England in the Late Middle Ages

Cover design by John Brinkley During the last generation a vast amount of research has been done on all aspects of the late Middle Ages in England, and this has radically modified previous views; yet no general synthesis has hitherto been attempted. Moreover, the period has suffered undue neglect and disparagement in comparison with the preceding ‘Age of Faith’ or the subsequent triumphs of Elizabethan England. But our generation may well find a particular interest in an England afflicted by war and disillusionment—from which it eventually recovered; and the late Middle Age in England was a time not merely of violence and decay but of growth and creativeness. Its Canterbury Tales and its Paston Letters, its ballads and its carols, its Perpendicular churches and its unsurpassed wood-carving, are still an essential part of English culture. It was an age of decisive importance for the future—the time of a developing Parliament and common law, of a government learning how to cooperate with the governed, of the rise to political and social importance of the middle classes, of a new pride in the English tongue, English ways, and English nationality. Revised edition: Does not include 31 illustrations. Includes (1) map of England, (1) map of France, (1) genealogy family-tree of Edward III. A. R. Myers, M.A., Ph.D., F.S.A., F.R. Hist. S., is Reader in Medieval History in the University of Liverpool. A Yorkshireman, he was educated at Huddersfield College and Manchester University, where he gained his First Class in History in 1934. His education in knowledge of human nature was advanced most rapidly during his wartime career in the Royal Navy, whether on active service in the North Sea, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, or in shore establishments at Winchester and Hove. His final naval rank was that of Lieutenant-Commander. He has contributed articles and reviews to various historical journals at home and abroad, and in 1959 had another book. The Household of Edward IV, published by the Manchester University Press. He is at present preparing English Historical Documents, 1322-1485 for the series edited by Professor D. C. Douglas. About the Series (The Pelican History of England) England in the Late Middle Ages is the fourth volume of a series planned to form an intelligent and consecutive guide to the development of English Society in all its aspects from the Roman invasion to the outbreak of the First World War. Each volume has been written by a speciahst, and each author has been left to decide what he himself considers significant and interesting in the period with which he deals, and to make his own balance between the claims of the sub-divisions of his general thesis, politics, economics, culture, religion, social life, colonial expansion, foreign relations. All have sought to emphasize the sense ofperiod, and while some parallels are inevitable, the business of discovering comparison and con- clusion, and of adapting the lessons of history to our own times, is left, for the most part, to the reader.