Talk:England in the late Middle Ages

Change from redirect
This article has been changed from a redirect to England in the Middle Ages, to a substantive article as a result of reviews and discussion at House of Plantagenet. As a result it uses text originally from that article and England in the Middle Ages.--  SabreBD  (talk ) 18:23, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

End of the period
Should we more equivocal about this? 1485 is of course a convenient dynastic marker, but many would think the medieval period in England went on until some point in the early 16th century. The V&As big exhibition on English late medieval art was called "Gothic; Art for England 1400-1547", though that is perhaps unusually late. Johnbod (talk) 10:53, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The date has migrated. It used to be in the Renaissance which is largely 15thC in England, but now the Reformation is more often seen as the turning point. I will see if I can find something reliable to that effect. However, that does mean it may be out of sinc with the other English medieval articles.--  SabreBD  (talk ) 17:48, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Good luck with that one Sabrebd! The end of this period is a largely arbitrary definition. A quick trawl round Wikipedia indicates that 1485 is largely accepted but that is Wikipedia and may just be down to the way a lot of the content originated from out of copyright versions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. That said both the National Archives & Oxford English Dictionary take this date as the start of Early Modern England. The Faculty of History at Cambridge unhelpfully uses c1450 which would exclude the Wars of the Roses from this article. In a European sense both the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and discovery of America in 1492 are used. 1492 is coincidently used in Spain marking the conquest of Granada. Weisinger in "Studies in the Renaissance" said "Ever since the Renaissance invented itself some six hundred years ago there has been no agreement as to what it is" and Thomas in "Religion and the Decline of Magic" indicated the medieval belief systems coexisted with the new world for a further century or more. I am sure the the V&A are correct in labelling their Gothic exhibition in an artistice sense but England was later than our European cousins in coming to the ball (perhaps distracted by all that fighting) but selecting the death of Henry VIII as a marker seems even more arbitrary.Norfolkbigfish (talk) 10:20, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
 * All true. I think the solution may be to point to some of the different dates, rather than necessarily try to radically change the scope of the article. It is probably worth stressing that it is not a clear break, where everyone woke up the day after Bosworth in the Renaissance.--  SabreBD  (talk ) 11:00, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, at the moment we just say "...through to the start of the accession of the Tudors and the early modern period in 1485", which gives another problem, as don't many historians interpose the Renaissance between MA & EM? They do round my way. We need to at least indicate there is no one fixed date. Middle Ages has a section on this, & with its talk has various sources, and one might work in a link to Periodization. Johnbod (talk) 11:19, 3 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Or alternatively that sentence could be rearranged slightly......... "...through to the start of the accession of the Tudors in 1485 and the beginning of the early modern period "? Norfolkbigfish (talk) 14:55, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I went for "...through to the accession to the throne of the Tudor dynasty in 1485, which is often taken as the most convenient marker for the end of the Middle Ages and the start of Early modern Britain." - as a holding measure, removing a bit from a lower para saying much the same. Johnbod (talk) 15:21, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I think that looks good for now.--  SabreBD  (talk ) 16:14, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

English as the official language
This was a change neatly fitted into this period, and needs amplification - probably in the "national identity" section. There is a bit (a tad misleading) in the Literature section, but it needs coverage higher up. Johnbod (talk) 11:46, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I will have a look for that too.--  SabreBD  (talk ) 18:27, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Unofficial languages
Other languages were spoken in England in this period. For instance, Welsh was spoken in areas of Herefordshire and Shropshire, and Cornish in Cornwall. This should be mentioned somewhere. Jim Killock (talk) 07:27, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Content removal
Could you please explain why you made this edit? You removed a lot of content with no edit summary. Chris Troutman ( talk ) 10:03, 28 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't think this edit can be justified and it is probably best to revert it. To reduce the significant factors to just the itermittant 100-years war and the War of the Roses ignores many significant events (Black Death, decline of feudalism, greta famine, Bannockburn etc etc) Norfolkbigfish (talk) 12:44, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Taking all the edits this morning (incuding some tidying), I think it is clear what he was up to. But, at the least, he has not adjusted for the links he has removed (Edward II, Gascony), & having been too long, many paras are now too short. I think some compromise version should be found - there was too much detail in the lead. Johnbod (talk) 12:52, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but now we have too little detail in the lead and too many paragraphs.--  SabreBD  (talk ) 15:02, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
 * It doesn't look like we are going to get a detailed rationale at the moment, so I have put back a shorter version of the lead that the restores the four paragraphs recommend by the MOS, puts back the definition in the first sentence, but skips some of the detail.--  SabreBD  (talk ) 17:18, 29 April 2014 (UTC)