The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

Jones explores the role that personal characteristics and relationships played in the politics of this period.

He suggests that personality impacts political players’ decision-making. He offers an interpretation of the individual personalities of kings such as Edward I’s martial streak or Richard II’s insecurity stemming from traumatizing threats to his position early in his reign. He highlights a common cruelty and anger across many of the kings. Jones suggests that these characteristics impacted the events of their reigns: Edward I’s subjugation of Wales or Richard’s paranoid despotism. These examples show the personal nature of politics in this period: with so much power concentrated in figures such as the king, the magnates, and the bishops, individual traits could alter history.

This is also apparent in Jones’s presentation of relationships. Friendships, enmity, marriage, and family were personal and political for the political classes on which Jones focuses. For example, he explores the impact of having many children versus none, emphasizing the sense of stability this gave Edward III as opposed to Richard II. He shows how intense friendships derailed Edward II and Richard II’s reigns due to the influence of, and opposition to, these favorites. He shows how Eleanor of Aquitaine, powerful in her own right in her territory, protected and expanded her power through her marriages and her sons; her role as a mother related to her political power. By emphasizing the significance of these relationships, Jones also shows the connection between soft and hard power for women like her, Constance of Brittany, or Edward II’s wife, Isabella, whose familial relationships enabled them to exercise very real power.

Personal relationships also impacted geopolitical history: marriages and familial connections impacted diplomatic connections, and alliances and friendships often overlapped. For example, Edward III’s marriage to Philippa of Hainault brought a connection to the increasingly wealthy Low Countries; Philip II’s bonds with Henry II’s sons helped them establish their power and formed an initial basis of Richard I’s crusading with Philip, an alliance which was undermined when Richard rejected his engagement to Philip’s sister to the detriment of his popularity in Europe. Jones shows that personal relationships and political relationships were often connected.

He also includes these personality portraits and relationship dynamics to add drama and human interest to the history: he emphasizes in his introduction that he is offering an entertaining, narrative account (rather than a strictly academic one). He offers intermittent reminders of the biases of the period’s written sources; for example, he notes that contemporaneous accounts might flatter a king in power, while many critical accounts of Edward II’s early reign were produced after his downfall. This shows the role that the personal plays in the study of history itself: sources are created and received through the lens of an individual. Jones also acknowledges that a modern historian cannot know a historical figure’s feelings or the true details of their relationships such as the nature of Edward and Gaveston’s relationship. These moments highlight the challenges of exploring the role of the personal in history.

Jones shows that the personal played a large role in this period’s history; he also reminds readers of the role of the personal in the writing and interpretation of history.

Jones explores the structural changes in English governance during this time; it gradually became more bureaucratic, shifting from less formal, relational systems into formal processes. Governmental machinery reached into the provinces, standardizing government throughout (for example, the introduction of local Keepers of the Peace, forerunners of Justices of the Peace). The monarchy centralized authority, and the monarchy extended into the country.

These changes also had the effect of limiting monarchy: defining monarchical power formally demarcated its remit. The distinction was made between the office of the king and the person of the king, as formalized by Edward II’s dissatisfied magnates in the 1308 parliament. Jones highlights the reoccurring use of the Magna Carta as a formal statement of the king’s acknowledgment of subjection to law and the barons’ rights.

These shifts also represented a development and formalization of the role of the broader political community. The growth of parliament as an institution is a major example of this: early in this period, monarchs might summon an assembly of their magnates for support or consultation. By the end, parliaments were staged regularly and had a recognized role in representing the demands of the political community. Henry IV used a parliamentary assembly to legitimize Richard II’s deposition, stressing its powers regardless of whether the king presided. The political community represented in parliaments expanded to include the Commons, not just the bishops and magnates, which at this time consisted of the next layer in the social hierarchy, such as the wealthy gentry rather than lords.

Jones explores the process through which these changes often happened: a negotiation of giving the king funding for wars in return for the formalization of political rights and relationships. He identifies a key precedent for this: Henry III’s administration reissued charters of political liberties before a parliament-like assembly to negotiate funds.

These changes came with tensions and constitutional conundrums. Bureaucracy could formally acknowledge rights or reduce local corruption but created a jostling for where power was distributed. For example, Jones notes that local government developments under John eroded magnates’ feudal power by encroaching on their jurisdiction. The shift of kingly authority from feudal, personal relationships to governmental structures, meanwhile, meant the king’s magnates owed less loyalty to him. This was problematic when later monarchs aimed to campaign on the continent; combined with the loss of continental territories, it was no longer in the magnates’ interests to follow them to war. It also made the monarch insecure in the face of dissent. Edward III and Richard II tried to combat this: Edward III formed his Order of the Garter to tie knights to him through a cultural, social, and religious covenant; Richard II implemented his system of paid retainers, as his magnates had.

Overall, Jones shows how English governance developed at this time through the creation and solidifying of bureaucratic structures and the shifting nature of political roles and relationships. He examines the causes of this—namely, military endeavors on the continent played a huge role—and its consequences, including civil strife and periods of stability and governmental wealth.