Okay, perhaps I just have too much time on my hands, this is all I have so far today. I got all bogged down just thinking about the War of the Roses. Anyone inclined to help me and add to it, please jump right in!
Please remember it's a work in progress and send all flames directly to me.
Submitted Lovingly,
Medb
A Brief History of England
by Deborah Murphy Kerr
Part One
A very long time ago, an ice age came along and made England very cold. After it thawed, the people living there went about their usual business of knapping flint and drawing pictures on cave walls. Once they got really good at playing with rocks, they built big round structures from them, so they'd all know where to have important meetings, and kill things. Eventually, while digging about, they learned how to turn metal into useful shapes, and got better at the killing. They formed tribes, appointed leaders, and found more and fancier reasons to kill each other.
Things went along swimmingly in this manner for a nice long time, then some fellows from the mainland, who had been very successful building a huge empire, decided to include England as part of it. They came over in their boats, brought with them some fancy new stuff, some clever new customs, and a great big nasty army. The inhabitants of England were very surprised and mostly overwhelmed, and although an angry ex-queen caused a ruckus and had to be stifled, things settled into a sort of pattern of fancy bathing, mixed marriages, wall building, and making pretty pictures from bits of tile.
They kept doing this until they lost enthusiasm. This period of low enthusiasm is referred to as the Dark Ages ... not because it was all that dark, but because while a lot of changing and shuffling about was happening, people forgot to write things down, and if they did write things down, they forgot where they left their notes. Maybe because it was dark and we just don't know because we can't find the notes.
One of the things that did eventually prompt more attention to record keeping, probably so people could keep track of their losses, was the increasing number of visits to England from a gang of ill-tempered blonde guys from up north. They would drop in on coastal towns, all cranky from spending days and days on their cramped little ships, and rape the monasteries, pillage the cattle, and burn the women ... or something like that. Some would collect some plunder and go back up north, and some stayed behind to do a little farming. Several years of this went by, and what with all the marrying and swapping recipes, people never gave another thought about seeing all the little blonde haired children that seemed be everywhere all of a sudden.
Things were just about back to normal again when this bastard named William came along and upset everybody with his Norman Invasion. Apparently, Norman has never been available for comment, but some women got together and made a big dishtowel to commemorate the event. William and his relatives, grandkids and such tramped all over England, as well as France, fought over who got to be in charge of what areas, and generally disturbed a lot of farmers. Some of the more prosperous disturbed farmers, who liked to be called barons, got tired of the constant disruptions, and wrote a paper on it, which they made the king at the time, John, sign his name to, so they could prove he had read it. The whole business vexed John so much that he tripped and lost his family jewels in a river.
Suddenly, people started getting sick. People literally caught their death of fleas, though they didn't know that at the time and mostly just thought the air had gone bad. The plague made a very significant dent in the population, and while it didn't prompt any great breakthroughs in medical science as can be noted by the silly bird hats that became fashionable among doctors and nurses, it did create major changes in the labor market. Minimum wage took a decided leap; and the common working man, provided he wasn't dead, found himself a much better off financially.
From: "deb kerr" <dkmurphy@advant.net>
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Received on Thu Oct 2 16:39:00 2003
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