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There were a number of Englishmen of this century whose names live on. There was Stephen Langston, one of the great men of the early century, a builder of rights against royal, baronial and at times ecclesiastical pretensions. And there was Hubert de Burgh, a defender of the monarch but a solid champion of the rights of all Englishmen. It was a period of increased papal demands but these were resisted by Robert Grosseteste, scholar, scientist and saint, who anticipated Wycliff. It was the time of Simon de Montfort, who led the baronial revolt and of Roger Bacon, who described the magnetic needle and reading glasses and predicted such things as the steamship and airplane. He is usually given credit for the invention of gun-powder, although there is no concrete evidence of this and we have noted that the Chinese had it in the 11th century. (Ref. 260 )

Cambridge and Oxford universities were founded but all books were in Latin and there were few of these. By the end of the century London was a city of 40,000 people even though England was still 90% rural. There were 8,000,000 sheep in the country, more sheep than people and there was sheep cheese on every table. In spite of this, there were repeated famines throughout the century. Coal was mined at Newcastle for the first time in this period. By the end of the century all Jews had been expelled from England. (Ref. 49 , 57 , 211 , 8 , 170 , 222 )

Scotland

By this time the Scottish nobility had been largely Normanized. All through the first half of the century there was poverty, war with England and war with Norway over the Hebrides, but Alexander III (A.D. 1249) at last established friendly relations with England and gave Scotland a temporary golden age of prosperity and peace. He had become king at the age of eight, with the actual ruler for the first six years being Walter Camyn, Earl of Menteith. Becoming of age, Alexander tried to buy the Hebrides from King Haakon of Norway but was laughed at and then subjected to an attack on the Firth of Clyde by the Norwegian navy. A great storm destroyed most of that fleet and Haakon had to retreat. Three years later, by the Treaty of Perth, Man and the Western Isles were given to Scotland for a monetary arrangement. (Ref. 170 )

At Alexander's death, in the absence of direct male heirs, his granddaughter, Margaret, the Maid of Norway

Alexander had managed to marry his daughter, Margaret, to Eric, son of King Magnus of Norway, and this child was their offspring. (Ref. 38 )
became a child queen in 1286, with six guardians to govern in her name. All but one of these were of Norman descent. In 1290 she left Norway for Scotland, only to die on the way, and this paved the way for a great Scottish civil war over the succession with both Robert Bruce and John Balliol contesting. There was chaos for two years until Edward of England put the Norman John Balliol (formerly de Ballieul) on the throne as a vassal puppet for England. When Edward attempted to completely subdue the Scots, as he had previously successfully done with the Welsh, he met fierce resistance led by William Wallace and Robert Bruce, in multiple, bloody battles. Wallace was eventually hung, drawn, beheaded and quartered in the lovely fashion of the English of that day. After humiliating and slaughtering many Scottish people, Edward I even captured his puppet king, John, in 1296, and for 10 years Scotland had no king. Although under British domination, Scotland still remained, in a sense, free and was actually more disposed toward France, a situation which continued intermittently for some 300 years. What had once been forts or fortified villages now became trading burghs, as a mercantile and agricultural economy replaced the ancient pastoral tribalism. Of incidental interest is the fact that leprosy was rampant in Scotland at that time. (Ref. 49 , 170 )

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Source:  OpenStax, A comprehensive outline of world history. OpenStax CNX. Nov 30, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10595/1.3
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