The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326

The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326 PDF Author: Natalie Fryde
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521548069
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This book reassesses the unusually violent rule of Edward II and the Despensers between 1321 and 1326. It examines the social dislocation caused by Edward's execution of his opponents and the confiscation of their lands in 1322 and the perversion of the law which accompanied it. From an examination of a large amount of unpublished material, Mrs Fryde shows how an exceptionally grasping courtier, the younger Despenser, worked with an equally grasping king to produce for the one an enormously swollen landed estate and for the other a vast hoard of treasure. The new evidence brought to light suggests that it was greed for wealth rather than any spirit of innovation which brought the Exchequer reforms of these years. Queen Isabella's contribution to the king's overthrow and Edward's disastrous relations with her brother, the king of France, are worked out in detail and there is a separate chapter on the contribution of London to the downfall of the regime.

The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326

The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326 PDF Author: Natalie Fryde
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521548069
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This book reassesses the unusually violent rule of Edward II and the Despensers between 1321 and 1326. It examines the social dislocation caused by Edward's execution of his opponents and the confiscation of their lands in 1322 and the perversion of the law which accompanied it. From an examination of a large amount of unpublished material, Mrs Fryde shows how an exceptionally grasping courtier, the younger Despenser, worked with an equally grasping king to produce for the one an enormously swollen landed estate and for the other a vast hoard of treasure. The new evidence brought to light suggests that it was greed for wealth rather than any spirit of innovation which brought the Exchequer reforms of these years. Queen Isabella's contribution to the king's overthrow and Edward's disastrous relations with her brother, the king of France, are worked out in detail and there is a separate chapter on the contribution of London to the downfall of the regime.

Hugh Despenser the Younger and Edward II

Hugh Despenser the Younger and Edward II PDF Author: Kathryn Warner
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526715635
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Hugh Despenser the Younger and Edward II tells the story of the greatest villain of the fourteenth century, his dazzling rise as favorite to the king and his disastrous fall.Born in the late 1280s, Hugh married King Edward I of Englands eldest granddaughter when he was a teenager. Ambitious and greedy to an astonishing degree, Hugh chose a startling route to power: he seduced his wifes uncle, the young King Edward II, and became the richest and most powerful man in the country in the 1320s. For years he dominated the English government and foreign policy, and took whatever lands he felt like by both quasi-legal and illegal methods, with the kings connivance. His actions were to bring both himself and Edward II down, and Hugh was directly responsible for the first forced abdication of a king in English history; he had made the horrible mistake of alienating and insulting Edwards queen Isabella of France, who loathed him, and who had him slowly and grotesquely executed in her presence in November 1326.

The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family

The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family PDF Author: Kathryn Warner
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1526744945
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
A historian’s fascinating account of two centuries in the lives of the powerful Despensers, famed for tragedy and scandal in medieval England. The Despensers were a baronial English family who rose to great prominence in the reign of Edward II (1307-27) when Hugh Despenser the Younger became the king’s chamberlain, favorite, and perhaps, lover. He and his father Hugh the Elder wielded great influence, and Hugh the Younger’s greed and tyranny brought down a king for the first time in English history and almost destroyed his own family. The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family tells the story of the ups and downs of this fascinating family from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, when three Despenser lords were beheaded and two fell in battle. We begin with Hugh, Chief Justiciar of England, who died rebelling against King Henry III and his son in 1265, and end with Thomas Despenser, summarily beheaded in 1400 after attempting to free a deposed Richard II, and Thomas’s posthumous daughter Isabella, a countess twice over and the grandmother of Richard III’s queen. From the medieval version of Prime Ministers to the (possible) lovers of monarchs, the aristocratic Despenser family wielded great power in medieval England. Drawing on the popular intrigue and infamy of the Despenser clan, Kathryn Warner’s book traces the lives of the most notorious, powerful, and influential members of this patrician family over a two-hundred-year span.

Fourteenth Century England VII

Fourteenth Century England VII PDF Author: W. M. Ormrod
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 1843837218
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This series provides a forum for the most recent research into the political, social and ecclesiastical history of the 14th century.

Historical Dictionary of Late Medieval England, 1272-1485

Historical Dictionary of Late Medieval England, 1272-1485 PDF Author: Ronald H. Fritze
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313011362
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 677

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Book Description
Providing the chronological setting for many of Shakespeare's plays, various swashbuckling novels from Sir Walter Scott's to Robert Louis Stevenson's, and such Hollywood films as Braveheart, late Medieval England is superficially well known. Yet its true complexity remains elusive, locked in the covers of specialized monographs and journal articles. In over 300 entries written by 80 scholars, this book makes the factual information and historical interpretations of the era readily available. Covering political, military, religious, and constitutional subjects as well as social and economic topics, the volume is easy to use, comprehensive, and authoritative. It provides a useful resource for undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, and educated laymen. Rightly characterized as an age of crisis, the 14th century saw the Hundred Years War, the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the Avignon Papacy, and the Great Schism of the Western Church. All placed great stresses on English society, aggravating old problems and creating new ones. In the late Middle Ages, parliament became an important element in English government; Cambridge and Oxford universities attained European-wide reputations; and general literacy increased. The Church remained a paramount religious, political, and social institution, but its independence and intellectual monopoly slipped. The entries in this book synthesize recent scholarship on these and other historical events. While emphasizing political, religious, constitutional and military topics, the book also provides brief introductions to social, economic, cultural, and intellectual topics. It is a valuable guide for those wishing to understand this complex, tumultuous, and until recently, poorly understood era.

The Theory and Practice of Revolt in Medieval England

The Theory and Practice of Revolt in Medieval England PDF Author: Claire Valente
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135188123X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Medieval Englishmen were treacherous, rebellious and killed their kings, as their French contemporaries repeatedly noted. In the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, ten kings faced serious rebellion, in which eight were captured, deposed, and/or murdered. One other king escaped open revolt but encountered vigorous resistance. In this book, Professor Valente argues that the crises of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were crucibles for change; and their examination helps us to understand medieval political culture in general and key developments in later medieval England in particular. The Theory and Practice of Revolt takes a comparative look at these crises, seeking to understand medieval ideas of proper kingship and government, the role of political violence and the changing nature of reform initiatives and the rebellions to which they led. It argues that rebellion was an accepted and to a certain extent legitimate means to restore good kingship throughout the period, but that over time it became increasingly divorced from reform aims, which were satisfied by other means, and transformed by growing lordly dominance, arrogance, and selfishness. Eventually the tradition of legitimate revolt disappeared, to be replaced by both parliament and dynastic civil war. Thus, on the one hand, development of parliament, itself an outgrowth of political crises, reduced the need for and legitimacy of crisis reform. On the other hand, when crises did arise, the idea and practice of the community of the realm, so vibrant in the thirteenth century, broke down under the pressures of new political and socio-economic realities. By exploring violence and ideas of government over a longer period than is normally the case, this work attempts to understand medieval conceptions on their own terms rather than with regard to modern assumptions and to use comparison as a means of explaining events, ideas, and developments.

Martyrs in the Making

Martyrs in the Making PDF Author: D. Piroyansky
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230582745
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
This book explores the late medieval English cults which evolved around 'political martyrs'. By examining these cults the richness of political culture is revealed, and insights offered into the ways in which belief, worship, social and civic identities, and political language and practice were continuously constructed and re-constructed.

The Worst Medieval Monarchs

The Worst Medieval Monarchs PDF Author: Phil Bradford
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1399083082
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Stephen. John. Edward II. Richard II. Richard III. These five are widely viewed as the worst of England’s medieval kings. Certainly, their reigns were not success stories. Two of these kings lost their thrones, one only avoided doing so by dying, another was killed in battle, and the remaining one had to leave his crown to his opponent. All have been seen as incompetent, their reigns blighted by civil war and conflict. They tore the realm apart, failing in the basic duty of a king to ensure peace and justice. For that, all of them paid a heavy price. As well as incompetence, some also have reputations for cruelty and villainy, More than one has been portrayed as a tyrant. The murder of family members and arbitrary executions stain their reputations. All five reigns ended in failure. As a result, the kings have been seen as failures themselves, the worst examples of medieval English kingship. They lost their reputations as well as their crowns. Yet were these five really the worst men to wear the crown of England in the Middle Ages? Or has history treated them unfairly? This book looks at the stories of their lives and reigns, all of which were dramatic and often unpredictable. It then examines how they have been seen since their deaths, the ways their reputations have been shaped across the centuries. The standards of their own age were different to our own. How these kings have been judged has changed over time, sometimes dramatically. Fiction, from Shakespeare’s plays to modern films, has also played its part in creating the modern picture. Many things have created, over a long period, the negative reputations of these five. Today, they have come to number among the worst kings of English history. Is this fair, or should they be redeemed? That is the question this book sets out to answer.

Imprisoning Medieval Women

Imprisoning Medieval Women PDF Author: Dr Gwen Seabourne
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409482324
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The non-judicial confinement of women is a common event in medieval European literature and hagiography. The literary image of the imprisoned woman, usually a noblewoman, has carried through into the quasi-medieval world of the fairy and folk tale, in which the 'maiden in the tower' is one of the archetypes. Yet the confinement of women outside of the judicial system was not simply a fiction in the medieval period. Men too were imprisoned without trial and sometimes on mere suspicion of an offence, yet evidence suggests that there were important differences in the circumstances under which men and women were incarcerated, and in their roles in relation to non-judicial captivity. This study of the confinement of women highlights the disparity in regulation concerning male and female imprisonment in the middle ages, and gives a useful perspective on the nature of medieval law, its scope and limitations, and its interaction with royal power and prerogative. Looking at England from 1170 to 1509, the book discusses: the situations in which women might be imprisoned without formal accusation of trial; how social status, national allegiance and stage of life affected the chances of imprisonment; the relevant legal rules and norms; the extent to which legal and constitutional developments in medieval England affected women's amenability to confinement; what can be known of the experiences of women so incarcerated; and how women were involved in situations of non-judicial imprisonment, aside from themselves being prisoners.

Philippa of Hainault

Philippa of Hainault PDF Author: Kathryn Warner
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445662809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Philippa of Hainault: Mother of the English Nation. The first biography of a remarkable and influential English queen.