The world-shaking forced evictions of English peasants during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are treated by most historians as largely a 'Tudor myth'. For them, the peasantry disappeared much later through fair means thanks to industrialisation and trade. Centred on close scrutiny of the royal commission of 1517 – 'England's Second Domesday' – this book overturns these accounts. It demonstrates, unequivocally, that capitalism carved fundamental and irreversible breaches into the English countryside between 1400 and 1620. It began, grew and thrived on widespread illegal clearances of rural people and their culture by the English ruling class, long before the British industrial revolution.

Centred on close scrutiny of the royal commission of 1517 - 'England's Second Domesday' - this study reveals how capitalism began, grew and thrived on widespread illegal clearances of rural people and their culture during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The two-and-a-half centuries after 1066 were momentous ones in the history of Britain. In 1066, England was conquered for the last time. The Anglo-Saxon ruling class was destroyed and and the English became a subject race, dominated by a Norman-French dynasty and aristocracy. This book shows how the English domination of the kingdom was by no means a foregone conclusion. The struggle for mastery in the book's title is in reality the struggle for different masteries within Great Britain. The book weaves together the histories of England, Scotland and Wales in a new way and argues that all three, in their different fashions, were competing for domination

In this comprehensive synthesis canvassing the peoples, economies, religion, languages, and political leadership of medieval Britain, Carpenter weaves together the histories of England, Scotland, and Wales.

The only modern study devoted to the question of how the English kingdom was formed, arguing that the eleventh-century English kingdom was defined, not by any earlier vision of English unity, but by a series of administrative reforms that appear to have been implemented in the mid- to late tenth century.

This anthology brings together medieval documents and narratives illustrative of the political, social, economic, and cultural history of England during the Middle Ages. Authors and subjects included are both secular and clerical, male and female, mighty and low. Along with classic texts, such as the Domesday Book and Magna Carta, the collection also contains materials on less frequently addressed topics, such as the persecution of Jews, and the writings of a number of women, such as Margery of Kempe and Queen Isabella of Angoul?me.