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Henry I - Review
Contemporary Review, July, 2001
Henry I. C. Warren Hollister and Amanda Clark Frost, editor. Yale University Press. [pound]25.00. 554 pages. ISBN 0-300-08858-2. Yale's 'English Monarchs' series has been an unusual effort: its volumes have varied in size and quality but in this latest issue we have a first-rate job of historical revisionism.
The author, who had been a professor of history in the University of California at Santa Barbara and a noted mediaeval scholar, died in 1997 before completing this mammoth biography. It was finished by one of his graduate students. Hollister began his work in 1962 but, like John Stuart Mill, he lost his manuscript and notes in a fire. Before his death he had completed a new draft of eight and a half chapters and an outline for the remainder and had appointed Dr Frost to complete his work. Professor Hollister amassed his evidence to show that William the Conqueror's son was not the sexual maniac and cruel tyrant that previous writers would have, but a capable administrator and an innovative monarch. Holl ister shows that Henry I established the new Norman dynasty and left England with a bureaucratic government, rather than a government centred solely on the King. This dates this important achievement much earlier than had been previously thought. Henry was 'a master builder: of men, of personal relationships, of institutions, of a myriad religious establishments ... [and] of a ring of castles on the ... frontiers'. As much as his father he changed not only the course of English history but the look of England. (T.B.)
COPYRIGHT 2001 Contemporary Review Company Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
