Kings and Queens of England

I spent some time over the Christmas break reading about the medieval history of England, mostly in Simon Jenkins’ A Short History of England (2011).  The blurb on the back from the Spectator says ‘This is a traditional, kings-and-things history with all its dates and famous quotations in place…’, and that very nicely sums up the book.  Although I’ve read several accounts of medieval English history, this is not a period I’ve ever studied academically, and it remains a bit of a blur.  I understand the broad outlines: essentially a 400+ year period of occupation by a French speaking royalty and nobility giving way to a very gradual ‘Anglicisation’ of the ruling class, especially as a result of increased conflict with France in the C.14 and C.15 centuries during the Hundred Year War.

The Jenkins book helps to fill in many of the details of this history, and without the details it doesn’t really make sense.  There are lots of obvious comparisons with histories of kingship in the Hebrew Bible (e.g. the books of Samuel), and the history of the nation seems to be shaped to a significant degree by the circumstances and character of the monarch.  This is very different to the C.20 history that I’ve focused on, where the history of the royal family barely enters into the story.  There would be an interesting ‘great man’ themed exam question that asks when things changed.  I might answer that by saying that things started to change when we got more sources from ‘the masses’ and began to pay attention to wider historical trends.  In other words, history itself changes when we move beyond a ‘kings-and-things’ approach.  That said, there is real value in understanding the ‘top down’ history of medieval England, and I wouldn’t suggest that it’s entirely unfair to say that individuals enjoyed a greater influence over national history during this period than subsequently.  The Jenkins book is short and well worth reading.