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

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 sup...