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The History of Richard II: Digital Study Guide

The short summaries of journal articles on this website are designed for university students revising for exams, A-Level students writing essays, and anyone else interested in reading detailed and specialist research into late medieval England.

Start by reading the digital study guide, which provides a short introduction to the reign of Richard II.

Then follow the links within the text to read more detail about specific topics. Each link takes you to a summary of a journal article.

What is a journal article?

A journal article is a specialist essay written by a professional historian – usually a lecturer or researcher at a university. Before being published they are peer-reviewed. This means that they are read and critiqued by other professional historians – sometimes articles are rejected and not published on the basis of this peer review. This helps to ensure that the research is of a high quality.

Journal articles usually analyse the existing historical writing (known as historiography) on a very specific topic, and then put forward conclusions based on new evidence or based on a new interpretation of existing evidence. They are primarily written for other professional historians, and as such, they are usually very difficult to read for anyone who isn’t an expert. They use jargon, and assume knowledge on the part of the reader.

University students are expected to read, understand and analyse journal articles. However, even for university students and professional historians, a journal article often takes over an hour to read, longer to digest, and can even longer if you're taking notes.

 You can see an alphabetical list of the journal article summaries.  

About the Author

Matt Phillips completed his PhD at the University of Nottingham in 2013, and is the author of several publications in leading academic journals:

PHILLIPS, M., 'Archbishop Walter Reynolds, the Clerical gravamina, and Parliamentary Petitions from the Clergy in the Early Fourteenth Century', in SMITH, T. W. (ed.), Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500 (Turnhout, 2020), 341-354

PHILLIPS, M., 'Petitions of Conflict: The Bishop of Durham and Forfeitures of War, 1317-1333' in SMITH, T. W., and KILLICK, H. (eds), Petitions and Strategies of Persuasion in the Middle Ages: The English Crown and the Church, c.1200-c.1550 (York, 2018)

PHILLIPS, M. ‘Bishops, Parliament and Trial by Peers: Clerical Opposition to the Confiscation of Episcopal Temporalities in the Fourteenth Century’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (2016), 288-305

PHILLIPS, M. ‘Urban conflict and legal strategy in medieval England: The case of Bishop's Lynn, 1346–1350’, Urban History, 42 (2015), 365-380

DODD, G., PHILLIPS, M., and KILLICK, H., 'Multiple-clause petitions to the English parliament in the later Middle Ages: instruments of pragmatism or persuasion?', Journal of Medieval History, 40 (2014), 176-194

He previously held the Alan Pearsall Fellow in Naval and Maritime History at the Institute of Historical Research, 2013-2014 and worked with Education & Outreach at The National Archives on a variety of e-resources to support the teaching of medieval history at secondary schools.

As a freelance researcher, he has written local church histories for the Southwell & Nottingham Church History Project (http://www.nottsopenchurches.org.uk/).

His doctoral research focused on petitions from bishops to the English crown in the fourteenth century: Church, crown and complaint: petitions from bishops to the English crown in the fourteenth century (University of Nottingham, PhD. Thesis, 2013)


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Phillpotts, Christopher, 'The fate of the truce of Paris, 1396-1415', Journal of Medieval History 24 (1998), 61-80

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Theilmann, John M., 'Stubbs, Shakespeare, and Recent Historians of Richard II', Albion 8 (1976), 107-124

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