Following on from the popular first book in this series covering the Norman period, "The Angevins" traces the establishment and growth of the English nation state. Covering the reigns of Henry II, Richard I and the infamous King John, the narrative flows from the ending of the civil war known as the Anarchy to the First Baron's War and the Magna Carta. With over 190 illustrations and maps, the format has been designed to enable the reader to absorb the essence of the period. This is a serious history book with easy readability. The author’s encyclopedic knowledge of the English Middle Ages has enabled him to delve into fascinating details of the time and the links with England today to be found in language, institutions and places. "England in the Middle Ages: The Angevins” is ideal for scholars, students, visitors to England, and for the general history reader.

This intriguing book tells the story of England’s great medieval Angevin dynasty in an entirely new way. Departing from the usual king-centric narrative, Richard Huscroft instead centers each of his chapters on the experiences of a particular man or woman who contributed to the broad sweep of events. Whether noble and brave or flawed and fallible, each participant was struggling to survive in the face of uncontrollable forces. Princes, princesses, priests, heroes, relatives, friends, and others—some well known and others obscure—all were embroiled in the drama of historic events. Under Henry II and his sons Richard I (the Lionheart) and John, the empire rose to encompass much of the British Isles and the greater part of modern France, yet it survived a mere fifty years. Huscroft deftly weaves together the stories of individual lives to illuminate the key themes of this exciting and formative era.

A collective biography of English royalty, writers, politicians and artists of the early medieval period from 1066-1272.

"All aspects of England in the High Middle Ages are covered, including sections on social, economic, religious, military, intellectual and art history, as well as on political and constitutional history."--Publisher description.

Medieval England presents the political and cultural development of English society from the Norman Conquest to the end of the Wars of the Roses. It is a story of change, progress, setback, and consolidation, with England emerging as a wealthy and stable country, many of whose essential features were to remain unchanged until the Industrial Revolution. Edmund King traces his chronicle through the lives of successive monarchs, the inescapable central thread of that epoch. The momentous events of the times are also recreated, from the compiling of the Domesday Book, through the wars with the Scots, the Welsh, and the French, to the Peasants' Revolt and the disastrous Black Death.

The secular clergy - priests and other clerics outside of monastic orders - were among the most influential and powerful groups in European society during the central Middle Ages. The secular clergy got their title from the Latin word for world, saeculum, and secular clerics kept the Church running in the world beyond the cloister wall, with responsibility for the bulk of pastoral care and ecclesiastical administration. This gave them enormous religious influence, although they were considered too worldly by many contemporary moralists - trying, for instance, to oppose the elimination of clerical marriage and concubinage. Although their worldliness created many tensions, it also gave the secular clergy much worldly influence. Contemporaries treated elite secular clerics as equivalent to knights, and some were as wealthy as minor barons. Secular clerics had a huge role in the rise of royal bureaucracy, one of the key historical developments of the period. They were instrumental to the intellectual and cultural flowering of the twelfth century, the rise of the schools, the creation of the book trade, and the invention of universities. They performed music, produced literature in a variety of genres and languages, and patronized art and architecture. Indeed, this volume argues that they contributed more than any other group to the Twelfth-Century Renaissance. Yet the secular clergy as a group have received almost no attention from scholars, unlike monks, nuns, or secular nobles. In The Secular Clergy in England, 1066-1216, Hugh Thomas aims to correct this deficiency through a major study of the secular clergy below the level of bishop in England from 1066 to 1216.