Rulers Regions And Retinues

Essays on crucial aspects of late medieval history.

This series [pushes] the boundaries of knowledge and [develops] new trends in approach and understanding. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW

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 family members and arbitrary executions stain their reputations. All five reigns ended in failure. As a result, the kings have been seen as failures themselves, the worst examples of medieval English kingship. They lost their reputations as well as their crowns. Yet were these five really the worst men to wear the crown of England in the Middle Ages? Or has history treated them unfairly? This book looks at the stories of their lives and reigns, all of which were dramatic and often unpredictable. It then examines how they have been seen since their deaths, the ways their reputations have been shaped across the centuries. The standards of their own age were different to our own. How these kings have been judged has changed over time, sometimes dramatically. Fiction, from Shakespeare’s plays to modern films, has also played its part in creating the modern picture. Many things have created, over a long period, the negative reputations of these five. Today, they have come to number among the worst kings of English history. Is this fair, or should they be redeemed? That is the question this book sets out to answer.

First extended survey of the subject, looking at the knights' activities, roles, background and service.

The eagerly anticipated final volume in Jonathan Sumption's prize-winning history of the Hundred Years War, 'one of the great historical undertakings of our age' (Dan Jones, Sunday Times). Triumph and Illusion is the final volume of Jonathan Sumption's epic history of the Hundred Years War. It tells the story of the collapse of the English dream of conquest, from the opening years of the reign of Henry VI, when the battles of Cravant and Verneuil consolidated their control of most of northern France, to the loss of all of England's continental dominions except Calais thirty years later. This sudden reversal of fortune was a seminal event in the history of the two principal nation-states of western Europe. It brought to an end four centuries of the English dynasty's presence in France, separating two countries whose fates had once been closely intertwined. It created a new sense of national identity in both countries. The legacy of these events would influence their divergent prospects for centuries to come. Behind the clash of arms stood some of the most remarkable personalities of the age: the Duke of Bedford, the English Regent who ruled much of France from Paris and Rouen; Charles VII of France, underrated in both countries, who patiently rebuilt his kingdom after the disasters of his early years; the captains who populate the pages of Shakespeare - Fastolf, Montagu, Talbot, Dunois and, above all, the extraordinary figure of Joan of Arc, who changed the course of the war in a few weeks at the age of seventeen.

This book assesses how Middle Eastern leaders manipulated visuals to advance their rule from around 4500 BC to the 19th century AD. In nine fascinating narratives, it showcases the dynamics of long-lasting Middle Eastern traditions, dealing with the visualization of those who stood at the head of the social order.

Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England explores English legal culture and practice across the Anglo-Saxon period, beginning with the essentially pre-Christian laws enshrined in writing by King Æthelberht of Kent in c. 600 and working forward to the Norman Conquest of 1066. It attempts to escape the traditional retrospective assumptions of legal history, focused on the late twelfth-century Common Law, and to establish a new interpretative framework for the subject, more sensitive to contemporary cultural assumptions and practical realities. The focus of the volume is on the maintenance of order: what constituted good order; what forms of wrongdoing were threatening to it; what roles kings, lords, communities, and individuals were expected to play in maintaining it; and how that worked in practice. Its core argument is that the Anglo-Saxons had a coherent, stable, and enduring legal order that lacks modern analogies: it was neither state-like nor stateless, and needs to be understood on its own terms rather than as a variant or hybrid of these models. Tom Lambert elucidates a distinctively early medieval understanding of the tension between the interests of individuals and communities, and a vision of how that tension ought to be managed that, strikingly, treats strongly libertarian and communitarian features as complementary. Potentially violent, honour-focused feuding was an integral aspect of legitimate legal practice throughout the period, but so too was fearsome punishment for forms of wrongdoing judged socially threatening. Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England charts the development of kings' involvement in law, in terms both of their authority to legislate and their ability to influence local practice, presenting a picture of increasingly ambitious and effective royal legal innovation that relied more on the cooperation of local communal assemblies than kings' sparse and patchy network of administrative officials.

The editors present a collection of 23 historical papers exploring relationships between "the Germans" (necessarily adopting different senses of the term for different periods or different topics) and their immediate neighbors to the East. The eras discussed range from the Middle Ages to European integration. Examples of specific topics addressed include the Teutonic order in the development of the political culture of Northeastern Europe during the Middle ages, Teutonic-Balt relations in the chronicles of the Baltic Crusades, the emergence of Polenliteratur in 18th century Germany, German colonization in the Banat and Transylvania in the 18th century, changing meanings of "German" in Habsburg Central Europe, German military occupation and culture on the Eastern Front in Word War I, interwar Poland and the problem of Polish-speaking Germans, the implementation of Nazi racial policy in occupied Poland, Austro-Czechoslovak relations and the post-war expulsion of the Germans, and narratives of the lost German East in Cold War West Germany.