Hell if I know.
If I must continue fan wanking Sir Walter Scott, perhaps Rowena and Athelstane were the closest beings living to Saxon royalty.
Upon re reading your post, why was Cedric a landholder?
He was a mean son of a bitch.
He fights one guy in the movie while Ivanhoe stabs the guy in the back. 
Richard I you mean? Walter Scott’s version is of course pretty much all invention, but I guess you are correct it is technically set in the late 12th century :). I was thinking of the very heavily Scott-influenced movie The Adventures of Robin Hood w/ Errol Flynn ( which is what I always think of first - a favorite when I was young ), which is also de facto set in the 1190’s. The recent movie version of course is mostly set in the 1200’s, though pretty murkily so.
As these strategic plans show, it lasted well into the eighties.
Well, those English barons that objected to Henry’s appointments were Normans, themselves, remember. And their objection to the foreign appointments weren’t that they were foreigners, per se. It was “He’s naming foreigners instead of us.” The appointment of the “foreigners” meant that Henry wasn’t appointing the English barons to positions of power, and that’s what they objected to.
As either Stanley G. Weinbaum or H. Beam Piper, I forget which, once pointed out, “English is the result of Norman knights trying to make dates with Saxon barmaids.” (The point being that any obsession with linguistic purity is utterly pointless for an English-speaker – mash up Greek roots with Latin suffixes or vice-versa, so what, it’s all good English.)
This was on my mind, BTW, because I recently saw Becket (1964; Richard Burton as Becket, Peter O’Toole as Henry II), which portrays Saxon resentment simmering bitterly as late as the reign of Henry II. (I also started a CS thread on the nitpick that Becket was, in fact, a Norman, not a Saxon.)
BTW, the earliest Robin Hood ballads are set in the reign of a King “Edward” (number not specified, so what, when yer King of England ye’ve got more important things to remember than yer bloody number). His association with Richard I is a 16th-Century addition.
Murkily indeed! (“Royal Folio Depository”?!)
There was a living Saxon claimant at that time: Richard I!
Henry I, son of William the Conqueror, married Matilda, daughter of Margaret of Scotland who was the granddaughter of King Edmund Ironside. Margaret had a brother, Edgar Athling, who was briefly proclaimed King of England after the Battle of Hastings, but abandoned his claim and had no legitimate issue. Her sister Cristina went into a nunnery and also died without issue.
Margaret of Scotland was thus the sole source for lineage for the Saxon royal house. The Kings of Scots descended from her also had Saxon blood, of course, but since Margaret’s daughter Matilda had married the King of England, their issue’s claim was arguably stronger.
But, surprisingly, it can only be traced back to 1846.
Slight hijack: I have to argue with this, although it’s been many years since I read it. Even according to your link, it is in Merlin’s backwards memories (i.e. of the future) that these figures are mentioned. I don’t believe the dates of the events are significantly different from Malory’s dates, i.e. after Roman occupation had ended, before Saxon rule was solidified.
Again, sorry for the hijack; I don’t have anything to add about the endurance of Saxon resistance.
Roddy
But, when the newly-crowned Arthur’s forces are preparing to put down the rebellion of King Lot of Orkney, Merlin calls Kaye a “Norman gentleman” to his face without contradiction. And, when asked by Arthur to explain the historical background to the rebellion, Merlin goes through what amounts to a fairly accurate summary of the past waves of invasion of Britain, including the Celts (represented, now, by Lot, or at least by his soldiers), and the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Norman Conquest (perpetrated by Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon – time-scale is seriously compressed, here). And the recit (as distinct from dialogue) also makes references to “the Coeur de Lion of the legends” (i.e., in this universe Arthur is real and Richard is the ahistorical legend), and so forth. And the setting is very definitely “High Middle Ages” (White actually uses the phrase) rather than Dark Ages. And Mordred’s rebellion is marked by his unprecedented atrocity of using cannon on people, which clearly evokes a WOTR-period setting or not long before.
I haven’t read it for a long time either, but I’m sure of every bit of the above, it was one of my faves.
Yeah, I remember trying to read the Once and Future book and being totally turned off by the bizzarre timeline. By now, any adult interested in history knows the approximate (alleged) timelines of Arthur, Wlliam the Conqueror, Richard and Robin Hood, etc. Only in a child’s mind would it all blur together. It’s almost as jarring a if a yo-ho-ho Carribean pirate showed up in the middle too… or the anachronistic stuff in the recent Sherlock Holmes stupidity. Or those westerns where the hand-cranked machine gun shows up all the time…
IIRC, the Norman Conquest was the side effect of a dispute over succession; William (allegedly) was promised the crown then Harold reneged on agreeing to this (William’s version, of course). Harold says he was promised it. Edward was half Normans and spent quite a while in Normandy. SO it’s not as if the change of leaders was unexpected or too foreign. It seem to me the replacement of the upper aristocracy was a side effect of them failing to accept the change at the top. If you fight the new king, don’t be surprised if he takes your lands and gives them to someone else who is a friend and helped in the fight.
The Gatling gunis a product of the 1860’s. If your point is that the movies make them appear to be in more common use than they actually were, you may have a point. If you meant that there were no “hand-cranked machine guns,” you are in error.
Obligatory xkcd.
Yeah, I thought I read somewhere how few were actually produced. But then, every western seemed to have one. Plus - how much ammo would you need to lug around in the days when horsecart was the pinnacle of load hauling?
And don’t forget the Harrying of the North, during which William essentially committed genocide against the north of England, depopulating it, and making way for his barons to take over.
Looks like it got slightly garbled somewhere.
That’s it! Piper! Thanx!