Free GCSE History Questions and Answers

The full-mark answer · 8 marks

Sources A and B agree substantially about the reach of Norman rule and differ about its character. Both present a government from which nothing escaped: B records a survey so thorough that ‘not even an ox, nor a cow, nor a swine’ went unrecorded, and A shows exaction reaching down to ‘wretched men’ through the king’s stewards. They differ in that B describes an administrative system and A a personal rapacity that ‘recked not’ for law. Both are from the same chronicle, so the agreement cannot be explained by one writer echoing another — it is the same tradition reporting two different activities and reaching the same impression of thoroughness.

The full-mark answer · 8 marks

Sources A and B agree that disease is connected to insanitary conditions and disagree fundamentally about how. Chadwick pairs ‘filth and bad ventilation’, locating the danger in the air, which is the miasma theory; Snow places the beginning of cholera in the alimentary canal, which implies ingestion. The agreement is therefore about association rather than cause, and it had practical consequences: both positions supported sanitary improvement, so the wrong theory produced useful action. The provenance shows which was dominant — Chadwick’s report was official and Snow published alone.

The full-mark answer · 8 marks

Both are useful and for different parts of the enquiry, and because they share an author the judgement must rest on content. Source A is the more useful for how poverty was explained: it distinguishes beggars made so by others from those at fault themselves, and names enclosure as a cause. Source B is the more useful for how the poor were treated and, in particular, for attitudes — ‘a just reward, no doubt’ assumes the reader’s agreement rather than seeking it, which makes it stronger evidence of a common view than a sentence written to persuade. Overall B is the more revealing, since it shows the attitudes that produced the vagrancy laws.

The full-mark answer · 8 marks

They reached opposite conclusions because evidence answers the question put to it, and they put different questions. Freeman asks when a whole order of society arrived, and answers from the man he holds responsible. Round asks what fixed the size of one obligation, and answers from the quotas, which run in tens of knights and match neither the hidage nor the value of an estate. Their categories then diverge: Freeman rejects ‘the Feudal System’ as datable at all, while Round does not use the term, so the two dispute not a fact but what would count as one. Round’s purpose completes it: the passage is written as a correction of Freeman, whom it names.

The full-mark answer · 12 marks

William secured control by making resistance expensive and his own survival profitable. Castles were the first mechanism: quickly built and cheaply garrisoned, they let small forces dominate districts without further battles, and they were placed to hold towns and river crossings. The harrying of the north in 1069–70 applied the same logic to a region, destroying its capacity to supply an army — Domesday still recorded Yorkshire land as waste in 1086. The land settlement supplied the second mechanism: estates were granted to men who held them from William alone, so every new landholder had a personal interest in the regime surviving. Hastings gave him the throne; these measures are why the risings of 1067–71 failed to take it back.

The full-mark answer · 12 marks

The consequences were administrative, legal and political. Administratively the survey reduced England to assessable quantities — hides, ploughlands, mills, values before and after the Conquest — so the geld could be levied on record rather than custom. Legally it settled title: the return was treated as final, which ended the disputes left by two decades of confiscation and grant. Politically the survey was itself a demonstration: commissioners entered every shire and took evidence from juries on oath, showing a reach no previous English king had exercised, and the Salisbury Oath of 1086, in which landholders swore directly to William, followed from the same assertion of authority.

The full-mark answer · 8 marks

The survey’s significance at the time was that it established written record as the basis of royal government. Taxation could be assessed from evidence rather than custom, title could be settled by reference to the return, and the survey itself demonstrated that the crown could compel sworn testimony in every shire — a precedent that ran forward into the exchequer and later royal inquests. Its significance for historians is separate and unintended: it is the most detailed record of any European society of its date, which makes it invaluable evidence rather than a turning point in itself.

The full-mark answer · 8 marks

Snow’s significance is methodological as well as medical. By mapping deaths against water supply in Soho in 1854 he established that cholera followed the water rather than the air, deriving the conclusion from the distribution of cases rather than from theory — the foundation of epidemiological method. Its medical significance was delayed: he could not explain the mechanism, since germ theory lay a decade ahead, and he published at his own expense against an establishment committed to miasma, dying in 1858 before his conclusion was accepted. The removal of the pump handle came as the outbreak was already declining, so the demonstration matters more than the intervention.

The full-mark answer · 8 marks

The rising of 1069 combined Northumbrian rebellion with a Danish fleet that entered the Humber, and the combination proved strong enough to storm York, demolish the castle and kill the garrison — the most serious reverse William had suffered since 1066. His response followed from what he could not do: the fleet lay in the Humber beyond his reach and wintered there, so he turned on the shire, laying it waste in what became known as the harrying of the north. The devastation removed the region’s capacity to feed or supply a rebel army, and Domesday still recorded Yorkshire land as waste in 1086. The north was secured, but through the destruction of its resources rather than the defeat of the force that had beaten him.

The full-mark answer · 8 marks

Cholera returned to Britain in 1848, entering through the ports and travelling along trade routes. In an industrial town it met conditions that guaranteed transmission: water drawn from shallow wells and rivers, cesspools leaking into the same subsoil, sewers discharging above the intake, and privies shared between many households, so one case could contaminate a court’s whole supply. The response followed the prevailing theory. Believing the disease airborne, authorities removed refuse and flushed drains, which in some towns increased the volume of waste entering the rivers from which people drank — so a sanitary measure could accelerate the epidemic. The outbreak declined as the susceptible population was exhausted, and the Public Health Act of the same year answered the alarm rather than the mechanism.

The full-mark answer · 16 marks

Agree: at the level of the governing class the change was close to total. By Domesday almost no substantial English landholders remained; bishoprics and abbacies had passed to Normans and other continentals; and French became the language of law and lordship. Disagree: the machinery of government persisted — shires, hundreds, sheriffs, the hundred courts and the geld all continued, because William had conquered an unusually well-administered kingdom and had no interest in dismantling it. Most of the population continued to speak English and to work the same land under customary obligations. Judgement: the Conquest was a near-complete replacement of the ruling class and a minimal change to the structures through which it ruled — which is precisely why control could be established so quickly.

The full-mark answer · 16 marks

Agree: religion shaped medicine more for most of the period, and chiefly by provision rather than obstruction. Monastic houses supplied hospitals and infirmaries, preserved and copied classical texts, and framed illness within an explanatory system — disease as divine punishment or trial — that determined how patients and practitioners understood it. That framework also reinforced Galen’s authority, since his account of purposeful design suited Christian teaching, which made challenging him costly. Disagree: science advanced regardless, with Vesalius correcting anatomy from 1543 and Harvey demonstrating circulation in 1628. Judgement: those advances changed knowledge without changing treatment before 1800, so religion shaped the medicine people actually received while science shaped what it would later become.