How far England was centrally controlled and how far power in reality remained in the localities are key considerations in understanding English history both in the Middle Ages and afterwards. These essays examine what the exercise of power involved in local terms.

Regionalism and revision, Anthony Gross; The significance of the county in English government, J.R. Lander; A crisis of the knightly class? inheritance and office among the gentry of thirteenth-century Buckinghamshire, Anne Polden; Mid thirteenth-century reformers and the localities - the sheriffs of the Baronial regime, 1258-1261; the commons and the early justices of the peace under Edward III, Anthony Verduyn; The dissolution of St Augustine's Abbey and the creation of the diocese of Bristol, J.H. Bettey; Sir Thomas Cheyne, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, 1536-1588 - central authority and the defence of local privileges, Peter Fleming; Purveyance and politics in Jacobean Leicestershire, Richard Cust.