A Gentry Community
Leicestershire in the Fifteenth Century, c.1422–c.1485

An examination of the gentry as land holders, pillars of society, political leaders, family members and individuals.

Eric Acheson (Author)

9780521524988, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 October 2003

312 pages
21.7 x 14 x 2.3 cm, 0.419 kg

This book examines the fifteenth-century gentry of Leicestershire under five broad headings: as landholders, as members of a social community based on the county, as participants in and leaders of the government of the shire, as members of the wider family unit and, finally, as individuals. Economically assertive, they were also socially cohesive, this cohesion being provided by the shire community. The shire also provided the most important political unit, controlled by an oligarchy of superior gentry families who were relatively independent of outside interference. The basic social unit was the nuclear family, but external influences, provided by concern for the wider kin, the lineage or economic and political advancement, were not major determinants of family strategy. Individualism among the gentry was already established by the fifteenth century, revealing its personnel as a self-assured and confident stratum in late medieval English society.

List of maps
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Leicestershire: the county, the Church, the crown and the nobility
2. The gentry in the fifteenth century
3. Land and income
4. A county community and the politics of the shire
5. The gentry and local government, 1422–1485
6. Household, family and marriage
7. Life and death
Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], British & Irish history [HBJD1]