England in the Late Middle Ages

Description

During the last generation a vast amount of research been done on all aspects of the late Middle Ages In England, and this has radically modified previous views; yet no general synthesis has hitherto been attempted. Moreover, the period has suffered undue neglect and disparagement in comparison with the preceding ‘Age of Faith’ or the subsequent triumphs of Elizabethan England. Its Canterbury Tales and its Paston Letters, its ballads and its carols, its Perpendicular churches and its unsurpassed wood-carving, are still an essential part of English culture. It was an age of decisive importance for the future the time of a developing Parliament and common law, of a government learning how to cooperate with the governed, of the rise to political and social importance of the middle classes, of a new pride in the English tongue, English ways, and English nationality.