At the height of his power and influence the justiciar was the king's chief political and judicial officer, superintending the administrative machinery and acting as regent in the king's absence abroad. He was also a feudal lord or bishop; and the study of the careers of the chief justiciars, as soldiers and politicians, judges and financiers, throws light on the workings of feudal society and on the technical administrative means by which royal power was effectively exercised. Dr West traces the history of the office from the first need for the delegation of royal power under William 1 until...

This is a detailed study of the large and important diocese of Lincoln under three sixteenth-century bishops.

Sovereignty has always been an important concept in political thought, and at no time in European history was it more important than during the perplexed conditions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Universal government was a fading dream, giving way to the new conception of the national state and the whole basis of political thought was being reorientated by the influx of Aristotelian ideas. Dr Wilks's book is an attempt to clarify the more important problems in the political outlook of the period. He shows that at this time the theologians and literary writers, especially...

Peter Abelard conducted many analyses of Scriptural and Patristic teachings, and achieved an extensive rapprochement between Christian and pagan thought. His public career was ended in 1140 by an ecclesiastical condemnation, but this touched upon the central issues facing the early leaders of the medieval scholastic movement and Abelard's own teachings continued to be controversial. Dr Luscombe considers the influence of Abelard's principal teachings among his contemporaries and successors. his aim is to explain the conflicting estimates of Abelard which were current in the twelfth century...

Dr Robson gives a full account of Wyclif's career as an Oxford don - the little-known period of his life before in 1372 he became a controversialist - so answering the question, why was Wyclif when he became a public figure already acknowledged the leading master in Oxford? Part I of the book examines scholastic theology at Oxford from 1330 to 1370, with special emphasis on Bradwardine and Fitzltalph, the two great influences on Wyclif. Part II analyses Wyclif's most important work of philosophy, the Summa de Ente. The last chapter discusses the survival of realist metaphysics at Oxford after...