David Carpenter (2) (1947–)

This is the second and final volume in the author's look at the life of Henry III. This review feels a lot like my review of the first book. There is simply way too much information here for it to be enjoyable to read to a casual reader of the time period. There were times, I confess, where I was outright bored.

In the first book, the author covers a period of a period of fifty-one years in seven hundred pages. I thought that was tough going. In this volume, the author covers a period substantially smaller, sixteen years, in just as many pages. The author clearly recognizes this as he mentions it in his author's note. It is an exhaustive account of the latter part of Henry III's reign.

My favorite bit of the book was actually the end. I find the deaths, funerals, and burials of these medieval kings highly interesting, and to that end, the book did not disappoint.

As I finished with this series on a previously little known or understood king, I came away a bit shell-shocked. A lot of info was poured out. And sadly, because of the pacing and just the sheer amount of detail, I retained very little.… (mer)

It is ironic that probably the best documented medieval English king is also one of the least well known. With the second volume of his biography of Henry III, David Carpenter continues his valiant attempt to address this imbalance. Carpenter expresses a concern that he remains an academic rather than a popular historian but, despite the length, there is nothing for the general reader to fear: this is history at its very best.

Carpenter is the perfect tour guide of the 13th century. The reader is carried along at a gentle pace, the prose scaffolded by a lifetime’s learning evident in the generous footnotes, and distilled into a conversational style. The reader is aided by two thematic chapters that explore the society of Henry’s England, and the intellectual and practical basis of the revolutionary regime of Simon de Montfort.

The task is made a little easier by the events the book covers. The 14 years (1258-72) described in this volume are some of the most exciting, terrible and important in English history. The book begins where the first volume left off, with the dramatic march on Westminster Hall by seven barons demanding the reform of the realm. Carpenter traces the often-twisted paths that reform took as the reformers argued among themselves, and Henry plotted to wrest back power for himself.

Far more radical than Magna Carta, which sought largely to regulate the exercise of royal power, the so-called Provisions of Oxford (the name given by reformers and historians to an array of reforms that took place in 1258 and 1259) wrenched virtually all executive power away from the king. The reformers corporatised royal authority among the barons, investing it in a council of 15 to rule with minimal input from the king. The work of the reformers exposed the failings of Henry’s personal rule and Carpenter takes us through the painstaking work of the justiciar Hugh Bigod as he travelled around the country, hearing the people’s complaints and trying to do genuine justice. The reformers sought to reach beyond the great lords to the lesser knights and gentry, to the church and even to the peasantry. The demands of the ‘community of the realm’ to preserve the Provisions and the oath taken at Oxford to uphold them were both inspiring and threatening. Those who dared to forsake their oath were to be regarded as mortal enemies while foreigners, especially England’s Jews, became, as so often, the scapegoat for the nation’s ills and the target of hostility and, increasingly, violence.

Read the rest at HistoryToday.com

Andrew Spencer is Senior Tutor and Fellow in History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.… (mer)

This was a mammoth book. At over 700 pages in actual reading material, it's hard to believe there's more story to tell. But there is. In fact, the author has a second volume planned. When I tell you that every fact possible about Henry III has been included in this book, believe me. There were times, quite often as a matter of fact, when I felt overwhelmed when reading the book, simply by the recording of every single detail of every single aspect of Henry's reign. The parts of the book I enjoyed the most were the bits on how Henry lived. That was far more interesting to me than the accounts of courtiers who took advantage, military campaigns gone wrong, and similar things.

That being said, I will definitely read the second volume when it is released. This is recommended for hardcore fans of the time period and not for those who are new to the subject.… (mer)

Great, I imagine, if you have Magna Carta memorized, but otherwise more a reference book than a book. It's entirely possible that every factoid about Magna Carta has been recorded here, by David Carpenter, somewhere. Unfortunately, factoids strung together are not interesting to read.

That said, Carpenter organizes his work clearly enough that the book is eminently skimmable, and I know more about Magna Carta now than I did before I started (which was, admittedly, nothing). But considering how well he writes, and how interesting the story itself is, this is some dry-as-dust stuff.… (mer)