Lesson video

Hello.

Welcome back to history here at Oak National Academy.

I'm Miss Barnett and thank you for joining me for lesson three of our inquiry into what the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine can teach us about who had power in the Middle Ages.

We are now going over halfway through our inquiry and today's lesson is going to be focused on Eleanor's role in the Great Revolt.

So, this is our title for today.

Please use this opportunity to make sure you've got a pen, pencil and paper in front of you.

Pause here to give yourself time to get the title, making sure that you've got capital letters in the same place that I have.

And then, when you're done, un-pause the video and we'll get started.

Okay, everyone.

So, we are going to start off our lesson today by doing a recap of Eleanor's narrative so far.

We've already covered quite a substantial amount of her life, and so before we add anymore information in, we are going to recap some of the key points from lessons one and two.

Now, I have picked five key events here from her narrative.

These five key events here are next to the bullet points on the right-hand side, but they are not in chronological order.

Chronological order means in time order, so this narrative of her life is jumbled up.

So, to start off today's lesson, what I would like you to do is to un-jumble these events and to put them into time order.

You can, if you want to, like I've done on the left-hand side, turn this into a flow diagram, with arrows between each one, or you can just do it as a list of five events, but you need to make sure you're getting them in the correct order, so earliest event first, through to the last event at the end.

So, I'd like you to pause the video here to complete that task, and then when you're done, un-pause the video and we'll go through the answers together.

Okay, everyone, welcome back.

So, let's have a look then at Eleanor's narrative so far, to make sure we've got these key events in the right order before we add in anymore information.

So, the first event we should have on our list is that she inherited Aquitaine.

She was 13 when this happened, but of our list of five, this is the first thing we should have.

So, give yourself a big tick here if you've got it correct.

Pause here though if you need to change the order and amend anything.

The second event from these five is that she married Louis VII, King of France.

We know this is a very interesting marriage, but this happened quite soon after she inherited Aquitaine.

The third event in our narrative, you'll see in my box, it's slightly shorter, 'cause I couldn't fit it all in, so sorry about that, is that she went on crusade and publicly disagreed with her husband while she was there.

So, this was Louis' crusade to the Holy Land, that Eleanor joined him with, and while she was there, they had a very public disagreement about what should happen next.

So, it's very clear that their marriage wasn't a great match and they.

Oh, I'm not going to say, actually, it's the next one.

They end up annulling the marriage between Louis and Eleanor, and then she marries Henry and moves to England.

So, this is our fourth event, which makes our final event her returning to Aquitaine to rule as Duchess alone.

This was in 1168 and was one of the last things we looked at in lesson two.

So, please pause the video here to check your answers.

Give yourself a big pat on the back if you've got five out of five.

If you need to amend anything or make any tweaks, then please do.

I always recommend doing it in different colour, just so you can see where you got things a bit wrong, so you remember them for next time.

But, it's entirely up to you.

But, please use this opportunity to pause and make sure you've got these five in the correct order.

If you are all happy and you've got five out of five, then, firstly, great job, well done, and we are going to move on.

Okay, so let's revisit this timeline then, that we've looked at for a couple of lessons now, which just kind of puts the information we've been looking at so far into order, so we can see whereabouts we're up to.

So, Eleanor was born around 1123, she dies in 1204.

Lesson one covered Eleanor's marriage to King Louis.

And, we then know that Eleanor goes on to marry King Henry II of England.

We can see from this timeline, their marriage goes on for quite a substantial amount of time, through to 1189, but we're not quite there yet.

So, today's lesson is where this pink arrow is.

We're going to be focusing on the events of 1172 through to 1174 for today's lesson, constantly thinking about this inquiry question.

What can the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine tell us about who held power in the Middle Ages? We've done two lessons so far, looking at her life, we're now onto lesson three, we're constantly thinking, well, what does this part of Eleanor's life tell us about who held power? So, always thinking back to this question.

Now, we're actually going to think about this image to start off our new content for today.

Firstly, have a really quick look at this and have a think, what can you see? Okay, now I'm going to give you four questions to focus your attention even further.

I want to know, why is this person kneeling? Why is this person wearing a crown? Why is this person wearing a crown? And, what's happening with this book? So, I would like you to pause the video here, have a think through your answers to these four questions, and then when you think you've got answers for those four questions, un-pause the video and we'll go through some of them.

Okay, welcome back, everyone.

So, interesting image here.

Let's think through the answer to these four questions and see if we can work out what's going on.

So, let's start with the order the questions came up.

Why is this person kneeling? Now, generally, in images from this time, if you are kneeling, it puts you lower than someone else.

And, this tends to be a position that people adopted if they were trying to show respect to the person who's higher than them.

So, this person kneeling on the floor is beneath the height of the person sat in the chair.

And, the purpose of this is just to show that the person in the red, kneeling, is showing respect to the person sat in the chair.

Now, this image develops somewhat when we think about the fact that the person kneeling is wearing a crown.

And, we don't often expect people wearing a crown to be kneeling beneath the height of others.

But, what we can infer from this, and when I say infer, kind of make an educated guess, so if this person is wearing a crown, he is likely to be a king, certainly someone of power and of influence, and this kind of adds another dimension to this image.

Particularly when we think about the other person who's wearing a crown.

We're now referring to the person in blue here, and they're also wearing a crown.

So, these two people are of equal status, and yet we have one kneeling and lower than the other, paying respect to the other person.

And, the book is designed to be there to be, it's a Bible and is designed to be there for the person who's kneeling to swear this respect and loyalty to the other person on, to make it kind of very official when you're swearing on the Bible.

Now, this event has a particular name and this is called homage.

Now, homage is when you show your respect to someone by praising them publicly.

And, this can often also involve swearing an oath of loyalty to that person, promising that you're not going to betray them or go against them.

And, this is what we can see happening in this image here.

We normally associate paying homage with people of different status.

So, normally we would see a person of a higher status being paid homage by someone of a lower status, the person who's kneeling.

But, what we can see from this image is that it often happened between people of equal status.

We can see this here, because we've got two people wearing crowns.

We've got one king paying homage to another king and publicly respecting them.

Now, the reason we're talking about homage and this idea of swearing an oath of loyalty is because, in today's lesson, we're going to be looking at two examples of that, and both examples anger and annoyed Eleanor quite significantly.

So, let's have a look at example number one.

Now, example number one is connected to an area of France called Toulouse.

Now, I've done a big, pink arrow, pointing out here.

You can see that it's quite close to Aquitaine, which we know are Eleanor's lands.

And, Eleanor has a very distant claim to Toulouse.

When we talk about a claim, this means that, a claim to the land, a claim to be in charge of the land.

And, it comes through her grandmother.

It's not a very strong claim, but it is there.

And, throughout Eleanor's life, people have tried to fight the rulers of Toulouse on her behalf.

So, firstly, King Louis declared war on Toulouse.

Excuse me.

And then, King Henry does the same.

Both of these, because Eleanor has this claim.

The problem is that it causes tension in the south of France.

We've got two significant territories potentially fighting each other.

And, by 1173, Henry decides that it's not a good atmosphere to have in the south of France and he decides that rather than seeing the Duke of Toulouse as an enemy, as someone who owns lands that Eleanor could have, Henry decides that, actually, they should rebuild the relationship between the royal couple and the Dukes of Toulouse.

And, what happens in 1173, without consulting Eleanor, without asking Eleanor what should happen, is that King Henry II organises a meeting with the Duke of Toulouse and, at this meeting, the Duke of Toulouse pays homage to King Henry II, and also, Henry, Duke of Normandy, who was the royal couple's eldest son at this point.

Now, I want you to think about, why would this homage from the Duke of Toulouse to Henry the II and Henry, Duke of Normandy anger Eleanor? Why would Eleanor be annoyed by this homage? Surely, it would calm things down in the south of France and mean that she would not have to worry about potential battle on her lands, but actually angers her.

So, I want you to pause the video here and have a think.

Why would this anger Eleanor? Okay, so let's think about this then.

The claim to Toulouse is Eleanor's claim.

It's Aquitaine's claim.

And yet, the homage is paid to King Henry II of England and Henry, Duke of Normandy.

There is no homage to Aquitaine.

There is no promise of loyalty or public praise of Aquitaine, which is who the argument is with.

And so, Eleanor feels angry and annoyed that her husband has negotiated this homage that misses out her, but also, more importantly, her lands.

And, Aquitaine is overlooked and there is a potential concern that Aquitaine is losing some of its independence, is being absorbed into Henry's lands, rather than it being seen as Eleanor's lands.

So, she's quite concerned by this action in 1173.

Now, Eleanor is not the only person to be annoyed with Henry II at this point.

And, Henry's sons are increasingly becoming annoyed with him.

Now, unfortunately the royal couple's eldest son, William, had died by this stage.

Remember from lesson two, we talked about the dates in red are the dates of their birth and dates of their death, and so their eldest son, William, died aged three.

This then makes their second eldest son, Henry, I know, some confusion, becomes the eldest and the heir.

Now, to help us distinguish between the two Henrys, we're going to refer to the father as Henry II, he was the King of England and he was Henry II, and what we're going to refer to son Henry as is Henry the Young King.

This was a name he was referred to at the time and this is because he was believed to take over, he was going to be king after his father died and as well as that, he actually has a mini coronation, so he's crowned king before his father has even died.

So, we are going to refer to the two Henrys, dad Henry's Henry II and son Henry is going to be called Henry the Young King.

Now, the three sons we're focusing on in particular then are Henry the Young King, Richard and Geoffrey.

And, these are the three who are angry with their father.

Now, as these three grew up, Henry promised certain parts of the Angevin Empire to them.

And, if we remember from lesson two, Angevin Empire is the name given to the combined lands of Henry and Eleanor.

Henry the Young King was heir to the throne, so it was expected that he would take over England.

He also became Duke of Normandy, like his father had been, so he was given, or promised, Normandy as his territory.

Richard became the Duke of Aquitaine, so he was the heir to Eleanor's lands.

And, we also have Geoffrey.

Geoffrey isn't given land specifically, he marries into the lands of Brittany in France.

He has control over them.

But, ultimately, they are all given some territory.

Now, the problem is that these promises of land actually encourage these three sons to become a bit greedy.

And, whilst they're promised these lands, Henry II doesn't give them much control over these lands.

So, the three sons have these lands in their names, in their titles, but they don't actually have any real control in these areas and it makes all three of them quite annoyed with their father.

Why would you give us these territories, but not give us any control over them? Don't you trust us? Don't you think we'll do the right thing? And so, there is some tension between the sons and their father.

This tension bubbles over when Henry II promises some castles to his youngest son, John.

He is on the very right-hand side here.

Now, the problem with this is that Henry the Young King believed that these castles were rightfully his.

And, this seems to be the spark that turns the sons' annoyance with their father into outright aggression and wanting to attack their father.

So, rather then, Henry the Young King, speaking to his father and saying, I thought those castles were mine, Henry the Young King instead decides to plot a revolt against his father.

He travels to Paris, he meets the King of France, remember, who is Louis, Eleanor's first husband, and he, with the King of France, plots a revolt against his dad.

He is annoyed that Henry has given him no real control or authority, and now, he's taken some of the castles he though were his, given them to his younger brother and that's enough.

So, he plans a big revolt to get his dad off the throne, so he can take power.

And, Richard and Geoffrey join this revolt.

They're also really annoyed with their dad, and so they also travel to Paris to join this rebellion.

So, this is the start of the Great Revolt in 1173.

We have three of Henry's surviving sons in open revolt and rebellion against their father and also supported by the King of France.

Now, before we look at anymore new information, we're just going to check our key knowledge here, okay? So, four statements.

We did a true or false in lesson two, so we are going to look at these four statements, you are going to work out if they are true or false.

You're going to pause the video to do that.

And then, once you've got your answers to them, you're going to un-pause the video and we're going to see if they are correct.

Okay, welcome back, everyone.

So, let's talk through these four statements, then see how we've done.

So, statement number one, Eleanor returned to Aquitaine in 1168.

This is indeed true.

So, from lesson two, we learnt that her youngest child, John, was born in 1166 and after that, she gradually returns to Aquitaine and starts to take control again.

For statement B, Eleanor had a claim to Normandy, this is false.

So, she instead had a claim to Toulouse.

It wasn't a very strong claim, but it was a claim nonetheless.

For statement C, homage is when you borrow money from another person, this is false.

Homage is when you publicly praise another person and this often involved swearing an oath of loyalty to that person.

And, finally, statement D.

Henry II and Eleanor's sons plotted against their father.

This is true.

We looked at, in the video, a moment ago, the anger from Henry's sons directed towards him about territory and not giving them enough power or control.

This bubbles over into an outright revolt against him, supported by the King of France.

Four out of four? Well done.

Okay, so let's have a think then.

This is obviously a difficult situation.

Let's think about Eleanor.

Her sons have decided to rebel against their father, her husband.

What would we expect Eleanor to do? What would have been expected of Eleanor? Okay.

Normally, it would be expected that she would support her husband and side with her husband.

However, Eleanor joined her sons in rebelling against Henry.

Really interesting position for her to take, certainly very unusual.

The punishment, at this time, for going against the King, because obviously her husband is the King, is execution, so she obviously is aware of this, but still decides to side with her sons in the rebellion against Henry.

We know that she was annoyed with Henry.

He still had control of the army and money of Aquitaine and she hadn't been happy about the Duke of Toulouse paying homage to him and not to Aquitaine, but this is still a very bold move, to join her sons.

Now, she is captured really early on in the revolt.

She's travelling to Paris to meet her sons there, when Henry's soldiers capture her.

So, she plays a very, very tiny role in the revolt, because she is captured very early on.

The revolt continues without her and lasts for 18 months.

And, the key outcome of that is that Henry II was victorious, he defeated his sons.

This rebellion had spread from France into England, Henry successfully crushes the revolt in both countries and he's able to show his power and dominance through doing this.

What's interesting is about how Henry then reacts to the people involved in the revolt.

Now, remember, this revolt was started by Henry the Young King, annoyed by his father's actions.

Henry II forgives his sons.

And, this is where the second example of homage comes in, that we talked about towards the beginning of this video.

His sons have to pay homage to him and they have to swear an oath of loyalty to their father.

And then, they are forgiven and there is no further punishment.

Eleanor, however, is imprisoned for 16 years.

Remember, she's captured at the beginning, she doesn't really participate in the revolt, but her betrayal of her husband is seen to be so significant that Henry imprisons her for 16 years, whilst their sons, who had fought against their father, are forgiven.

So, very different reactions from Henry II to the Great Revolt.

Now, we're going to flesh this out a bit more, with our reading from today's lesson.

So, in a second, you're going to pause the video and you're going to go away and read the worksheet, which is going to narrate this in more detail than I have done so far.

And then, once you've read through, you're going to answer these five questions.

Remember, they should be done in full sentences, so that means including the question in the answer.

So, for question one, in what ways did Henry II still control Aquitaine in 1172? For question two, why would the homage between the Duke of Toulouse and King Henry II have annoyed Eleanor? For three, why did Henry the Young King begin a revolt against his father? For four, why was Eleanor's involvement in the Great Revolt unusual? And then, for question five, kind of three parts to question five.

I want to know what the outcomes of the Great Revolt were for Helena, Helena? That's them combined, isn't it? Maybe that's how I should refer to all of them going forward.

Henry and Eleanor's sons, Henry II and Eleanor.

So, pause the video here, read the worksheet, answer the questions in full sentences and then, once you're done, return back here and we're going to go through some answers.

Okay, welcome back, everyone.

So, we now know the Great Revolt in a bit more detail.

Let's check our answers together.

As always, I recommend a green pen, but it can be any colour, ideally just a colour different from the one you've written in to add or amend to your answers.

And, as well as that, remember that my answers won't be written exactly the same as yours, we just need to check that you've got the key details.

So, for question number one, in what ways did Henry II still control Aquitaine in 1172? As always, I've got an acceptable answer and a good answer.

We're going to go straight to the good answer because, by now, you guys are constantly writing good answers.

So, by 1172, Henry II was still in control of the taxes and the army in Aquitaine.

Pause here if you need to add anything to your answer in your green or other colour pen.

If you're happy with your answer and it's got the key details, we are going to look at question two.

Why would the homage between the Duke of Toulouse and King Henry II have annoyed Eleanor? So, straight to the good answer.

There had been tension between Toulouse and Aquitaine, due to Eleanor's claim to the land.

The homage between the Duke of Toulouse and King Henry II, however, overlooked Eleanor and Aquitaine.

It could be argued, Eleanor and Aquitaine were losing their autonomy.

Now, autonomy is another word for independence.

So, the argument here is that Eleanor is annoyed that herself and Aquitaine were kind of just absorbed into Henry's control and Henry's lands and they weren't having their own independence anymore.

So, pause here to add anything or tweak anything.

If you're happy that you've got the key details in your answer, we're going to look at question three.

Okay, why did Henry the Young King begin a revolt against his father? So, good answer, Henry the Young King had become power-hungry and greedy.

When his father gave his younger brother, John, three castles that he believed were his, Henry the Young King decided to try and overthrow his father and take his crown.

Again, pause here if you need to tweak or amend anything.

The rest of us are going to look at question four.

Why was Eleanor's involvement in the Great Revolt of 1173 to 1174 unusual? So, Eleanor's involvement in the Great Revolt was unusual, as it was expected that wives would support their husbands.

Also, her husband was the King of England.

To go against the King could result in execution.

'Kay, pause here if you need to tweak or add anything to your answers.

If you're happy, let's look at question five.

So, this was the one with three parts.

I wanted to know the outcomes of the Great Revolt for Henry and Eleanor's sons.

So, their sons were eventually forgiven by their father after they swore their loyalty to him.

The outcome of the Great Revolt for Henry II himself was that Henry II showed how powerful he was as King by crushing a rebellion in England and Normandy.

And then, finally, the outcome of the Great Revolt for Eleanor was that Eleanor was imprisoned for 16 years for her betrayal, losing her political influence in England.

So, last opportunity here to pause, add anything to this particular answer or to rewind if there's anything you need to add in.

If you're happy with all of these answers, we're going to do another revisit to our inquiry question.

So, we keep coming back to this, we should know this now off by heart.

What can the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine tell us about who held power in the Middle Ages? We're now at the end of lesson three, so we've covered quite a significant chunk of Eleanor's life.

Obviously, in this lesson, we've looked at a shorter period, but a lot happening, and some of the outcomes of this too, imprisoned for 16 years.

So, we are going to think about what examples we have got to help us answer this inquiry question, which we're going to be looking at in more detail in lesson four.

So, when we thought about this in lesson two, we did it as a scale and I got you to write up one sentence, explaining your opinion.

Now we're at the end of lesson three, we are going to reflect on all three lessons and we're going to think about what examples we've got for both sides of the argument.

Now, one side of the argument is that Eleanor and her life and her actions did challenge the traditional ideas on who had power and that some of the things she did showed that people from different backgrounds could have power and influence.

The other side of the argument is that Eleanor and her life and her actions didn't challenge traditional ideas on who had power.

She was just a standout woman who was unusual for the time, but in reality, kind of things stayed the same.

So, we're going to think about what examples we've got for either side of this argument.

So, in a second, you are going to pause the video and you're going to write down these two headings.

You can do it as a quick table, if you wish, or you can just do two lists underneath these headings.

You are going to think back across lessons one, two and today's lesson, lesson three, and you're going to try and come up with three examples for either side, that support the statement.

Now, some of you may be really confident and know what you're doing, and so if you're one of those people and you want to have a go at this completely independently, then you're going to pause the video here and have a go at it on your own.

If you are not quite so confident and you just want a bit of help with some examples, then in a second, on the screen, a variety of different examples from lessons one, two and today are going to come up and you're going to sort them into your different headings.

But, before we get to that stage, make sure you've got these two headings written down.

If you've got these two headings written down, then here are your possible examples.

So, pause the video here and you're going to sort three of them onto the left-hand side, so this is the heading about how she did challenge traditional ideas, and then you're going to find three of these examples that support the idea that she didn't challenge them, and pop them on the right-hand side of your list.

So, pause here to complete that task.

Okay, welcome back, everyone.

So, let's have a think through this then.

Here's my model.

I've put three on either side.

For those people that did have a look at the examples, you'll notice that I haven't used all of them, 'cause I was doing the same task as you and went with three of them.

I'd also like to point out that these are not the definitive or the only correct answers that you may have, so if you have got some on your list that aren't here, that doesn't mean that they're wrong, it's just that, obviously, if we think back to this slide, I've put one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, I think there's 10 there and I've only included six here, so you may have some that I haven't included, but I've put it here as potential examples.

So, you could argue that she did challenge traditional ideas because she retained control of Aquitaine in her own right throughout her life.

You could argue she challenged traditional ideas of who had power by her journey on the crusade.

That was very unusual.

It wasn't expected that queens would go.

And, the example from today's lesson about her joining the Great Revolt against Henry, her husband.

However, on the other side, you could argue she didn't challenge traditional ideas, because none of the charters between 1156 to 1167 of Aquitaine included her name, and so she has lost some of her power and influence there.

On top of that, when she does start to take back power, Henry kept control of the army and taxes.

And then, finally, the example from today's lesson, her involvement in the Great Revolt led to her imprisonment for 16 years, which lost her her political influence in England.

So, pause here if you want to use any of these examples in your own, or to kind of tick any of them off.

We're not developing this any further for today's lesson, we're just thinking about sorting our examples into either side, so we're not writing this up, but we will be using some of these examples in lesson four, for when we revisit the inquiry question for the final time.

So, in lesson four, we're going to wrap up Eleanor's life, we're going to be thinking about visiting that inquiry question one more time and having a go at tackling what we can learn from Eleanor's life about who had power in the Middle Ages.

So, I look forward to you joining me for lesson four very soon.