The final volume in the series of Chancery documents now classified in the Public Record Office as Inquisitions Miscellaneous.

This book is the first full-length biography of Joan of Navarre, a fascinating royal woman who became duchess of Brittany and queen consort of England through her two marriages in 1386 and 1403 respectively. Joan was enmeshed in the turbulent politics of the later Middle Ages as her extensive family and marital connections meant she was related to most of the royal houses of Western Europe—as well as the key protagonists of the Hundred Years War. The large foreign entourage that Joan brought with her to England, and her family ties across the Channel, made her unpopular with her subjects and her loyalties suspect, provoking several purges of her household and culminating in a charge of treason on which she was detained for several years. Yet Joan returned to court in her later years and fought vociferously to the end to retain queenly rights, revenues, and position. Ultimately, this book highlights Joan’s political agency and tenacity, bringing her out of the historical shadows and into the foreground of high politics in fifteenth-century England and Europe. Joan of Navarre is a useful resource for all students and scholars interested in queenship studies, women’s history, and European politics during the later Middle Ages.

A collection which highlights "the range and richness of scholarship on medieval warfare, military institutions, and cultures of conflict that characterize the field". History 95 [2010] The comprehensive breadth and scope of the Journal are to the fore in this issue, which ranges widely both geographically and chronologically. The subjects of analysis are equally diverse, with three contributions dealing with theCrusades, four with matters related to the Hundred Years War, two with high-medieval Italy, one with the Alans in the Byzantine-Catalan conflict of the early fourteenth century, and one with the wars of the Duke of Cephalonia inWestern Greece and Albania at the turn of the fifteenth century. Topics include military careers, tactics and strategy, the organization of urban defenses, close analysis of chronicle sources, and cultural approaches to the acceptance of gunpowder artillery and the prevalence of military "games" in Italian cities. Contributors: T.S. Asbridge, A. Compton Reeves, Kelly DeVries, Michael Ehrlich, Scott Jessee, Donald Kagay, Savvas Kyriakidis, Randall Moffett, Aldo A. Settia, Charles D. Stanton, Georgios Theotokis, L.J. Andrew Villalon, Anatoly Isaenko.

Whilst much recent research has dealt with the popular response to the religious change ushered in during the mid-Tudor period, this book focuses not just on the response to broad liturgical and doctrinal change, but also looks at how theological and reform messages could be utilized among local leaders and civic elites. It is this cohort that has often been neglected in previous efforts to ascertain the often elusive position of the common woman or man. Using the Vale of Gloucester as a case study, the book refocuses attention onto the concept of "commonwealth" and links it to a gradual, but long-standing dissatisfaction with local religious houses. It shows how monasteries, endowed initially out of the charitable impulses of elites, increasingly came to depend on lay stewards to remain viable. During the economic downturn of the mid-Tudor period, when urban and landed elites refocused their attention on restoring the commonwealth which they believed had broken down, they increasingly viewed the charity offered by religious houses as insufficient to meet the local needs. In such a climate the Protestant social gospel seemed to provide a valid alternative to which many people gravitated. Holding to scrutiny the revisionist revolution of the past twenty years, the book reopens debate and challenges conventional thinking about the ways the traditional church lost influence in the late middle ages, positing the idea that the problems with the religious houses were not just the creation of the reformers but had rather a long history. In so doing it offers a more complete picture of reform that goes beyond head-counting by looking at the political relationships and how they were affected by religious ideas to bring about change.

A valuable resource on the social and economic life of medieval England

The book is intended as a contribution to the history of England as a whole in the fifteenth century and to the study of the long-term development of the English landed classes and the English constitution.