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Leges Henrici Primi:all facts at a glanceThe Leges Henrici Primi or Laws of Henry I is a legal treatise, written in about 1115, that records the legal customs of medieval England in the reign of King Henry I of England. The Leges Henrici Primi or Laws of Henry I is a legal treatise, written in about 1115, that records the legal customs of medieval England. It was written during the reign of King Henry I of England, and was part of a ... (Source: Wikipedia: Leges Henrici Primi)

"In this essay, I shall be examining what I feel are the main issues surrounding the problem of why historians do not agree whether Henry V was a good king. The main reasons all stem from individual choices of the historian, and include their choice of frameworks, of sources, how these sources are interpreted and finally the historian's own motives for writing. Through this, I hope to conclusively show how a historian's opinion on a historical figure is often a subjective opinion, just as if they were judging how successful a person alive today had become."

1. Between Magna Carta and the Parliamentary State: The fine rolls of King Henry III 1216-1272 and the project A fine in the reign of King Henry III (1216-1272) was an agreement to pay the king a sum of money for a specified concession. The rolls on which the fines were recorded provide the earliest systematic evidence of what people and institutions across society wanted from the king and he was prepared to give. They open a large window onto the politics, government, economy and society of England in the hinge period between the establishment of Magna Carta at the start of Henry's reign and the parliamentary state which was emerging at its end. This Project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, makes the rolls freely available to a wide audience while at the same time, in the Fine of the Month feature, providing regular comment on their historical interest. Users of the website are also invited to follow and contribute to the Fine Rolls blog.

"Story of medieval England 16/36 Henry II-Law and Order" Video

Read online  - Knighton's Chronicle 1337-1396 by Henry Knighton, G. H. Martin

"The Angevin Empire may have come about by a mixture of luck and calculation, but skill and respect for local custom were required for Henry II to preserve it intact."

Helen Castor and The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth. This segment of the BBC 4's Women's Hour radio program was broadcast on 4 October 2010. In Chapter 4 of the program, Jane Garvey interviews Dr. Helen Castor, Fellow in History at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, about her new book, She-Wolves. From the synopsis by the publisher, Faber 6 Faber: "In 1553, England was about to experience the 'monstrous regiment' - the unnatural rule - of a woman. But female rule in England also had a past. Four hundred years before Edward's death, Matilda, daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conquerer, came tantalisingly close to securing her hold on the power of the crown. And between the 12th and the 15th centuries three more exceptional women - Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, and Margaret of Anjou - discovered, as queens consort and dowager, how much was possible if the presumptions of male rule were not confronted so explicitly."

In 1176 a delegation from Sicily came to the English court, asking for Joan's hand in marriage on behalf of William II of Sicily. Joan's parents agreed to the proposal, and the betrothal was confirmed. On the 27th of August, Joan, together with a large group of people consisting of ladies-in-waiting, knights, clergy and various retainers, laid out to sail for Sicily. The trip began with the short stretch from Winchester to Southampton, escorted by the archbishops of Canterbury and Rouen, the bishop of Evreux and her father's brother Hamelane. Then Prince Henry, her oldest brother, accompanied her across the Channel and into France to Poitiers. There she was met by another brother, Richard, who escorted her through the Duchy of Aquitaine, across the allied County of Toulouse to Saint Gilles Port, where Bishop Richard Palmer welcomed her in the name of the King of Sicily. Twenty-five Sicilian ships awaited the young princess to sail her to her husband-to-be. The last part of the journey left Joan seasick, but she finally arrived at the end of January and married William at Palermo Cathedral on the 13th of February 1177 at the tender age of eleven while her husband was twenty-three! She was crowned, and was now queen consort.

The subject of The Life of King Louis the Fat  was Louis VI, the first important Capetian king of France, who reigned from 1108 to 1137.  Louis's main achievement was to consolidate royal power within the Ile-de-France by suppressing the castellans who dominated the royal domain lands. (The term "castellan" refers to a noble who possessed one or more castles.) Louis's success owed much to an alliance he forged between the French monarch and the great Churchmen (bishops and abbots) and the leading townsmen of northern France.  Suspicious of the power of his barons, Louis used clergy and burghers rather than great nobles as royal administrators. His efforts to establish peace and maintain order facilitated the development of agriculture, trade and intellectual activity in the Ile-de-France. Under his rule, Paris began its expansion which would make it by 1200 the greatest Christian city north of the Alps. The following excerpts describe Louis's military actions against the "robber barons" of the Ile-de-France and the King of England Henry I (r.1100-1135).

"The Economics of English Agriculture in the Middle Ages is the economic history of English agriculture from the Norman invasion in 1066, to the death of Henry VII in 1509. England's economy was fundamentally agricultural throughout the period, though even before the invasion the market economy was important to producers. Norman institutions, including serfdom, were superimposed on an existing system of open fields."

Knighton's Chronicle 1337-1396 read online in Google Books