Churchill's People

878 AD: King Alfred has suffered another defeat from the Danes and escapes through the Athelrey swamps to the safety of Odda's Hall. Disguised as a minstrel, Alfred enters the headquarters of the Viking invaders but his conversation with Chieftain Guthrum unsettles the Danes.

1042: Godwin, Earl of Wessex, summons Edward from out of his exile in Normandy to wear the Crown of England. But the apparent security of Godwin's Anglo-Saxan policies is disrupted by Edward's partiality for a French connection and Rome-orientated religious tendencies.

1066-1070: Forest laws bring about a climax between the Saxons and the Normans.

1160: In Norman England a man could will his movables to his kin and friends but only the next heir could inherit his land paying the overlord for the privilege. When old William de Secqueville dies he has two heirs - one is his daughter Mabel, by a disolved marriage, and the other is his nephew Richard. Egged on by his wife Maud, Richard pursues a dogged course through the courts of the new King Henry to prove Mabel illegitimate.

1191: King John is brought to his knees and signs the Magna Carta.

1265: A runaway peasant accidentally witnesses a meeting between King Henry III and his chief Baron Simon de Montfort. Their argument indicates that only by a confrontation of arms between the monarch and his noble will their differences be settled. The paths of Earl Simon and Ranulf cross again at the battle of Leves where the King is defeated by Simon's forces.

March 1296: The story of William Wallace, a rough Lanarkshire knight who strikes a blow for Scottish liberty by destroying the town of Lanark and its English Sheriff. The vision and zeal of Wallace rallies the dispirited commons of Scotland and the English are defeated at the battle of Stirling Bridge, but King Edward I takes charge of the retaliation which follows.

1381: Revolt in East Anglia when the peasants are pressed beyond endurance by taxes and misgovernment by inexperienced King Richard II. Bishop Henry is sent to quell the risings.

1440: When Henry V died, the feudal families of England began to prey upon each other. Royal upstarts succeeded one another until the nation was divided into two factions, the House of York and the House of Lancaster.

1538: Hugh Goodrest, a Warwickshire Lawyer, returns to his home town of Hales Owen to find the nearby Abbey and its inmates under investigation by the King's Commissioner, Dr. Layton. Rumours of monastic dissolution have reached the townspeople and they are apprehensive because the abbey is the centre of their lives.

1603-1618: Sir Walter Raleigh is tried on trumped-up charges of treason and imprisoned in the Tower. For 13 years he languishes in jail, still dreaming of a legendary Peruvian empire, its treasure, and its king. King James is finally forced to release the old man and send him to Guiana to bring back the gold he has so often talked about.

1610: A Puritan family in Nottinghamshire, hounded by King James I for their opposition to Anglican orthodoxy, go into unhappy exile in Holland and then decide to try the untried land of America.

January 1640: King Charles I rallies his troops to fight the Roundheads and loses his head and kingdom for the trouble.

Burford, 15 May 1649: The Puritan revolution has reached its climax. The soldiers' democracy is over and Cromwell takes his revenge.

1665: The Royalists return. But for John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, the Restoration means plague and despair.

1689: The Protestant settlement in Ulster pre-empts King William's offensive against the Irish Jacobites. In Londonderry the apprentice boys close the gates of the town against James's troops, beginning a siege that is to cause appalling privations to its citizens.

1720: Tom Mackenzie, a confidence trickster from Scotland, steals a certificate for £100 worth of South Sea Company stock. He uses this to gain the confidence of Mrs. Trundle, Jack Plaster and other Southwark villains and together they set up a company known as Universal Improvements Ltd. Working on the gullibility of rich and poor alike they issue shares in innumerable bogus companies for fantastic and improbable schemes. The craze escalates until even the Government and Royal Family are involved and a crash is inevitable.

1772: The MacAmney family are evicted from their highland homestead by the landlord to make way for sheep. Selling everything they own, they embark on a perilous sea journey to Canada.

1775: An American judge who has settled in London reconstructs in an interview with a journalist his dispute with the radical Sam Adams, the Boston Massacre and the events which led to the Boston Tea Party.

1781: Jack Gable apprehensively embarks on a new career as a clerk with the East India Company in Bengal. Under aegis of the lively Jack Potts he meets some of the extraordinary characters of Calcutta society. Then, Bob, already too involved in the customary intrigue and corruption is posted up-country, leaving Jack his house, his servants and his enormous debts. In desperation Jack is forced to seek the aid of the Governor Warren Hastings.

1797: The men of an ill-governed Royal Navy refuse to put their ships to sea. Aaron Graham, a London magistrate, is sent to investigate the circumstances leading up to the mutiny. His search leads him to dark taverns and stinking docks. His findings bear out the general disaffection. But this is not to the liking of the Government.

1834: The Tolpuddle Martyrs are sent to Australia where a Tasmanian settler tries to get their service on his estates.

1819-1837: The story of the Cato Street Conspiracy, the plot of a radical political group to assassinate two Government ministers as a prelude to a general uprising.