English Medieval History

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her.

The Byzantine Empire survived as a self-contained political entity longer than any other in the history of Christianity. This history by Charles Oman is a catalog of good, bad, and indifferent emperors who either pushed Byzantine Civilization to new heights or savagely drove it to defeat and dissolution. It is a strange tale populated by some of the most interesting men and women who have ever lived.

After eight years, Evadne will finally be reunited with her older sister, Halcyon, who has been serving in the queen’s army. But when Halcyon unexpectedly appears a day early, Eva knows something is wrong. Halcyon has charged with a heinous crime, and though her life is spared, she is sentenced to 15 years. Suspicious of the charges, brought forth by Halcyon’s army commander, as well as the details of the crime, Eva volunteers to take part of her sister’s sentence. If there’s a way to absolve Halcyon, she’ll find it.

While the Moors have always been associated with Spain due to their lengthy stay on the Iberian Peninsula, the most famous battle they were involved in was actually fought in modern France. While the Franks were consolidating a kingdom there, Muslim forces were pushing out of North Africa and into the Iberian Peninsula in the early eighth century, and by the dawn of the 730s, the Umayyad dynasty had expanded its territory from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees, a series of seasonally snow-capped mountains in Europe that forms a border between the nations of Spain and France.

In this indispensable volume, one of America's ranking scholars combines a life's work of research and teaching with the art of lively narration. Both authoritative and beautifully told, The Middle Ages is the full story of the thousand years between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance - a time that saw the rise of kings and emperors, the flowering of knighthood, the development of Europe, the increasing power of the Catholic Church, and the advent of the middle class.

“William came over the sea, with bloody hand came he...” 1069 AD. Three years after the Battle of Hastings, William of Normandy had yet to crush resistance in England. To the north, the people of the Danelaw refused to bow to the Norman yoke. In the east, the famous Hereward waged savage resistance in the fens of Lindsey. Meanwhile the sons of Harold Godwinnsson, backed by a Viking fleet, planned to return and avenge their father. The tale of this bloody and brutal time is written by Thorkell Skaldsson, once a bard in the service of Waltheof, the last English earl. In old age, thousands...

In the storm-lashed waters of 13th-century Japan, destiny clashed with empire. Waves of Resistance is a gripping historical account of two of the most dramatic and consequential military confrontations in Japanese history—the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281. As the mighty Mongol Empire, led by the fearsome Kublai Khan, set its sights on the Japanese archipelago, a fiercely independent nation braced for annihilation. Through vivid storytelling, author Terry Sloan brings to life the courage of the samurai, the chaos of naval warfare, and the fateful arrival of the legendary "divine wind"...

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world - a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.

After the earth-shattering events of the Cameron brothers’ war to reclaim the Phoenix Throne and crown Angus as King, Urlu falls into peace and prosperity at last. Everybody is happy—everyone except Hazel Green, the time-traveling woman whose spell originally cursed the land. With her friends Elle and Carmen contentedly married to Cameron brothers, Hazel is on her own—or so she thinks. There’s still one person interested in Hazel—Fergus, the young Cameron brother who came to her aid when everyone turned against her. As Fergus has some strange power of his own, the two forge an ...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. During the year 1066, England had three different kings and fought three huge battles in defence of the realm, including the bloody Battle of Hastings. The result was the Norman Conquest which defined England during the Middle Ages. 1066 in an Hour will guide you through the politics and personalities of the Norman invasion. It will help you understand why William the Conqueror was victorious and introduce you to the new king and subsequent ancestor to the Plantagenets and Tudors.

Set against the backdrop of the turbulent 13th century, a time of chivalry and crusades, poetry, knights, and monarchs, comes the story of the four beautiful daughters of the count of Provence, whose brilliant marriages made them the queens of France, England, Germany, and Sicily.

Brienna desires only two things: to master her passion and to be chosen by a patron. Growing up in Valenia at the renowned Magnalia House should have prepared her. While some are born with a talent for one of the five passions - art, music, dramatics, wit, and knowledge - Brienna struggled to find hers until she chose knowledge. However, Brienna's greatest fear comes true - she is left without a patron. But months later, her life takes an unexpected turn when a disgraced lord offers her patronage.

In Volume 4, Hume closes his account of ‘England Under the House of Tudor' begun in Volume 3, and devotes it entirely to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. It was not really expected that she would survive to accede to the monarchy; and it was certainly unexpected that she would rule for so long (1558-1603) while steadfastly declining to take a husband. All in all, her reign was a remarkable achievement. Elizabeth had so much to contend with over the years. From the start, she had to oversee the reinstatement of the Protestant religion after the tumultuous reign of her sister, Mary.

This work explores the writings of three great medieval theologians, all doctors of the church, and all enormously influential not only within their time but for centuries to come. Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Aquinas all held positions of significant sway within their monastic circles and their writings have continued to be points of reference, both for Catholic and Protestant theologians to this day. Simultaneously, a development of the twin themes of God’s attributes of transcendence and immanence is an appropriate starting point not just for theology proper ...

The Secret History, written by the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius, is one of the most extraordinary and scandalous documents to have survived from the early Byzantine period. Procopius, the leading official historian of his time, lived during the testing and indulgent time of Emperor Justinian the Great and wrote the official records of the successful wars and the grand building projects of his ruler. These were words of aggrandisement. But covertly, Procopius kept a very different record....

The Book of Margery Kempe is the extraordinary account of a medieval wife, mother, and mystic from Norfolk. Having married in c. 1393, given birth to 14 children, and pursued unsuccessful ventures in brewing and milling, Kempe made a vow of chastity and embarked on a life of prayer, penance, and pilgrimage.

‘Small, very talkative, ready enough to do evil, shrewd and jocular, extremely cruel and daring.’ Orderic Vitalis on Mabel de Belleme. Mabel is the daughter of William de Belleme, known as Talvas, the Hard Shield, for his fierceness in battle…and at home. When William murders Mabel’s mother, he is expelled from his castle into exile—but Mabel follows him loyally, despite what he has done. As the Belleme fortunes gradually return, Mabel is married to an upstanding young lord, Roger de Montgomery, a close friend of the new Duke of Normandy—William, who will one day become the ...

The Three Edwards, third in Thomas B. Costain's survey of Britain under the Plantagenets, covers the years between 1272 and 1377 when three Edwards ruled England. Edward I brought England out of the Middle Ages. Edward II had a tragic reign but gave his country Edward III, who ruled gloriously, if violently.

Once upon a time an Indian writer name Amitav Ghosh set out to find an Indian slave, name unknown, who some 700 years before had traveled to the Middle East. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with 20th-century desires and discontents. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself immersed in those of his modern Egyptian neighbors.

In the chaos and confusion following the defeat of English army at Bannockburn, the northern counties of England came under immediate and grave risk of attack by the victorious Scottish forces under Robert Bruce. With the English now demoralised and in disarray, the defence of the border counties fell to those lords whose lands were at greatest risk. In many cases they paid “tribute” to the Scots for their lands to be protected. But in Carlisle and the two counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, the English fought back. The Constable of Carlisle, a city that had once been a part of ...