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Gentry and Community in Medieval England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Extract

There is now a strong case for banning the word “community” from all academic writing and an even stronger one for banning it from the vocabulary of politics. As one early modern historian has put it, the word is becoming a “shibboleth.” It is employed where “group” or “society,” for example, would be more appropriate, and, worst of all, its use is often not just a matter of slack thought but expresses an implicit hankering for some mythical past when there were “communities.” The increasing overworking of the word by politicians and other public figures can be related to an uneasy feeling that the sense of belonging and of mutual obligation implicit in the idea of “community” are disappearing. Accordingly, if they call things “communities” often enough, that will somehow create them. This prelapsarian attitude to communities is, as we shall see, quite as fundamental to historical use of the term. It is the purpose of this article to examine critically how the word has been applied in relation to the medieval English gentry, to ask whether there can be any legitimate use in this context, and to look at the types of identity, whether communitarian or not, that may have obtained among this important group within medieval society.

Historiographically, the “gentry community,” as is well-known, first appeared in the seventeenth century, specifically in the work of Alan Everitt.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1994

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References

1 Holmes, C., Seventeenth-Century Lincolnshire, History of Lincolnshire, no. 7 (Lincoln, 1980), p. 3Google Scholar. See also Short, B., “Images and Realities in the English Rural Community,” in his The English Rural Community: Image and Analysis (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 118Google Scholar, and “The Evolution of Contrasting Communities within Rural England,” in ibid., pp. 19–43, where the eminently “correct” language of power and attacks on the myth of the countryside contrast with the uncritical acceptance of the supremely mythical “community.”

2 Everitt, A., The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion, 1640–60 (1966; 2d impression, Leicester, 1973), p. 13Google Scholar, Change in the Provinces: The Seventeenth Century, Department of Local History, Occasional paper, 2d ser., 1 (Leicester, 1969)Google Scholar; Holmes, , Lincolnshire, pp. 12Google Scholar.

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12 See pp. 365–67 below.

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14 See pp. 367–69 below for discussion.

15 Wright, , Derbyshire (n. 5 above), pp. 5–6, 144Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society (n. 5 above), p. 18Google Scholar. Saul's range is denned by those who emerge from his various subjects of research, e.g., military service, retainers, and is therefore quite large and socially diverse (see the list in Saul, , Knights and Esquires [n. 5 above], pp. 271–92Google Scholar), but in practice most of the work concentrates on the elite, especially in relation to the county community which is defined in terms of office holding and parliamentary representation (ibid., chap. 4, and see pp. 375–78 below). Bennett ranges widely but, in practice, does not have a great deal to say about either lesser men or their social and political world (Community, Class and Careerism [n. 5 above], chaps. 2, 3, and 5; and cf. Clayton, D. J., The Administration of the County Palatine of Chester, 1442–1485, Chetham Society Publications, 3d sen, no. 35 [Manchester, 1990], pp. 138–39)Google Scholar. Acheson (Gentry Community [n. 5 above]) concentrates on the greater gentry of Leicestershire, if not explicitly so.

16 Everitt, , Kent (n. 2 above), pp. 3536Google Scholar. Fletcher, , County Community, p. 25Google Scholar; Underdown, , Somerset, pp. 1819Google Scholar; Morrill, , Cheshire, pp. 1516Google Scholar; and Smith, Hassell, County and Court, pp. 5354Google Scholar (all n. 3 above), concentrate on the elite, mostly officers, in practice, if not explicitly.

17 Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 36Google Scholar; Saul, , Knights and Esquires, pp. 3034Google Scholar; Payling, Political Society, chap. 1; Acheson, , Gentry Community, pp. 3643Google Scholar. Bennett started from lists of meetings of gentry in Cheshire and Lancashire (Community, Class and Careerism, chap. 2, and A County Community: Social Cohesion amongst the Cheshire Gentry, 1400–1425,” Northern History 8 [1973]: 2444)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 5–6, 57Google Scholar; Bennett, , Community, Class and Careerism, pp. 3435Google Scholar; Saul, Knights and Esquires, chap. 4; Payling, , Political Society, pp. 111–12Google Scholar; Acheson, , Gentry Community, pp. 132–34Google Scholar.

19 Hughes, , Politics, Society and Civil War (n. 5 above), pp. 3840Google Scholar; Fletcher, , County Community, pp. 4453Google Scholar; MacCulloch, , Suffolk and the Tudors (n. 3 above), pp. 9, 420–21Google Scholar; Holmes, , Lincolnshire, pp. 7576Google Scholar, The Eastern Association in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1974), p. 229Google Scholar; Everitt, , Kent, pp. 4143Google Scholar; Morrill, , Cheshire, pp. 3–4, 1516Google Scholar; Wright, , Derbyshire, p. 44Google Scholar; Bennett, , Community, Class and Careerism, pp. 2640Google Scholar (no figures given here for exogamy, but cf. Morrill, Cheshire); Pollard, , North-Eastern England (n. 5 above), pp. 108–10Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, pp. 15, 8083Google Scholar; Acheson, , Gentry Community, pp. 87–88, 155–58Google Scholar (although the differentiation between gentry is not made here); Saul, N., Scenes from Provincial Life: Knightly Families in Sussex, 1280–1400 (Oxford, 1986), p. 61Google Scholar; Carpenter, C., Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 97105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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21 Holmes, , “County Community” (n. 5 above), pp. 5758Google Scholar. But see Hughes, , Politics, Society and Civil War, pp. 4142Google Scholar; Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 56–58, 143–44Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, pp. 8486Google Scholar; Acheson, , Gentry Community, pp. 8788Google Scholar; Saul, , Scenes from Provincial Life, pp. 6163Google Scholar; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, chap. 9.

22 Pollard, , North-Eastern England, pp. 165, 167–68Google Scholar; Virgoe, , “Aspects of the County Community” (n. 5 above), p. 7Google Scholar; Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 96, 98, 108–9Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, pp. 184, 217Google Scholar; Moreton, , Townshends (n. 5 above), p. 62Google Scholar; Smith, Hassell, County and Court, p. 109Google Scholar; MacCulloch, , Suffolk and the Tudors, pp. 113–14Google Scholar. Even then people might fail to attend sessions held far away from their residences (MacCulloch, , Suffolk and the Tudors, p. 39Google Scholar; Hughes, , “Warwickshire on the Eve” [n. 5 above], pp. 4355Google Scholar). Similarly with M.P.s (Hughes, , “Local History” [n. 5 above], p. 229Google Scholar). Note also Holmes's warning against identifying the commission of the peace with the county in the seventeenth century (“County Community,” pp. 61–64).

23 Maddicott, J. R., “The County Community and the Making of Public Opinion in Fourteenth-Century England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 28 (1978): 28–30, 3341CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saul, , Knights and Esquires, p. 259Google Scholar, Scenes from Provincial Life, p. 57; Bennett, , Community, Class and Careerism, pp. 2426Google Scholar.

24 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 341–44Google Scholar and references therein and p. 342, n. 246; Pollard, , North-Eastern England, pp. 155–57Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, pp. 159–65, 217, 248–49Google Scholar; Virgoe, , “Aspects of the County Community,” pp. 710Google Scholar. Compare Maddicott, , “County Community,” pp. 2930Google Scholar (he includes fifteenth-century returns). A meeting to elect in 1414 is used by Bennett as support for his opinion that the court could be a focal point for the county (Community, Class and Careerism, pp. 25–26), but he admits that it was exceptional. As Bennett shows, such meetings could certainly be used to get other business done, but their centrality in this respect must depend on who attended.

25 Palmer, R. C., The County Courts of Medieval England: 1150–1350 (Princeton, N.J., 1982), chaps. 3, 5, and p. 295Google Scholar; Maddicott, , “County Community,” pp. 3032Google Scholar; Coss, , Lordship, Knighthood and Locality (n. 4 above), pp. 45Google Scholar (although the equitability of the court scarcely seems relevant to the issue).

26 English Historical Documents, vol. 3, 1189–1327, ed. Rothwell, H. (London, 1975), pp. 485, 496Google Scholar.

27 Palmer, , County Courts, pp. 235–59Google Scholar; Maddicott, , “County Community,” p. 29Google Scholar. Maddicott does suggest that the court's role as local forum was moving elsewhere by the later fourteenth century (“County Community,” p. 42), but there must be doubts about its regular function in this respect after ca.1300. If it had importance in the fourteenth century, this can only have been within a parliamentary context, and much would have depended on attendance at elections in this period, about which we know little (ibid., p. 30). Coss believes that the county court only acquired a role as a forum for local opinion from the later thirteenth century (Lordship, Knighthood and Locality, pp. 320–23), but the issue is not fully explored, and it is not evident that the matters he regards as “business” (p. 320), especially when “receiving royal news and instruction” includes receiving reissues of Magna Carta (n. 26 above), can really be distinguished from politics. For a generally pessimistic view of the court's importance to the locality from the mid-thirteenth century onward, see Prestwich, M. C., English Politics in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1990), pp. 4958CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also pp. 375–76 below.

28 Wright, , Derbyshire (n. 5 above), p. 146Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 343–44Google Scholar. Note the exemptions from attendance from an early stage: Cam, H. M., Liberties and Communities in Medieval England (London, 1963), pp. 242–43Google Scholar; Pollock, F. and Maitland, F. W., A History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2 vols., 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1968), 1:537–38Google Scholar.

29 Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 95, 112–37Google Scholar; Carpenter, C., “The Fifteenth-Century English Gentry and Their Estates,” in Gentry and Lesser Nobility in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Jones, M. (Gloucester, 1986), pp. 3660Google Scholar, Locality and Polity (n. 19 above), pp. 37–38, 61–65, 92–93, 97, 274, 277; Payling, , Political Society (n. 5 above), pp. 7779Google Scholar; see also references in nn. 19–21 above for connections with other counties. Geographical dispersal of interests was also not unknown in early modern England, but it does not get serious consideration: Holmes, , Eastern Association (n. 19 above), p. 230Google Scholar; Smith, Hassell, County and Court (n. 3 above), pp. 5458Google Scholar.

30 Hughes, , Politics, Society and Civil War (n. 5 above), p. 40Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 3738Google Scholar; Gross, A. J., “The King's Lordship in the County of Stafford, 1312–22,” Midland History 16 (1991): 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Officers in Nottinghamshire, another midland county, seem to have had more restricted employment (Payling, , Political Society, p. 185Google Scholar).

31 Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 4, 144Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, pp. 7, 15Google Scholar; Acheson, , Gentry Community (n. 5 above), p. 39Google Scholar. Saul, , Knights and Esquires (n. 5 above), pp. 31–32, 259Google Scholar, works on the assumption that gentry had only a single county of residence and that this was where they held office; to take just one fifteenth-century example from the same county, John Greville resided in both Gloucestershire and Warwickshire, while holding office mostly in the latter but occasionally in the former; see, e.g., SirDugdale, William, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 2 vols. in one (London, 1730), p. 707Google Scholar; A List of Sheriffs for England and Wales, ed. Hughes, A.; Public Record Office (PRO), Lists and Indexes, main series (London, 1898; reprint, New York, 1963), 9:145–46Google Scholar; Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1461–67 (London, 1897), p. 680, 1467–77Google Scholar (London, 1900), pp. 348–49, 634 (hereafter cited as Cal. Pat. Rolls); PRO, C67/42 m3. One of the problems is that contemporary lists of gentry by county (pp. 344–45 above) cannot be taken at face value, for they override the fact that they may include people who had interests at least as pressing in other counties, while omitting local landowners who appear on lists for other counties (see Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 5051Google Scholar, and n. 42 below).

32 Acheson has a single reference to their external interests (Gentry Community, p. 104); Wright, , Derbyshire, passim, esp. pp. 70–72, 134–36Google Scholar, though the author does acknowledge the problem (p. 65), and see also p. 68. For the Shirleys in Warwickshire (where for much of the century their political absence was more important than their presence), see Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, e.g., pp. 28, 149, 175–76, 315–16, 525, 565Google Scholar.

33 A point relating to the records in print, explained to me by Dr. John Morrill, but note Hughes's conclusions on Warwickshire: Politics, Society and Civil War, pp. 40–41, 54. The issue of employment in other counties is not considered in other early modern studies, e.g., Fletcher, , County Community, p. 128Google Scholar; Underdown, , Somerset (n. 3 above), p. 20Google Scholar; Holmes, , Lincolnshire (n. 1 above), pp. 7987Google Scholar; Smith, Hassell, County and Court (n. 3 above), pp. 5261Google Scholar.

34 See Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War; and Carpenter, Locality and Polity, both passim.

35 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 25–27, 345Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, p. 79Google Scholar.

36 Bennett, , Community, Class and Careerism (n. 5 above), pp. 3, 14, 42, 215–23, 238Google Scholar; Clayton, Administration of Chester (n. 13 above), chap. 2. Clayton tries to make a socially more broadly based case than Bennett for a Cheshire county community, grounded on the large number of gentry involved in the county's administration in some way (ibid., pt. 2, passim), but, although this is almost the only county where this might be possible, because of its peculiar status and traditions, Clayton's interpretation ignores the nonadministrative links with Lancashire shown by Bennett.

37 Payling, Political Society, passim, esp. the conclusion.

38 Ibid., p. 10, and chap. 2, esp. pp. 49–51.

39 See pp. 362–63 below.

40 Similarly in Wright, , Derbyshire (n. 5 above), p. 6Google Scholar (a point well made in Moreton, C., “A Social Gulf? The Upper and Lesser Gentry of Later Medieval England,” Journal of Medieval History 17 [1991]: 255CrossRefGoogle Scholar); cf. Carpenter, Locality and Polity (n. 19 above), chap. 3.

41 Payling, , Political Society (n. 5 above), pp. 17, 7577Google Scholar. Compare Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 57, 66, 8288Google Scholar, on changes in the meaning of knighthood and on wealthy esquires, and pp. 92–93, for problems in using income as evidence of local status.

42 Carpenter, M. C., “Political Society in Warwickshire, c.1401–72” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1976), app. 2, pp. 3940Google Scholar; PRO, E179/192/59. Compare in Nottinghamshire, Ralph Makerell: not counted as elite, not a knight, £40 in Nottinghamshire in 1412, total income of £80 in 1436 (widow), family among most frequent Nottinghamshire officers; William Nevill of Rolleston: counted as elite, a knight, £20 in Nottinghamshire in 1412, total income of £120 in 1436 (Thomas Nevill), family held few Nottinghamshire offices (Payling, , Political Society, pp. 3, 222–23, 227, 244–45Google Scholar); which of these two had more influence in Nottinghamshire?

43 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 56, 283–84Google Scholar. Note, however, the large income that could arise in some instances from a single manor. The most notable Warwickshire example is Birmingham, valued at £40 by an inquisition post mortem (I.P.M.), in 1478; I.P.M.s frequently undervalued (Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, p. 18Google Scholar, n. 6).

44 See n. 16 above. The word “magnate” is used for the leading local gentry in Smith, Hassell, County and Court (n. 3 above), pp. 5152Google Scholar.

45 Payling, , Political Society, pp. 6473Google Scholar. Payling may be right, but his theory needs to be placed on firmer ground by counting the numbers of manors held by his elite families at various times in the century. A more recent piece of work suggests that he has changed his mind on this point (Payling, S. J., “Social Mobility, Demographic Change and Landed Society in Late Medieval England,” Economic History Review 45 [1992]: 5173CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

46 Number of Warwickshire manors held by county elite: the ten leading families on the basis of number of Warwickshire manors: fifty-two manors in 1410 (six knights, four esquires), sixty-nine in 1436 (six knights, four esquires), fifty-three in 1500 (two knights, eight esquires); the ten leading families on the basis of global income in 1436 (note that this includes those on tax returns from other counties; of the manorial elite, this excludes the Catesbys, for whom there is no extant return): forty-seven manors in 1436 (seven knights, three esquires); eight of these families existed in 1410 (two knights, five esquires, one other), holding thirty-three manors; seven of these families existed in 1500 (three knights, four esquires), holding twenty-two manors. See The Victoria County History of the County of Warwick, 8 vols. with index (London, 19041969), vols. 3–6Google Scholar; Dugdale, Antiquities (n. 31 above); Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, chap. 3, esp. p. 36Google Scholar, n. 7, apps. 1 and 2, “Political Society,” apps. 2 and 3. Figures from 1500 are somewhat misleading; a count taken ca. 1510 would produce a larger number of knights (part of a movement back towards knighthood dating from ca.1470) and probably a larger number of manors in the hands of the elite (Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 8588Google Scholar).

47 Everitt, , New Avenues (n. 10 above), p. 6Google Scholar; Williams, , “Crown and Counties” (n. 5 above), pp. 137–38Google Scholar; Fletcher, A., Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England (New Haven, Conn., 1986), pp. 365–66Google Scholar; Holmes, , “County Community,” pp. 7071Google Scholar.

48 See references in nn. 8 and 10 above; and Holmes, , Lincolnshire (n. 1 above), p. 2Google Scholar, “County Community” (n. 5 above), pp. 70–71.

49 Everitt, , Kent (n. 2 above), pp. 3334Google Scholar.

50 Clayton, , Administration of Chester (n. 13 above), pp. 140–41Google Scholar, n. 24; Morrill, , Cheshire (n. 3 above), p. 16Google Scholar.

51 Fletcher, , “National and Local Awareness” (n. 5 above), p. 151Google Scholar; Smith, , “‘Modernization’” (n. 8 above), p. 162Google Scholar; Cust, R., “Politics and the Electorate in the 1620s,” in Cust, and Hughes, , eds., Conflict in Early Stuart England (n. 5 above), pp. 134–67Google Scholar.

52 Payling, , Political Society (n. 5 above), p. 158Google Scholar; Powell, E., “Jury Trial at Gaol Delivery in the Late Middle Ages: The Midland Circuit,” in Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Jury in England, 1200–1800, ed. Cockburn, J. S. and Green, T. A. (Princeton, N.J., 1988), pp. 78116Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity (n. 19 above), pp. 73–76, 435–36Google Scholar.

53 Clayton, , Administration of Chester, pp. 133–36Google Scholar.

54 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, app. 1. Wright, Derbyshire (n. 5 above), concentrates on about fifty families out of over two hundred (pp. 5–6, 11).

55 Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 143–44, 146Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, p. 86Google Scholar; Saul, , Scenes from Provincial Life (n. 19 above), pp. 6364Google Scholar; Pollard, , North-Eastern England (n. 5 above), pp. 108–10Google Scholar; Moreton, , “A Social Gulf?” (n. 40 above), pp. 255–65Google Scholar, Townshends (n. 5 above), pp. 23–27; Acheson, , Gentry Community (n. 5 above), pp. 8387Google Scholar; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, chap. 9.

56 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 296–97, 300–303, 344Google Scholar; cf. Boissevain, J., Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators and Coalitions (Oxford, 1974), pp. 7172Google Scholar.

57 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 335, 345Google Scholar.

58 Bennett makes a case for the hundred but not a very well supported one (Community, Class and Careerism [n. 5 above], pp. 42–43). Moreover, the peculiarities of Cheshire's local government (see p. 350 above; Clayton, , Administration of Chester, chap. 1 and pp. 195–97Google Scholar; Bennett, , Community, Class and Careerism, pp. 239–40Google Scholar) may have given the hundred more significance here. Compare Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, p. 340Google Scholar. Saul suggests that the Sussex lathe may have been something of a focus for local identity (Scenes from Provincial Life, pp. 59–60).

59 Everitt, , “Country, County and Town” (n. 5 above), pp. 8083Google Scholar; MacCulloch, , Suffolk and the Tudors (n. 3 above), pp. 9, 39Google Scholar; Williams, , “Crown and Counties” (n. 5 above), pp. 136–37Google Scholar; Hughes, , Politics, Society and Civil War (n. 5 above), p. 41Google Scholar; Postles, D., “The Pattern of Rural Migration in a Midlands County: Leicestershire, c.1270–1350,” Continuity and Change 6 (1992): 145, 148Google Scholar; Pollard, , North-Eastern England, p. 6Google Scholar; Moreton, , Townshends, pp. 81, 195Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 296309Google Scholar; Saul, , Scenes from Provincial Life, p. 61Google Scholar.

60 For example, Fletcher, , County Community (n. 3 above), p. 4Google Scholar (cf. Saul, , Scenes from Provincial Life, pp. 5861Google Scholar); Clark, P., English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution: Religion, Politics and Society in Kent, 1500–1640 (Hassocks, 1977), p. 120Google Scholar; Morrill, , Cheshire (n. 3 above), pp. 45Google Scholar; Everitt, , Kent (n. 2 above), p. 43Google Scholar; Hughes, , “Local History” (n. 5 above), p. 230Google Scholar.

61 Moreton, A Social Gulf?” pp. 255–65Google Scholar, Townshends, pp. 195–96. Richmond, C., John Hopton (Cambridge, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, focusing on a single man and his family, seems to be veering in the same direction, if not explicitly (pp. xvii, 167, 259–60). We might also consider the significance of ties forged across social and economic frontiers in wartime, although these are likely to have greater effect in areas much used for military recruitment, such as Cheshire (Morgan, P., War and Society in Medieval Cheshire, 1277–1403, Chetham Society Publications, 3d ser., no. 34 [Manchester, 1987], chap. 4Google Scholar).

62 Cohen, , Symbolic Construction (n. 8 above), pp. 2829Google Scholar.

63 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity (n. 19 above), pp. 22, 436, 623–24Google Scholar. As was probably the case in villages, conflict was more easily engendered in areas such as this, as well as more rapidly settled.

64 For work on arbitration, of which that by Edward Powell is the most important, see Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, p. 2Google Scholar, n. 9. A recent key work on the subject of late medieval society and the law is Maddern, P. C., Violence and Social Order: East Anglia, 1422–1442 (Oxford, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pt. 2, passim, esp. pp. 621–25Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society (n. 5 above), pp. 201–13Google Scholar; Bennett, , Community, Class and Careerism, p. 33Google Scholar; Pollard, , North-Eastern England, pp. 113–20Google Scholar; Walker, S., The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361–1399 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 118–19, 155–56, 157Google Scholar. Also see n. 72 below.

65 Summarized in Walker, , Lancastrian Affinity, pp. 36Google Scholar.

66 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, chaps. 9 and 10, The Beauchamp Affinity: A Study of Bastard Feudalism at Work,” English Historical Review 95 (1980): 514–32Google Scholar; Cherry, M., “The Courtenay Earls of Devon: The Creation and Disintegration of an Aristocratic Affinity,” Southern History 1 (1979): 7197Google Scholar; Gunn, review (n. 6 above), p. 1000; Payling, , Political Society, pp. 87, 219Google Scholar; Acheson, , Gentry Community (n. 5 above), pp. 9394Google Scholar. But note another series of “exceptions”: Pollard, , North-Eastern England (n. 5 above), pp. 401–3Google Scholar.

67 Most explicitly in Payling, , Political Society, p. 88Google Scholar.

68 The impossibility of assessing noble power properly through the county in a study of a fragmented county is implicit throughout Wright's in many ways excellent account of Derbyshire (Derbyshire [n. 5 above], e.g., pp. 60, 63–66, 82, 145). For a summary of the problem, which was probably particularly acute in the midlands (see pp. 348–50 above), see Carpenter, C., “The Duke of Clarence and the Midlands: A Study in the Interplay of Local and National Politics,” Midland History 11 (1986): 2526CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Beauchamp Affinity,” pp. 517–18 (but note the correction in Locality and Polity, p. 318, n. 147). Also, Gross, , “King's Lordship” (n. 30 above), p. 30Google Scholar; Prestwich, , English Politics (n. 27 above), pp. 6061Google Scholar.

69 Note Finberg's belief that local history cannot illuminate national history: “Local Historian and His Theme” (n. 10 above), pp. 12–13; Fletcher, , County Community, p. 246Google Scholar; but cf. Holmes' attention to “brokers,” Lincolnshire (n. 1 above), chaps. 5 and 6; Cust, and Hughes, , “Introduction: After Revisionism” (n. 10 above), p. 5Google Scholar; Sacks, , “Corporate Town” (n. 7 above), pp. 70, 7173Google Scholar. See in Wright, , Derbyshire, p. 66Google Scholar: “In Derbyshire it was the retinue that was the external factor.”

70 Also implicit in Moreton, , Townshends (n. 5 above), pp. 23–27, 196Google Scholar.

71 Payling, Political Society, chaps. 1 and 4; Bennett, , Community, Class and Careerism (n. 5 above), pp. 7476Google Scholar; Acheson, , Gentry Community, pp. 1828Google Scholar; Wright, , Derbyshire, passim, esp. pp. 63–66, 68–91, 98–101, 144–45Google Scholar; Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, chaps. 5–7; Payling, Political Society, chap. 7; Saul, , Knights and Esquires (n. 5 above), pp. 102–3, 105, 166–67, 261Google Scholar. Saul makes a similar point in Scenes from Provincial Life, pp. 56–57, although, as in Gloucestershire (Saul, Knights and Esquires, as in n. 72 below), there was clearly a lot of noble influence about, which would repay investigation at greater depth (pp. 29-38); and see Walker on Lancastrian power in Sussex (Lancastrian Affinity, pp. 127–41). See also Richmond, , John Hopton (n. 61 above), pp. 110, 161–63Google Scholar.

72 For what follows, see Saul, , Knights and Esquires, pp. 82, 90–91, 189204Google Scholar; Wright, , Derbyshire, chap. 9 and pp. 143–44Google Scholar; Bennett, , Community, Class and Careerism, pp. 220–22Google Scholar; Pollard, , North-Eastern England, pp. 155–67Google Scholar; Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, chaps. 5–7; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pt. 2, passim, esp. pp. 347–60Google Scholar, “Beauchamp Affinity,” pp. 514–32, Law, Justice and Landowners in Late-Medieval England,” Law and History Review 1 (1983): 205–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity (n. 19 above), pp. 633–37Google Scholar.

74 The exceptions, Richard II and Henry VI, prove the rule (Tuck, A., Richard II and the English Nobility [London, 1973], chaps. 3 and 4Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, p. 631Google Scholar).

75 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 633–34Google Scholar and references therein. Men who rose by service at court did not usually become great in the country unless, like Cromwell, they were able to use their influence to acquire landed power (Payling, , Political Society [n. 5 above], pp. 96–97, 143–47Google Scholar). If they tried to wield influence largely on the strength of their court connections, this was likely to provoke antagonism (see n. 74 above). The only notable family of court nobles in the fifteenth century were the Beauforts who were in the peculiar position of being closely related to the crown but underendowed (Harriss, G. L., Cardinal Beaufort: A Study of Lancastrian Ascendancy and Decline [Oxford, 1988]Google Scholar, chap. 1 and passim; Jones, M. K. and Underwood, M. G., The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort Countess of Richmond and Derby [Cambridge, 1992], chap. 1)Google Scholar.

76 Payling, , Political Society, pp. 105–8Google Scholar.

77 See references in n. 72 above; in Payling, , Political Society, note esp. p. 105Google Scholar.

78 Why else were they normally placed on commissions of the peace in the counties where they had a large landed interest, if not so that their authority could be used to buttress that of the justices who usually did the actual sitting? (See, e.g., Payling, , Political Society, pp. 170–72Google Scholar; Acheson, , Gentry Community [n. 5 above], p. 130Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 347–48 and 283–86, 347–60Google Scholar.)

79 See, e.g., Wright, , Derbyshire (n. 5 above), p. 145Google Scholar: “No simple model of magnate hierarchy will fit the complex structure of Derbyshire society,” but would it fit any part of England then?

80 Carpenter, , “Beauchamp Affinity” (n. 66 above), pp. 523–24Google Scholar, Locality and Polity, p. 318; Cherry, , “Courtenay Earls” (n. 66 above), pp. 7680Google Scholar.

81 Payling, , Political Society, pp. 104–5, 106–8Google Scholar; Acheson, , Gentry Community, p. 94Google Scholar (the extraordinary statement, “In [Devon and Warwickshire] resident magnates composed the political score which the gentry … then played to order”), p. 202; Saul, , Knights and Esquires (n. 5 above), chap. 4, esp. p. 248Google Scholar: “Retaining still posed a threat to the growing identity of gentry with shire that emerged in the fourteenth century,” and conclusion. Compare Walker, , Lancastrian Affinity, p. 114Google Scholar.

82 Wright, , Derbyshire, p. 117Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, p. 120Google Scholar. Compare Pollard, , North-Eastern England (n. 5 above), pp. 155–56Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, 275–77Google Scholar.

83 See, e.g., Gaunt's Lancashire retainers (Walker, , Lancastrian Affinity [n. 64 above], p. 146Google Scholar); see n. 86 below.

84 Payling, , Political Society, p. 105Google Scholar; Walker, , Lancastrian Affinity, pp. 146–48, 250–54Google Scholar.

85 Payling, , Political Society (n. 5 above), chap. 1 and pp. 105–8Google Scholar; Pugh, T. B., “The Magnates, Knights and Gentry,” in Fifteenth-Century England, 1399–1509: Studies in Politics and Society, ed. Chrimes, S. B., Ross, C. D., and Griffiths, R. A. (Manchester, 1972), pp. 86128Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity (n. 19 above), p. 36Google Scholar.

86 This point about the nobility can be established by reference to the medieval works in n. 5 above; “nobles” includes the crown as private landowner. See Boissevain, Friends of Friends (n. 56 above), passim; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 276, 320–21, 335–36, 621–22Google Scholar, “Beauchamp Affinity,” pp. 523–24.

87 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, pt. 2, passim. It is precisely these crucial less formal ties that are dismissed by Payling, (Political Society, p. 107: “Such connections must by their very nature have been tenuous”)Google Scholar. Why?

88 As, e.g., in Payling, , Political Society, p. 106Google Scholar; and Saul, , Knights and Esquires, p. 98Google Scholar.

89 Well appreciated in Wright, , Derbyshire (n. 5 above), pp. 6465Google Scholar. See also Carpenter, Locality and Polity, passim, esp. chap. 17, “Law, Justice and Landowners” (n. 72 above), p. 231. The mutuality of the relationship between lords and followers has rarely been denied: e.g., McFarlane, K. B., The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), chap. 1, p. viGoogle Scholar; Carpenter, , “Beauchamp Affinity,” pp. 519–31Google Scholar.

90 Payling's, tables (Political Society, pp. 12, 170Google Scholar) show how much this varied.

91 Cherry, , “Courtenay Earls,” pp. 9097Google Scholar; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, chaps. 10–13.

92 Walker, , Lancastrian Affinity, passim, esp. pp. 248–50Google Scholar; also implicit in Walker's account of the more normal, and locally more successful, affinity of the Staffords in Staffordshire (pp. 213–14, 216). Similarly, see Thomas of Lancaster (Gross, , “King's Lordship” [n. 30 above], pp. 2741Google Scholar, esp. p. 30).

93 Bennett, , Community, Class and Careerism (n. 5 above), pp. 7072Google Scholar and passim, esp. chap. 10; Wright, Derbyshire, esp. chap. 6; Acheson, , Gentry Community, pp. 98105Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, pp. 7, 119–56Google Scholar (much of this was through extensive overlordships rather than through land held in demesne).

94 Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 78–79, 188–89Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 518–20Google Scholar, “Duke of Clarence” (n. 68 above), pp. 34–36.

95 Acheson, , Gentry Community (n. 5 above), pp. 98105Google Scholar.

96 Payling, , Political Society (a. 5 above), pp. 110, 147–49, 219–20Google Scholar.

97 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity (n. 19 above), pp. 274–75, 632Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, pp. 118–19Google Scholar; Wright, , Derbyshire, p. 97Google Scholar. Note that, at a time when it seems to have been unusual for the major families regularly to act as J.P.s, they were doing so in Nottinghamshire—possibly under pressure from the king/duke? (Payling, , Political Society, p. 113Google Scholar; and cf. Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 61, 88Google Scholar).

98 Implicit but not addressed in much of Wright, , Derbyshire (e.g., pp. 60, 90–91, 143–44)Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, 8485Google Scholar. See also Pollard, , North-Eastern England (n. 5 above), esp. p. 3Google Scholar; and Davies, R. R., Lordship and Society in the March of Wales, 1282–1400 (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar, for regionalism within other areas.

99 Wright, , Derbyshire (n. 5 above), pp. 7881Google Scholar. Compare Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 525–32, 545–46Google Scholar.

100 Wright, , Derbyshire, p. 66Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 532, 606–11, 640Google Scholar; and see Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 6668Google Scholar on Sir Richard Vernon; and Payling, , Political Society, pp. 120–24 and 128–29Google Scholar, on Sir Thomas Rempston and Sir Thomas Chaworth. This would be worth pursuing in relation to the apparent preponderance of nonnoble feoffees: was a particular group of gentry frequently used by their fellows, and were the feoffees usually connected to the local lord, i.e., the duke of Lancaster? (cf. in Payling, , Political Society, pp. 83–84 and 120–21Google Scholar).

101 Powell, E., Kingship, Law, and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar, chap. 8; Storey, R. L., The End of the House of Lancaster (London, 1966)Google Scholar, chaps. 11 and 13; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 368, 476Google Scholar. This may also be true of Yorkshire (Pollard, , North-Eastern England, pp. 100101Google Scholar, and chaps. 10 and 11).

102 Wright, , Derbyshire, chaps. 5–9, esp. pp. 6873Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, pp. 143–47, 208–11Google Scholar; Castor, H., The Duchy of Lancaster in the Lancastrian Polity, 1399–1461 (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1992)Google Scholar, chap. 8. The pursuit of political allegiances cannot be done without detailed time-consuming research (p. 360 above); one has to be very satisfied that all possible sources have been examined before accepting the existence of “independent gentry” (Saul, as in n. 71 above); cf. Carpenter, , “Law, Justice and Landowners” (n. 72 above), p. 206Google Scholar, n. 7. Acheson notes but fails to pursue spheres of noble power in Leicestershire (Gentry Community, pp. 94–98) and, notably, fails to use the two most important sources for the nobility's ties with the gentry in the PRO, SCI 1/12 and SC6 (p. 259).

103 Acheson, Gentry Community, does have a chapter (chap. 4) with “politics” in the title, but it deals with allegiances rather than politics.

104 Walker, , Lancastrian Affinity (n. 64 above), pp. 112–15Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 312–21, 323–33, 337–38Google Scholar.

105 Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 9091Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, 308–9Google Scholar. Compare Coss, , Lordship, Knighthood and Locality (n. 4 above), pp. 5, 4460Google Scholar. There may have been more noble influence than Moreton gives credit for in the Townshends' corner of East Anglia, at least in the period ca. 1450–1500; it does not seem entirely probable that a lawyer, however astute in moving between employers, could be as politically neutral as Moreton implies, since the county, according to Moreton, was run by the nobility, and the Townshends undoubtedly had, and continued to have, noble connections (Moreton, , Townshends [n. 5 above], pp. 10–19, 23–27, 45–49, 80Google Scholar).

106 Compare Maddicott, J. R., “Parliament and the Constituencies, 1272–1377,” in The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, ed. Davies, R. G. and Denton, J. H. (Manchester, 1981), p. 86Google Scholar: “By the 1370s parliament had become the chief intermediary between the crown and its subjects.” This can only have been true for matters affecting the whole kingdom, not for local everyday issues, for which the nobility would have been the channel of communication (except, of course, in areas where the major noble was the king).

107 Maddicott, J. R., Thomas of Lancaster, 1307–1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II (Oxford, 1970), pp. 911Google Scholar; Holmes, G. A., The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 2425Google Scholar. This exceptional circumstance is central to Helen Castor's thesis (Duchy of Lancaster, passim, esp. chap. 1).

108 Fletcher, County Community (n. 3 above), chap. 2; Underdown, , Somerset (n. 3 above), p. 20Google Scholar; MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors (n. 3 above), chap. 3 (although sophisticated in conceptual approach); Holmes, , Lincolnshire (n. 1 above), pp. 7677Google Scholar; Clark, , English Provincial Society (n. 60 above), pp. 122–24Google Scholar; Everitt, , Change in the Provinces (n. 2 above), pp. 2627Google Scholar; Morrill, , Cheshire (n. 3 above), pp. 1516Google Scholar; Everitt, , Kent (n. 2 above), pp. 4143Google Scholar; Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 5659Google Scholar and chap. 5; Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism (n. 5 above), chap. 2; Pollard, , North-Eastern England (n. 5 above), pp. 109–13Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society (n. 5 above), pp. 8385Google Scholar; Saul, , Scenes from Provincial Life, pp. 6165Google Scholar.

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110 Clifford Geertz, quoted in Cohen, , Symbolic Construction, p. 17Google Scholar. See similarly Mitchell, , “Networks, Norms and Institutions,” pp. 2729Google Scholar: much of the significance of a relationship depends on how the actors construe the relationship.

111 For a beginner's guide to techniques, see Scott, Social Network Analysis.

112 Wright, , Derbyshire (n. 5 above), p. 65Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, p. 86Google Scholar.

113 Cohen, , Symbolic Construction, p. 12Google Scholar; Scott, , Social Network Analysis, pp. 5683Google Scholar: it is highly germane to the problem addressed in this article that network analysts have become very conscious of the dangers of assuming both the boundaries of localities and the degree of communalism within them (ibid., p. 57); Boissevain, Friends of Friends, chaps. 2, 3, 6, and 8; Aldrich, H., “The Origins and Persistence of Social Networks: A Commentary,” in Marsden, and Lin, , eds., Social Structure and Network Analysis, pp. 286–88Google Scholar; Noble, M., “Social Network: Its Use as a Conceptual Framework in Family Analysis,” in Boissevain, and Mitchell, , eds., Network Analysis, p. 5Google Scholar; Gould, R. V., “Power and Social Structure in Community Elites,” Social Forces 68 (1989): 531–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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116 Boissevain, , Friends of Friends, p. 38Google Scholar.

117 For “simplex” and “multiplex,” see Cohen, , Symbolic Construction, p. 29Google Scholar; Boissevain, , Friends of Friends, p. 45Google Scholar. Note the separation of family and political ties made in Banck, G. A., “Network Analysis and Social Theory: Some Remarks,” in Boissevain, and Mitchell, , eds., Network Analysis, pp. 4043Google Scholar, which is certainly inapposite for this period.

118 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity (n. 19 above), p. 206 and chap. 9, esp. pp. 291–95Google Scholar; Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 6162Google Scholar. Also Carpenter, , “Duke of Clarence” (n. 68 above), p. 24Google Scholar.

119 Wright, , Derbyshire, pp. 5455Google Scholar; Bennett, , Community, Class and Careerism (n. 5 above), pp. 24–26, 3133Google Scholar; Pollard, , North-Eastern England (n. 5 above), pp. 110–13Google Scholar; Walker, , Lancastrian Affinity (n. 64 above), pp. 147–48Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society (n. 5 above), pp. 8386Google Scholar; Moreton, , Townshends (n. 5 above), pp. 2327Google Scholar; Saul, , Scenes from Provincial Life (n. 19 above), pp. 6263Google Scholar.

120 Clayton, , Administration of Chester (n. 13 above), p. 144Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, p. 295Google Scholar.

121 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 311–12Google Scholar. On the dangers of reading political alliances into kinship ties, see Holt, J. C., The Northerners: A Study in the Reign of King John (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 6669Google Scholar.

122 Compare the inclusion of palatinate officials in Cheshire deeds (Clayton, , Administration of Chester, p. 144Google Scholar).

123 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 284–85Google Scholar.

124 Summarized in Carpenter, Locality and Polity, chap. 7.

125 The sources used for the following analysis are Collections for a History of Staffordshire, ed. William Salt Archaeological Society (1880–)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Collections), o.s., vol. 6, pt. 1 (Extracts from the Plea Rolls of the Reign of Edward I), vol. 7 (Extracts from the Plea Rolls of the Reign of Edward II), vol. 8 (A Chartulary of the Priory of St Thomas the Martyr, near Stafford), vol. 9 (Extracts from the Plea Rolls of the Reign of Edward II), vol. 10 (Extracts from the Plea Rolls of the Reign of Edward II), vol. 12 (The Chetwynd Chartulary), vol. 16 (The Rydeware Chartulary), n.s., vol. 6, pt. 2 (A History of the Family of Wrottesley of Wrottesley, co. Stafford), vol. 7 (An Account of the Family of Okeover, of Okeover, co. Stafford), vol. 1921 (Calendar of the Manuscripts in the William Salt Library, Stafford); Moor, C., Knights of Edward I, Harleian Society, 5 vols. (19291932)Google Scholar; Nomina Villarum,” published in Inquisitions and Assessments concerning Feudal Aids, 1284–1431 (London, 1908), 5:1117Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Feudal Aids): unless otherwise indicated, all references to lands and offices come from these last two. Most of the evidence for the time of Philip is of parties and witnesses to settlements.

126 It has proved difficult to trace Henry Verdun, the fourth close associate. He may be a cadet of the Verduns of Alton, Staffordshire (White, G. E. C. and White, G. H., eds., The Complete Peerage [London, 1959], 12, pt. 2:3031Google Scholar; Gross, , “King's Lordship” [n. 30 above], pp. 3031Google Scholar).

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128 Carpenter, Compare, Locality and Polity (n. 19 above), pp. 311–12Google Scholar.

129 Carpenter, D. A., “Was There a Crisis of the Knightly Class in the Thirteenth Century? The Oxfordshire Evidence,” English Historical Review 95 (1981): 741–42Google Scholar. The editor of the Chetwynd cartulary suggests Philip was knighted, but he is not named a knight in any of these deeds, while his father is, and he does not feature in Moor's list (Collections, o.s., 12:250).

130 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 335–36, 344Google Scholar; Moreton, , Townshends, p. 26Google Scholar.

131 The Complete Peerage, vol. 12, pt. 1, ed. White, G. E. C. and White, G. H. (London, 1953), pp. 172–73Google Scholar; Feudal Aids, 5:18Google Scholar; William Salt Library, Stafford, William Salt Original Collection, 335/1; Gross, , “King's Lordship,” p. 32Google Scholar.

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133 Gould, , “Power and Social Structure” (n. 113 above), p. 537Google Scholar; see the whole article, pp. 531–52, for approaches to the study of brokers.

134 Scott, , Social Network Analysis (n. 109 above), p. 59Google Scholar.

135 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, p. 621Google Scholar.

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137 See, e.g., Reynolds, Cam, Liberties and Communities (n. 28 above), pp. 233, 234, 236, 242Google Scholar; S., , Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe: 900–1300 (Oxford, 1984), p. 312Google Scholar.

138 Edwards, J. G., “The Plena Potestas of English Parliamentary Representatives,” in Historical Studies of the English Parliament, ed. Fryde, E. B. and Miller, E., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1970), 1:136–49Google Scholar; Harriss, G. L., King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar, passim.

139 For example, Cam, , Liberties and Communities, pp. 164–65Google Scholar; Palmer, , County Courts (n. 25 above), p. 295Google Scholar, nn. 122–23; Pollock, and Maitland, , History of English Law (n. 28 above), 1:534–36Google Scholar, and see the variety of medieval uses of the word given on pp. 494–95.

140 Maddicott, , “County Community” (n. 23 above), pp. 2728Google Scholar and references therein. But note the dissent expressed by Prestwich (n. 27 above).

141 Wormald, P., “Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes in Anglo-Saxon England,” in The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Davies, W. and Fouracre, P. (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 149–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reynolds, , Kingdoms and Communities, pp. 224–26Google Scholar; Lyon, H. R., The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England, 500–1087 (London, 1984), pp. 133–37Google Scholar; Warren, W. L., The Governance of Norman and Angevin England: 1086–1272 (London, 1987), pp. 59–63, 8183Google Scholar.

142 Coss, , Lordship, Knighthood and Locality (n. 4 above), pp. 210Google Scholar; Palmer, County Courts, chap. 10; Warren, , Governance, pp. 133–40Google Scholar; Brown, A. L., The Governance of Late Medieval England: 1272–1461 (London, 1989), pp. 116–28Google Scholar; Prestwich, , English Politics, pp. 5859Google Scholar; Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance, passim, esp. pt. 2.

143 Saul, pp. 258–61, also pp. 152–67; endorsed by Payling, , Political Society, pp. 157, 184–85, 217Google Scholar. For the increasing amount of government, see Saul, ibid., pp. 133–35, 163; and n. 142 above. Royal rather than local needs may have fostered the role of the county court as a local forum in this period; see pp. 346–49 above and Maddicott, , “County Community,” pp. 3441Google Scholar.

144 Hassell Smith, County and Court (n. 3 above), pts. 1–4, esp. chap. 15; Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces, passim.

145 Cust, and Hughes, , “Introduction: After Revisionism” (n. 10 above), pp. 1315Google Scholar; Holmes, , “County Community” (n. 5 above), pp. 6468Google Scholar; Saul, , Knights and Esquires, pp. 108–19Google Scholar. Sacks shrewdly notes the probability that local issues will be raised at times of national crisis—even in “Magna Carta” (“Corporate Town” [n. 7 above], p. 70, and see also the comment on local politics on p. 105). There is also the simple human matter of what people are likely to put in letters home, i.e., mainly rather private and parochial matters and expressions of homesickness when they are away: cf. Morrill, , Revolt of the Provinces (n. 3 above), pp. 135–37Google Scholar; Everitt, , Kent (n. 2 above), p. 44Google Scholar; and Carpenter, , Locality and Polity (n. 19 above), p. 8Google Scholar.

146 Cohen, , Symbolic Construction (n. 8 above), p. 35Google Scholar (“presentation to the outside world”), pp. 101–2, 117, Belonging: The Experience of Culture,” in Cohen, , ed., Belonging, Identity and Social Organisation (n. 8 above), pp. 1–3, 8Google Scholar; Strathern, , “The Village as an Idea,” pp. 247–77Google Scholar; Wright, , “Image and Analysis” (n. 8 above), pp. 214–15Google Scholar; Strathern, M., Kinship at the Core: An Anthropology of Elmdon in North-West Essex in the Nineteen-Sixties (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar, chap. 3.

147 Many of Fletcher's examples of resistant localism to the Stuart government in Reform in the Provinces (n. 47 above) have strong “nimby” (not in my backyard) overtones, which should be exceedingly familiar in the late twentieth-century world (pp. 364–65).

148 MacCulloch, , Suffolk and the Tudors, p. 125Google Scholar; Clark, , English Provincial Society (n. 60 above), pp. 218–19Google Scholar; Everitt, , Change in the Provinces (n. 2 above), p. 47Google Scholar (although Everitt, in contrast to Clark, writing about the same county in the same period, finds the roots of the development in the county rather than in response to external pressures [p. 48]); Everitt, Kent, passim; Williams, , “Crown and Counties” (n. 5 above), pp. 136, 138Google Scholar; Fletcher, , “National and Local Awareness” (n. 5 above), pp. 152–54, 169–72Google Scholar; Morrill, , Cheshire, pp. 23–30, 331–32Google Scholar, Revolt of the Provinces, p. 14; Fletcher, , Reform in the Provinces, pp. 366–67Google Scholar; Smith, Hassell, County and Court, pp. 99–101, 161–67Google Scholar; Cust, , “Politics and the Electorate” (n. 47 above), pp. 134–67Google Scholar. See also Wright, , Derbyshire (n. 5 above), p. 59Google Scholar.

149 Saul, Knights and Esquires, chap. 4. For other instances of parliamentary rhetoric, see Walker, , Lancastrian Affinity (n. 64 above), pp. 256–60Google Scholar; Carpenter, , “Law, Justice and Landowners” (n. 72 above), pp. 226–31Google Scholar; and Maddicott, J. R., “Law and Lordship: Royal Justices as Retainers in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century England,” Past and Present, no. 4, suppl. (1978), pp. 4271Google Scholar. Comments and complaints expressed in the county court, where M.P.s were elected, can be seen as the quid pro quo of Edward III's use of the county court as a means of communication to get the intensive government necessary for the war done (Maddicott, , “County Community,” pp. 3341Google Scholar). Saul, the principal advocate of the “county community” interpretation of parliamentary petitions, seems now to be coming round to the view expressed here (Scenes from Provincial Life [n. 19 above], p. 57).

150 Payling, , Political Society (n. 5 above), p. 217Google Scholar. See also Saul's more recent and more credible thoughts on Commons petitioning on liveries (The Commons and the Abolition of Badges,” Parliamentary History 9 [1990]: 302–15Google Scholar, and cf. Saul, Knights and Esquires, as quoted in n. 81 above).

151 See pp. 348–52 above.

152 See Virgoe, , “County Community” (n. 5 above), pp. 56Google Scholar, for some examples of references to “county” in the Paston letters, although it is not always clear that “country” means “county” in his examples: cf. Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 347Google Scholar, n. 3.

153 Wright, , “Image and Analysis,” pp. 204–5Google Scholar. This use of “community” seems to be implicit in Hughes, , “Local History” (n. 5 above), pp. 229, 232–35Google Scholar. Compare Rubin, , “Small Groups,” p. 134Google Scholar, on the meaninglessness of the term.

154 Carpenter, , Locality and Polity, pp. 633–39Google Scholar.

155 Moreton rightly suggests that it “has been presented at a level of conceptual purity” (Townshends, [n. 5 above], p. 195).

156 Saul, , Knights and Esquires, pp. 258–62Google Scholar; Wright, , Derbyshire, p. 146Google Scholar; Payling, , Political Society, pp. 217–18Google Scholar; Carpenter, , Locality and Polity (n. 19 above), pp. 648–49Google Scholar; Virgoe, , “County Community,” pp. 14Google Scholar. Payling is, however, almost forced by his evidence to abandon the enterprise (ibid., pp. 86, 216–17) and falls back on the Commons' petitions which can be interpreted rather differently (pp. 376–78 above).