Historian Michael Wood delves through medieval court records to follow the fortunes of a village in Hertfordshire and, more particularly, the family of peasant Christina Cok. The 14th century was a perilous time in British history, shot through with famine, plague and war. It was a time of climate change, virulent cattle diseases and, above all, the Black Death. But it was also the time when modern mentalities were shaped, not just by the rulers but increasingly by the common people. It was the beginning of the end of serfdom, the growth of individual freedom and the start of a capitalist market economy. Michael chooses an everyday story of a medieval country family through which to illustrate the bigger picture of how the character and destiny of ordinary British people was being shaped. It is history told not from the top of society but from the bottom – and especially through the eyes of the forgotten Michael brings to life the story of a 14th-century extended family: peasant Christina Cok, her father Hugh, estranged husband William, and her children John and Alice. Michael shows us that though their lives might at first seem quite alien, you only have to scratch below the surface to find uncanny connections with modern-day Britons. In them, you can see our beginnings as a nation of shopkeepers and the roots of the British love affair with beer and football. Perhaps more importantly is the triumph of that sturdy and cussed streak of individualism that has been a characteristic of ‘Britishness’ down the centuries.
Take Away: As you watch this video you should be asking yourself if things are different in any real way from the feudal days of the middle ages. Just as today the law is used more to obfuscate and thwart rather than attain justice. The critical fault of the left today is its religious belief in the power of government. Yet is it not clear that government is used more to enslave than any other single function? Can you imagine what the governments at the time would have been able to do with a database? The english have been steeped in bureaucracy for a millenia. Now that is hard to fathom. I am forced to posit that mankind can not thrive in this circumstance and that the world was fortunate many other regions were free from this sort of government. As we enter an age of every last bit of the world coming under the unwanted embrace of bureaucracy how will the spirit of mankind react ? It is a dower grey fog that looms ahead of mankind.
0 Comments