The Dissolution of the Lancastrian Kingship: Sir John Fortescue and the Crisis of Monarchy in Fifteenth-century England

Name: The Dissolution of the Lancastrian Kingship: Sir John Fortescue and the Crisis of Monarchy in Fifteenth-century England
Brand: Paul Watkins Publishing
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By Anthony Gross

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Description

The last years of the Lancastrian kingship, the reign of Henry VI, have long been regarded as a desperate struggle for survival but Anthony Gross challenges this view by tracing an intelligent political strategy led by the lawyer Sir John Fortescue, author of The Governance of England. Gross examines the surviving Fortescue manuscripts to show that his writings were more closely associated with immediate political problems than has previously been supposed. But there was a flaw in the plan. Because kingship was sacred, it was believed that supernatural agency would solve the problem of the king’s madness. Alchemy was the solution! Alas, the king was deposed and in came Edward IV and the Yorkist branch of the Plantagenet dynasty. This is a radical book which contextualises the dilemmas of the House of Lancaster within an ideology of monarchy which had developed across the middle ages and whose ramifications would continue to be played out over the next century and a half. The dustwrapper shows the head of Fortescue from his tomb in the parish church of Ebrington, Gloucestershire.

Product details

Number of Pages:: 166
Release Date:: 1996-10-01
Publication Date:: 1996-10-01
Publisher:: Paul Watkins Publishing
Languages:: Published: English, Original: English
ISBN10:: 1871615909

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