Description
This is a description of England during the two and a half centuries after the Norman Conquest. A chronological setting is given to the development of society during the period by references to political events of the time.
The relations between the King, the nobles, the Church, and the people are described, and the author sketches the stages by which, as time went on, departments of state evolved out of the individual authority of officers of the royal household, and Parliament out of the King’s Council.
But essentially the book recaptures the life of ordinary people in these centuries and, with the help of contemporary records, describes the well-wooded country they inhabited and their manner of cultivating the open fields, their manors, villages, and towns, their courts, their churches, and their pastimes.
‘It provides what, within its modest compass, may be regarded as the best existing sketch of English society in the earlier Middle Ages’ – The Times Literary Supplement
The cover shows the Exemplification of Kin Henry III’s reissue of Magna Carta 1225 – British Museum
Paperback, 320 pages. In very good preloved condition with the exception of a minor colour change to pages consistant with the 1967 publication date of this book.