Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Late Medieval English Kingship
- Cambridge Companions to History
- The Cambridge Companion to Late Medieval English Kingship
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- Part I Chronology and Context
- Part II Kingship in Practice
- 4 Governance and Politics
- 5 Finance
- 6 Justice
- 7 Warfare and Chivalry
- 8 The Royal Court and Household
- 9 Queens and the Royal Family
- Part III The King and His Subjects
- Part IV Representations
- Part V Reflection
- Index
- References
4 - Governance and Politics
from Part II - Kingship in Practice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2025
By
Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Late Medieval English Kingship
- Cambridge Companions to History
- The Cambridge Companion to Late Medieval English Kingship
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- Part I Chronology and Context
- Part II Kingship in Practice
- 4 Governance and Politics
- 5 Finance
- 6 Justice
- 7 Warfare and Chivalry
- 8 The Royal Court and Household
- 9 Queens and the Royal Family
- Part III The King and His Subjects
- Part IV Representations
- Part V Reflection
- Index
- References
Summary
In a political system based on monarchy it is misleading to equate governance (the active and legitimate exercise of social control) with politics (the public debate surrounding that practice), for the basis of power and authority in late medieval England lay overwhelmingly in the personal rule of the king, and ‘public debate’ over how he did so was very rarely conducted in the open, though, as we shall see, it certainly could – and did – occur. For most of the time, however, there was very little ‘politics’ but an awful lot of ‘governance’. The basis of a king’s right to exercise governance over his subjects lay in the theoretically unimpeachable notion that he had been appointed by God to protect and advance the common interest of the kingdom.
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- Type
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- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
References
Further Reading
Carpenter, C., ‘Resisting and Deposing Kings in England in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’, in Murder and Monarchy: Regicide in European History, 1300–1800, ed. von Friedeburg, R. (Basingstoke, 2005), 99–121.Google Scholar
Carpenter, C. ‘Henry VI and the Deskilling of the Royal Bureaucracy’, in The Fifteenth Century IX: English and Continental Perspectives, ed. Clark, L. (Woodbridge, 2010), 1–37.Google Scholar
Gillingham, J. B., ‘Crisis or Continuity? The Structure of Royal Authority in England 1369–1422’, in Das Spätmittelalterliche Königtum im Europäischen Vergleich (Sigmaringen, 1987), 59–80.Google Scholar
Harriss, G. L., ‘Political Society and the Growth of Government in Late Medieval England’, Past & Present 138 (1993), 28–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lander, J. R., The Limitations of English Monarchy in the Later Middle Ages (Toronto, 1989).Google Scholar
Ormrod, W. M., Political Life in Medieval England, 1300–1450 (Basingstoke, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, S., ‘Civil War and Rebellion, 1200–1500’, in Walker, , Political Culture in Late Medieval England: Essays by Simon Walker (Manchester, 2006), 246–62.Google Scholar
Watts, J., ‘“A New Fundacion of Is Crowne”: Monarchy in the Age of Henry VII’, in The Reign of Henry VII: Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Thompson, B. (Stamford, 1995), 31–53.Google Scholar
Watts, J. ‘Ideas, Principles and Politics’, in The Wars of the Roses, ed. Pollard, A. J. (Basingstoke, 1995), 110–33.Google Scholar
Watts, J. ‘Usurpation in England: A Paradox of State-Growth’, in Coups d’État à la Fin du Moyen Âge? Aux fondements du pouvoir politique en Europe occidentale, ed. Foronda, F., Genet, J.-P. and Nieto Soria, J. M. (Madrid, 2005), 115–30.Google Scholar
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