The Norman Conquest in English History

Professor Sir John Baker KC, FBA, University of Cambridge In an impressive display of scholarship, deploying a diverse range of sources, Professor Garnett shows how the cataclysm of 1066 was not merely a moment in time but the occasion of legal and constitutional controversy, even anxiety, for centuries thereafter. This groundbreaking study will be important reading for students of medieval and early-modern English history, political thought and legal history.

Professor John Hudson FBA, University of St Andrews Immense in its scope and learning, The Norman Conquest in English History is essential and gripping reading for all those interested in medieval historical writing, those considering the early development of the 'Ancient Constitution', and above all for those wanting to understand the legal culture of the twelfth to sixteenth centuries.

William Eves, The English Historical Review It is a densely packed and richly detailed study which engages with an enormous array of primary material, carefully tracing the textual transmission, manuscript histories and printed editions of a wide range of works. The amount of information in each paragraph, and sometimes each sentence, necessitates careful reading, but also rewards it.

Alex Burghart, Times Literary Supplement As these long and deep influences imply, the Conquest in the intellectual mind of the nation is a truly vast topic, one whose tentilla reach into the historical crevices of many centuries. Only a brave historian would have undertaken it and only a brilliant one could have done it justice. George Garnett has done it justice.

George Garnett is Fellow and Tutor in History, St Hugh's College, Oxford, and Professor of Medieval History in the University. He read History at Queens' College, Cambridge, was a Research Fellow at St John's College, Fellow and Director of Studies at Magdalene College, and Senior Proctor of Oxford University in 2015-16. He has published two earlier books on the Norman Conquest and also works on medieval and early modern thought.

Introduction 1: The Early Twelfth-Century Perspective in English Historical Writing 2: The Audiences for English History in the Early Twelfth Century 3: The Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication of Old English Law in the Twelfth Century 4: Edward the Confessor: From Critical Standard to Patron Saint 5: The Conquest in Historical Writing from the Late Thirteenth Century 6: The Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I: Jurisprudence and Forensic Practice in the Thirteenth Century 7: The Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II: Edward II's Reign and After 8: The Preservation of the Sources for English Medieval History in the Sixteenth Century 9: Elizabethan Study of Old English Law and its Post-Conquest Endorsement 10: The Printing of Twelfth-Century English Historiography, and the Integration of Law with History