- •3. The Anglo-Saxon period
- •The origin of day names
- •4. The Danish Invasion of Britain
- •5. Edward the Confessor
- •1. Beginning of the Norman invasion
- •2. The Norman Conquest
- •3. England in the Middle Ages
- •Church and State
- •Magna Carta and the beginning of Parliament
- •4. Language of the Norman Period
- •5. The development of culture
- •First universities
- •1. General characteristic of the period
- •2. Society
- •Peasants’ Revolt
- •3 Economic development of England
- •Agriculture and industry
- •4. Growth of towns
- •5. The Hundred Years War
- •6. Wars of the Roses
- •7. Pre-renaissance in England
- •Geoffrey Chaucer
- •William Caxton
- •Music, theatre and art
- •Assignments (1)
- •1. Review the material of Section 1 and do the following test. Check yourself by the key at the end of the book. Test 1
- •2. Get ready to speak on the following topics:
- •III. Topics for presentations:
- •The English Renaissance
- •1. General characteristic of the period
- •2. The Great Discoveries
- •3. Absolute monarchy
- •4. Reformation
- •5. Counter-Reformation
- •6. Renaissancehumanists
- •Elizabethan Age
- •1. The first playhouses
- •2. Actors and Society
- •3. London theatres
- •4. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
- •5. Shakespeare and the language
- •1. The reign of James I
- •2. Strengthening of Parliament
- •3. Charles I and Parliament
- •4. The Civil War
- •5. Restoration of monarchy
- •6. Trade in the 17th century
- •7. Political parties
- •S 8. Science, Art and Music cience
- •J 9. Literature ournalism
- •Assignments (2)
- •I. Review the material of Section 2 and do the following test. Check yourself by the key at the end of the book. Test 2
- •II. Get ready to speak on the following topics:
- •3. Topics for presentations:
- •Britain in the New Age. Modern Britain.
- •1. The Glorious Revolution
- •2. Political and economic development of the country
- •3. Life in town
- •4. London and Londoners
- •5. The Industrial Revolution
- •6. The Colonial Wars
- •7. The Development of arts
- •8. The Enlightenment
- •1. Napoleonic Wars
- •2. The political and economic development of the country
- •3. Romanticism
- •4. Art and artists
- •5. Victorian Age
- •Victorian Literature
- •1. The beginning of the century
- •2. Britain in World War I
- •3. Social issues in the 1920s
- •4. The General Strike and Depression
- •5. The Abdication
- •6. Britain in World War II
- •7. Britain in the post-war period
- •8. The fall of the colonial system
- •9. The Falklands War
- •10. Britain in international relations
- •11. Britain’s economic development at the end of the century
- •12. Social issues
- •13. 20Th-century literature
- •14. The development of the English language Changes in the language
- •In recent decades the English language in the uk has undergone certain phonetic, lexical and grammatical changes:
- •The spread of English. Variants of English.
- •Spelling differences
- •Phonetic differences
- •Lexical differences
- •Grammatical differences
- •Assignments (3)
- •I. Review the material of Section 3 and do the following test. Check yourself by the key at the end of the book. Test 3
- •II. Get ready to speak on the following topics:
- •III. Topics for presentations:
- •Cross-cultural notes Chapter 1
- •1. Iberians [aI'bi:rjRnz] – иберы/иберийцы (древние племена, жившие на территории Британских островов и Испании; в III–II вв. До н.Э. Завоеваны римлянами и романизированы.
- •Chapter 2
- •Chapter 3
- •Chapter 4
- •16. William Byrd [bR:d], Thomas Weelkes ['wi:lkIs], John Bull [bul] – Уильям Бэрд, Томас Уилкис, Джон Булл – английские композиторы конца XVI и начала XVII в. Chapter 5
- •8. Dark Lady – Смуглая Леди, незнакомка, часто упоминаемая в сонетах у. Шекспира. Chapter 6
- •Chapter 7
- •Chapter 9
- •Key to Tests
- •Электронный ресурс:
- •119454, Москва, пр. Вернадского, 76
- •119218, Москва, ул. Новочеремушкинская, 26
Peasants’ Revolt
In 1381 the impoverished peasants and townsmen revolted. Sixty thousand people led by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw marched from Essex and Kent to London. They besieged the Tower of London where King Richard II and his court had found refuge. Central power was paralyzed. The rebels destroyed the Royal Courts, several prisons, killed the king’s men, beheaded the archbishop of Canterbury and nailed his head to the gates of the Tower. On June 14 the rebels met the king at Mile End, in the suburbs of London. Wat Tyler handed Richard their demands which later became known as the ‘Mile End Programme’. Richard, who was only 14 years of age at the time, met all their demands. He abolished the ‘Labourers’ Statute’ and serfdom. Part of the rebels left the place, bearing the king’s charters which granted them freedom. But the more radical part remained and continued the talks on the following day, in Smithfield. It was there, in Smithfield, that the leader of the revolt, Wat Tyler, was treacherously killed. The rebels were dispersed and punished. Over 100 of them were hanged. But as a result, serfdom was practically done away with by the end of the 14th century. It paved the way to a new social system.
3 Economic development of England
Already
between the 12th
and the 14th
centuries, new economic relations began to take shape within the
feudal system. The peasants were superseded by the copy-holders, and
ultimately, by the rent-paying tenants. The crafts became separated
from agriculture, and new social groups came into being: the poor
townsmen (artisans and apprentices), the town middle class and the
rich merchants, owners of workshops and money-lenders. The peasants
who wished to get free from their masters migrated to towns. The
village craftsmen travelled about the country looking for a greater
market for their produce. They settled in the old towns and founded
new ones near big monasteries, on the rivers and at cross-roads.
Agriculture and industry
In the late Middle Ages, England’s wealth was its land. Farming and cattle breeding were the main rural occupations. Corn and dairy goods were the main articles of agricultural produce.
England’s most important industry, textiles, was also based on the land, producing the finest wool in Europe. By 1300 the total number of sheep in England is thought to have been between 15 to 18 million.
As the demand for wool and cloth rose, Britain began to export woollen cloth produced by the first big enterprises – the manufactures. Landowners evicted peasants and enclosed their lands with ditches and fences, turning them into vast pastures. Later, Thomas More wrote about the sheep on pastures: ‘They become so great devourers and so wylde that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves’. (The phrase is often quoted in Russian as “овцы съели людей”.) In English history this policy is known as the policy of enclosures.
Other industries were less significant in creating wealth and employing labour, although tin-mining in Cornwall was internationally famous.
The new nobility, who traded in wool, merged with the rich burgesses to form a new class, the bourgeoisie, while the evicted landless farmers, poor artisans and monastic servants turned into farm laborers and wage workers or remained unemployed and joined the ranks of paupers, vagrants and highway robbers.
Wool trade
Trade extended beyond the local boundaries. The burgesses (the future bourgeoisie) became rich through trading with Flanders, the present-day Belgium. The English shipped wool to Flanders where it was sold as raw material. Flanders had the busiest towns and ports in Europe and Flemish weavers produced the finest cloth. Flemish weavers were often invited to England to teach the English their trade. However, it was raw wool rather than finished cloth that remained the main article of export. All through the period Flanders remained England’s commercial rival.
As the European demand for wool stood high, and since no other country could match the high quality of English wool, English merchants could charge a price twice as high as in the home market. In his turn, the king taxed the export of wool as a means of increasing his own income. Wool trade was England’s most profitable business. A wool sack has remained in the House of Lords ever since that time as a symbol of England’s source of wealth.
European contacts
London merchants derived great incomes from trade with European countries, as London was one of the most important trading centres in Europe. It had commercial ties with the Mediterranean countries as well as the countries of Northern Europe. (See Map 8.) With the beginning of crusades the demand for oriental goods increased. Every year Venetian ships loaded with spices and silks sailed through the Straight of Gibraltar and up to the English Channel on their way to Flanders. But before they reached Flanders, they always called at ports on the southern coast of England. English merchants bought luxurious oriental goods and sold them again at a high profit. Particularly profitable was the trade in spices, which often cost their weight in gold.
As England traded with the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, an important sea route ran across the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Hull, Boston, Dover, Newcastle, Ipswich had long been important trade centres.
The merchants of the Hanseatic League as well as traders from the Baltic states and Flanders settled in London, Hull and other English ports. Closer contacts with the Continent meant more goods available for exchange. In the 14th century, the list of imports was considerably increased. From France England imported wines, salt and building stone for castles and churches; a greater quantity and variety
Map 8
(From S.D. Zaitseva. Early Britain. Moscow, 1975.)
of cloths and spices was brought from the East. In its turn, England exported wool, tin, cattle and lead. At first, the bulk of the export trade was in the hands of the Venetian and Flemish merchants, but with the growth of trade at the beginning of the 14th century, more than half the trade fell into the hands of English merchants.
During the 14th century English merchants began to establish trading stations called ‘factories’ in different places in Europe. Often they replaced the old town guilds as powerful trading institutions. In 1363 a group of 26 English merchants who called themselves the Merchant Staplers, were granted the royal authority to export wool to the Continent through the French port of Calais. In return, they promised to lend money to English monarchs. The word ‘staple’ became an international term used by merchants to denote that certain goods could be sold only in particular places. Calais became the staple for English wool and defeated rival English factories in other foreign cities. The staple was a convenient arrangement for the established merchants, as it prevented competition and was a safe source of income for the Crown, which could tax exports more easily.