Three Crises in Early English History gives a clear, concise, and up-to-date account of the three crises in early English history beginning with the Norman Conquest which began with the battle of Hastings and ended in William the Conqueror’s Suppression of the Yorkshire rebels in 1071. There is a detailed account of the positive and negative effects of the Conquest on English government. A special effort is made to explain King John’s judicial and financial expedients, which collectively drove a determined minority of the country’s baronage into the open rebellion that led to the sixty-three clauses of the Magna Carta.
The book concludes with four connected essays of the Wars of the Roses, which resulted from England’s defeat in the Hundred Years’ War and the ineffectual rule of Henry VI and lasting a whole generation. Here these complicated episodes and the colorful figures involved, like Richard of York, Warwick the Kingmaker, and Edward the IV are laid out clearly for the reader.