Magna Carta was not born in a peaceful ceremony, but in a tense meadow surrounded by armed men, suspicion, and civil war. On Magna Carta Day, explore the real drama of Runnymede, King John’s tyranny, and the forgotten role of Nicola de la Haye — the woman who helped save England and Magna Carta itself.

The Battle That Nearly Erased England

On 20 May 1217, the fate of England came down to one woman holding a battered castle against a French invasion. It's a story that should be far better known — and on its 808th anniversary, it deserves to be told properly. It's also the story at the heart of my novel Lady of England, the third book in my Nicola de la Haye trilogy, which will be published late 2026/ early 2027.

By the spring of 1217, the situation for the nine-year-old King Henry III looked desperate. King John was dead. Prince Louis of France had landed with an army, rebel English barons had welcomed him to London, and much of the south-east had fallen. The Plantagenet dynasty appeared to be finished. Three fortresses still flew Henry's colours: Dover, Windsor – and Lincoln Castle.

Lincoln Castle was held by a woman.

"The Woman Who Saved England": Who Was Nicola de la Haye?

On This Day in History, 1066 and the Terrible Portents in Lincoln, 1185

In the spring of 1066, something extraordinary blazed across the English night sky. For several weeks, a brilliant comet hung over England, visible even in daylight, trailing a luminous tail that stretched across the heavens like a wound in the fabric of the world. People stopped in the streets to stare at it. Monks recorded it in their chronicles. Kings, it was whispered, trembled.

They were right to. Within months, Harold Godwinson was dead, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England had fallen at Hastings, and a Norman duke sat upon the English throne. Whether the comet caused any of this is, of course, a question for a different kind of historian. But what it meant — that, the medieval mind had no doubt about whatsoever.