Table of Contents

Part 1: Political Society
1: Concepts of Governance
2: The King and the Court
3: Central Government
4: The Nobility
5: The Gentry
6: The Local Polity
Part 2: Work and Worship
7: Agrarian Society
8: Trade, Industry, and Towns
9: The Institutional Church
10: Religion, Devotion, and Dissent
Part 3: Men and Events
11: England, France, and Christendom 1360-1413
12: Ruling England 1360-1413
13: England and her Neighbours
14: The English in France 1413-1453
15: Ruling England 1413-1461
Conclusion: The Emerging Nation
Chronology
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Gerald Harriss is an Emeritus Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Reviews

well written, comprehensive, and balanced in its judgements. John S Moore, Economic History Review there can be little doubt that Shaping the Nation will not only rapidly establish itself as the first book one would wish to place in the hands of an undergraduate or interested non-specialist [...] but will also stand the test of time as a monument to the depth and breadth of scholarship on the society [...] of late medieval England during the second half of the twentieth century [...] Yet this is certainly not just a book for under-graduates or non-specialists; the range of its scholarship and the wisdom of its pronouncements make it a book from which specialists can learn a great deal. It takes a special kind of book to get it right for both types of audience, but that is the measure of Gerald Harris's achievement. The English Historical Review Outstanding book...Harriss brings extraordinary scholarship to the task of illuminating a path through this demanding terrain. He has produced a survey of stunning bredth and crystalline judgement. At more than 600 closely-argued pages, Shaping the Nation is not in any sense a light read. But as an insight into the complex reality of late medieval life, it is matchless. The Guardian This is a beautifully written book. Gerald Harriss' volume in the New Oxford History of England is immensely readable and full of memorable insight and incident...engaging volume...Harriss is a master at encapsulating complex truths in vivid images. BBC History Superbly done, simultaneously exciting and informative, a remarkable achievement in a book of this nature: Dr Harriss writes with a rare lucidity which never surrenders to over-simplification on the one hand or to over-elaboration on the other. Harriss is not summarizing. He is giving us a new history. TLS erudite and wide-ranging Sunday Times