In this world, there are some blessed people who are able to pick up a history book, read a chosen section, and remember practically every detail: dates, names, places, everything. For the less fortunate, however, this is not the case. No matter how many times a passage from a historical book or article is read, one inevitably ends up forgetting the key facts.
All this said, I personally do have an incredible talent for remembering words from songs I have probably only heard once in my life, or lines from a poem. It was for this reason that we put together this very useful poem about the history of England. Whilst it does not recount every event that took place in the course of Britain's history, it does have the most important dates, historical figures, and occasions … (as well as being extremely tongue-in-cheek!)
The History of England
Julius Caesar attempted invasion in 55 and 54,
Augustus threatened but did no more,
Claudius came in 43,
Into Kent and the south country,
The Iceni tribe, when the ruler had died,
Was left to his daughters and Boudicca his bride,
The Romans ignored this, they flogged and abused,
And, understandably, Boudicca was not amused.
An army of 100,000 men she found,
And destroyed London, St. Albans, and burnt Colchester to the ground,
Boudicca, she slaughtered, but the Romans came through,
And after the Battle of Watling, her last breath she drew.
Hadrian decided to build a wall,
73 miles long and 15 foot tall,
To protect the Brits from the raiding Scots,
And the wall’s still there today, minus a few odd rocks.
St. Alban, he lived a few years on,
And though pagan gave help to a priest on the run,
He converted and wore the priest’s cloak in his stead,
And the Romans took him and chopped off his head.
Constantine became emperor in 306 AD,
A truly great Roman who brought unity,
He became a Christian and protected the faith,
And his mother, St. Helena, kept The True Cross safe.
In 367 the Picts, Scots, and Saxons,
Invaded the south and fought the Romans,
They murdered, enslaved, and were so very rough,
That the Romans said: “That’s it, we’re off, we’ve had enough!”
The ages were dark, or so they are called,
When with the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons civilisation stalled,
But these times they brought saints and heroes to the plate,
Like Augustine, Patrick, Bede, and Alfred the Great.
The Vikings arrived ready for war,
They raped, pillaged, and worshiped Thor,
When they marched for the South, they were unprepared,
For Alfred to win and their king to be spared.
Guthrum the Dane, as Alfred did plan,
Ruled East Anglia after being baptised, Aethelstan,
Alfred translated books for his people’s sake,
Improved the navy, and burnt some cake.
When Ethelred bribed the Danes with gold,
He wasn’t ready, or so we are told,
For them to invade and demand more,
He petulantly cried: “Oh what a bore!”
In 1002, St. Brice’s day,
He said: “Kill ‘em all! Let none get away!”
But Swine Forkbeard came in style,
And Ethelred was forced into exile.
In 1017 old Canute was king,
He was fair, it’s true, but rather demanding,
Edward the Confessor was next in line,
A sweet old man but he couldn’t make up his mind,
Both William and Harold fought to be king,
And in 1066 came the Battle of Hastings,
William’s lot fought without fear,
And Harold got poked in the eye with a spear.
William, he conquered this Saxon power,
Demanding loyalty, and land, and building London’s tower,
He ordered a list of every man and child,
And in 1086, the Domesday book was compiled.
Pope Urban II called for a crusade,
As the pilgrims and Holy Lands needed to be saved,
After William and Henry came a nineteen-year fight,
When Stephen stole the throne, which was Matilda’s by right.
Then in 1154 we had Henry II,
A king who made a terrible mess and,
Of his friendships it’s known how he did wreck it,
When he called for the death of Thomas Á Becket.
Richard the Lionheart was Henry’s son,
And, as a crusader, was second to none,
His brother John was quite a plotter,
Treacherous and cruel and a treasonous rotter.
When he became King, the people nearly lost hope, Especially when he angered the Pope,
It was fortunate that his barons were smarter,
And in 1215 he signed Magna Carta.
Edward and the Scots had a tiff or two,
With battles at Falkirk and Stirling to name but a few,
There was William Wallace and Robert the Bruce,
Until finally they agreed a truce.
First came a plague and then a revolt,
And, when the peasants went marching, Wat Tyler was smote,
Then the hundred-years’ war was a bit of a lark,
Apart from the bit where we burnt Joan of Arc.
The War of the Roses in 1455,
Went on until Henry VII took a wife,
We have been told, that before that occured,
About the reign and terror of wicked Richard III.
Well the truth is that Richard was loved in his day,
A jolly nice fellow, all his relations would say,
But the Tudors were ruthless, and put about the lie,
That Richard was the reason two little princes had died.
Henry VIII was crowned in 1509,
And was, sadly for England, another swine,
Any woman he looked at must have felt dread,
As there was a good chance she would soon lose her head.
In his time on the throne, he caused an uproar,
Like the time he killed St. Thomas Moore,
First he married his brother’s wife,
Then Anne Boleyn, though she lost her life.
Henry changed the church, the Pope was demoted,
And Henry died fat and bloated,
Then little Edward, a sickly boy,
Reigned a while with little joy.
Although she was but a teen,
Lady Jane Grey became Britain’s first queen,
After Mary, Elizabeth ruled without fear,
In a time of Drake, Raleigh, and William Shakespeare.
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots,
Was involved in endless plots,
Elizabeth tried to have this refuted,
But in the end had Mary executed.
Sir Francis Drake was playing bowls,
When the Spanish came, so the story goes,
They fought hard but he fought harder,
And with Howard defeated the Armada.
The pilgrims left on the Mayflower,
And Raleigh spent thirteen years in the tower,
At the time of James, another Prot,
Who was almost killed in the gunpowder plot.
Charles I was kind and good,
Though he was, it’s true, much misunderstood,
When he dissolved parliament, it made them rebel,
Leading to that man, Cromwell.
England’s civil war cost her dear,
A fight between Roundhead and Cavalier,
It led to her greatest sin,
When Cromwell killed her rightful king.
The Commonwealth lasted about nine years and a half,
And those puritan times weren’t a barrel of laughs,
When Charles II was brought back from France,
It was a time of wine, women, and dance.
Then came a plague, and then The Great Fire,
Then Titus Oates, that awful old liar,
Then James II, though he was deposed,
As he was Catholic, so parliament proposed,
To put William on the throne in 1688,
Along with Mary, causing quite a debate,
As he was Dutch, and I think you’ll agree,
That it was rotten to make the real king flee.
Next came Anne, then George the First,
And in English, this Hanoverian wasn’t well versed,
There was the war of Spanish Succession and The South Sea Bubble,
Then that Bonnie Prince Charlie caused a bit of trouble.
In 1721, Walpole our first prime minister,
And the Battle of Culloden was a bit sinister,
A seven years’ war, and Georges’ 2 and 3,
The latter who took the role a bit more seriously.
There was an industrial revolution where progress roamed free,
And some careless Colonists who spilt some tea,
America became independent, and the French became mean,
When they had a revolution and killed her king and queen.
And now, we come to a time close to our heart,
Even though it features that dreadful Bonaparte,
For you see it gave us Nelson and Wellington too,
And triumphs at Trafalgar and Waterloo.
Meanwhile, old George III, he went mad,
And his son became Regent, and he was quite a lad,
A bigamist and fool, it’s hard to defend,
The one described in: “And who’s your fat friend?”
Yes, those were the words of Beau Brummell,
Ah, that was a dandy, but boy he was swell,
With Almack’s and Whites and fashions we’ll praise,
And if you don’t stop us, we’ll go on for days!
The Regent was crowned in 1821,
And after him William, as he didn’t have a son,
Changes to corn laws and Catholic relief,
And in 1829, Robert Peel formed the police.
Victoria became queen and India’s Empress,
She’s known for her long reign and perpetual black dress,
For Albert her husband had died very young,
When he caught typhoid in 1861.
Disraeli and Gladstone as leaders were smart,
And we had Turner and Constable to give us great art,
The Brönte’s and Dickens, over their books we still cry,
And Elgar and Tennyson, they both make us sigh.
But grim times were ahead as the Irish lost their spuds,
And, in 1854, the Crimea cost much blood,
With wars over Opium, and Boer 1 and 2,
Afghan and Maori and even Zulu.
Edward VII was next to be king,
Then George, whose reign was very interesting,
To ignore the Romanovs must have caused him regrets,
And dismay at the Titanic and Suffragettes.
In 1914, the Great War began,
And killed too many in the four years it ran,
With Douglas Haig commanding and Lloyd George too,
And Kitchener pointing, saying: “Your country needs you!”
Edward VIII was next in line,
But it wasn’t for him and it made him whine,
He said, stamping his foot and causing much strife,
“I abdicate the throne for Simpson, my wife!”
So George VI took over the role,
And the stress of it all on him took its toll,
The Second World War began in 1939,
And Churchill was a leader with steel for a spine.
There is much to be said of our years at war,
The Blitz, Dunkirk, the Dambusters and more,
The Yanks, they helped us as we fought to survive,
And we were finally victorious in 1945.
After 70 years on the throne, Elizabeth died in 2022,
And many a book is written on all that she went through.
Wars in Iraq, the Falklands and even her own home,
But what is in store for King Charles is as yet unknown.
And now of our history we’ve come to an end,
This land of ours, we love enough to defend,
Times are hard now and they make us heartsore,
But this England, this Albion, will rise up once more.
Excellent poem Alyssa, enjoyable while imparting lots of information😀