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Edward was succeeded by William, who became Duke of Normandy at a mere 7 years of age. Edward had allegedly promised the throne of England to William, who used a 7,000-strong army to take it by force from Harold Godwinson.
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Papermaking methods slowly spread and evolved from the earliest Chinese papyrus sheets.
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The first literary references to Robin Hood appear in a series of 14th- and 15th-century ballads about a violent yeoman who lived in Sherwood Forest with his men and frequently clashed with the Sheriff of Nottingham. Rather than a peasant, knight or fallen noble, as in later versions, the protagonist of these medieval stories is a commoner.
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The Magna Carta, or "Great Charter," was written by Archbishop Stephen Langton. King John of England (1199-1216) was forced into "signing" it, but he did not give a signature, merely his seal.
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The ninth and last major Crusade to the Levant occurred in 1271-2, although other armed attacks in Europe were also called Crusades. After a long series of losses in Palestine, there was little morale left for further adventures in Palestine.
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The bubonic plague, or the Black Death, claimed the lives of over 2/3 the population of Europe in just two years. The plague was spread by fleas common on the street rats.
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Chaucer never finished his enormous project, and even the completed tales were not finally revised. Scholars are uncertain about the order of the tales.
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The houses of Lancaster and York were represented by red and white roses, respectively, in a series of dynastic wars fought between supporters of two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet for the throne of England.
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The Middle English of Le Morte D'Arthur is much closer to Early Modern English than the Middle English of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. If the spelling is modernized, it reads almost like Elizabethan English.
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Henry VII used Parliament to bring in his taxation payments and at the same time kept over-taxation charges away from himself--a sure way to encourage rebellion.
