This book is a study of William de la Pole, the first English royal banker. E. B. Fryde discusses Pole's role as a merchant and financier, his political influence and the social preeminence he gained for himself and his family. The book addresses the growing significance of England's merchant class in financial and governmental affairs and examines the origins of one of the country's great families of the late medieval period.

Edmund Fryde provides a general account of the attempt to revive and surpass the standards of classical historiography and charts its progress. The career of Politian, the librarian of Lorenzo the Magnificent, illustrates the advance in scholarship during the fifteenth century. Using new evidence from the Vatican Library the author demonstrates that Lorenzo's library can be largely reconstructed and that a wealth of manuscripts was already available in his time.