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This is the book which Sir Rees Davies, former Chichele Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford and one of the outstanding medievalists of his generation, was working on at the time of his much-lamented death in May 2005. He did not quite complete it: at least one more chapter, ‘The Context of Aristocratic Lordship’, was planned. The eight chapters which appear here nevertheless make an admirably coherent monograph and the arguments which lie at the heart of the book are readily apparent. As with all of Rees Davies's work, his clear, elegant, evocative and completely unpretentious prose is a delight to read. The main thrust of his argument is set out on a number of occasions. British historians, he suggests, have tended to write more about royal lordship (or ‘kingship’) than about aristocratic lordship in late medieval Britain (and especially England), largely because this is where the abundant documentation of the late medieval Crown has led them. This is a balance which needs to be redressed. Furthermore, they have tended to write about lordship in terms of land-lordship, whereas in reality ‘late medieval lordship was always more, much more, than land-lordship’ (p. 159). Lordship, Davies argues, was very personal, often very forceful, significantly more ‘managerial’—even professional—than some historians have been prepared to allow, and may well have provided the models for the development of the royal administration rather than vice versa, as tends to be assumed.
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