Churchill's People

400 AD: Among the splendours of his palace at Eboricum (York), Roman British governor Tiberius Claudius broods on what he believes to be the end of the civilised world.

654 AD: Two powerful adversaries face each other - Penda, pagan king of Mercia, and Oswy, Christian king of Northumbria.

878 AD: King Alfred has suffered another defeat from the Danes and escapes through the Athelrey swamps to the safety of Odda's Hall. Disguised as a minstrel, Alfred enters the headquarters of the Viking invaders but his conversation with Chieftain Guthrum unsettles the Danes.

1042: Godwin, Earl of Wessex, summons Edward from out of his exile in Normandy to wear the Crown of England. But the apparent security of Godwin's Anglo-Saxan policies is disrupted by Edward's partiality for a French connection and Rome-orientated religious tendencies.

1066-1070: Forest laws bring about a climax between the Saxons and the Normans.

1160: In Norman England a man could will his movables to his kin and friends but only the next heir could inherit his land paying the overlord for the privilege. When old William de Secqueville dies he has two heirs - one is his daughter Mabel, by a disolved marriage, and the other is his nephew Richard. Egged on by his wife Maud, Richard pursues a dogged course through the courts of the new King Henry to prove Mabel illegitimate.

1191: King John is brought to his knees and signs the Magna Carta.

1265: A runaway peasant accidentally witnesses a meeting between King Henry III and his chief Baron Simon de Montfort. Their argument indicates that only by a confrontation of arms between the monarch and his noble will their differences be settled. The paths of Earl Simon and Ranulf cross again at the battle of Leves where the King is defeated by Simon's forces.

March 1296: The story of William Wallace, a rough Lanarkshire knight who strikes a blow for Scottish liberty by destroying the town of Lanark and its English Sheriff. The vision and zeal of Wallace rallies the dispirited commons of Scotland and the English are defeated at the battle of Stirling Bridge, but King Edward I takes charge of the retaliation which follows.

1381: Revolt in East Anglia when the peasants are pressed beyond endurance by taxes and misgovernment by inexperienced King Richard II. Bishop Henry is sent to quell the risings.