The Medieval Gentry; Power, Leadership and Choice During the Wars of the Roses, Malcolm Mercer (Continuum, London & New York, 2010) ix, 173pp., hardback £65.00, ISBN 978 1 44119064 2

This study has a bibliography of some fourteen pages listing sources, manuscript and printed, from London, Oxford and Dublin, primary and secondary.  Malcolm Mercer has put together a most scholarly book to explain how the leading gentry arrived at decisions in the turbulence of the Wars of the Roses between the Battle of St Albans of 1455 and the Battle of Stoke of 1487.  A principal horror of medieval society was the disruption of domestic tranquillity.  Tudor historians debate at length the origins of the wars.  Edward Hall marvelled at the colourful personalities involved, Polydor Virgil blamed Richard Duke of York for the conflict.  The debate continues about gentry independence or subservience.

Mercer's volume unlike many other works on the Wars of the Roses is arranged not chronologically but thematically and this is its distinguishing feature.  The thought processes and concerns of the gentry are examined and demonstrate the complexity of choice facing them.  The definition of gentry draws on recent research and acknowledges differences between the south and the north of the country where nobility dominated traditionally.  Elsewhere wealth was a factor.  It is too simplistic, Mercer argues, to draw too sharp a distinction between vertical and horizontal ties of association and equally the gentry were not a homogeneous group.

It is thought-provoking and an unusual approach.  A pity that it is priced so that few individuals will buy it.  Could a paperback edition be accommodated?