Linda Clark & Peter W Fleming 
The Fifteenth Century XVIII 
Rulers, Regions and Retinues. Essays presented to A.J. Pollard

Essays on crucial aspects of late medieval history.


The essays collected here, offered by three generations of his friends and pupils, celebrate the outstanding career of Professor A.J. Pollard and pay tribute to his scholarship and enduring influence in furthering our understanding of late medieval England and France. Drawing inspiration from his own research interests and writing, which illuminated military, political and social interactions of the period, they focus on three main themes. The contrastingstyles of governance adopted by English monarchs from Richard II to Henry VII; the differing responses to civil conflict revealed in a variety of localities; and the lives of men recruited to fight overseas during the Hundred Years’ War, and beyond the border with Scotland in later years, are all explored here. These topics take us across England from the far north to the Channel, to London, the south-west and the Welsh lordship of Gower, while on the wayalso examining how townsmen resisted taxation, the gentry administered their estates and the western marches were ruled.


LINDA CLARK is Editor Emeritus at the History of Parliament; PETER FLEMING is Professor Emerius, University of the West of England.


Contributors: Michael Bennett, Douglas Biggs, Sean Cunningham, Anne Curry, Keith Dockray, Gwilym Dodd, Ralph A. Griffiths, Michael Hicks, Rosemary Horrox, Andy King, Hannes Kleineke, Carole Rawcliffe, James Ross.

Table of Content

Preface – Linda Clark

Tyranny and Affinity: The Public and Private Authority of Richard II and Richard III – Gwilym Dodd

The Commission to ensure Good Governance of 11 May 1402: A Case-Study of Lancastrian Counter-Propaganda – Douglas Biggs

A Failure in Foresight: the Lancastrian Kings and the Lancastrian Dukes – Michael Hicks

The Strothers: A Tale of Northern Gentle Folk, Social Mobility and Stagnation in Late Medieval Northumberland – Andy King

‘No Good unto our said King at this Time’ – Rosemary Horrox

Contemporary and Near-Contemporary Chroniclers: The North of England and the Wars of the Roses, c.1450-1471 – Keith Dockray

England, 1461: Predominantly Provincial Perspectives on the Early Months of the Reign of Edward IV – Hannes Kleineke

Greater Landowners and the Management of their Estates in Late Medieval England – James Ross

Lordship and the Social Elite in the Lordship of Gower during the Wars of the Roses – Ralph A Griffiths

A Yorkist Legacy for the Tudor Prince of Wales on the Welsh Marches: Affinity-Building, Regional Government and National Politics, 1471-1502 – Sean Cunningham

Southern England and Campaigns to France, 1415-1453 – Anne Curry

Last Men Standing: Lancashire Soldiers in the Wars in France – Michael J Bennett

Northern Pride goes Before a Fall: The ‘Horrorable’ History of Adelston Attysle – Carole Rawcliffe

Professor Tony Pollard: An Appreciation – Anne Curry

The Published Works of A.J. (Tony) Pollard, 1972-2019 – Sandra Pollard

About the author

MICHAEL HICKS, the academic director, is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Winchester and author of Richard III: The Self-Made King (Yale, 2019), among many other books and articles.