The History of England Magazine

Every October, in a ceremony dating back to 1211, something rather odd happens. The City of London pays rent to the Crown on two pieces of land, even though it no longer knows their exact locations!

In 1758 a small sickly baby boy was born, the son of the Rector of Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk. No one could have envisaged that this child would, in his lifetime, become one of England’s greatest heroes…

The English longbow, also called the Welsh longbow, was a powerful type of medieval longbow used to great effect against the French during the Hundred Years War, particularly at the Battle of Agincourt…

The invention of the indoor water closet or lavatory

The history of the Bank of England, also known as The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street

The Order of the Garter – British order of chivalry

Elizabethan privateer, MP, military leader and founder of Bermuda (The Somers Isles). The small inconvenience of being shipwrecked didn’t stop him from completing his voyage to the Virginian colony of Jamestown…

Knaresborough in Yorkshire boasts not one, but two town heroes. The prophetess Mother Shipton is well known, but there was also the indomitable Blind Jack Metcalf, who despite blindness, became a prolific road builder…