WHAT ANNIVERSARY ?

The 7^th April has brought to mind a few items that have intrigued, and led to other areas of interest. In trawling through historical events, I felt drawn, for reasons I cannot explain, to centenaries. Why the 100^th anniversary of an event should make it significant is itself a mystery, yet we seem to have a strange attraction to celebrating 50’s, 100’s, 150’s etc. In the case of sovereigns it appears that any excuse for a jubilee of some sort, to mark what is thought to be a significant anniversary, is in order; silver, gold, diamond (some tomes suggest that diamond is for 75 years, while others suggest 60 years, and still others state 30 years – whatever suits, I suppose).

In any event I have been looking over semicentennials, centennials, sesquincentennials, bicentennials, and so on. In doing so, I was leafing through British History, A chronological Dictionary of Dates. To my surprise I found there was no entry at all for the year 1172. I admit this date, being 840 years ago,  is not strictly speaking a 50^th or 100^th, it is strange that nothing worth putting in a dictionary occurred in that year, even although in was quite a significant period of British history.  Thomas Becket had been assassinated on the 29^th December of 1170. Shrines were erected, miracles performed rebellion was brewing from Scotland and Ireland, and there was no official Archbishop of Canterbury until Richard of Dover was made Archbishop on the 7^th April 1174.

Richard was a medieval Benedictine monk. Employed by Thomas Becket immediately before Becket's death, Richard arranged for Becket to be buried in Canterbury Cathedral and eventually succeeded Becket at Canterbury in a contentious election. Much of Richard's time as archbishop was spent in a dispute with Roger de Pont L’Evêque, the Archbishop of York over the primacy of England, and with St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury over the archbishop's jurisdiction over the abbey. Richard enjoyed better relations with King Henry II of England than Becket had, and was employed by the king on diplomatic affairs. Richard also enjoyed the trust of the papacy, and served as a judge for the papacy.

Looking further back, some other Archbishops of Canterbury had a tough time. 1000 years ago in the year 1012, the Danes raided Kent, set fire to Canterbury Cathedral and took Archbishop Alphege prisoner. He was held at Greenwich. On the 19^th April, during a drunken feast, the Danes brutally murdered Alphege. Apparently Thorkill the Tall, head of the Danish army, was so disgusted by his troops brutality in murdering Alphege, that he changed sides and brought 45 ships into King Ethelred’s service. Politics, what can one say?

The Archbishopric of Canterbury goes back 1,415 years to the year 597 when it was established by Augustine.

Another anniversary of significant note, in my view, was 650 years ago in 1362, when English became the official language in Parliament and the Law Courts instead of French. In the year 1300, the English Law Courts were organised into three parts: the King’s Bench, the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of the Exchequer. The little matter of the Norman Conquest brought the French Language into the administrative and Judicial systems. The Pleading in English Act of 1300 (36.Edw.III.c.15) (the 36^th year of the reign of Edward III, chapter 15) was enacted. Latin still remained the preserve of the clergy.

It was also in the year 1362 that William Langland’s Piers Plowman was written/published.