England
Overview
England in 1300 held major territories on the Continent, and specifically in France. This central fact sets the stage for all our main narrative threads for English political history during this era. We will follow three in particular: war, monarchy, and parliament.
War
The dominant theme in English history during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is war. The Hundred Years War was by far the most significant, but these centuries also saw repeated wars with Scotland and Wales, and a civil conflict known as the Wars of the Roses.
The wars created tremendous pressures on government financial and administrative structures—essentially the king had to figure out how to raise money far in excess of his own traditional royal income, and how to distribute that income effectively to carry on the war.
The Monarchy
A second major theme is the issue of succession. After two hundred years of stability in the house of the Plantagenets, the crown was suddenly up for grabs during much of the 15th century. Who gets to be king? Who gets to decide? Moreover, oyal succession was tied closely with questions of public authority. Who was the ultimate source of authority within the nation? If the government needs to be reformed, who can do the reforming? These questions were not yet discussed directly, but they form a background to most of the political debates of the time.
Parliament
The third great political theme is the rise of Parliament. That rise was intimately connected with the themes of war and royal succession, so much so that it is incorrect to see any one of the three as a cause of the others. Rather, events or changes in one area necessarily created reactions in the other two.
Society and Economy
The great social theme of the age is the changing relations between nobility and commons. Put briefly, the nobles faced chronic economic difficulties that caused them to treat their estates differently than in earlier centuries. At the same time, the towns were prospering and were making a bid for a greater say in their economic and political fortunes, and were beginning to form a social counterpoint to the dominance of the nobility. Finally, even the peasantry was changing, twice lashing out at exploitation by the noble class. That these changes were connected with the political fortunes of the nation should come as no surprise.
The central economic themes were the effects on the economy of population loss, along with some fundamental shifts in strategic trade products such as wool. The demographic crisis hit England as it did everywhere else, and with similar effects. The general outlines of the response were similar, though of course the particulars varied. The shift in the wool trade was also something that happened elsewhere, but perhaps no country had its economic fortunes so tied to a single product. England went from being a supplier of raw wool to being a producer of cloth. That shift had ramifications not only in the local economy but also in international political relations.
Culture
If there's a word to apply to the cultural history of the times, I might use "innovation." Oxford and Cambridge were founded in the previous century, but they emerged as important intellectual centers in English life with the 14th century. John Wycliff introduced important innovations in religious thought that were radical enough that some of his teachings were labelled heresy. But Wycliffite ideas had an impact on Jan Hus in Bohemia (15th century) and on Martin Luther in Germany (16th century). In architecture we get English Perpendicular, the peculiarly English form of Gothic; and in literature we have a number of important writers, not least of whom was Geoffrey Chaucer.
The history of England, although tangled, is probably clearer and more dramatic than for any of the other countries we'll study in this course. Keep in mind the main themes and try not to let the endless parade of names overwhelm you.