The Crown Lands 1461-1536

Originally published in 1970, this volume examines the history of the Yorkist and early Tudor royal landed estate, conducted in the light of its role in earlier medieval history and especially in Lancastrian government. It provides material with which to understand the nature and origins of the changes that took place in the late 15th and early 16th centuries in Tudor chamber finance. Many of the documents had not been previously published when this book first appeared. The book also questions fundamental assumptions in the wider field of English constitutional history, for example, that the revenues of medieval kings of England were divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extra-ordinary’ and that they were expected to ‘live of their own’ on their ‘ordinary’ revenues.