Abstract
In the period covered by this book, 1460–1660, the kingdom of England underwent dramatic and formative changes that led to the creation of the true modern English state, a state quite distinct from the more cosmopolitan and foreign-dominated one of the Middle Ages. There was no sharp break, of course, between the more European past and the nationalist future, but on the contrary much continuity, especially in the area of the constitution. However, it was not until the early fifteenth century, just before our period begins, that the line of foreign rulers over England finally embraced English as their daily tongue, the symbol of their unalloyed alliance with the English people: Henry V (1413–22) was actually the first English king after the Norman Conquest habitually to speak English, rather than a dialect of French. Medieval England had been ruled by two lines of French kings, the Normans and the Angevins (also known as Plantagenets). Accordingly much of the work of government in the early fifteenth century still continued to be written in Norman-French, but what becomes evident by the second half of the fifteenth century is the increasing use of the English language in government.
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Notes
P. Laslett, The World We Have Lost (2nd edn, London, 1971), p. 127.
All figures are vague: see S. M. Jack, Towns in Tudor and Stuart Britain (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 173.
E. Kerridge, The Agricultural Revolution (London, 1967); The Farmers of Old England (London, 1973).
J. V. Beckett, The Agricultural Revolution (London, 1991), p. 40.
First proven use was in Dorset in 1608: M. Overton, Agricultural Revolution in England (Cambridge, 1996), p. 112.
A. Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism (Oxford, 1978), pp. 165ff.
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© 2001 Philip Edwards
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Edwards, P. (2001). Prologue. In: The Making of the Modern English State, 1460–1660. British Studies Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-333-99383-5_1
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