Gerald Leslie Harriss FBA (22 May 1925 – 2 November 2014)[1] was an English historian of the Late Middle Ages.
[2] G. L. Harriss first came up to read Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford as an undergraduate in 1943 where he was tutored by K. B. McFarlane.
Essays presented to Gerald Harriss (Hambledon, 1995), a Festschrift in his honour, edited by two of his former research students, Rowena E. Archer and Simon Walker, was published in 1995.
In his magnum opus, King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford, 1975), Harriss placed the parliamentary-controlled system of royal finance in the context of the emergence of the crown as a corporate body separate from the person of the king, and its role in the development of English political society and the constitution.
Harriss later benefited from the work of Simon Walker, particularly in relation to the retinue of John of Gaunt and the development of private forms of political authority alongside that of the crown.