The Nobility

<p dir="ltr">In every human relationship there is a tension, or perhaps better say a dynamic, between what is and what is desired by the parties involved, and in this the relations between medieval kings and the upper nobility were no different. When these factors coincided, the relationship tended to work well; when they did not, it could break down. Both at the time and since, debates have arisen about what was the most profitable state of affairs in a monarchical form of government, as defined by kings and nobles, by parliaments and other councils, and by contemporary theorists. In more recent times, historians have engaged in an intellectual push and pull between concepts of a constitutional, or at extreme idealised, outlook on the royal/noble relationship in the English Middle Ages on the one hand and a personalised, or, more basely, self-interested, view on the other. To understand how this relationship played out between medieval English kings and their nobilities, we first need to understand how the structure of that relationship evolved. We can then examine how it manifested itself in areas such as the king’s role in maintaining the nobility, service and cooperation between kings and his nobles, the interplay of ideas of wealth and power, favouritism, political instability and in some cases the removal of monarchs.</p>