ivanhoe

toward the end of the reign of King Richard I, England is in the grip of turmoil. The king is far from the country, having been imprisoned by the rulers of Austria and Germany on his way home from the Crusades. In his absence, the throne is held by Prince John, but the real authority lies in the hands of the nobles, who have used Richard's absence as an excuse to fortify their own power at the expense of the monarchy's. This state of affairs has aggravated relations between the two groups of people who inhabit England: the Saxons, who ruled England until 1066, and the Normans, a French people who conquered the island under William the Conqueror. The nation's powerful nobles are all Normans, and the Norman nobles have been seizing the lands of less powerful Saxon nobles, forcing many Saxons to become serfs. The remaining Saxon lords are tense and angry. The division between the two peoples is so great that even though a common English language exists between them, they generally speak their own native tongues--French for the Normans, Anglo-Saxon (sometimes called Old English today) for the Saxons.

In a forest near Sheffield, a Saxon swineherd named Gurth discusses the state of the country with his companion, a clown named Wamba. They note that pigs are called by their Saxon name (swine) when they are alive and a source of endless labor for Gurth, but that once they are slaughtered to become feasts for the nobles, they go by their Norman name (pork). Gurth and Wamba are in the service of Cedric, a Saxon lord whose son Ivanhoe has been fighting in the Crusades, to his father's great displeasure. Ivanhoe has been disinherited. Cedric also has a ward, Rowena, who, though not his natural daughter, is renowned for her beauty. A storm is coming, and the men begin to gather the swine. Suddenly, they hear the thunder of approaching hooves: A group of horsemen is riding toward them.
The horsemen, a party of about ten men, are led by Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Prior