A survey of the English experience through a thousand years and more, this book concentrates on the lasting characteristics of a people who early on discovered the fact of a national identity. The outstanding hallmarks of this experience were the existence of a strong central authority (in the monarchy), the provision of a system of law, and with these two the possibility of preserving individual rights and liberties in the face of a long sequence of historical vicissitudes.

Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton was fellow of Clare College, Cambridge since 1954 and between 1967 and 1983 was Professor of English Constitutional History. He was President of the Royal Historical Society between 1972 and 1976, of the Selden Society between 1983 and 1985 and of the Ecclesiastical History Society in 1983-84.