The Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, the Hundred Years War, the
War of the Roses... A succession of dramatic social and political
events reshaped England in the period 1360 to 1461. In his lucid
and penetrating account of this formative period, Gerald Harriss
draws on the research of the last thirty years to illuminate late
medieval society at its peak, from the triumphalism of Edward III
in 1360 to the collapse of Lancastrian rule. The political
narrative centres on the deposition of Richard II in 1399 and the
establishment of the House of Lancaster, which was in turn
overthrown in the Wars of the Roses. Abroad, Henry V's heroic
victory at Agincourt in 1415 led to the English conquest of
northern France, lasting until 1450. Both produced long term
consequences: the first shaped the English constitution up to the
Stuart civil war, while the second generated lasting hostility
between England and France, and a residual wariness of military
intervention in Europe. Equally significant changes occurred in
English society. The Black Death produced a crisis in agrarian
structures, marked by the Peasants' Revolt in 1381 and the end of
serfdom. In landed society distinctive grades of knights, esquires
and gentlemen emerged, linked to the nobility in a web of patronage
and service, with an ethos of 'good lordship' and fidelity. While
the nobility were the king's immediate counsellors, the gentry
reflected the concerns of the community of the realm in parliament.
An increasingly well-educated and articulate class, they served as
MPs and JPs and staffed the growing legal profession. The greater
merchants controlled the wool trade, the source of England's
wealth, and distributed commodities through a network of towns and
markets. The marked individualism of this society, memorably
depicted in The Canterbury Tales, was accompanied by a growing
sense of national identity, expressed in the use of standard London
English. A spate of church building in perpendicular, a distinctive
national style, was matched on the one hand by the intensity of
Catholic devotion and on the other hand by the proto-Protestantism
of John Wyclif and the Lollards. THE NEW OXFORD HISTORY OF ENGLAND
The aim of the New Oxford History of England is to give an account
of the development of the country over time. It is hard to treat
that development as just the history which unfolds within the
precise boundaries of England, and a mistake to suggest that this
implies a neglect of the histories of the Scots, Irish, and Welsh.
Yet the institutional core of the story which runs from Anglo-Saxon
times to our own is the story of a state-structure built round the
English monarchy and its effective successor, the Crown in
Parliament. While the emphasis of individual volumes in the series
will vary, the ultimate outcome is intended to be a set of standard
and authoritative histories, embodying the scholarship of a
generation.
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