Ruling by the Book Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings

Westminster Abbey has always been where religion meets royalty.

Monarchs have been crowned on this site for nearly 1,000 years.

Through the Royal rituals held here, the medieval world lives on,

just as it does in this breathtaking architecture.

But for me, the abbey's most remarkable treasure

is something most people never get to see.

It's hidden from everyone except the occasional scholar

in the abbey library.

MUSIC: "Zadok The Priest" by Handel

This is Liber Regalis - the Book of the King.

I believe that this part of the regalia

is just as potent a symbol of British monarchy

as the orb, sceptre or crown.

It's been the basis of every coronation

since the reign of Richard II at the end of the 14th century.

Here history, art, and religion collide.

An illuminated manuscript is always much more than a book.

This is a powerful, even mystical object and for us,

it can act as a portal to the lost world of the medieval monarchy.

In this series, I'll be exploring not just the Liber Regalis,

but also the other crown jewels of illumination.

I've been given unrivalled access

to the Royal Manuscript collection at the British Library.

Few people have seen these miraculous survivors,

except the monarchs who owned them.

They were custom made for kings. They were about kings.

And they were read by kings.

I'll be exploring the world which created these manuscripts.

I'll be going to the places where they were made...

..and discovering what they reveal about the centuries of conflict

when England was forged.

It's a story of monarchy

which spans six centuries from the Anglo Saxons to the Tudors.

In this episode,

I'm starting my journey with the first kings to unite England.

I'll reveal how manuscripts gave them divine authority,

even when the reality was rather more human.

Edgar isn't the complete goody-goody that you might think he would be.

If Henry had seen some of the things

Paris was writing, he would be absolutely appalled.

I'll see for myself the unlikely origins of these beautiful objects.

Now, the finest manuscripts came from the urine of the abbot.

And I'll discover

how the ideal of an English monarchy even survived the Norman Conquest.

When the British Library began life in the 18th century,

some of its very first books were donations from the Royal Family.

Among them were some 2,000 illuminated manuscripts,

amassed by the monarchy over several centuries.

The most precious of these are hidden from public view

in a highly secure bunker, deep in the bowels of the building.

Even for an art historian like me,

this inner sanctum is normally off limits.

I've spent my working life poring over individual manuscripts,

but to be allowed in here, in the heart of the British Library,

it's almost overwhelming.

These volumes can give us unique insights

into the monarchs of the past,

from how they ran their courts,

to how they raised their children.

To discover their royal secrets, however,

you often have to dig deeper than the book's professed subject.

Take, for example, this monumental biography of Julius Caesar,

created for Edward IV in 1479.

Gosh.

I'm touching something that, more than 500 years ago,

was made for a king.

As I turn the pages,

I can imagine the hands of Edward IV himself turning them.

The book's subject matter

tells us something about this particular king's interests.

He was one of the greatest generals during the Wars of the Roses,

so would have identified

with its accounts of Caesar's military career.

Edward saw his father and his brother killed in battle

and he saw his grandfather and another brother

executed for treason.

The illustrations here mirror the turmoil

which was often part of a medieval king's life.

Because although this is a book about the ancient world,

it also reflects the era when it was made.

It says here that the manuscript is "fait a Bruges..."

made in Bruges, at the commandment

of the most excellent and victorious prince, the King Edward IV.

So Edward hasn't just bought this, he's commissioned it,

he's ordered it to be made.

It's entirely bespoke, like a Savile Row suit.

He can be certain

that there's not another book like this anywhere in the world.

He would have paid some 3,000 Flemish groats for it -

hundreds of thousands of pounds in today's terms.

It would have taken a scribe six months to handwrite the 359 pages.

And more than one artist was employed

to paint the 40 illustrations here.

These images are not just pleasing to the eye,

they're full of information

and I think they can often speak louder than the words.

Take a look at this one.

It's the first image we encounter in the manuscript.

The subject here is the birth of Caesar, which took place in 100BC.

But the people don't look like ancient Romans,

they're wearing 15th-century costume.

Images like this are hugely useful. We can look at it

and determine what was fashionable during the time of Edward IV.

The dress of the doctor for example.

The sleeves on some of the female attendants,

even these hooks at the front of the headdresses

that were used to keep them balanced, to keep them up.

These are all really important pieces of information

for the historian trying to recreate Edward IV's court.

But for the artist, including some of these contemporary details

allowed them to do something else -

to blur the boundary between the ancient past

and the medieval present.

In the border framing the story, we see Edward's coat of arms

and symbols of the house of York that he belonged to.

Edward was very aware that there were rival claimants to his throne,

so he needed to establish his lineage and his legitimacy.

I think there are elements within this image that do that for him.

Growing out from the crown,

these roses represent a stylised family tree.

If you follow the line upwards, it leads directly to the infant Caesar.

This vertical line dominates the page.

You could say, it's a line of succession.

There's so much here about royal blood.

We even have this bowl of blood here sat on the table.

It's the result of young Julius' Caesarean birth.

The red is sprinkled with gold to show it's imperial blood.

The eye connects this with all the red and gold in Edward's heraldry,

encouraging the mind to connect the two men.

So I think what this image is showing

is that there's a direct link

between one of the greatest emperors of the ancient world

and Edward IV, this medieval King of England.

Edward offers just one example

of how monarchs made use of manuscripts.

Long before HIS reign,

kings were using books to prove their legitimacy,

define their image and assert their power.

The story begins in the courts of Anglo Saxon rulers.

This was an era

when the greatest power in the British Isles was the Church

and when most illuminated manuscripts

were made in monastic settings.

These sacred artefacts radiated divine power

which would prove invaluable to the first kings of England.

This is the earliest English manuscript

in the Royal Collection at the British Library.

We can date this book - from the script

and from the remarkable decoration -

to the first half of the 8th century,

so firmly in the Anglo Saxon period,

this great period of production of manuscripts

and particularly of what we have here - the four Gospels in Latin.

I can see you're handling it without gloves.

-Now that's official British Library policy, isn't it?

-It is.

You see, as I turn the pages, I have a very good sense, feedback,

from the end of my fingers as to how hard to press on the pages,

what speed to do it at. It gives me much greater sense of control.

The book is very important to the Christian religion, isn't it?

Yes.

The early Christian church is a sort of powerhouse for creating books.

Every church, every religious house

would have had at least a copy of the Gospels

and other parts of the Bible.

But a book like this would rarely ever been seen

by the average person during this period.

And if they saw it at all,

they would make nothing of the script because they couldn't read.

What's the Royal connection with this manuscript?

Well, the Royal connection comes, if I turn another page here,

we continue the biblical text, so this is Matthew's Gospel,

but we also have, at the foot of the left hand column,

this inscription which relates to King Athelstan

who was crowned in 925.

And the inscription says,

"Athelstan the King freed Eadhelm forthwith

"as he was crowned King."

So it seems to be that this was an important statement

that he was doing this, if you like,

an act of kingly generosity right from the start of his reign.

And that's captured, it's recorded in a Biblical manuscript.

This is interesting, isn't it?

We've got this reference to kingship

in what's otherwise a functional Gospel book, isn't it?

It is. The context gives authority, links the two together.

And it's recorded for all time now.

The appearance of a king's name and deeds

in something as valued as a Gospel book is evidence of his power.

And Athelstan is a king who deserves to be remembered.

He changed the course of this island's history.

In the centuries before Athelstan's reign,

there had been a number of different Anglo Saxon kingdoms.

Through a mixture of diplomacy and war,

Athelstan united them all into a single entity.

The place he treated as capital of his new kingdom was near its centre.

Malmesbury.

These days there's little to suggest

that the Cotswolds town was once such a significant place.

But there's one big clue to its past glory -

its vast, half-ruined abbey.

This site has been used for Christian worship since 676.

As well as being a mighty warrior,

Athelstan was famously pious and he was a generous patron of this abbey.

It's also where he was buried in 939AD,

though the statue on his tomb is more recent, from the 15th century.

Amazingly though, there is an image that survives from his own lifetime.

And apart from the faces on coins,

it's the earliest surviving portrait of an English king.

He's pictured showing his devotion

to the great Northumbrian saint Cuthbert.

This image is found at the front of a religious manuscript

which Athelstan gave to a northern monastery.

I get goosebumps when I look at this image.

I'm actually looking at the face of King Athelstan.

And he's holding a book.

So here we have a book within a book. It's setting up this idea

that there's a close association between kings and manuscripts.

Whether he's depicted with them, donating them,

or having deeds recorded in them,

it seems the first King of all England needs manuscripts.

Back in the library,

another survivor from Athelstan's reign gives us more insights.

This Gospel book is again over 1,000 years old,

though its pages have been remounted more recently.

It was damaged by fire in 1731 -

you can see how it's all singed around the edges.

It acts as a reminder of how vulnerable these things are

and how lucky we are that any manuscripts survive at all.

Yet what's MOST striking is not the damage,

but how vivid and impressive this work of art still is.

Despite everything this manuscript's been through

and the passage of centuries,

the gold still really shines out of the page.

Literally illuminates.

And I suppose that's the advantage

of the pages being kept out of the light

and shut within covers all this time.

And here's the name of Athelstan.

It says he's "Anglorum basyleos",

ruler of the English and ruler of all of Britain.

This is a reminder of why he's so important.

But what reveals most about Athelstan is not the words here,

but the pictures.

The human figures are relatively realistic.

There's even some basic use of perspective.

At the time, English artists didn't work in this style,

which means this book must have come from the European mainland,

most likely the Low Countries.

I find the presence of this great Continental artwork

in English Royal hands a really inspiring thought.

It shows that the British Isles weren't some backwater,

disconnected from the rest of Europe.

Athelstan's court was welcoming

international scholars and artists with open arms.

The King's reach clearly extended

beyond the borders of the new England.

On another page, there's evidence of his foreign policy.

Here's another inscription -

"Odda Rex". Definitely not the name of an English king.

He is what would now be known as a German, Otto I.

Athelstan had many sisters and half-sisters,

and he used them as diplomatic tools,

marrying them into the different royal families across Europe.

Apparently he sent two to Otto so he could have a choice,

and he, of course, chose the most beautiful of the sisters.

What Athelstan got in return was international prestige and influence

and, most likely, he also got this manuscript as a wedding gift.

It's proof that there was more value to a manuscript

than just its contents. It could also act as a kind of currency.

Some time after Otto gave him this manuscript,

Athelstan passes it on to the monks of Christ Church in Canterbury.

He's spreading Christian learning throughout the country.

In return, the grateful monks add a poem to the Gospel book

which praises devout King Athelstan, renowned through the wide world.

Manuscripts clearly enhanced Athelstan's status.

And a strong reputation

gave him more power over his newly-formed kingdom.

Greater territory brings a lot of responsibilities.

Hand-in-hand with that, we see Athelstan using a more judicial,

bureaucratic type of kingship because he's got more to administer.

And we see him setting up an obligatory assembly

and every noble from across the entire country

has got to attend his court regularly.

We see him trying to run the economy effectively by controlling coinage,

so it really is a concerted effort

to make England function as a country as a whole.

Yes, that's definitely the impression I get

from looking at Athelstan and the manuscripts surrounding him.

He's harnessing all the language and the imagery of power.

If you're concerned for your image,

if you're concerned for the sort of reputation of your kingship,

as Athelstan was, you have a scribe to talk up your kingship,

to try to elevate and create a sense of a king

who's more than the sort of king you used to have in England.

-It's an amazing propaganda machine, isn't it?

-It is a propaganda...

You've got everything working together -

law, imagery, language all building him up.

One could argue it's no accident that we have the first image of a king

being the image of Athelstan

when he was a king who was so concerned for his image

and had to be because he was pushing forward the frontiers of kingship.

When Athelstan died in 939AD,

he left not just a united England,

but a model for how manuscripts could enhance royal image.

His successors would build on that legacy.

Just 20 years later, when Edgar the Peaceful takes the throne,

the role of King of England had evolved further.

Like his Great Uncle Athelstan,

Edgar lives on in manuscripts held by the British Library.

One is a Royal charter,

which shows clearly just how powerful a figure Edgar was,

and where he got his power from - the Church.

Gosh.

Wow. Well, we're clearly dealing

with something quite different to what we've seen before.

Every page is written in gold.

It just glistens off the vellum there.

You can only imagine what it must have been worth.

It shows me that this text

is about something, and someone, very important.

It was created by the monks of Winchester's New Minster.

At the front, they included a flattering portrait of Edgar.

And what have we here?

Another book,

held in the hand of the King, a gold book, probably this book itself.

And again we have this connection

between an English monarch and manuscripts,

the giving of manuscripts.

The book is doing the same job as the crown in this image.

It too is now a symbol of royal power.

This charter was created to commemorate

a major reform of England's monasteries in 964

in which Edgar gave more power and land to the Benedictine order.

In return, the artist of the charter

seems to have elevated the King to a near-divine status.

There's some potent symbolism going on here.

This is the first time

we've seen an English king inserted so prominently in a spiritual scene.

He's there in the centre

and, in terms of scale, he seems to be the largest figure.

And then coming after that very regal frontispiece,

we see the name of the king himself, "Edgar Rex". King Edgar.

And it's on the facing page to this Kairo,

the name of the King of Kings Christ.

So Edgar and Christ paired up alongside one another.

His image is one of pious perfection.

The reality was rather different.

Edgar made his capital in Winchester.

The city was also one of the centres of the English Church

in the 10th century.

Near where the cathedral now stands,

the scribes at the New Minster produced Edgar's golden charter,

along with many other great illuminated manuscripts of the era.

In this city, the relationship between church and state

could not have been closer.

Well, there'd be an amazing collection of buildings here.

We're actually walking over the Old Minster

which was the Anglo Saxon cathedral.

Over there is the New Minster of the charter,

the Royal Nunnery back there and, ahead of us, the Royal Palace.

-Winchester's an important place, isn't it?

-It is.

London might be a trading centre but this is really the ritual

and the religious centre of Edgar's England.

We know from the New Minster charter that Edgar's very involved

with church affairs here in Winchester. Why might that be?

Bishop Aethelwold of Winchester was actually Edgar's tutor,

so he's been indoctrinated from a young age

about his duty towards the Church.

But Edgar isn't the goody-goody that you might think he would be.

He has got a reputation as a womaniser.

Yes, and it's all sorts of women, isn't it, including nuns

and chasing them into sewers and things.

Yes, it's not the sort of relationship with nuns

that Aethelwold was anticipating!

But later stories do associate him with attempts to seduce a nun.

-Uh-huh!

-Though, admittedly, he wanted to marry her,

but when she turned him down and ran away from him,

he did agree to marry her cousin instead.

So we could look at the frontispiece as propaganda for the King's image?

Yes, that is the public view that you're being given of Edgar.

He is Christ's representative on Earth

and a figure that is bolstered by these religious connections.

In return for cleaning up his image,

the King gave the church large donations of money and land.

This mutual back-scratching is suggested by an image of Edgar

where he's literally bound together with his clergy

by another Winchester manuscript.

The boundaries between divine authority and earthly power

are increasingly blurred.

It was very much in all their interests to work together.

The kings protect the monasteries, the monasteries protect the king

but also, of course, promote his image.

Yes, that's strong here, isn't it?

Yes, very much you see here, with the King wearing that imperial crown.

And, of course, there is this parallel

between the King on Earth and Christ in heaven.

It's a really big statement about just how important the King is

and how different he is from other laymen

or indeed other rulers in other parts of Britain.

So in texts like this and the New Minster charter,

Edgar's taking a new position, isn't he?

He's referring to himself as the Vicar of Christ.

This is quite an unusual change in the idea of kingship, isn't it?

Yeah, I think there's a much more self-conscious use

of the religious role of kings. The Church is really trying to show here

that kingship is almost a sort of clerical office.

They're moving it away from the, you know, the king as a war leader.

Although the imagery of monarchy was becoming more defined,

no king at this time was entirely secure in his position.

The threat from challengers to the throne

and enemies to the kingdom was constant.

Just 40 years later, a Dane was ruling England.

Yet unlike other invaders,

Cnut is not remembered now as a violent conqueror.

Quite how he managed to integrate himself into English history

is partly explained in the pages of another book

produced at Winchester's New Minster.

This is a list of Anglo Saxon names

that's clearly been added to throughout the centuries.

We've got Leofric,

Alfric...and down here Godwin.

At its simplest,

this is a membership register

of people associated with the brotherhood at the New Minster.

But it's also a list of names that are going to be prayed for.

If your name was written into these pages,

it was believed you'd go to the front of the queue for heaven.

Because this is no ordinary manuscript.

It's the Liber Vitae, the Book of Life.

It's the earthly draft

of the register Christ will call from on the Day of Judgement.

It shows where those in the Church's good books

can hope to spend eternity.

And underneath is where you'd end up if your name's not on the list.

Given pride of place in this sacred artefact of the English church,

however, is a foreigner. Cnut.

These days Cnut's best known

for that story about turning back the waves.

But the makers of this image

knew him more as a fearsome Danish warrior

who'd conquered their country through a series of bloody battles.

Even in this scene of pious harmony, he's still drawing his sword.

But keeping hold of the throne would call for more than military power.

What Cnut really needs to do to maintain power

is to establish his legitimacy.

And looking at this image,

I can see a number of ways in which he's trying to do that.

He's got this crown coming down from heaven to begin with.

But he's also got this other figure pictured alongside him.

And the inscription reads, "Aelfgifu Regina" - Queen Aelfgifu.

Aelfgifu was married to Ethelred the Unready,

one of Cnut's Anglo-Saxon predecessors.

By marrying her, he's bringing the two nations together,

and this image is really emphasising that.

she's put in this position of prominence

on the right hand of the father, beneath the feet of the virgin.

This is a hugely significant image for me.

Other than religious figures,

there are virtually no women in manuscripts of this period.

It's also proof of just how badly

Cnut needed some Anglo-Saxon pedigree.

The other figures almost literally supporting his kingship here

are the monks of the New Minster.

In order to keep a grip on his throne,

Cnut needed the support and the political backing of the Church.

So he tries to ingratiate himself with particular establishments,

like New Minster in Winchester. And how does he do that?

He gives donations and gifts.

Here we see a magnificent golden cross

that he's placing on the altar.

Crucifix and manuscript would have been displayed side by side.

In today's cathedral, there's a similar arrangement.

People looking at this image

will see the same gold cross on the altar.

Like a picture by Escher, it's an endlessly repeating image,

where the real and the imagined are blended.

And there's a further dimension at work here.

The cross is pictured on the Day of Judgement,

which means it also exists at the end of time.

The medieval imagination had little difficulty

moving between the now and the eternal.

And so this cross in the manuscript

is acting like a portal between earth and heaven.

The other book on the altar in Cnut's day

would have been King Edgar's charter.

The two images side by side would have further reinforced

the idea that Cnut was Edgar's rightful successor.

All Cnut's efforts to write himself into England's Royal story

eventually paid off. He remains to this day at Winchester,

in one of the cathedral's ancient mortuary chests.

He clearly made the grade in the eyes of the Church.

The image of kingship that Cnut was to create

has withstood the tides of time for almost a thousand years.

The manuscript was such a powerful object a thousand years ago,

it seemed almost alive.

It's a quality referred to in a poem of the period.

So I've got an Anglo-Saxon riddle for you.

SHE SPEAKS IN OLD ENGLISH

Have you guessed what it is yet? No?

The answer to the riddle and the voice we hear in the poem is vellum.

Paper doesn't reach northern Europe until the 14th century.

All manuscripts created here before then are written on

the treated skins of calves and other beasts.

The Anglo-Saxons would have been very aware

that their precious manuscripts

had their origins in the living creatures around them.

Amazingly, vellum is still being made today,

in much the same way as the Anglo-Saxon poet describes.

William Cowley in Buckinghamshire are one of just a handful of firms

in the world keeping the tradition alive.

-So here we are, this is our storeroom.

-Wow.

The raw material, as we say.

-Animal skins.

-Animal skins.

-Nice and smelly.

-Lots and lots of animal skins.

It does smell, yeah. Oh!

So we have calf here, we have goat over there,

-and in the box there would be sheep.

-Wow.

Every skin in here

-has been hand-selected from the abattoir.

-What do you look for?

We'll be looking for if there's any marks from barbed wire,

from thorns, even insects.

A tick will get well into the skin

-and can leave quite a hole.

-Oh, I've seen manuscripts

with these large holes which have been written around.

If you pick the wrong skins, you'll end up with a duff manuscript.

Right, so what happens next, then?

-Well, from here, we'll take the skins...

-Right.

-..and we then have to soak them.

-OK.

Ooh, it smells like rotting flesh.

Well, yeah, you're not that far away.

What we've done is we've now got it soaking in a lime bath.

-OK.

-Now, bear in mind, if you go back far enough,

-it was urine and dog faeces, and everything.

-Ugh, yeah.

Cos what you're looking to do,

you're looking to get the skin to start to break down.

The finest manuscripts came from the urine of the Abbot.

The Abbot's diet was so much better

-than that of an average monk...

-Ah, there you go.

..so his urine was said to be of better quality

when producing parchment and vellum.

So there's all these different things you can adapt

-to get the absolute best quality.

-Yeah.

-You haven't got Abbot's wee today?

-No, no.

-So here we have what we call the grain with the hair on it.

-Yeah.

We're looking to get this off...

-Right, right, right.

-..without marking the writing surface.

-Ah.

This is going to be the writing surface.

And if you feel, you can already feel how soft that is.

Wow, yeah.

'I've handled plenty of vellum over the years,

'but never at this stage of its life.'

-A real parchment maker's apron.

-Wow.

Right, so here we go.

-Here's our knife.

-Mmm-hmm.

-Just lean over, two hands on the knife...

-Yep.

-..and just push down. There you go.

-Oh, wow, it's actually...

-Yeah, I'm hardly putting much pressure on there.

-No.

Gosh, this process is just like the one that I've read about.

There's an Old English riddle that describes

the process of making a manuscript and it says...

SHE SPEAKS IN OLD ENGLISH

And it's talking about precisely this bit.

-Yes.

-Scraping, shaping the skin.

-Yep.

And it's so evocative, I really feel like that poem's coming to life

while I'm doing this.

Manufacturing vellum is both labour and time-intensive.

After the fat is scraped off, the skin takes several weeks to dry.

From abattoir to finished sheet can take up to three months -

one reason why vellum has always been a luxury good.

Some of the stock in this room will go on to be Acts of Parliament.

Today's Royal Family are customers too.

The marriage certificate for William and Kate

was written on vellum made here.

-So here we have the finished product now.

-Amazing.

All that effort and energy and this is what you end up with.

-Feel that lovely smooth surface.

-Absolutely amazing.

This is so exciting for me,

because I'm used to seeing finished manuscripts

with their ink and their illuminations,

and yet to see it like this - just pure and white and new -

it is just fantastic.

I really feel there's this passage of time taking place.

It's come from a life, from a calf,

-and it's going onto something else, isn't it?

-Absolutely.

Long after everyone else is gone, this will still be here.

This is vellum as I'm used to encountering it.

And despite the fact it's a thousand years old,

you still get the sense that this was once a living creature.

You can feel the hair side underneath your fingertips.

And what's really remarkable is that,

despite the fact it's been used for centuries,

it's still so well preserved.

There's something extraordinary

about the contents of this manuscript too.

This time the key figure is not a king, but a queen.

It's Cnut's wife, Aelfgifu, or Emma.

And this book was made after Cnut's death.

It's a highly flattering biography of her and her husband,

and like the other manuscripts I've looked at,

there's a sense in which image is being manipulated here,

because Emma has commissioned it herself.

Cnut's death caused a power struggle.

The throne passed not to one of Emma's children,

pictured with her here, but to his son by a previous marriage.

Emma's clearly learnt the power of manuscripts

from her Royal relatives. This is her version of history,

and she's had it written

to ensure she and Cnut remain at the heart of it.

Their reign is described here as one of peace and prosperity,

in contrast to the bloody turmoil which ensued afterwards.

This text does everything it can to prove Emma's sons

are the rightful heirs to the throne.

In the end, both her sons did rule England.

But in this image, it's not the boys that are on the throne -

it's Emma herself.

It really strikes me what an important historical figure she is -

married to two kings and mother to two kings.

But it was another of Emma's relatives

who was to have the most dramatic effect on English history.

Emma had grown up in Normandy

and her great-nephew was called William.

The most famous imagery of the Norman Conquest, of course,

isn't on vellum, but on fabric.

The story told by the Bayeux Tapestry

not only spelt the end of the Anglo-Saxon Royal line,

but also caused a deep rupture in the story of England.

For generations to come,

this would prove a challenge to the makers of Royal manuscripts.

How do you present the Royal line as legitimate when its power was won

through such widespread cultural and political upheaval?

'This is one solution - the genealogical chronicle.

'Once the descendants of the Norman invaders had put down roots here,

'they wanted to prove that they too

'had their place in the Royal family tree.'

The artist that's worked on this genealogical roll

has come up with a number of different strategies to show

a continuity throughout the history of the English kings.

The language used for the manuscripts may now be French,

but the roll includes all the familiar names

of the Anglo-Saxon era, such as Edgar and Athelstan.

Around that most famous of dates, 1066,

the roll gets a little bit more confusing.

The last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson, who died at Hastings,

is shown in isolation.

For the Normans, he had no legitimate claim to be king.

In contrast, we see here William the Bastard.

This is William The Conqueror.

And there's been a huge amount of effort made to connect him

to the other kings on the roll.

So we have this stand-alone section here showing William's heritage.

He's come from a strong line of Dukes of Normandy.

And following on from him,

we see this line coming out of his descendants

and connecting into future kings.

So here we have Henry, the first of the Plantagenet kings.

And there's been an attempt made to link him back

to the Anglo-Saxon monarchy, through his wife here, Queen Maud.

And if we follow this long blue line past the Normans,

past Cnut and Harthacnut,

we get back to this character - St Margaret,

a descendent of the Anglo-Saxon king Edmund Ironside.

This particular roll is almost five metres long,

and features 32 successive kings of England.

Dozens of other Royal family trees survive

from the 13th and 14th centuries.

Though they were made by a variety of scribes across England,

they all follow a common template,

using this graphic style

of depicting each of the monarchs as if on a coin.

And, unusually for this period,

we actually know the name of the artist

who first came up with this much-copied design.

Matthew Paris. He even left us this self-portrait.

As the haircut suggests, he was a monk.

He lived during the reign of Henry III

and exemplifies the confident Anglo-French culture of the era.

And he produced various kinds of chronicles,

including this, his Historia Anglorum.

Matthew Paris has been involved

in all aspects of creating this manuscript.

Not only is he the author - he's actually composed this text -

but this is his handwriting, so he's acting as scribe as well.

And then he's gone through

and illuminated and illustrated throughout.

There's some really lovely detailing where he's painted it too.

It's quite an exceptional feat for one man.

Among the illustrations are a hospital, and a man threshing.

They're clearly drawn from the contemporary world around him,

as is much of the text.

The majority of the work concerns Paris' own lifetime

and the king who ruled over him - Henry.

As we get towards the end,

Paris is writing about events almost as they're happening,

and he's also offering opinions on them.

So what we seem to be dealing with here is less like history

and more like journalism.

As a result, this work offers a view of monarchy

quite unlike anything that's gone before.

There are a number of points in this manuscript

where Paris is openly critical of Henry and his family. Here's one.

He's describing John, Henry's father,

and the taxation that he's imposing on the English people,

and he refers to him here as "tyrannus" - "tyrant".

That's pretty strong criticism of the king's father.

And it's seems it's so strong, perhaps,

that Paris has returned to the manuscript later,

and added this note,

"vacat" - "disregard".

Does this suggest that Paris knew he'd gone too far?

And look at this image here.

In its composition, it's saying something really telling

about the relationship between the Church and the King.

So you can see the Bishop,

the representative of the Church, is on a really stable footing.

And yet the King, King Henry, is teetering on the edge.

He's very contorted and unstable-looking.

It's not a very flattering image of him.

In many ways, it's a bit like a satirical cartoon.

Frankly, Paris reads less like a medieval scribe

and more like a modern author.

But how could this startlingly independent approach

have arisen in 13th-century Britain?

Matthew Paris lived and worked for most of his life

in St Albans Abbey, now the foundations of the town's cathedral.

On its walls are some 13th-century paintings.

Paris would have seen these.

In Medieval times, the abbey was a major site of pilgrimage.

And chief among the devout visitors was Henry III himself.

I think Matthew Paris is an absolutely unique chronicler

because of his relationship with the King.

He knows Henry III intimately. Henry III comes here, he meets Paris.

It's a curious relationship because, on the one hand,

Henry III says to Paris, "Write this, write that,"

cos Henry III has this huge desire

to have the events of his reign recorded

and have his own great deeds recorded, and Paris does that.

On the other hand, if Henry had seen some of the things

Paris was writing, he would have been absolutely appalled.

Absolutely, yes. It is the most critical text we've had to date

of someone writing about a king,

and so there's this strange ambiguity and tension.

I think with Paris it's that God is working his purpose out in history,

and Paris feels it's absolutely obligatory on him

-to actually say what is good and what is bad.

-Yes.

Because in God's history, some things are good and some are bad.

And I wonder, you know, whether at St Albans itself,

there was a party within the monks,

perhaps the Abbot himself, who deeply worried about Paris' tone.

And I think, in the end,

this may help to explain the extraordinary way

in which, very late in life,

Paris went through the work and excised a great deal.

Did it in a funny sort of way,

-because sometimes he stuck bits of paper...

-Yes.

..over what he'd excised,

-so actually you can still lift it up...

-And find the criticisms.

So, you know, you lift...

On the top, it says, "The venerable archbishop Boniface came

"and behaved in a dignified way,"

and underneath it says, "The appalling archbishop Boniface

"took all our horses," and everything.

The volume I've seen was perhaps intended as a first draft,

to be copied again later without the offending passages.

And in his major portraits of the kings, Paris is much less critical.

They're imbued with the spirituality of their divine calling.

And Henry is glorified by his greatest act of piety -

the reconstruction of Westminster Abbey.

The greatest of Anglo-Saxon cathedrals had remained the centre

for Royal ritual, despite the Norman conquest of England.

Now it was assuming a grander, more awe-inspiring form,

much like the monarchy itself.

This must have been a really vibrant and stimulating place

in the mid-13th century.

Under Henry III, there was masses of building work taking place.

And alongside architecture,

there were other artistic activities based right here in Westminster.

The best English manuscript art was now being produced in London,

rather than in Winchester or Northumbria.

Some of the most stunning illustrations of this era

appear in psalters -

small, personal prayer books made from the Book of Psalms.

These had a particular relevance for Royal readers,

because they centred on a model of monarchy from the Bible.

King David combined two of the qualities of kingship

which Medieval England most valued.

Psalters were the perfect learning tool for a young prince,

because they could teach them

how to be pious rulers and valiant soldiers.

I've got one here that was custom-made

for an heir to the English throne.

It's a shining example of the 13th-century Westminster style.

The difference between this manuscript

and the other ones I've encountered

is that this one has been designed throughout

for the personal use of one individual Royal.

This psalter was commissioned as a wedding gift.

In 1284, King Edward I was preparing to celebrate

the marriage of his young son and heir,

the exotically-named Prince Alphonso.

He was engaged to a countess from Holland,

so next to England's coat of arms is her Dutch heraldry.

As was often the case at this time,

the groom was a boy of just ten years old.

And that's why the margins of this book are full of images

that would have appealed to a young prince,

like a man wrestling with a lion.

Compared to a typical psalter,

the images of battle here are fantastical.

At times, it's like a high-class comic book.

There are also images of fertility in here,

like a mermaid suckling her young.

These were seen as perfect for a wedding gift,

but are perhaps a little strange

when you remember that the groom is a prepubescent boy.

Other illustrations are probably references

to the opulent lifestyle of the Royal household.

Queen Eleanor kept lions in her menagerie,

while the aviary may have provided models

for these exquisitely delicate birds.

This really is one of the most beautiful manuscripts I've seen.

This use of gold and bright colours

is really in keeping with the fashion at court for lavish display.

Like any manuscript, many months of labour

would have gone into creating this exquisite work.

But the marriage that all this work was done for never took place.

Just months before the wedding day, the young prince died,

aged just ten years old,

and work on the psalter ceased.

The margins, so richly decorated in the early pages,

are suddenly left painfully blank.

Yet an unlikely set of circumstances

meant that this book did eventually have a second life.

Some 15 years later,

Alphonso's sister became engaged to his fiancee's brother.

The arms of Holland and England that feature in this beautiful book

would finally be united.

It's proof of just how valuable these objects were,

that someone was keen to make use of all the work

which had already been done.

Alphonso, meanwhile,

rests to this day in the most sacred chapel of Westminster Abbey,

near both his father Edward and his grandfather Henry III.

By the time this part of the Abbey was built in the late 13th century,

the English monarchy seemed permanent and assured.

Set in stone, in fact, and brass.

It had come a long way since Athelstan began to define

what a king of England could be.

One English monarch had even been elevated to sainthood -

Edward the Confessor's shrine was the centrepiece

of the new Westminster.

Religious and Royal power remained intertwined

in the architecture and the rituals of the Abbey,

and in its manuscripts.

Above all, in the coronation book.

We've got so much going on here in terms of the centuries

of manipulating kingly imagery that we've seen in earlier manuscripts.

Here we have a joint coronation going on.

In this instance,

we're looking at Richard the II and his wife Anne of Bohemia.

The King and the Queen have all this regalia.

They have these enormous crowns on their heads,

and the whole composition is really showing

the sanctification of the King and Queen.

You can see there are these archbishops -

the archbishops of York and Canterbury -

framing the King and his queen,

making them seem divine, even. And anyone looking at this image

would call to mind the coronation

of Edward the Confessor, the saintly king.

He was crowned by both the archbishops of York and Canterbury,

so all future coronations are harking back to this earlier one,

this ideal one.

And the use of gold -

it's just absolutely absorbing them into this divinity,

this wealth, this absolute image of power.

The manuscripts of the English monarchy

did so much more than just record knowledge and bequeath us portraits.

Over the centuries, when England was first formed, then conquered,

they gave legitimacy and continuity to a succession of rulers.

Manuscripts defined the image of the English monarchy.

They shaped its role, and they communicated its meaning.

They did that in ways which formed this kingdom in their lifetimes...

..and which are still with us today.

Next time...

In an age of plague, rebellion,

and a Hundred Years' War with France -

how manuscripts taught kings the tools of their trade.

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