The Plantagenet kings, the royal dynasty of England starting with Henry II (ascended 1154) and his sons Richard and John, and ending with the death of Richard II in 1399, held what is called an “itinerant court.”

An itinerant court didn’t have a set center, or capital, but moved throughout the realm. So, the reigning monarch and their court would occupy one particular manor or castle somewhere in the kingdom (either one belonging to the king himself, or one belonging to a vassal) for a few weeks or months. Then, they would pack up and move to another manor or castle, and so on.

There were many reasons for this style of governance.

In part, it was to more effectively administer the entire realm. At its height, the Plantagenet’s’ Angevin empire encompassed all of England, Wales, at times good chunks of Scotland, and huge portions of France, including Normandy, Aquitaine, Poitou—pretty much the entire Atlantic and Channel coasts excluding Brittany. And the king himself controlled lands across this realm as his demense.

It also reinforced the personal relationships so important in medieval governance. The king, by traveling to visit local lords in person, could exert more direct control. Being hosted by a vassal showed favor to and for that subordinate. It also allowed the king to keep his thumb in political activities across the kingdom. Have you ever worked for a retail chain store? Notice how the district manager is constantly traveling around visiting the stores, checking up on what’s going on, making sure the store is “in compliance”, and talking with the store managers? Not a bad analogy, really.

Finally, an additional reason was logistics. A large group of people was expensive. The court required huge amounts of food, goods, and money. The court could, essentially, eat itself out of house and home. Transport was, by comparison, slow. So, instead of bringing the resources to the court, the court moved to the resources. This reason for an itinerant court is, in popular telling of history, rather played up in my opinion. It’s a compelling visual, a group of nobles descending on a town like locusts and denuding the countryside as they went. I suspect the prevalence of this reason is somewhat overblown, since transport remained much the same after the switch to more permeant capitals, and that the ultimate contemporary reasoning was more political.

Eventually, the economic and political powerhouse that is London basically caught the king’s court in its gravity well. Starting in the mid-14th century, governance became increasingly centered in London. This was not a quick or straightforward process. Basically the bureaucracy grew to the point moving sections of the government around every few months became unwieldly. The archives, the treasury, and eventually parliament, and ultimately the court spalled off and established themselves permanently in London.

So, ultimately, moving into the late 14th century and the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, the style of government changed from more personal with the king ruling his vassals directly to more bureaucratic with the king ruling by law and decrees. As such, the mechanism of government became too “heavy” to move around and solidified in London as the capital city.