George Garnett – författare

The Norman Conquest in 1066 was the last time England was successfully invaded, and was one of the most profound turning points in English history, cataclysmically transforming a disparate collection of small nations into a European state. But what actually happened? How was the invasion viewed by those who witnessed it? And how has its legacy been seen by generations since? This fascinating Very Short Introduction reveals how dramatically English life was changed, from its language to its law, and focuses on the differing ways the conquest has been viewed by historians and in folklore ever since. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Conquered England argues that Duke William of Normandy's claim to succeed Edward the Confessor on the throne of England profoundly influenced not only the practice of royal succession, but also played a large part in creating a novel structure of land tenure, dependent on the king. In these two fundamental respects, the attempt made in the aftermath of the Conquest to demonstrate seamless continuity with Anglo-Saxon England severed almost all continuity. A paradoxical result was a society in which instability in succession at the top exacerbated instability lower down. The first serious attempt to address these problems began when arrangements were made, in 1153, for the succession to King Stephen. Henry II duly succeeded him, but claimed rather to have succeeded his grandfather, Henry I, Stephen's predecessor. Henry II's attempts to demonstrate continuity with his grandfather were modelled on William the Conqueror's treatment of Edward the Confessor. Just as William's fabricated history had been the foundation for the tenurial settlement recorded in the Domesday Book, so Henry II's, in a different way, underpinned the early common law procedures which began to undermine aspects of that settlement. The official history of the Conquest played a crucial role not only in creating a new society, but in the development of that society.

The Norman Conquest in English History, Volume 1: A Broken Chain? pursues a central theme in English historical thinking over seven centuries. Covering more than half a millennium, this first volume explains how and why the experience of the Norman Conquest prompted both an unprecedented campaign in the early twelfth century to write (or create) the history of England, and to excavate (and fabricate) pre-Conquest English law. Garnett traces the treatment of the Conquest in English historiography, legal theory and practice, and political argument through the middle ages and early modern period, examining the dispersal of these materials from libraries afer the dissolution of the monasteries, and the attempts made to rescue, edit, and print many of them in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These preservation efforts enabled the Conquest to become still more contested in the constitutional cataclysms of the seventeenth century than it had been in the eleventh and twelfth. The seventeenth-century resurrection of the Conquest will be the subject of a second volume.

The Norman Conquest in English History, Volume 1: A Broken Chain? pursues a central theme in English historical thinking over seven centuries. Covering more than half a millennium, this volume explains how and why the experience of the Norman Conquest prompted both an unprecedented campaign in the early twelfth century to write (or create) the history of England, and to excavate (and fabricate) pre-Conquest English law. Garnett traces the treatment of the Conquest in English historiography, legal theory and practice, and political argument through the middle ages and early modern period, examining the dispersal of these materials from libraries afer the dissolution of the monasteries, and the attempts made to rescue, edit, and print many of them in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Marsilius of Padua is conventionally seen as a thinker ahead of his time: the first secular political theorist, and the first post-classical thinker to espouse republicanism. He is presented as a scholastic precursor of the republican humanists of the Renaissance.Starting with an examination of the neglected evidence for Marsilius's life, and the contemporary response to his best-known work, the Defensor Pacis, this new study argues that such an interpretation is quite wrong. It shows that Marsilius was not a republican, but an imperialist; and that far from being a secular political theorist, his great work Defensor Pacis is underpinned by a profound Christian understanding of history as a providentially ordained process.

The Vindiciae, contra tyrannos was the most infamous of the monarchomach treatises produced during the French wars of religion, and continued to be revered (or execrated) as a key part of the radical canon for well over a century after its publication. It is one of the first attempts to advance a systematic justification, with interlocking secular and religious arguments, of resistance against legitimately constituted political authority. This edition presents the first complete and accurate English translation of the work, a comprehensive apparatus, and an introduction which provides the first detailed analysis of the argument and also reconsiders the much-disputed question of authorship. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars working on the history of political thought and early modern Europe.

The Vindiciae, contra tyrannos was the most infamous of the monarchomach treatises produced during the French wars of religion, and continued to be revered (or execrated) as a key part of the radical canon for well over a century after its publication. It is one of the first attempts to advance a systematic justification, with interlocking secular and religious arguments, of resistance against legitimately constituted political authority. This edition presents the first complete and accurate English translation of the work, a comprehensive apparatus, and an introduction which provides the first detailed analysis of the argument and also reconsiders the much-disputed question of authorship. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars working on the history of political thought and early modern Europe.

The works of Sir James Holt are well known to all those working in medieval history, in Europe, North America and Japan. This important set of essays, written in his honour, reflects his interests which have set a new agenda for the study of medieval law and government. The first group, on rebellion and warfare, brings to mind his work on the Northerners; the second analyses the issues of land-holding, family and politics; which he discussed in a series of papers from the early 1970s. The third group treats documents, politics and government, a field which Holt made his own, and in which his collection of Henry II and Richard I's Acts is of outstanding importance. The essays have been contributed by specialists who have worked with, studied under, or debated with the honorand.

Walter Ullmann's contribution to the study of medieval political and legal thought needs no emphasis. In the present volume are collected a number of the early articles which it was not possible to include in his previous collections, together with others published since those volumes appeared. The articles display a striking consistency of approach, though in the more than forty years separating the earliest from the latest there is an obvious development in his thought. Ullman held the view that the law must be studied in its own historical context, as a function of society and a product of the factors which shaped social life; equally, he stressed the central position of the law in the study of medieval history, for its precise character meant that it could provide a more reliable probe into medieval beliefs and doctrine than any other form of evidence.