Good accounts of Edward III’s reign are found in M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1959) and M. Prestwich, The Three Edwards (London, 1980). P. Johnson, The Life and Times of Edward III (London, 1973) and M. Packe, King Edward III (London, 1983), are not works of scholarship, but the former has the benefit of being illustrated. The most recent interpretation of this period is R.W. Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988). A contrary view is put forward in W.M. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and the Recovery of Royal Authority in England, 1340–60’, History, lxxii (1987), pp. 4–19. The most notable biographies relating to this period are R. Barber, Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine (London, 1978), and K. Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster, 1310–1361 (London, 1969).
The social and economic background is covered by M.M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society (Harmondsworth, 1975); J.L. Bolton, The Medieval English Economy (London, 1980); E. Miller and J. Hatcher, Medieval England: Rural Society and Economic Change, 1086– 1348 (London, 1918); and J. Hatcher, Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348–1520 (London, 1977). An alternative and revealing study is C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989).
The artistic achievements of this period are brilliantly summarized in J. Alexander and P. Binski, eds., Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England, 1200–1400 (London, 1987). Two useful studies setting the literature of the fourteenth century in its political context are J. Barnie, War in Medieval Society: Social Values and the Hundred Years War, 1337–99 (London, 1974), and J. Coleman, English Literature in History, 1350–1400: Medieval Readers and Writers (London, 1981).
On Edward III’s wars, E. Perroy, The Hundred Years War, trans. W.B. Wells (London, 1951), is still the classic account; but C. Allmand, The Hundred Years War (Cambridge, 1988), provides a convenient summary and up-to-date bibliography. J. Le Patourel’s important essays on the subject are reprinted in his Feudal Empires: Norman and Plantagenet (London, 1984). The two essential works on the Scottish war are R.G. Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots, 1327–1335 (Oxford, 1965), and J. Campbell, ‘England, Scotland and the Hundred Years War in the Fourteenth Century’, in J.R. Hale, J.R.L. Highfield and B. Smalley, eds., Europe in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1965), pp. 184–216. Also useful is A. Grant, Independence and Nationhood: Scotland 1306–1469 (London, 1984).
There is no general study of kingship in later medieval England. A.L. Brown, The Governance of Late Medieval England, 1272–1461 (London, 1989), is the most recent attempt to characterize administration in this period. For the court and its role in politics see C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England 1360–1413 (London and New Haven, 1986). The best introductions to the legal system are A. Harding, The Law Courts of Medieval England (London, 1973) and E. Powell, Kingship, Law and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V (Oxford, 1989). For the tax system M.W. Beresford, The Lay Subsidies and Poll Taxes (Canterbury, 1963) is particularly useful. There is an excellent account of the structure of county administration by R.B. Pugh in The Victoria County History of Wiltshire, v (Oxford, 1957), pp. 1–43.
On parliament, G.L. Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford, 1975), is fundamental. Aspects of this book are summarized by the same author in ‘War and the Emergence of the English Parliament, 1297–1360’, Journal of Medieval History, ii (1976), pp. 35–56, and ‘The Formation of Parliament, 1272–1377’, in R.G.Davies and J.H. Denton, eds., The English Parliament in the Middle Ages (Manchester, 1981), pp. 29–60. See also R. Butt, A History of Parliament: The Middle Ages (London, 1989). E.B. Fryde and E. Miller, eds., Historical Studies of the English Parliament (Cambridge, 1970), contains a number of important essays. The controversial arguments of H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles are summarized in G.O. Sayles, The King’s Parliament of England (London, 1975).
The standard work on the aristocracy remains K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), but more recent and detailed work is summarized in C. Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1987). J.T. Rosenthal, Nobles and the Noble Life, 1295–1500 (London, 1976), is interesting; and G.A. Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1957), deals with far more than just estate administration.
P. Heath, Church and Realm, 1272–1461 (London, 1988), provides a general survey of ecclesiastical politics and an excellent bibliography. R.N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), contains a wealth of material, though much of it relates to the fifteenth century. Still very useful are WA. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955), and A. Hamilton Thompson, The English Clergy and their Organization in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1941). J.R.L. Highfield, ‘The English Hierarchy in the Reign of Edward III’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., vi (1956), pp. 115–38 condenses much essential work on the episcopate.
A useful starting point for the study of the gentry is chapter 3 of Given-Wilson’s English Nobility (see above). Otherwise the best case study is N. Saul, Knights and Esquires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1981). On the shire as a political unit see J.R. Maddicott, ‘The County Community and the Making of Public Opinion in Fourteenth-Century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., xxviii (1978), pp. 27–43. On links between nobility and gentry, K.B. McFarlane’s study of ‘Bastard Feudalism’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xx (1945), pp. 161–80, reprinted in his posthumous collection, England in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1981), pp. 23 4–3, remains the classic text, though it has been modified by subsequent research, conveniently summarized by G.L. Harriss in the introduction to the latter work. The most recent studies, providing extensive bibliographies, are J.M.W. Bean, From Lord to Patron: Lordship in Late Medieval England(Manchester, 1989), and J.G. Bellamy, Bastard Feudalism and the Law (London, 1989).
R.H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), is not quite what the title implies, but it provides a starting point for study of the rural population. The same author’s The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England, 2nd edn (London, 1983), and Bond Men Made Free (London, 1973), are essential reading. J.R. Maddicott, ‘The English Peasantry and the Demands of the Crown’, in T.H. Aston, ed., Landlords, Peasants and Politics in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 285–359, is very important for the economic situation of the peasantry before the plague. R.H. Hilton and T.H. Aston, eds., The English Rising of 1381 (Cambridge, 1984), contains a number of important essays.
For urban society see S. Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), and C. Platt, The English Mediaeval Town (London, 1976). Interesting case studies are G.A. Williams, Medieval London: From Commune to Capital (London, 1963); C. Platt, Medieval Southampton (London, 1973); J.W.F. Hill,Medieval Lincoln (Cambridge, 1948); and R.H. Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge, 1986). A wealth of material is also available in the various studies made for the Victoria County History and for M.D. Lobel and W.H. Johns, eds., Atlas of Historic Towns (London, 1969–75).
On the politics of commerce see T.H. Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977), and the collected essays of E.B. Fryde, Studies in Medieval Trade and Finance (London, 1983). R. Horrox, The de la Poles of Hull, East Yorkshire Local History Series, xxxviii (1983), provides a convenient summary of Fryde’s work on the credit dealings of William de la Pole.