The Northerners: A Study in the Reign of King John

by J.C. Holt

The Northerners A Study of the Reign of King John

Genres: History

286 pages, Hardcover

First published May 12, 1981

About the author

Professor Sir James Clarke Holt FBA (born 26 April 1922) is an English medieval historian and was the third Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University.

Educated at Bradford Grammar School, Holt graduated, and subsequently took his DPhil, at the University of Oxford. He held the positions of Professor of Medieval History at the University of Nottingham (1962 - 1965), Professor of History at the University of Reading (1965 - 1978) and Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cambridge from 1978 until his retirement in 1988. From 1981 until 1988 he served as the Master of Fitzwilliam College.

Holt became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1978 and was its Vice President from 1987 - 1989, president of the Royal Historical Society (1981–1985), and was knighted for his work as an historian.

Holt made his fame with the book Magna Carta, which came out in its original edition in 1965. In this work he treated the charter in the context of the political framework of its time. The book has since been fully revised, and is still considered authoritative within its field. He has also published other works on the same period, such as The Northerners: A Study in the Reign of King John, and Robin Hood.

Reviews

[Michael Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1216, King John was trying hard to regain the political ground he had lost when he was forced by a group of rebellious barons to sign the Great Charter (Magna Carta) the year before. To that end, he led an army into the north of England, eventually as far as Berwick on the Tweed River, to try to subdue the individuals and the forces that opposed him. And he had some successes in the short term, but in the long run the balance of power between the king and the peerage had changed forever. Writing a half-century ago, Holt takes a somewhat fawning, flag-waving view of the Charter of the sort that might raise a cynical eyebrow today, but otherwise he supplies a thoroughly astute, open-eyed history of the rebellion in the north — an area of England that in the 13th century meant everything above the Trent and which still seems almost a foreign country to many in the south. He examines the rise of factions and the role of and connections between the great families, especially the Percys, the Mowbrays, the Lacys, the Nevilles, the Rosses, the Stutevilles, the Vescis, and the lowland Scots houses like the Baliols and the Bruses. The prose is academic but not crushingly so, and citations to sources are frequent, so this volume would be an excellent starting point for further research into any of the families noted above.