The growth of royal government under Henry Ⅲ, ed.

摘要

This book is the product of a conference held in 2012 under the auspices of King s College London's Fine Rolls Project, which since its launch in 2005 has published three volumes of its eponymous records (from 1216 to 1242) both in book form and online, and has made the rolls from 1242 onwards electronically accessible as well . They constitute a significant addition to the sources already available for the history of thirteenth-century English government. The expansion of that government (and the increase in its records) which is the underlying theme of this volume resulted from monarchic interference and improvisation being increasingly - though never wholly - superseded by bureaucratic method. For David Carpenter the importance of the fine rolls lies in the light they shed on the process whereby the royal prerogative was tamed under the influence of Magna Carta: old financial difficulties persisted, but the methods by which King John attempted to resolve them were no longer available to his successor. That process was more often hindered than helped by Henry Ⅲ, but a combination of consensual government and parliamentary taxation slowly developed to enable the king's government to meet its fiscal needs.