The Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, the Hundred Years War, the Wars of the Roses... a succession of dramatic social and political upheavals reshaped England in the period 1360 to 1461. In his lucid and penetrating account of this formative period, Gerald Harriss draws on the research of the last thirty years to describe late medieval society at its peak. The political narrative centres on the rule and eventual deposition of Richard II on charges of tyranny and the establishment of the House of Lancaster, which was in turn overthrown in the Wars of the Roses. Abroad, Henry V's heroic victory at Agincourt in 1415 opened the way to the English conquest and colonisation of Normandy and a projected union of England and France. Far reaching chenges occured in English society. The Black Death produced a crisis in agrarian structures, marked by the Peasant's Revolt in 1381 and the end of serfdom. A class structure emerged in landed society, with grades of knights, esquires, gentlemen and yeomen linked to the nobility through patronage and service. The marked individualism of this society was accompanied by a growing sense of national identity. Literature expressed an assertive patriotism, facilitated by the spread of London english as a standard language, while a spate of church building developed perpendicular as a distinctive national style. the increasing participation of the laity in the Church stimulated new forms of Catholic devotion and prompted the emergence of the proto-Protestantism of John Wyclif and the Lollards. Through a close examination of these aspects of late medieval England, Gerald Harriss traces its transformation from a feudal into a national society.