Anglistika (ispitna pitanja)

EARLIEST TIMES
1. Around 700bc the Celts probably came from central
Europe or from southern russia. They were tehnicaly
advanced and new how to work with iron and could
make better weapons than the people who used
bronze.
The Celts are important in British history because
they are ancestors of many of the people in Scotland,
Wales, Ireland and Cornwall today because of their
culture and langauges. They were successful farmers
and traders.
2. The Romans, under Julius Caesar first came to Britain
in 55bc and stayed untill AD 409. The Romans
established roman british culture across the southern
half of Britain. They brought the skills of reading and
writing to Britain, so after a time a number of town
dwellers spoke Latin and Greek with ease. The
Romans built towns (with stones which had planned
streets, market, shops) and roads that connected the
towns.
They also built strong wall along the northern border,
named after the Emperor Hadrian which kept raiders
from the north and also marked the border between
two later countries, England and Scotland.
3. The Germanic tribes, The Saxons, Angles and Jutes
came from the land we now call Germany, after AD
430. The newcomers were warlike and illiterate.
4. An English monk named Bede, who lived 300 years
later, wrote about Germanic tribes and their conquest
in his book Ecclesiastical History of the English
People, which has proved generally correct.
5. The Saxons created institutions which made the
English state strong for the next 500 years. One of
these institutions was the Kings Council, called the

Witan. By the 10th centuary the Witan was the formal

body, issuing laws and charters. It was at all
democratic, because the king could decide to ignore
the Witans advise.
6. The king who made most use of the Church was
Alfred, the great king who ruled Wessex at the end of
9th century. He used the literate men of the Church to
establish a system of law to educate the people and
to write down important matters.
7. The Saxon king, Ethelred, decided to pay the Vikings
to stay away. To find the money he set a tax on all his
people, called Danegeld or Danish money. It was
the beginning of regural tax system which would
provide money for armies.
8. Towards the end of the 8th century, new raiders,
Vikings, came from Norway and Denmark. They burnt
churches and monasteries and in invaded Britain.
They quickly accepted Christianity and did not
disturb the local population.
King Alfred fought the Vikings and succeeded in
making a treaty with the Vikings. Viking rule was
recognised in the east and north. In the rest of the
country Alfred was known as king.
9. Christianity came to Ireland in about AD 430. The
beginning of Irelands history dates from that time
because for the first time there were people who
could write down events. Christianity was spread in
Ireland by a British slave, Patrick, who because the
patron saint of Ireland. The period is often called
Irelands golden age.

10.
Scotland was populated by fur groups of people.
The main group, Picts, lived in the north and northeast. They were different from Celts because they
inherited their rights, their names and property from
their mothers, not from their fathers.

Scots, were Celtic settlers from Ireland. The third group

were
the Britians who inhabited the Lowlands.
Finally, there were Angles from Northumbria.

11.
The first Christian mission to Scotland had come
in about AD 400. Later, in 563, Columba, a
missionary, knows as the Dove of the Church came
from Ireland. Through his work both Scots and Picts
were brough to Christianity. He even, so it is said,
defeated a monster in Loch Ness.

The early middle ages

1. In 1066 William the Conqueror defeated English in
the battle of Hastings and crowned himself as the
king of England. He gave occupied land to his lords
and knights and nobles. All the others lost
everything. He sent a team of people all through
England to make a compleat ecomonic survey: how
much land was there? Who owned it? How much was
it worth? How many families, ploughs and so on. This
survey was the only one of its kind. The facts were
written down in the The Domesday Book.
2. Henry II Matildas son,( who was Henry I daughter
and Willian the Conqueros grandaugher), was the
first unquestioned ruler of the English throne for a
100 years. He distroyed the castles which many
nobles had built, without royal permission. He was
ruler of far more land than any privious king. He
actually controlled a greater area than the king od
France. However, Henry quarrelled with his beautiful
wife and his sons Richard and John. Unfortunately, he

died a broken man, disapointed and defeated by his

sons and French king.
3. Henry II was followed by his rebellious son, Richard I,
who has always been one of Englands most popular
kings. He was brave, and a good soldier, a true
lionheart. Richard was everyones idea of perfect
feudal king. He went to the Holy Land to make war on
the Musleums and he fought with skill, courage and
honour. In 1199, Richard was killed in France.
4. Richard, Lionshear had no son, and was followed by
his brother John. John made himself unpopular with 3
most important groups of people: the nobles, the
merchants, and the Church, because he was greedy.
John took many cases out of lords courts and tried
them in the kings courts, taking the money for
himself. (eg. When the lords daughter was married,
for enhariting lords land and so on). He also
quarrelled with the pope over who should be the
Archbishop of Canterbury.
5. Johns son, Henry III heavy spending, upset the
nobles. Once again they acted as a class under the
leadership of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. In
1259 they took over the government and elected the
council of nobles. De Montfort called it a parliament.
This parliement took control of the treasury. The
towns supported the nobles, wishing to be free of
Henry heavy taxes.
6. Simon de Montforts council, a parliament, included
only nobles. Henry III son, Edward I, was the first to
create a representative institution, which could
provide the money he neeeded. This institution
became the House of Commons. Unlike the House of
Lords it contained a mixture of gentry (knights and
other freeman) and merchants from the town.
7. According to the legend, Robin Hood lived in
Sherwood Forest near Nottingham as a criminal or
outlaw. He stole from the rich and gave to the poor.

His weapon was not the sword of nobles and knights,

but the longbow, the weapon of the common man.
Most of the story is legend. The only thing that we
know is that a man called Robert or Robin Hood
was a wanted criminal in Yorkshire.
Later the story was changed, Robin Hood was
discribed as a man of noble birth, whose land had
been taken by King John.
8. Guilds were brotherhoods of different kinds of
merchans or of skilled workers. Memebers paid
towards the cost of the brotherhood. The merchan
guilds grew in the 13th century and included all the
tradors in any particular town. At least one hundred
guilds existed in the 13th century. In some cases enrty
was only open to the sons of guild members. In other
cases members had to pay a fee to cover the cost of
the training or apprenticeship.
9. In England two schools of higher learning were
established, the firstat Oxford and the second at
Cambridge, at the end of the twelfth century. Thus
becoming the intellectual leaders of the country.

THE LATE MIDDLE AGES (ended 1485)

1. Edward III and his eldest son the Black Prince (14 th
century) were greatly admired in England for their
courage on the battlefield and for their courtly
mannars. They became the symbols of the code
of chivarly. The way in which a perfect night
should behave. The perfect night fought for his
good name if insulted, served god and the king,
and defended any
lady in need.

2. The terrible plague, known as the Black Death,

reached almost every part of Britain during 13489. Probably more tha one-third of the entire
population died.
3. After the100 Years war with France the
discontented nobility were divided between those
who remained royal to Henry VI, the
Lancastrians, and those who supported the Duke
of York, the Yorkists. Much later, in the 19 th
century the novelist Walter Scott named these
wars the Wars of the Roses because Yorks
symbol was the white rose and Lancastians were
red one. The Wars of the Roses nearly distroyed
the English idea of kingship forever. These wars
were a disaster for the nobility, which nearly
destroyed itself. Almost half the lords of the sixty
noble families had died in the wars.

4. The writers helped in the re birth of the english

literature. William Langland, a priest in his poem
Piers Plowman gives a powerful discription of the
times in which he lived. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote
The Canterbury Tales in which he describes a
group of pilgrims travelling from London to the
tomp of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. During the
journey each character tells a story.
5. William Caxston set up first english printing press
in 1476. He had learned the skill of printing in
Germany. At first he printed popular books, such as
Chaucers Canterbury tales and Malorys Morte
dArthur. Caxstons printing press was as dramatic
as for his age as radio, television and technological
revolution are for our own.

TUDORS

1. the century of Tudor rule (1485-1603) is often

thought of as a most glorious period in English
history.
Henry VII built the foundations of the wealthy
state and a powerful monarchy. He firmly
believed that war and glory were bad for
business and that business was good for the
state. He avoided quarrels with Scotland and
France. Henry had more power and more money
than earlier kings. He forbade anyone, except
himself to keep armed men. He also rased taxes
for wars. The only thing on which he was happy
to spend money freely was the building on
ships.

2. Henry III kept a magnificent court and made the

Church in England truly English by breaking
away from the Roman chatolic church. He tried
to persuade the pope to allow him to divorce his
first wife, but faced with the popes deniel. In
1531 Henry persuaded the bishops to make him
head of church in England. Thus, england
become a politically a protestant country. Henry
closed 560 monasteries and other religious
houses. Henry died in 1547 leaving behind him
Mary, later the queen of Scotland and Elizabeth
who became one of the most famous and
successful.
During the Tudor age England experianced one
of the greatest artistic periods in its history.
Unlike his father, Henry III was cruel, wastefull,
wasteful with money and interested in pleasing
himself. He wanted England to hold the balance
of power between two giants Spain and France.
He spent much money on maintaining
magnificent court in this serious financial crises,

Henry needed money. One way of doing this was

by reducing the amount of silver used in coins.

3. Elizabet I became queen in 1558. She wanted to

make England prosperous. She made protestant
Church part of the state machine. By the end of
the 16th century most english people believed
that to be a Catholic was to be enemy of
england.

4. Playwrights like Cristopher Marlowe, Ben

Jonson and Willian Shakespeare filled the
theathers with their exciting new plays.
Shakespear was born in Stratford-upon-Avon
1564. His plays were popular with both
educated and uneducated people. Many of his
plays were about English history