A History of the English Monarchy

Gareth Russell traces the development of English monarchy from the resistance of Boudica to the reign of Elizabeth I. The book examines how royal authority emerged from Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Norman systems of rule, and how conquest, religious belief, inherited custom and political violence shaped what subjects expected from a king or queen. Legends are considered alongside the surviving evidence to show how rulers acquired reputations that often outlived their policies.

The narrative moves through the Norman settlement, the Angevin empire, medieval succession disputes, the Wars of the Roses and the consolidation of the Tudor dynasty. Attention is also given to England’s changing relationships with Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Henry VIII’s religious revolution and Elizabeth I’s management of a divided kingdom form the conclusion to a survey concerned not only with individual monarchs but with the institution they repeatedly remade.