This provocative study of English politics between the later years of Edward I and the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses challenges the trend away from constitutional and towards social history by arguing that, although governance may have been an elitist activity in the later Middle Ages, politics certainly was not, and that the major events of the period 1300 to 1450 - the Hundred Years War and the Black Death - served to politicise a large cross-section of the population.

It also counters the recent preoccupation with the 'low' politics of the localities by arguing that England was a remarkably unified state whose subjects were directly affected by, and therefore interested in, the 'high' politics of the court, council and parliament. The book reassesses the significance of the depositions of Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI and concludes with a discussion of the origins of the Wars of the Roses.