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In "The Minority of Henry the Third," Kate Norgate delves into a pivotal period in English history, detailing the years of political instability surrounding the young King Henry III's ascension. Norgate employs a rich narrative style characterized by scholarly rigor and vivid imagery, immersing readers in the complexities of medieval power dynamics. The book intricately examines the tug-of-war between royal authority and baronial rebellion, underpinned by Norgate's meticulous research and analysis of primary sources, which illuminates the challenges faced by a monarch at such a tender age during the mid-13th century. Kate Norgate, a prominent historian and skilled biographer, brings her deep...
The controversial reign of King John is the subject of the essays collected in this book, which offers a challenging reappraisal of a number of its most important aspects.
James Campbell's work has established the impressive powers of the Anglo-Saxon state, with its ability to impose laws, raise revenue, undertake major works and consult the interests and wishes of its subjects. This collection of essays looks at the state and its successors from a number of angles.
What constitutes a historian? What skills and qualities should a historian cultivate? Who is entitled to define historians’ “physiognomy”? Victorians sought to answer these questions as history transformed from a Romantic literary pursuit into a modern discipline during the second half of the nineteenth century. This book offers a novel interpretation of this critical historiographical period by tracing how historians forged themselves a collective scholarly persona that legitimized their new disciplinary status. By combining historiography and book history, Elise Garritzen argues that historians appropriated titles, prefaces, footnotes, and other paratexts as an institutionalized spac...
An expanded edition of a classic study of the Magna Carta interprets the events of 1215 and the Charter itself in the context of the law, politics and administration of England and Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
This reference book, containing the biographies of more than 1,100 notable British women from Boudicca to Barbara Castle, is an absorbing record of female achievement spanning some 2,000 years of British life. Most of the lives included are those of women whose work took them in some way before the public and who therefore played a direct and important role in broadening the horizons of women. Also included are women who influenced events in a more indirect way: the wives of kings and politicians, mistresses, ladies in waiting and society hostesses. Originally published as The Europa Biographical Dictionary of British Women, this newly re-worked edition includes key figures who have died in the last 20 years, such as The Queen Mother, Baroness Ryder of Warsaw, Elizabeth Jennings and Christina Foyle.
Brings together agenda-setting essays that illuminate the complex relationship between ideas and political activity in modern British history. Ideas matter in modern British political life: culture, thought and belief are integral to the fabric of politics, high and low, foreign and domestic. They are woven into the day-to-day business of debate, policy and decision-making. This book shows how and why they have mattered so much. Inspired by the work of Jonathan Parry, it explores the cultural and intellectual influences on politics both formal and informal since the turn of the nineteenth century. Featuring original interventions by some of the world's leading historians, the essays in the v...
Stephen. John. Edward II. Richard II. Richard III. These five are widely viewed as the worst of England’s medieval kings. Certainly, their reigns were not success stories. Two of these kings lost their thrones, one only avoided doing so by dying, another was killed in battle, and the remaining one had to leave his crown to his opponent. All have been seen as incompetent, their reigns blighted by civil war and conflict. They tore the realm apart, failing in the basic duty of a king to ensure peace and justice. For that, all of them paid a heavy price. As well as incompetence, some also have reputations for cruelty and villainy, More than one has been portrayed as a tyrant. The murder of fam...
This first modern study of Henry the Young King, eldest son of Henry II but the least known Plantagenet monarch, explores the brief but eventful life of the only English ruler after the Norman Conquest to be created co-ruler in his father’s lifetime. Crowned at fifteen to secure an undisputed succession, Henry played a central role in the politics of Henry II’s great empire and was hailed as the embodiment of chivalry. Yet, consistently denied direct rule, the Young King was provoked first into heading a major rebellion against his father, then to waging a bitter war against his brother Richard for control of Aquitaine, dying before reaching the age of thirty having never assumed actual power. In this remarkable history, Matthew Strickland provides a richly colored portrait of an all-but-forgotten royal figure tutored by Thomas Becket, trained in arms by the great knight William Marshal, and incited to rebellion by his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, while using his career to explore the nature of kingship, succession, dynastic politics, and rebellion in twelfth-century England and France.
The Haskins Society, named after the celebrated American medievalist Charles Homer Haskins, was founded in 1982 to provide a forum for the discussion and study of English and related continental history in the middle ages.