United Kingdom

Recommended works on special topics include R. Allen Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest, 2nd ed. (1985); V.H. Galbraith, The Making of Domesday Book (1961), superseded in many ways, but a classic; and Peter Sawyer (ed.), Domesday Book: A Reassessment (1985). Feudal society is the subject of Frank Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism, 1066–1166, 2nd ed. (1961, reprinted 1979); Austin Lane Poole, Obligations of Society in the XII and XIII Centuries (1946, reprinted 1984); and J.C. Holt, Magna Carta (1965), the best account of the Great Charter. Also useful is J.C. Holt, Magna Carta and Medieval Government (1985). Studies of the nobility include K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (1973, reprinted 1997), a most influential book; and Chris Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages: The Fourteenth-Century Political Community (1987). Parliament is studied in G.O. Sayles, The King’s Parliament of England (1974); G.L. Harriss, King, Parliament, and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (1975); E.B. Fryde and Edward Miller (ed.), Historical Studies of the English Parliament, 2 vol. (1970); and R.G. Davies and J.H. Denton (eds.), The English Parliament in the Middle Ages (1981). The economy of the period is characterized in J.L. Bolton, The Medieval English Economy, 1150–1500 (1980); Edward Miller and John Hatcher, Medieval England: Rural Society and Economic Change, 1086–1348 (1978); M.M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain in the Middle Ages (1972); Reginald Lennard, Rural England: 1086–1135: A Study of Social and Agrarian Conditions (1959, reprinted 1966); and John Hatcher, Plague, Population, and the English Economy, 1348–1530 (1977). England’s major trade is discussed in Eileen Power, The Wool Trade in English Medieval History (1941, reprinted 1987); and T.H. Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (1977). Also informative are Susan Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (1977, reprinted 1982); and Maurice Beresford, New Towns of the Middle Ages: Town Plantation in England, Wales and Gascony (1967, reprinted 1988). Studies of the church include Frank Barlow, The English Church, 1066–1154: A History of the Anglo-Norman Church (1979); David Knowles, The Monastic Order in England: A History of Its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 940–1216, 2nd ed. (1963), and The Religious Orders in England, 3 vol. (1948–59, reprinted 1979); W.A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (1955, reprinted 1980); and C.H. Lawrence (ed.), The English Church and the Papacy in the Middle Ages (1965, reprinted 1984). Studies of the law of the period include Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1898, reissued 1982), still fundamental; Doris M. Stenton, English Justice Between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter, 1066–1215 (1964); Alan Harding, The Law Courts of Medieval England (1973); S.F.C. Milsom, The Legal Framework of English Feudalism (1976, reprinted 1986); and John Bellamy, Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages (1973).

England in the 16th century