Medieval England Quotes

A personal game-changer was when Ridley Scott cast me as King John, the King of England, for 'Robin Hood.'

I can only perceive the royal family as an entity historically. I think I know more about the royal family from the Plantagenets in the 14th Century than the modern family.

The Magna Carta was the first class-based charter, enforced on the monarchy by the rising class.

Magna Carta only came into being in 1217, when the wording had been changed and parts of the original were extended in the Charter of the Forests. This complementary charter covered liberties granted to the common man, including rights to the commons, grazing, fishing, water, and firewood, and was perhaps the first ecological charter in history.

The events with Henry III happened, obviously the way it happened, liberties were taken.

When William the Conqueror commissioned a great survey of his English realm at Gloucester in 1085, the result was a work so thorough, fair, dispassionate, and wide-ranging that it seemed to the succeeding generations to have come from another world.

The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age.

I feel very at home in woodlands and could easily live there. I should have been one of Robin Hood's men.

Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

'The White Princess' follows Princess Lizzie, who was forced into marriage with Henry Tudor. It's kind of about how their marriage united the Yorks and the Tudors - the two families do rival but have to unite.

'Henry V' is a great deal more than almost any other hell-bent-for-armor movie that you've seen.

There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.

Essentially, Robin Hood put a smackdown on the medieval equivalent of the IRS.

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game's afoot; Follow your spirit: and upon this charge, Cry — God for Harry! England and Saint George!

It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time. And the duke was called the duke of Tintagil.

I always wanted to be Robin Hood or John the Baptist when I was growing up.

The Normans came over, lance in hand, burning and trampling down every thing before them, and cutting off the Saxon dynasty and the Saxon nobles at the edge of the sword; but the right of petition remained untouched.

In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong enough to punch you.

Maid Marion, who said to Robin Hood, I will not live in a house with a Little John. Never got a dinner!

...Roland de Chumsfanleigh (it wasn't his fault).

A lot of fantasy names are too much. They’re too difficult to pronounce. I wanted the flavour of medieval England. I took actual names we still use today, like ‘Robert’, and in some case I tweaked them a little bit. I made ‘Edward’ into ‘Eddard’. If you look back at medieval times, no one knew how to spell their own names. There are a lot of variations that we’ve lost.

Up until the War of the Roses there had been continual conflict in England.

Forever behind a woman is the mediaeval English common law which places upon her the stigma of inferiority and bondage

We think of medieval England as being a place of unbelievable cruelty and darkness and superstition. We think of it as all being about fair maidens in castles, and witch-burning, and a belief that the world was flat. Yet all these things are wrong.

The office of Speaker is almost as ancient as Parliament itself. It emerged in the Middle Ages when the Commons - the ordinary people - of England needed a spokesman in their dealings with the King, someone who would voice their grievances and present their petitions. This was by no means a safe or easy thing to do at that time, and potential spokesman generally had to be pressured into accepting the responsibility.