ABSTRACT
The years between the accession of Henry V of England in 1413 and the removal of Henry VI in 1461 would seem to offer little in terms of an integrated or interconnected history of the British Isles. From the perspective of England the period was dominated by the warfare in France which ended in the loss of Normandy and Gascony in the early 1450s and by the gradual breakdown of political harmony leading to outbreaks of civil war in 1455 and 1459. While Wales’s history seems to be dominated by the renewal of processes of assimilation which had been violently disrupted by the Glyn Dwr rebellion, Ireland remained internally divided between English and Irish lordships, peoples and cultural models. The history of Scotland in this period consciously followed its own routes as a fully sovereign realm whose resurgent kings were, from 1424, keen to enlarge connections with continental rulers in ways which stressed this status. In each land the principal concern seemed to focus on the specific and distinct character of internal political society and activity. Common issues or developments, even on a par with those of the period before 1413, appear as limited and peripheral to these dominant directions. There were no personal interventions by English kings in the other lands of the isles, like those of Richard II and Henry IV, nor were there significant challenges to their rule from these lands. Relations between realms and peoples in the British Isles followed paths which had been established by the later fourteenth century.
