Several important themes run through this painstaking account of politics and finance in the two largest cities in England after London. Liddy emphasizes the many connections urban communities maintained not only with the crown, but also with one another and their hinterlands. He argues that the nineteenth-century's interest in constitutional and legal history has created a somewhat distorted view of boroughs as isolated and self-dependent entities, and that moreover, this focus has emphasized institutions at the expense of individuals (5, 8). Furthermore, the curial view of crown-town relations, with its emphasis on patronage, neglects the public dimension of both royal, even nascent national, concerns, and the place of urban elites in England's political and economic life, which last he argues has been woefully neglected. Finally, Parliament, not terribly significant in this era for constitutional history, was nonetheless the arena in which relations between the crown on the one hand, Bristol and York on the other, were mediated (17).
These are all important issues, and Liddy marshals a great deal of information to examine them. After a brief but informative introduction, he focuses on: the defense of the realm; the financial cost of royal government; commercial policy; parliament; and urban charters. These chapter titles indicate that different aspects of the war, politics and finances of Bristol and York vis-a-vis the crown will follow. And they do--more or less. As the book progresses Liddy separates his topics and sharpens his focus, but much of the time the reader senses his material is spinning out of his control--a sense reinforced by the author's habit of posing a series of questions, as if to reassess where exactly he is in his argument.
Perhaps some repetition is inevitable because the author examines several issues that necessarily intertwine with one another. He is correct to emphasize both the internal effects of achieving county status on Bristol and York themselves, in 1373 and 1396 respectively, and the subsequent effects of this elevation on each town's relations with the crown and, tangentially, with the local gentry. This fact comes up no fewer than ten times, however, and leads the reader to wonder whether Liddy might have rearranged his materials to avoid such repetition. Similar criticism applies to the renewal of the Hundred Years War in 1369, and to the (re)introduction of specific members of Bristol's and York's elite, often highlighting already presented information about each (see William de Derby and Thomas Graa in the index, 256 and 257 respectively, for instances of such repetition).
At times the relevance of large chunks of information remains unclear- -just because they occurred in one of Liddy's two urban communities or in some way involved them does not mean randomly surviving evidence in the archives matters. For example: Liddy spends nearly twenty pages examining the intriguing position Bristol occupied as "the queen's chamber"; he then winds through tortuous twists through conflicts over queen's gold and the fee farm. Liddy concludes that while "[T]he town of Bristol was, then, an important part of Philippa's landed resources," (71), "the extant sources, extremely limited though they are, do not suggest that the queen was an important patron to the town in the period 1350-1400" (80). Given that Liddy identifies as the theme of his book "the increasing participation of urban elites in government between 1350 and 1400," (15), why not focus on Walter de Darby, who defended Bristol against the queen's claims for queen's gold, then reappears as one of two granted the fee farm in 1371 (70, 76)? Another individual ill served by Liddy's treatment is John de Gysburn--an almost certainly corrupt official, whose persistent abuses seem to have sparked the November 1380 uprising in York--what a manipulator! Historians can choose to tell a story or to overwhelm with data. Liddy has unfortunately chosen the latter strategy; his presentation does not serve his material well, does not make the most of the dramatic capital at his disposal, does not highlight his significant conclusions. Some of the most interesting connections between royal service and civic office appear only in the tables at the end of the book, to which Liddy seldom refers in his text; these provide fascinating snapshots into the lives of specific individuals as well as larger patterns, but require analysis, not just presentation (220-234).
The author has become too close to his subject, and seems to have fallen in love with his two provincial urban communities. While striving to emphasize the relative importance of Bristol and York in crown finance, Liddy makes much of the fact that Bristol lent more than York to Richard II from 1377-1399; but Bristol's £3000 pales by comparison with London's £66,000 (41-42). Similarly, when analyzing the role of parliament as a meeting place for those of similar "estate" and reassessing the supposed disappearance of the estate of merchants (a fascinating thread I wish he had pursued more thoroughly), London dominates the scene. Richard II appointed a committee in 1377 to investigate royal expenses that included three parliamentary burgesses: two from London, one from York (176). Another committee established after the Peasants' Revolt to examine coinage included three merchants of London, one each of Bristol and York (179). A commons petition, also from 1381, to seek remedies for the "'great poverty' within the kingdom" led to the formation of another committee that ultimately included twenty-seven merchants (most of whom were not MPs at the time): twelve from London, a total of three from Bristol, one from York (181-182).
Much has already been written on London's own relations with the crown and its own development, and Liddy's excellent and extensive bibliography shows his through knowledge of this material. London enters the text in several dozen places in two dozen categories--as well it should, being by far the most populous and prosperous urban community of the realm. Trying to minimize London's role and emphasize those of Bristol and York leads to a sense of imbalance and incompletion; focusing on the peripheries is valuable, but especially so when the relationship between center(s) and peripheries emerges clearly. The oblique inclusion of London does not serve Liddy's goals of exploring his primary focus, the increasing participation of urban elites in the affairs of the kingdom as a whole (15), nor the secondary foci of urban attitudes, economies, and self-government in the second half of the fourteenth century.
So, what to do with this useful, important, and deadly dull book? By all means direct to it those interested in the minutiae of wartime maritime economies, prosopography, subtleties of changing relations between the English crown and urban communities. Sadly, also present it as an example of why no one but academics reads academic history nowadays. Ian Mortimer's iconoclastic The Perfect King, Kenneth Fowler's Medieval Mercenaries: The Great Companies, and William P. Caferro's John Hawkwood all demonstrate that it is possible to write richly documented, closely analyzed histories of war, politics and finance, and tell a gripping tale as well.
Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation (Jonathan Cape, 2006); Kenneth Fowler, Medieval Mercenaries: The Great Companies (Blackwell, 2001); William P. Caferro, John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Johns Hopkins Press, 2006).