William, Lord Hastings: A Political Biography

Abstract

This paper would be nothing but a re-hash of Dunham were it to dwell simply on the facts of Hastings life as a retainer and a lord. What makes Hastings particularly interesting is his close relationship to his lord, Edward IV, and the singular renaissance that has taken place over the last twenty years in the study of this king's impact on the development of Modern Britain. Since the early 1950's a sizable body of work has appeared concerning the administrative reforms of the kings of the Yorkist dynasty. The Yorkist revision set out to de-bunk one of the great myths in English history. That myth is the great originality of the Tudor monarchy.