Kenneth Bruce McFarlane was the nineteenth century's most influential historian of late medieval England.

His most important contribution to the field was his revision of the understanding of late medieval feudal relationships, known as "bastard feudalism". The old consensus, promoted primarily by Bishop Stubbs, was that payment for service in feudal relationships had promoting greed and civil strife. McFarlane pointed out the adhesive effect of this, and other forms of patronage, as a field of common interest for the crown and the landed aristocracy.

McFarlane did not publish widely in his own lifetime. The main sources for his scholarship are the book "Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights", his Ford Lectures from 1953 published in 1980 as "The Nobility of Later Medieval England", and the essays and shorter articles published by his student G. L. Harriss in 1981 under the title "England in the Fifteenth Century".