Reign of King Stephen,
1135-1154

By David Crouch
Jan 2000
Pearson Education / Longman
ISBN: 0582226570
400 pages
$57.50 Paper original

---

At last: an authoritative, up to date account of the troubled reign of King Stephen, by a leading scholar of the Anglo-Norman world. David Crouch covers every aspect of the period - the king and the empress, the aristocracy, the Church, government and the nation at large. He also looks at the wider dimensions of the story, in Scotland, Wales, Normandy and elsewhere. The result (weaving its discussions around a vigorous narrative core) is a a work of major scholarship. A must for specialist and amateur medievalists alike.

Contents
PART ONE: THE CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR: STEPHEN AS COUNT AND KING, 1113 - 1139
1. The Count of Mortain
2. Succession
3. Wales and Normandy
4. The Summer of Rebellions
5. Radicalism and Conspiracy

PART TWO: THE CIVIL WAR 1139 - 1147
6. Civil War in England
7. The Ideology of Civil War
8. Lincoln
9. Lords and Order
10. The Failure of the Empress
11. The Failure of the King Stephen
12. The End of the Civil War

PART THREE: SETTLING THE KINGDOM, 1147 - 1154
13. War, Peace and the Magnates
14. The Solution

PART FOUR: THE IMPACT OF STEPHEN'S REIGN
15. The Church
16. The Nation
17. Conclusion

Reviews

"This is quite the best study to have been devoted to a complicated and still somewhat mysterious period... (it) recasts an entire period of English history..."
Times Literary Supplement

'a useful and timely book...It goes probably about as far as we ever can with this neglected king'
Speculum

Return to main page of Trans-Atlantic Publications