The Fifteenth Century XX

"This series pushes the boundaries of knowledge and develops new trends in approach and understanding." ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW


As is appropriate in a volume honouring the distinguished scholarship in this field of Dr Rowena E. Archer, wealthy and influential ladies, most notably Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, take centre stage, alongside successive queens consort of the period, whose councils helped to implement justice. Alice's almshouse at Ewelme provides a fine example of the many institutions which offered care for the elderly in late medieval England, a period when Henry VII placed great emphasis on the burials of his kinsfolk, particularly in Westminster abbey, to ensure that their memory would endure. Pretenders to the throne of that king and his successor, who included Alice's grandson, bring into focus the riots of 1487 near the borders of Wales and portraits dating from the 1520s. Other themes of language (how Henry V employed English in France), law (the development of the concept of the body corporate) and taxation (levies imposed on imported wine) are added to an intriguing comparison of relations between English administrators and the nobility of Gascony with British imperialists and the princes of India.