Crown and Country: A History of England through the Monarchy. David Starkey

      Crown and Country

      A History of England through the Monarchy

      DAVID STARKEY

      Copyright

      Published by HarperPress in 2010

       Copyright © Jutland 2010

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      www.harpercollins.co.uk

      The Monarchy of England: Volume I, The Beginnings first published by Chatto and Windus, a division of Random House, 2004 © Jutland 2004

      Monarchy: From the Middle Ages to Modernity first published by HarperPress 2006 © David Starkey 2006

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      David Starkey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Some images were unavailable for the electronic edition.

      HB ISBN 9780007307708

       TPB ISBN 9780007307715

      Ebook Edition © 2010 ISBN: 9780007424825

      Version: 2018-08-08

      To all those who worked with me on the Channel 4 Monarchy series for helping me understand history better and write it more clearly

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Family Trees

      Houses of Godwin and Wessex

      Houses of Normandy, Anjou and the Plantagenets

      Houses of York, Lancaster and Tudor

      Houses of Tudor, Stuart and the Hanoverians

      House of Windsor

      Foreword

      PART I - BEGINNINGS

      Chapter 1 - The Shadow of Rome

      Chapter 2 - Christian Kingship

      Chapter 3 - Wessex

      Chapter 4 - Triumph and Disaster

      Chapter 5 - Confessor and Conquest

      PART II - THE MEDIEVAL MONARCHY

      Chapter 6 - Subjugation

      Chapter 7 - Sons of Conquest

      Chapter 8 - The Triumphant King

      Chapter 9 - Civil War

      Chapter 10 - ‘Touch Not Mine Anointed’

      Chapter 11 - The Curse of Anjou

      Chapter 12 - War Monarchy

      Chapter 13 - Death of a Dynasty

      PART III - THE IMPERIAL CROWN

      Chapter 14 - The Man Who Would Be King

      Chapter 15 - King and Emperor

      Chapter 16 - Shadow of The King

      Chapter 17 - Rebellion

      Chapter 18 - New Model Kingdom

      PART IV - EMPIRE

      Chapter 19 - Restoration

      Chapter 20 - Royal Republic

      Chapter 21 - Britannia Rules

      Chapter 22 - Empire

      Chapter 23 - The King is Dead, Long Live The British Monarchy!

      PART V - MODERNITY

      Chapter 24 - The Modern Monarchy

      Chapter 25 - New Kingdom

      Index

      Also By David Starkey

       About the Publisher

      FAMILY TREES

      HOUSES OF GODWIN AND WESSEX

      HOUSES OF NORMANDY, ANJOU AND THE PLANTAGENETS

      HOUSES OF YORK, LANCASTER AND TUDOR

      HOUSES OF TUDOR, STUART AND THE HANOVERIANS

      HOUSE OF WINDSOR

      Foreword

      THIS BOOK IS THE STORY of the crown of England and of those who wore it, intrigued for it and died for it. They include some of the most notable figures of English and British history: Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror, who shaped and reshaped England; the great Henrys and Edwards of the Middle Ages, who made England the centre of a vast European empire; Henry VIII, whose mere presence could strike men dumb with fear; Elizabeth I, who remains as much a seductive enigma to us as she was to her contemporaries; and Charles I, who redeemed a disastrous reign with a noble, sacrificial death as he humbled himself, Christ-like and self-consciously so, to the executioner’s axe.

      Such figures leap from the page of mere history into myth and romance. I have painted these great royal characters – and the dozens of other monarchs, who, rightly or wrongly, have left less of a memory behind – with as much skill as I could.

      But this is not a history of Kings and Queens. And its approach is not simply biographical either. Instead, it is the history of an institution: the Monarchy. Institutions – and monarchy most of all – are built of memory and inherited traditions, of heirlooms, historic buildings and rituals that are age-old (or at least pretend to be). All these are here, and, since I have devoted much of my academic career to what are now called Court Studies, they are treated in some detail.

      But the institution of monarchy – and I think this fact has been too little appreciated – is also about ideas. Indeed, it is on ideas that I have primarily depended to shape the structure of the book and to drive its narrative. These are not the disembodied, abstract ideas of old-fashioned history. Instead, I present them through lives of those who formulated them. Sometimes these were monarchs; more usually they were advisers and publicists. Such men – at least as much as soldiers and sailors – were the shock-troops of monarchy. They shaped its reaction to events; even, at times, enabled it to seize the initiative. When they were talented and imaginative, monarchy flourished;