1066

From the complacent armchairs of the modern world, the Norman conquest looks like a positive thing – a battle that defines us. But 1066 saw the country face invasion not once but twice: first in the north, where King Harold defeated a Norwegian and Flemish army led by his brother Tostig and Harald Hardrada; and then at Hastings. If you were English, this was bad enough, but what followed was worse. The native ruling class was almost entirely eliminated. All property passed to the new foreign king, who distributed it among his henchmen. Imagine that happening today – all the land in the country being taken by a foreign warlord and shared out among his followers, who do not speak English and who rule us all with violence and impunity from their defensive castles. It makes the terrorism we face today seem like an inconsequential thing.

1208

King John. Photograph: Getty Images

King John was not a good man – we remember that much. His petulant refusal to accept Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury caused a rift with Pope Innocent III. Innocent was not a pope to mess with; in March 1208 he placed the whole of England under an interdict. The result was that no church services could be held. No one could get married or have their children baptised. No one could have a funeral service. That might mean little in these secular times but, in the highly religious 13th century, it was deeply troubling. People believed that, because of John's tantrum, the necessary rites would not be carried out and they or their loved ones would be damned to hell for eternity.

1316

The early 14th century saw quite a few bad-news years, mostly to do with poor harvests. 1316 saw a second consecutive harvest failure: an exponentially bad situation as it left farmers without seed for the following year. Thousands died. In some cases, people turned to cannibalism. Politically, it was a nightmare too, with a rising in south Wales, led by Llywelyn Bren; a rebellion in Bristol, which had to be put down by force of arms; and the continued destruction of Ireland by the Scots, including the defeat of an English army at the battle of Kells.

1348

Praying for relief from the bubonic plague. Photograph: Getty

The worst news year in British history was surely the year that the Black Death reached these shores. The previous year it had struck in Italy, where it killed 40% of some cities' populations in a matter of weeks. Gradually it spread through France, and by September, it had reached the south coast of England. When it was over, according to modern reckoning, more than half the population had been killed. People's confidence in God's providence was another casualty. Cults of mortification and philosophies of human wretchedness began to emerge. Nothing in the last 1,000 years of human experience comes close to the fear and shock of the disease.

1485

Richard III at the battle of Bosworth. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Richard III's short reign ended in fear, chaos and death. Over the course of just two years, he personally alienated many of his supporters – through the deposition of his nephew Edward V (not to mention his possible murder of the boy and his brother), the summary execution of Lord Hastings, and his employment of a coven of close enforcers. Nevertheless, people looked on Henry Tudor's invasion in 1485 with trepidation. If you were loyally standing by Richard III, and Henry defeated the king, what penalties and loss of titles and estates would you face? Conversely, if you joined the invader, and the king defeated him, you could expect to die for your treachery as well as lose your wealth. So everyone had to gamble – and had every reason to be fearful. But what really made this year deadly was that the first epidemic of the sweating sickness fell on England, killing tens of thousands of men and women.

1596

Today we look back at the 1590s as a golden age – when our explorers were traversing the globe, natural philosophers were making significant advances in science and a certain William Shakespeare was attracting attention with his plays. However, at the same time, tens of thousands of their compatriots were starving. Consecutive harvest failures had left many people desperate. About a quarter of the population of Shakespeare's home town of Stratford was sleeping rough and begging or stealing food. It was estimated that there were about 30,000 homeless people in London – perhaps as many as one in seven people in the city was a vagabond. The equivalent in modern terms would be a million homeless people in the city. In real terms, the wages of a full-time English worker sank to just two-thirds of what they had been 150 years earlier.

1643

The First Battle of Newbury. Photograph: Alamy

Battles raged up and down the country in 1643 as parliament and royalists inflicted heavy casualties on each other at Adwalton Moor, Lichfield, Hopton Heath, Lansdowne, Bristol, Gainsborough, Gloucester and Newbury. But it was not just the sieges and pitched battles that caused distress. Farmers whose lands lay in the path of armies on the move saw their cattle and sheep killed for food, their horses requisitioned and their barns used for the troops' accommodation. They too were ruined. At the same time, parliament reintroduced legislation imposing censorship of the press. And the weather was foul – the 1640s saw some of the coldest, most drought-ridden years of the last millennium.

1848

It was just one of those years. Revolutions swept across Europe. The French monarchy fell, the Chartists held mass rallies and presented demands; anarchism became a watchword for many political agitators; but not much changed. In Ireland, the potato famine that had begun a couple of years earlier reached its height, killing hundreds of thousands of people and forcing as many again to emigrate.

1916

British ships in the Battle of Jutland. Photograph: Express/Getty Images

While 1914 was anything but encouraging, the list of calamities in 1916 marks it out as particularly depressing. It was the year that saw conscription introduced. It saw Zeppelin bombing raids and income tax rise to 25%. The battle of Jutland – the great naval conflict of the war – saw 14 ships sunk and more than 6,000 men killed. But even louder in our memories is the echo of the battle of the Somme, which started on 1 July: 20,000 British soldiers were killed and 40,000 injured on the first day alone.

1940

In January rationing started. By May, the German invasion of France had forced British troops back to Dunkirk. Auschwitz opened for its horrific business. Dozens of British warships were sunk by the German navy. The Channel Islands were occupied. And the Battle of Britain started: the Luftwaffe bombed London, Sheffield, Coventry, Plymouth and other cities in southern England. London was hit every night for 57 consecutive nights, and on 29 December more than 100,000 incendiary bombs struck the city.

• Ian Mortimer's Centuries of Change: Which Century Saw the Most Change and Why it Matters to Us is published by Bodley Head.