The Kings and Queens of England

As with Are You Trying to Pass Your Device?, I make no claim to artistic merit in the following, but as I've repeated many times on these pages, part of being good is being prolific, and to be prolific, you need something to write about. There are few sources of material as good as history. If you need a good story, read a history book, file off the serial numbers (or not), and retell actual events. There's a danger in this: I don't know who said it, but “Truth is stranger than fiction...fiction must be believable.”

This song is yet another example of “follow your instinct.” I began it as a song about the French kings, partly because my French history is weak, and I wanted to brush up on it. Unfortunately, I got bogged down after Charlemagne, since too many of the Carolingian kings were nonentities: It's hard to write a stanza about Louis the Fat or Charles the Stupid. So I decided to turn the song into a mnemonic for English kings (and by extension, English history). Perhaps some day I'll return to the Kings of France, but it'll probably be a focused history of a particular century or dynasty. The music is dargason.

When William Duke of all Normandy

Said “Edward often confessed to me

That he would leave me land by his will So I'll meet Harold at Senlac hill!” Son William Rufus met arrow mark While hunting deer in the forest dark His brother Henry in much despair Cried all the way to the royal chair The White Ship sank and the heir went down So Henry's daughter would wear the crown But empress though she might be abroad Soon cousin Stephen drove out Queen Maud Yet she prevailed in the end, we saw For her son Henry wrote common law Though Beckett's death was the one great sin That marred the first reigning Angevin Next Richard Palestine tried to gain King John to Philip lost Aquitaine

The barons forced him to sign and heed

The Magna Carta at Runnymede

Then William Marshall would be the one

Who'd serve as regent for John's young son

The barons marched off behind Montfort

So Henry fought a great civil war

Son Edward Longshanks the Jews expelled

And drove the Welsh from the lands they held

To William Wallace he gave some thwacks And parliament got to raise the tax The second Edward oft favored fools And chartered Cambridge and Oxford schools. The Scots made English eyes southward turn In thirteen fourteen at Bannockburn Now Edward married a high French lass Who proved a royal pain in the ... Spoken: At least, that's how the story goes. So Edward Three on the throne would sit And shame to him who thinks ill of it. But Salic law was about to void His claim to France, so he got annoyed He swore “I'll win it with blood and tears Though it may take me a hundred years!” In thirteen fifty-six at Crecy The knights of France proved their bravery “We charge 'cross muddy and swollen field Why won't those damned English bowmen yield!” The Great Death came and it went a way

The Black Prince died ere he reigned a day

Soon Richard dispossessed Bolingbroke

And rebel leader Wat Tyler spoke

Now Henry Four fought the Yorkist cause

And then son Harry to great applause

Won Agincourt and then France's throne

But died and left Henry Six alone.

From France, King Edward was driven out

By Spider Louis's pies, wine and gout. While back at home the next Edward died At uncle Richard's kind, loving side. But villain Richard Three's fate was sealed By Henry Tudor at Bosworth field Whose first son Arthur was groomed to rule While Henry junior was sent to school. So Isabella and Ferdinand Said Arthur can take our daughter's hand Soon Henry wed widow Catherine Because the Pope said it was no sin But we all know about what came next No sons survived and the King was vexed “If Luther can make a break with Rome I'll do the same and send Kate back home.”

When Edward sat on the royal chair

Tom Cranmer wrote Book of Common prayer And Jane kept Protestant Christian ways Alas, she only reigned nine short days 'Twas Bloody Mary and husband Phil Who tried the Anglican Church to kill Her sister Bess and good Francis Drake Made all the ocean an English lake The Faerie Queen never settled down

So cousin James came to London town

The wisest fool in all Christendom

Said smoking's noxious and quite loathsome

Then Charles his son tried to quell dissent

And rule the land without parliament

But Cromwell's boys gave him quite a shock

And sent the king to the chopping block

The kings and queens of the English isle

We've sung to you in this lyric style

With Lord Protector we'll end this song

Before a critic say it's too long!

1. William the Conqueror claimed that Edward willed England to him.
2. Mark is an (obsolete) use of the word to indicate the path of a planet. The word was used as late as 1540.
3. Philip of France.
4. Thwacks appears as a word as early as 1587, as "thumping thwacks." Whack, on the other hand (as in “forty whacks”) doesn't appear until 1737.
5. According to a reliable source (i.e., hearsay and rumor), Edward II was done in by having a red hot poker shoved up his...you know. However, the story seems to have been started some years after his death.
6. The (translated) motto of the Order of the Garter, founded by Edward III.
7. The bubonic plague was not known as the Black Death until the nineteenth century.
8. Just to make it clear: Edward the Black Prince did not die from the plague. Incidentally, the eponym Black Prince did not emerge until the sixteenth century.
9. Louis XI of France, known as the Universal Spider, wined and dined Edward IV and obtained a favorable treaty; Louis claimed to have driven the English out by pies, wine, and venison.
10. In case you're wondering, it is the same Isabella and Ferdinand who sponsored Columbus.
11. Again, for the record, Catharine of Aragon remained in England.
12. A reference to Spenser's Faerie Queen.
13. Henry IV of France called James I “The wisest fool in Christendom.” Still, James had his points: he wrote A Counterblast to Tobacco, the “stinking suffumigation.”