Despite the multidirectional nature of modern research, the interpretation of the political history of thirteenth-century England has remained locked into a traditional framework bequeathed by the mid-twentieth-century historian, R. F. Treharne, and embellished by the emphases and accentuations of his present-day successors. Characterised by its conception of community, its constitutionalism, its ready identification of a national enterprise, and its predilection for idealism and ''progressive'' thinking, this framework remains close to the Whig interpretation of English history. It is reinforced by the continuation of reverence for the baronial leader, Simon de Montfort.In contrast, Peter Coss offers here an alternative approach to the period which is anchored in social mores and cultural values. More emphasis is placed upon the interests, ambitions, and needs of contemporaries, upon social networks of various kinds, and upon how interests both clashed and cohered as people strove t