England’s greatest hero
In England, and probably Britain, we have a strange regard to the heroes. Possibly because of the influence of Shakespeare, and probably because of the abiding strength of Victorian historians, many people are unable to look further than our monarchs for heroes. The shadow of Shakespeare’s fictionalisation of Henry V is long. The field is narrowed considerably by the fact that so few women have held power in the last thousand years.
It was only in the Twentieth Century that some revision began,
as different heroes presented themselves, and a study of history based on
research and fact rather than embroidered hearsay emerged. A modern view of
heroism began to include commoners – great people who were remembered for
action, not status. A look at who graces our banknotes in the Twenty-First Century
is instructive.
In recent times a reassessment of colonial history and
the sins of empire have already started to further refine our pantheon of
heroes, removing some and adding others. For all the achievements in his long
life, perhaps Winston Churchill’s legacy is not as certain today as it was
fifty years ago. The administrators of India such as Clive and Canning are
already resigned to the murky backwaters of what Britons can accept as the face
of our shared history.
Another distortion of the way history is considered is that
some eras are obsessed over at the expense of others. It is a fault of history
teaching in England that there is such focus on the Tudor dynasty – a nasty,
corrupt and short-lived episode in our story. As both World Wars ebb from living
memory, our obsession with the valour of its combattants and its subsequent distorting of our idea
of our place in the world continues. The time between the Second World War and
today is nearly the same span as that war to the Crimean, but one look at our
newspapers would make you think it is only twenty years ago. That is not to
denigrate any of the great sacrifice of the wartime generation, and the lessons
learned should continue to be taught to our children – the evidence of
forgetting them has been painfully obvious in recent times. But to focus so
much on it sidelines important understanding of the European revolutions, Napoleon,
Catherine the Great, the land grab of North America and so many other events we
really should know much more about.
In a time when the whole notion of what it means to be
English, or British, or European, is up for grabs and there is a great
narrowing of understanding and appreciation of the history of our islands, the
longer view is as important as it has ever been. The tired old assumptions of
island power, unconquerable realms and Victorian daring-do persist. Who can possibly
understand what it means to be English when England as a kingdom has not
existed for over three hundred years? How can we get a sense of the fractured,
uncertain and ever-changing historical
landscape when a large number of people still believe England has remained unbeaten on the field of battle since 1066? It’s the same tunnel vision that helps
football fans to believe that England are somehow still world beaters when there
is only one world championship winning team in seventy years of trying.
Enter a real hero, untainted by modern nationalism, unadopted
for political capital, and from a period of history so little explored that
nearly all of it is educational. You won’t find his name in school history
books, and his name does not appear at the airport book stands alongside the
habitual subjects worshipped by Antonia Fraser and Alison Weir.
His name was William Marshall. He was not a king.
However, his achievements are so impressive that he ought to be on page one,
pushing Henry VIII and his boring wives well down the national conversation.
The most recent book about his long life was written by
Thomas Asbridge in 2014. If you really want to pick up lots of information
about an unglamorous but fascinating corner of English history (and French,
Welsh and Irish history for that matter) then I advise you to start here.
Asbridge has written a book that is so readable that it is a pleasure to move
from chapter to chapter. He is one of a new breed of historians who do not need
to semi-fictionalise his writing to sell copies.
The achievements of William Marshall are so lengthy that
it is difficult to summarise theme briefly. Some statistics begin to do him
justice: he served five anointed Angevin monarchs from Henry II to Henry III.
He was almost executed by King Stephen at the age of five, as a hostage and
bargaining chip. He travelled to the Holy Land. He was the greatest Tournament
Champion of his age and was known throughout Western Europe for his prowess. He
was the only man to better Richard the Lionheart in single combat. He was a
servant of monarchs for fifty years, and lived into his seventies in a time
when most men were dead at forty. At the age of seventy he led the charge intobattle to protect the interests of the boy king Henry III – and won.
The eye-opening facts keep coming. Starting out as the
undervalued son of a minor landowner, his service caused him to rise first to
knight, then to personal retainer of the son of the king, to regent of England
and guardian of the realm. All through those years of service, he retained an
amazing knack for steering a careful political course that largely avoided
falling from favour for any of the five monarchs he served, and to be respected
on all sides of the many turbulent events of the late Twelfth and early
Thirteenth Centuries.
Near the end of his life, he was instrumental in the
construction of the Magna Carta and its successful re-writing and employment.
This is the kind of hero who should be discussed in the
Twenty-First Century. If nothing else, a study of his life and times will teach
people just how fragile and impermanent our place on these islands has always
been. It will add to our understanding of the ties that have bound England to
Normandy and France for centuries, and why that is still important. The place
of Wales and Ireland in our island history also has important roots in Marshall’s
times, and some of his actions have echoes many hundreds of years later.
He is a hero from a time of different values and
understanding of the world, but he remains a hero because of his honesty,
faithfulness and service. His story deserves to be known by everyone who wants
to know about English history. His example needs to be heeded by those who
attempt to lead us today.
