The main argument of this book has been that a meaningful, and positive, trajectory can be detected in the complex and often turbulent politics of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe. It is a trajectory which stretches across the whole period and across the whole continent, and it takes the form of a continuous process of governmental and political growth. It was full of conflict, because neither the growth of institutions nor the advancement of political culture produces order in itself, but these later medieval conflicts should not necessarily be seen in a negative light: they themselves contributed to the political and governmental outcomes of the period, and should be seen in the same rational light as the other convulsions and confrontations that mark the great pathways of historical development.

The book has also argued for a particular way of understanding politics – as a phenomenon dominated by structures more than by individuals or collective solidarities, whether the latter are nations (as they often are in the historiography of this period), or estates, or classes. This is not to say that individuals were unimportant, nor to insist that solidarities never existed, but simply to recognise that the options, identities and actions of these familiar groups of political actors were deeply and obviously conditioned by the prevailing institutional, ideological, discursive and communicatory frameworks of their time. Over time, as will now be clear, the prevailing structures changed. The period between c.1200 and c.1350 was particularly dominated by notions and techniques of jurisdiction, afforced by the development of governmental literacy, the keeping of records and the making of laws.