A monumental mediaeval muddle

The history of England in the 14th and 15th centuries has traditionally been regarded either as a corrupt aftermath (as in ‘Bastard Feudalism’) or a confused prelude (as in the ‘New Monarchy’ of the Tudors). Its most vivid narrator remains Shakespeare who, perhaps surprisingly, supplies the title for this earnestly modern new account by Professor Miri Rubin of London University’s Queen Mary College. As so often, tradition misleads. To these centuries belong the origins or establishment of such enduring features of national life as the collegiate universities of Oxford and Cambridge; Justices of the Peace; parl- iamentary scrutiny and audit of public finances; the legal profession; the Order of the Garter; printing; and English as the language of literature and government. These centuries saw the most radical demographic shift in recorded history, the Black Death and the subsequent outbreaks of plague killing up to half the population, the new circumstances of the rural economy leading to the slow demise of serfdom. The survivors produced lasting intellectual and religious diversity, some of it branded by conservative contemporaries as ‘Lollardy’, that survived the 16th-century Reformation, as well as the many striking physical monuments to spiritual hope and anxiety that punctuate the landscapes of the Cotswolds or East Anglia. Henry V, the most impressive monarch of the period, survived as a recognised icon of Englishness into the 20th century. The political society created by the permanency of public warfare with Scotland and France was prone to dramatic or sordid dislocation witnessed by the convulsions of the Peasants’ Revolt or the so-called Wars of the Roses. The myth of England’s inviolacy since 1066 was exposed by four successful invasions (1326, 1399, 1471, 1485). The English became notorious for killing their kings; five of them met violent deaths, five were deposed (one of them, Henry VI, twice).