This volume explores the role of bishops at the heart of thirteenth-century English politics, examining their culture and political theology. Under King John and Henry III, the bishops acted as peacemakers, supporting royal power when it was threatened, but between 1258 and 1265, led by Simon de Montfort, they became partisans, helping to overturn royal power.

The fruits of new research on the politics, society and culture of England in the fourteenth century.

Despite the multidirectional nature of modern research, the interpretation of the political history of thirteenth-century England has remained locked into a traditional framework bequeathed by the mid-twentieth-century historian, R. F. Treharne, and embellished by the emphases and accentuations of his present-day successors. Characterised by its conception of community, its constitutionalism, its ready identification of a national enterprise, and its predilection for idealism and 'progressive' thinking, this framework remains close to the Whig interpretation of English history. It is reinforced by the continuation of reverence for the baronial leader, Simon de Montfort. In contrast, Peter Coss offers here an alternative approach to the period which is anchored in social mores and cultural values. More emphasis is placed upon the interests, ambitions, and needs of contemporaries, upon social networks of various kinds, and upon how interests both clashed and cohered as people strove to improve or preserve their situations. This was a crisis born of political instability, but in the context of institutional, administrative, and legal growth, that is to say at a particular point in the evolution of the state. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the book reconsiders the generation of the crisis, the factors which influenced its course, and its (partial) resolution. In short, it explores the anatomy and physiology of a troubled realm.

An account of Dominican activities in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales from their arrival in 1221 until their dissolution at the Reformation

Excommunication was the medieval churchâs most severe sanction, used against people at all levels of society. It was a spiritual, social, and legal penalty. Excommunication in Thirteenth-Century England offers a fresh perspective on medieval excommunication by taking a multi-dimensional approach to discussion of the sanction. Using England as a case study, Felicity Hill analyzes the intentions behind excommunication; how it was perceived and received, at both national and local level; the effects it had upon individuals and society. The study is structured thematically to argue that our understanding of excommunication should be shaped by how it was received within the community as well as the intentions of canon law and clerics. Challenging past assumptions about the inefficacy of excommunication, Hill argues that the sanction remained a useful weapon for the clerical elite: bringing into dialogue a wide range of source material allows âeffectivenessâ to be judged within a broader context. The complexity of political communication and action are revealed through public, conflicting, accepted and rejected excommunications. Excommunication could be manipulated to great effect in political conflicts and was an important means by which political events were communicated down the social strata of medieval society. Through its exploration of excommunication, the book reveals much about medieval cursing, pastoral care, fears about the afterlife, social ostracism, shame and reputation, and mass communication.

'An absorbing and eye-opening account of what the Plantagenets did for us.' - HELEN CASTOR 'Burt and Partington show precisely and engagingly why the Middle Ages matter.' - DAN JONES Between 1199 and 1399, English politics was high drama. These two centuries witnessed savage political blood-letting - including civil war, deposition, the murder of kings and the ruthless execution of rebel lords - as well as international warfare, devastating national pandemic, economic crisis and the first major peasant uprising in English history. Arise, England uses the six Plantagenet kings who ruled during these two centuries to explore England's emergent statehood. Drawing on original accounts and arresting new research, it draws resonances between government, international relations, and the abilities, egos and ambitions of political actors, then and now. Colourful and complicated, and by turns impressive and hateful, the six kings stride through the story; but arguably the greatest character is the emerging English state itself.