This evening I want to give an overview of British relations with Europe during this period, as the first in my series this year on Anglo-European relations. In 55 BC, 54 BC and 43 AD, it was the Romans from the late 8th century to the early 11th century, it was the Vikings and in 1066 - as we all know - it was the Normans. to 1066, Britain was repeatedly raided and invaded. Without a navy, the sea was, in the Viking term, a whale-path, which might be a road to trade, but equally a road to plunder or invasion. This was possibly the case later, when she had a navy, and especially when she had a navy second to none. In Shakespeare’s ‘Richard II’, John of Gaunt proclaims that England is a ‘precious stone set in the silver sea, which serves it in the office of a wall, or as a moat defensive to a house, against the envy of less happier lands’. THE ROMAN, THE VIKING AND THE NORMAN CONQUESTS
