1. Purpose: to give students experience comparing the life and times of an English ruler.



2. Content: This is still another exercise in critical thinking. Your essay should reflect an understanding of what the author had to say, and as well should convey this to the reader (of your paper) who has not yet read the book. The content of these essays will vary, appropriately, from student to student, because these lives and their contexts were so very different. Do not try to rewrite the book by detailing a narrative. Rather, place your subject within the relevant historical context and come to some conclusion about whether the times shaped your subject or your subject changed his or her era in some significant way.



3. Procedures:
1. Skim Britannia-Monarchs to determine which ruler you want to read about.



2. Choose a biography from the list below, and then use the discussion board to sign up: first come, first served.

The monarch paper is due at the point in the course when your subject appears.

Each of the following is in the library:

• Alfred P. Smith, King Alfred the Great (1996)
  
  
• Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor (1970)
  
  
• Ian Walker, Harold, the Last Anglo-Saxon King (1997)
  
  
• David C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (1964)
  
  
• R. H. C. Davis, King Stephen, 1135-1154 (1967)
  
  
• W. L. Warren,, Henry II (2000)

• John Gillingham, Richard I (1999)
  
  
• W. L. Warren, King John (1961)
  
  
• Sidney Painter, The Reign of King John (1949)
  
  
• Louis Salzman, Edward I (1968)
  
  
• Michael Prestwick, Edward I (1988)



• H. F. Hutchinson, The Hollow Crown: A Life of Richard II (1961)
  
  
• Nigel Saul, Richard II (1997)
  
  
• Christopher Allmand, Henry V (1993)
  
  
• Eric Simons, Edward IV (1966)
  
  
• Paul Murray Kendall, Richard III (1956)
  
  
• Charles Derek Ross, Richard III (1981)
  
  
• S. B. Chrimes, Henry VII (1972)
  
  
• Eric N. Simons, Henry VII (1968)
  
  
• J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (1968)
  
  
• Lacey Baldwin Smith, Henry VIII (1982)
  
  
• D. M. Loades, Mary Tudor (1989)
  
  
• Jennifer Loach, Edward VI (1999)

• Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I (1993)
  
  
• Antonia Fraser, Mary, Queen of Scots (1969)
  
  
• D. H. Willson, King James VI and I (1956)
  
  
• David Mathew, James I (1967)
  
  
• John Bowle, Charles I (1975)
  
  
• Charles Carlton, Charles I (1984)
  
  
• Christopher Hill, God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (1970)
  
  
• Peter Gaunt, Oliver Cromwell (1996)
  
  
• Maurice Ashley, The Greatness of Oliver Cromwell (1958)
  
  
• Ronald Hutton, Charles II (1989)
  
  
• John Miller, James II (2000)