Lesson video

Hello there.

Welcome back to history here at Oak National Academy.

I'm Ms. Barnett and thank you for joining me for lesson four of our inquiry into the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine and what it can tell us about who held power in the middle ages.

Today's lesson we're going to be recalling information from our previous three lessons as well.

So I would like you to pause the video here and gather your notes from those previous three lessons because we are going to be using them, and also use this opportunity to remove any distractions nearby.

Once you are ready, we are going to get our title into our notes for today's lesson.

The focus of today's lesson is looking at Eleanor, Richard and John.

And as it's our final lesson, we're going to be pulling together all of the threads we've been looking at so far about Eleanor's life to answer our inquiry question.

So we going to have lots of big thinking to do today everyone but I'm very confident that we are able to do that.

Now, pause here if you need a bit longer to get today's title into your notes.

If you're ready, we are going to get started.

Okay so, on this activity which is designed to recap some of the key points we've been looking at so far with Eleanor.

On the left hand side, you have got five beginnings of sentences.

And on the right hand side, you have got five ends of sentences, but they're all jumbled up.

And so what I would like you to do for our first task today is I would like you to match the beginning of the sentence to the correct end of the sentence.

So you're going to have to match up A, B, C, D and E with the correct ends of the sentences on the right hand side.

So pause the video here to complete that task and then when you're done unpause the video and we will go through the answers.

Okay, welcome back everyone.

So as always, I recommend a green pen but you can have whatever colour you wish to hand so we can kind of tick through our correct answers and make any amendments that we need.

Okay.

So the first correct sentence.

We'll do these in the order of the starting parts of the sentences.

So Eleanor inherited Aquitaine when she was 13.

So give yourself a big take if you've got that one right.

If you need to edit it then please do so now.

The second sentence, Eleanor's first husband was King Louis the seventh of France.

Again, big tick here, edit if you need to.

For the third sentence Eleanor's second husband was King Henry the second of England.

The fourth sentence in 1173 Eleanor joined the Great Revolt.

And then our final sentence, as punishment for her involvement, she was imprisoned for 16 years.

So really hoping we've got five big ticks on our page in front of us.

If you need to edit any of these just to make sure that we have got five correct sentences, then please pause the video here to get that done.

If you're happy with your answers and they're all edited and they're all correct in front of you, then we're going to get started on today's lesson and looking at kind of the next stage of Eleanor's life.

Okay.

So for the last time then, let's have a look at Eleanor's timeline.

So we know that she was born around 1123.

She dies in 1204.

And so far we have looked at kind of three significant time periods of her life.

In lesson one, we were looking at Eleanor's marriage to King Louis.

We know then the Eleanor gets married to King Henry the second.

And we've kind of split this marriage into two time periods.

So we were thinking in lesson two about Eleanor's role when she first gets married to Henry.

And then in lesson three, we looked at her involvement in the Great Revolts between 1173 and 1174.

And we left the lesson thinking about Eleanor's imprisonment for 16 years as part of her involvement.

Henry feeling very betrayed by her involvement.

So today, we are going to be picking up where this pink arrow is.

So we're going to be looking at Eleanor's life after the end of her marriage to King Henry and thinking about how her role develops.

Now, King Henry the second dies in 1189.

And so her marriage to Henry doesn't come to an end because of annulment like we saw with Louis, it's because Henry dies.

And when Henry dies, the royal couples' eldest surviving son is Richard.

We've come across Richard before.

He was involved in the Great Revolts but forgiven by his father.

And when his father died, he becomes King Richard the first of England as well as being in charge of the combined lands, the Angevin Empire that we've been looking at in the last few lessons.

Now, Richard when he becomes king, has to go and deal with some uprisings in Normandy.

The French decide to take the opportunity of a change of king to try and get rid of Richard's influence over them.

And so his first job as king is to go and crush that uprising.

Now, his second order as king is to release his mother.

So Eleanor has been imprisoned for 16 years.

She is imprisoned from the Great Revolt through to Henry's death.

She does come out of her imprisonments to occasionally attend Royal Court and to see her children.

But for the majority of that time, she is imprisoned.

And so Richard gives the order to release his mother.

Now, what we see is a really interesting development because Richard is in Normandy dealing with this uprising.

Richard gives Eleanor the power to control England whilst he remained in Normandy.

So Eleanor goes from someone who has been imprisoned for 16 years at the hands of her husband, who lost her political influence as queen, to then quickly find that she is ruling on Richard's behalf whilst he remains in Normandy.

So we have a very quick change of her role.

And this is what we're going to be thinking about in this last lesson.

So now that's Henry has died and Eleanor's son takes over, she has a new role.

She is the mother of the king now.

She is released from prison and she is given some power and authority to rule in Richard's name whilst he is away.

So we're going to be thinking in this final stage of Eleanor's life, in this new role that she has, what does this final section tell us about who held power in the middle ages? Now, what we're going to look at then is an important event in this final stage of Eleanor's life.

This image in front of you is a modern interpretation of a significant event from Eleanor's final role as mother to the king.

But I'm not going to tell you any more about it and I want you to do some thinking about this image.

So I would like you to pause the video here and I would like you to think through your answers to these three questions.

What is happening in this image? Who is the woman in the middle? And why is the man on the left kneeling to the man on the right? So pause here to think through your answers and then when you've got your answers and you're happy with them, unpause the video and we will discuss this in a bit more detail.

Okay everyone, welcome back.

So let's talk through some of the details of this image.

A reminder again then, this is a modern portrayal or modern version of this event.

It's not like the manuscripts we've been looking at previously.

Let's start with the characters before we think about the first question.

So this woman in the middle is Eleanor.

She is looking older here, unsurprisingly because she's at the end of her life.

And she's playing a very important role.

Interestingly positioned in the middle here between the two men.

And the idea of this is she's being portrayed as kind of the middle person, the person trying to sort out this issue.

Now the two men then.

On the right hand side, we have King Richard, Eleanor's eldest surviving son and the new king of England.

On the left hand side kneeling, we have John.

This is Eleanor's youngest son, Richard's younger brother.

And the kneeling is an important part of this image.

Can you remember from lesson three why someone may be kneeling? Why somebody would be positioning themselves in kind of beneath the head of somebody else? Now, hopefully we all remember that this is an act of homage.

This is John kneeling to pay homage to his elder brother Richard.

And this is also John swearing the oath of loyalty to Richard.

So why did John have to swear an oath of loyalty to Richard? Why did Eleanor have to intervene between the two brothers? Why is she having to solve this dilemma? Now, the reason she's having to intervene is because we have another rebellion.

We can certainly see this family are not happy with just accepting what's they have been given.

So here in this image, we have got John.

And the issue arises with John.

Now Richard, he, when he first becomes king, he in Normandy crushing the rebellion.

And he returns to England but he very quickly leaves again to go on crusade.

If you remember Eleanor went on crusade and Richard decides that he also would like to go on crusade.

So whilst he is away, John decides to capitalise on his brother's absence and tries to rebel.

Now this is because John feels a bit hard done by.

He was aware of the fact that he had been his father's favourite son towards the end of Henry's life.

This is partly because John wasn't involved in the Great Revolt against him.

But despite being Henry's favourite, he hadn't really been rewarded with much land or power.

And seeing his elder brother Richard take all of that land and power even though he had rebelled against his father, didn't sit very well with John.

So whilst Richard was away, John communicated with the king of France and the two of them tried to rebel in Richard's absence.

Now this was not a one time rebellion.

John actually tries to rebel twice.

And what we see is Eleanor stops John.

Eleanor uses her power and authority in terms of ruling in Richard's name whilst he is away to deter John from rebelling and to prevent him from undertaking any actions that could be seen as very cruel or unnecessary.

And when Richard finally returns to England, Eleanor organises a reunion between the two brothers to try and resolve their issues and that's what we saw in that previous image.

So the fallout between the brothers had come from John's attempted rebellion and Eleanor is trying to organise a reunion between the brothers to ensure that the Angevin Empire is safe.

Okay.

So at this point then let's do a quick check of our key knowledge so far, we should be used to the use by now.

So I'm going to read out the question, you're going to say the answer out loud and then we're going to check to see if we are correct.

So question number one.

Who was in charge of Aquitaine from the age of 13? Fantastic! Well done everyone, so Eleanor was.

Question two.

Don't forget to say these answers out loud everyone.

Question two, who was Eleanor's second husband? Henry the second.

Question three, who was the Great Revolt of 1173 against? Fantastic! Did we stick with Henry again? Well done everyone.

Question four.

Who was the youngest son of Henry and Eleanor? Great work.

Question five.

Who became king of England after Henry the second? Richard did as the eldest surviving son.

Question sex.

Who tried to rebel against Richard whilst he was away on crusade? We're back to John again.

Question seven.

Who stopped John's rebellions? Eleanor did, great job.

How many did we get right? Well done everyone.

Okay.

So let's think about Eleanor's final years then.

Now it's not smooth sailing.

One would hope that when Richard took over, Eleanor would stay as kind of the queen mother, advising Richard, kind of ruling in his name whilst he was away.

Now, unfortunately Richard dies in 1199, 10 years after he became king.

He was involved in a battle in France.

He got shot by an arrow.

Richard didn't tell anyone about it, removed the arrow himself.

But unfortunately the wound got infected and he died.

Now Richard at this point had no heirs to the throne.

And so John became the next king as Eleanor and Henry's youngest son.

Now John does not have an easy time of things being king.

He was never expected to be king and so hadn't had any of the practise and he wasn't used to controlling a huge variety of lands.

And so he relies really heavily on Eleanor to help him to the point where aged 75, Eleanor led an army to help John defend his lands.

She's actually riding up front with one of John's generals to help him defend his lands.

This is how still involved she is.

And although kind of that becomes the last significant event that she's involved with, she does even after that point, continue to spend her final years helping John until she died in 1204.

So Eleanor doesn't really get to switch off.

She remains in this very important role as the queen mother advising her sons and in some case fighting for her sons and ensuring that the Angevin Empire is being protected.

Okay so, today's set of questions, and remember with these ones, you write your answers up to these, including the question in your answer.

So you're going to find the information to these in your reading worksheet for today.

I want to know for question one when was Eleanor released from her imprisonment? For question two, what was Eleanor's role whilst King Richard the first was away from the country? For question three, why did John rebel against his brother? For question four, what was Eleanor's role whilst John was king of England? And then finally question five, how did Eleanor help to end the conflict between John and the French king? So you are going to pause the video here.

You are going to work your way through that reading sheets and then answer those five questions in full sentences.

And when you're done and happy with your answers, you're going to come back, unpause the video and we'll go through them.

Okay, welcome back everyone.

So last few questions connected to Eleanor then.

For, Oh, before we get stuck into questions, a reminder that always good to have different colour pen in your hand to tick through your answers but also to edit and add any details that you have missed.

But also to remind you that my wording will be different to your own.

And the important part in your answer is just to check that you have got the relevant details.

Okay, for question one then.

When was Eleanor released from her imprisonment? We're going to go straight to the good answer.

So Eleanor was released from her imprisonment, by her son Richard, in 1189 when he became the king.

Pause here if you need to add or amend anything.

But if you're happy with your answer and you've given yourself a tick, we are going to look at question two.

Okay.

What was Eleanor's role whilst King Richard the first was away from the country? So straight to the good answer.

Eleanor's role whilst King Richard the first was away from England was to rule in his absence.

She saw off any problems and kept control.

If you've got a specific detail in that answer then really great job.

But otherwise I'm sure we've got good answer anyway.

Pause if you need to add or amend anything.

If you're happy with your answer and you've given yourself a tick, we're going to think about question three.

Why does John rebel against his brother? So the good answer.

John rebelled against his brother for a couple of reasons.

He knew he was his father's favourite yet had been given no land and was angry.

He used his brother's absence from England to try and take land he believed should be his.

So, add, amend if you need to.

If you're happy with your answer, give yourself a tick and let's look at question four.

What was Eleanor's role whilst John was king of England? So good answer.

Eleanor's role whilst John was king of England was to help him defend the Angevin Empire.

She paid homage to the king of France, and helped John solve his problems with the barons.

So from our reading, very unusual action for Eleanor to pay homage to the king of France, but all to help John.

So, add, amend if you need to but if you're happy with your answer, let's look at question five.

Okay.

How did Eleanor help to end the conflict between John and the French king? So to the good answer.

Eleanor paid homage to the king of France to defend her lands against him.

This meant that when the other lands in the Angevin Empire fell, Aquitaine stayed under the control of the English monarch.

So that paying homage, very important to help bring the tension between John and the French king to an end whilst also making sure that John was able to keep the Angevin, sorry to keep Aquitaine when the rest of the Angevin Empire fell.

So again, give yourself a big tick if you've got this right.

If you need to pause to add or amend, then please do.

So let's finish then by revisiting our inquiry question.

We've been thinking about this throughout our lessons.

This has been our focus when we've been looking at different parts of Eleanor's life and working out what they can tell us about who held power in the middle ages.

Now before we can think about this question in a bit more detail, we're only going to know if Eleanor was able to challenge power if her actions tell us that things were different if we know what things were like traditionally.

Now traditionally power was held by kind of four key groups.

This to a certain extent is quite general.

So there are a few nuances to this list, but generally power was held by the church, by kings and other rulers, by local barons and by wealthy landowning men.

By comparison, if we think of what had or what should have been expected of Eleanor as a noble woman, someone kind of born into a family of power and influence, traditionally the role of a noble woman was to aim for a good marriage.

What we mean by that is to marry someone with power, influence, land, wealth.

And they would then be expected to provide the husband with children so that there was an air to take over that power, land, wealth.

And to support their husband, primarily in terms of approving the decisions that they make but also in looking after the home and raising the children.

Again, this is quite a general list and there'll be some nuances depending of you're looking at different people in different regions.

But if we're talking generally, this is what the role of a noble woman would have been.

So if we're thinking then about Eleanor and her life, does it show us the traditional ideas about who had power were challenged? So I want you to pause here and think about this question for a second.

And this is where your notes from previous lessons are going to come in really helpful.

I want you to think about throughout Eleanor's life and throughout the actions that she takes and is part of, does her life show us the traditional ideas about who had power were challenged.

Thinking about to that list of people who traditionally had power, does her life show us that these traditional ideas were challenged? So pause here, have a think about this.

I would really like for you to develop an opinion on this question.

And then when you've got your opinion, I'd like you to unpause the video and we're going to put that together in some writing.

Okay.

So hopefully we have returned with an opinion on this about how far Eleanor's life shows us traditional ideas about who had power were challenged.

If you don't have an opinion pause here, take a bit longer because having an opinion is going to be really important for our final task.

So, let's start off by thinking about the four stages of Eleanor's life we have looked at so far.

And in lesson one, we looked at Eleanor's early life up to 1152.

This was her marriage to Louis.

In lesson two, we considered Eleanor and the Angevin Empire.

And this largely is focused around Eleanor's marriage to Henry up to 1173.

For lesson three, we were looking at Eleanor's involvement in the Great Revolt against Henry between 1173 and 1174.

And in the first part of this lesson, we were looking at Eleanor's role as queen mother when her sons became the king of England.

Now what I would like you to do is for each of these lessons, I want you to think about whether there are examples that Eleanor's life shows traditional ideas were challenged or Eleanor's life shows someone fitting in traditional ideas of power.

So for example with lesson one, which was looking at Eleanor's marriage to Louis, does the content we learned in that lesson about Eleanor's life up to 1152, does that show that traditional ideas were challenged about who had power or does the content learnt in that lesson show that Eleanor's life shows someone fitting into traditional ideas of power? Now I have used pink and blue here.

You can sort these into different colours or into a table, it's entirely up to you.

And, but I would like you to pause the video here, think about each lesson in turn and work out, do they show that Eleanor's life shows traditional ideas were challenged or Eleanor's life show someone fitting into traditional ideas of power.

Once you've sorted these lessons, unpause the video and then we'll go through the answers.

Okay, welcome back everyone.

So, this is how they fit in.

Again, there'll be examples within each of these lessons that perhaps you could argue is the other side, but generally as the content, we, this is kind of the best fit.

So the first lesson and the content for the first part of today's lesson are good examples of Eleanor's life showing traditional ideas were challenged.

And then lesson two and lesson three, best fit that Eleanor's life shows someone fitting into traditional ideas of power.

But as I say within those there'll be examples that go into the other one.

But as a whole, this is the best fit.

Now we're going to use that information to have a go writing an essay.

And I know this is very bold but I know that we are all very capable of having a go at this.

So what I would like you to do is write your or our inquiry question at the top of your piece of paper.

This is the question that's in bold at the top of this slide.

So what can the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine tell us about who held power in the middle ages? Now you are going to be writing four paragraphs to help answer this question.

I'm just going to make this bigger so you can see what we're going to be doing.

You are going to write an introduction and your introduction is going to explain who Eleanor of Aquitaine was.

You're going to try and make this reasonably concise.

We're not going to have a whole page of information about Eleanor of Aquitaine but imagine you had to explain to someone who doesn't know who Eleanor of Aquitaine was.

In three or four sentences, how would you summarise who she was? And that's going to be your introduction.

You'll then going to write one paragraph that explains the ways that Eleanor's life challenge the traditional ideas of who was powerful, okay.

You're going to think about what are the best two or three examples from Eleanor's life that showed that it challenged the traditional ideas of who was powerful.

So what are the two to three best examples you've got from Eleanor's life where she's challenging the idea that it was the church or kings or wealthy men or barons who kept control? We did an example task at the end of lesson three so you may want to use some of those to help you here.

For paragraph three, this is where you're going to be explaining the ways that Eleanor's life didn't challenge the traditional ideas of who was in power.

In this paragraph, you're going to be thinking of two to three examples of where Eleanor's life fits the traditional idea of what women at the time were expected to do.

So we know that women at the time were expected to arrange a good marriage, to provide their husband with children, to support their decisions.

But also we know that traditional power at this time held by kings, barons, wealthy landowning men.

So for paragraph three, you're going to be thinking two to three examples from the lessons completed so far that supports the idea that Eleanor's life didn't challenge the traditional ideas.

And then you're going to finish up this written piece with a conclusion.

And that's why I got you to pause the video a few minutes ago to think of your opinion.

Because your conclusion should be an opinion on what the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine tells us about who had had power in the middle ages.

Did she challenge these traditional ideas? Or does she just stand out as a remarkable woman for the time and actually things, you know, traditional ideas remained? So your written piece is going to have four paragraphs in it.

Now I'm not expecting you to write this without any help or support whatsoever.

So this slide here has got some sentence starters for each section.

You've also on the right hand side got some key words that you may choose to include in your writing.

So the first sentence here is your sentence starter for your introduction.

The middle section is your sentence starters for paragraph two and paragraph three.

And then finally, you've got a sentence starter for your conclusion.

You are completely at liberty to not use the sentence starters.

If you are very confident starting these paragraphs using your own words, please, please go ahead and do that.

But if you're a bit stuck and you want a bit of support, then please use these.

So what I would like you to do here is pause the video to complete this essay.

Take as long as you need to do this.

But there, the, as we spoke about in the previous slide, an introduction explaining who Eleanor was.

One paragraph explaining how Eleanor of Aquitaine's life could have challenged the traditional ideas.

Another paragraph saying how Eleanor's life didn't challenge the traditional ideas.

And then a conclusion with your opinion about what we learned from her life.

So pause the video here to complete that task and then unpause when you are done.

Okay, welcome back everyone.

Really fantastic job on that written task.

It's not easy to write an essay.

And so I'm very impressed with the hard work and effort that we've put in.

Not just in today's lesson but throughout our inquiry.

Now, I would love to see these essays that you have written.

So what I would like you to do if you'd like to share your work with Oak National is to ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging at Oak National and hashtag learn with Oak.

But you do need to make sure that your parent or carer gives that permission fast.

But I really look forward to having a look at some of these essays and seeing what we think about Eleanor and how far she was able to challenge ideas or whether she was just a remarkable woman.

I say just a remarkable woman, obviously she was a remarkable woman.

And I really hope that we have learned lots about Eleanor and we are as interested in her as I am.

Thank you for your focus and concentration across these four lessons.

And I look forward to seeing your work.