England
In The Late Middle Ages (1307-1536) by A. R. Myers forms the fourth volume of
The Pelican History Of England. Now sixty years old, this particular text
examines a period of transition, perhaps from the traditional towards the
modern, at least in spirit. The author cites the fifteen thirties as the decade
beyond which medieval values and assumptions were in terminal decline. The
modernity that replaced them was merely incipient, however, and took centuries
more to transform English society, but the case made in this book for the
fifteen thirties forming the cusp of that change is compelling.
The
book certainly presents history as a top-down affair. The king and his concerns
are ever central, and most of the rest revolves around this core. It is Myers’s
case that medieval societies were characterised by a need for an all-powerful
figurehead whose authority was perceived as derived directly from God. And given
this, the history of the entire period was thus the history of the exercise of
this authority. There were strong kings, who commanded the allegiance of those
who held power of their own, and there were weak ones who thus invited plot,
conspiracy and instability. The divine right of kings, it seems, was subject to
Darwinian market forces: those who succeeded in attracting sufficient
authoritative godliness prospered, while those who did not were deposed.
A
measure of the monarch’s strength during this period seems to have been the
ability to fight foreign wars. The word “foreign” is problematic if the Angevin
origins of this empire are acknowledged. In the eyes of those who viewed
contemporary life, perhaps, England and their France were never perceived as
separate entities, but merely part of the same, unified heirloom estate that
happened to have a strip of sea through the middle. This view of the political
geography of the time is not stressed by Myers, so a sense of England versus
France pervades the narrative.
Myers
devotes time to the arts, economy, society in general and ecclesiastical life,
as well as to descriptions of court life, intrigue and military campaigns. His
discussion subtly charts the growth of trade and the rise of a class of nouveau
riche business families who eventually supplant the older, land-owning
aristocracy. And it is these people who eventually provide the stimulus that
encourages the adoption of humanism and other renaissance traits that had
developed a century earlier on mainland Europe. They thus appear to occupy the
role of a modernising elite.
The
fourteenth century in England was a century of plague amidst almost constant
warfare, either with France or, if that had temporarily run out of steam,
internally, where the Wars of the Roses saw the Houses of York and Lancaster
vie for the English throne. It was perhaps this conflict that resulted in
medieval values persisting in England when elsewhere they were already in
decline.
But
what is really satisfying about Myers’s account of late medieval England is
that in a short volume he manages to communicate and illustrate the
complications and exceptions, as well as the general thrust. This is a work of
true scholarship and understanding that strives to portray the big picture, but
accomplishes this via an attention to detail that brings the story completely
to life.
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