Henry II: The Vanquished King

by John T. Appleby

Genres: History

343 pages

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Arkansas native John Tate (Jack) Appleby was a biographer of English kings of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries and a long-time associate editor of the American Historical Review. He is best remembered in the Borough of St. Edmundsbury in southeastern England, where he served in the U.S. Army Air Force during the final months of World War II and traveled by bicycle then and just after the war. Appleby’s memoir of those times, Suffolk Summer, has remained in print since its publication in 1948.

Appleby received his AB degree in English, cum laude, from Harvard College in 1928. He then went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne while working as a reporter for the Paris Times. He moved to Washington DC, where he wrote a column, “Post Impressions,” and book reviews for the Washington Post. During the final months of World War II, he served as a trainer in celestial navigation for pilots in the Eighth Air Force, stationed on two bases in Suffolk. He never married or had children.

After the war, Appleby returned to Fayetteville to operate one of his family’s apple orchards and to write. His first work, Suffolk Summer, published by East Anglian Magazine, Ltd. in 1948, was an affectionate record of the months he had spent bicycling around East Anglia, enjoying the working landscapes of the region and the friends he met there. With its completion, Appleby began the first of several scholarly biographies of English kings. In 1953, this project took him back to Washington DC, where he deciphered and translated the Latin text of the Close and Patent Rolls, the private letters and public announcements of King John’s seventeen-year reign (1199–1216), which became the basis of his book. In 1959, the year of publication of this first history, John, King of England, Appleby became membership secretary of the American Historical Association; he soon began to work primarily on the American Historical Review (AHR), the association’s journal, and served in its Washington DC office as its associate editor until his death, while continuing his own scholarly writing with books about the reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I.




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Reviews

[Best British Biographies]

John Appleby came to the field of medieval biography via a circuitous route. Born in Arkansas, he graduated from Harvard with an A.B. and worked as a journalist until the Second World War brought him to England, an experience which inspired his memoir Suffolk Summer. After its publication in 1948, he began work on a biography of King John, a project that led him to translate the Close and Patent Rolls from his reign into Latin. His biography of Henry was his second of an English king, and one that he wrote while serving as associate editor of the American Historical Review, a position in which he served until his death in 1974.

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[Craig Hipkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an author of historical fiction that is relevant to this time period, I look for books that will help me with my research. Henry II by the late John T. Appleby is one of those books. I found it to be a wel written biography about a complicated king who had to deal with the constant threat of revolts, not only from his subjects but also from his sons. I highly recommend this work for anyone that is interested in the 12th century.