Later Medieval England
- Course Code
- HIST 0410
- Course Type
- Tutorials
- Subject Credit
- Course Availability
When the seven- year-old Henry III ascended his father’s throne in 1216, much of his kingdom was under French occupation; a peace treaty between the Crown and the political classes had failed disastrously; and all seemed close to collapse. When Henry VII died in 1509 he left a fully treasury; an administration run on the most modern (and rapacious) lines; a country where humanism was taking root; a prosperous and much loved English Church; and few signs of a resurgence of the sporadic civil war which had bedevilled England between 1455 and 1485. Amongst the key themes which students might explore in this course are: the development of political institutions capable of managing relations between kings and those they ruled (most famously ‘parliament’); relations with France and England’s other neighbours; the development of the economy; the impact of disease; and the flourishing of vernacular literature.
Sample Syllabus
- Magna Carta and the Rise of Parliament
- Hammering the Scots and Ruling the Welsh
- The Black Death: Who Gained and Who Lost?
- ‘Here is God’s plenty’: Chaucer’s England
- The Hundred Years’ War and English Identity
- Heterodoxy and Heresy: the Challenge of Wycliff
- The Wars of the Roses
- Henry Tudor’s Settlement
Introductory Reading
- King, E., Medieval England from Hastings to Bosworth. Stroud: the History Press, New Edition, 2009
- Keen, M.H., English Society in the Later Middle Ages, 1348-1500. London: Penguin, 1990
- Saul, N., Age of Chivalry: Art and Society in Late Medieval England. London: Collis & Brown, 1992.
- Robinson, F.N. (ed.), The Riverside Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 2008
- Froissart, Jean, Chronicles. Translated G. Brereton. London: Penguin, 1978 etc.