Churchill's People

43 AD: Lucius is one of several Roman spies sent into the offshore island of Pritan, quietly to study the ground before plans for the invasion by Emperor Claudius.

400 AD: Among the splendours of his palace at Eboricum (York), Roman British governor Tiberius Claudius broods on what he believes to be the end of the civilised world.

654 AD: Two powerful adversaries face each other - Penda, pagan king of Mercia, and Oswy, Christian king of Northumbria.

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 hea...

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...

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 d...

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...

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 an...

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 Hous...

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. Layt...

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 empi...

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 l...

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 Jam...

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...

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 Can...

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 le...

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 ch...

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....

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.