England Under The Normans And Angevins

ENGLAND UNDER THE NORMANS AND ANGEVINS H. W. C. Davis LONDON METHUEN CO LTD NEW YORK BARNES NOBLE INC A History of England in Eight Volumes I ENGLAND BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST by Sir Charles Oman II ENGLAND UNDER THE NORMANS AND ANGEVINS by H. W, C. Davis III ENGLAND IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES by Kenneth H. Vickers IV ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS by G. R. Elton ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS by G. M. Trevelyan VI ENGLAND UNDER THE HANOVERIANS by Sir Charles Grant Robertson VII ENGLAND SINCE WATERLOO by Sir J. A. R. Marriott VIII MODERN ENGLAND, 1885-1945 by Sir J. A, R. Marriott INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR IN England, as in France and Germany, the main characteristic of the last fifty years, from the point of view of the student of history, has been that new material has been accumulating much faster than it can be assimilated or absorbed. The standard works of the 19th-century historians need to be revised, or even to be put aside as obsolete, in the light of the new information that is coming in so rapidly and in such vast bulk. The series of which this volume forms a part is intended to do something towards meeting the demand for information brought up to date. Individual historians will not sit down, as once they were wont, to write twenty-volume works in the style of Hume or Lingard, embracing a dozen centuries of annals. It is not to be desired that they should the writer who is most satisfactory in dealing with Anglo-Saxon antiquities is not likely to be the one who will best discuss the antecedents of the Reformation, or the constitutional history of the Stuart period. But something can be done by judicious co-operation. In the thirty-four years since the first volume of thisseries appeared in 1904, it would seem that the idea has justified itself, vi INTRODUCTORY NOTE as the various sections have passed through many editions and revisions varying from six to sixteen. Each is intended to give something more than a mere outline of one period of our national annals, but they have little space for controversy or the discussion of sources. There is, however, a bibliography annexed to most of the series, which will show the inquirer where information of the more special kind is to be sought. Moreover, a number of maps are to be found at the end of each volume which, as it is hoped, will make it unnecessary for the reader to be continually referring to large historical atlases tomes which as we must confess with regret are not to be discovered in every private library. The general editor and his collaborators have been touched lightly by the hand of time. All regret the too early decease of our colleague Henry Carless Davis, sometime Regius Professor of Modern History in this University, who wrote the second of the eight volumes of the series. He had several times revised his contribution. Most of us survivors continue to do the same from time to time, as the pen or sometimes the spade produces new sources of information. Naturally the spade is particularly active for the purveying of fresh material for the first of our volumes, and the pen or the press for the two last. Information must be kept up to date, whatever the epoch concerned, even though it is known that much undiscovered evidence may yet be forthcoming in the near future. C. OMAN OXFORD. PREFACE THE period of English history which is covered by the present volume possesses a distinctive character andunity. With the Norman Conquest the nation passes at one bound from the Dark into the Middle Age the death of Henry III. marks the moment of transition from the first to the second stage of our medieval history, from the inventive and experimental era to that of consolidation and completion. The years 1066-1272 witnessed the beginning and the end of some remarkable developments the creation of English Feudalism, the rejuvenation of the English Church, the decisive conflicts of Church and Feudalism with the State...