The Magnificent Century is a history book which covers the long reign of the weathercock King Henry III, from 1216 to 1272. It was during the period covered in this book, an age appropriately thermed "the magnificent century," that England first made remarkable strides toward freedom, establishing principles of democratic rule which would later be accepted by the world. Englishmen returned home from the Crusades with the first implements for a new life—foreign books, medicines, and maps of the East; new foods, new heresies, and even new diseases. Although wars went on as before and ignorance still held sway, this was the beginning of an awakening which was to sweep men on to spectacular advances in the arts, science, philosophy, and theology.