Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401-1499

by Christine Carpenter

Overview

This is a comprehensive study of minor landowners—the gentry—in one county of fifteenth-century England. It looks at all aspects of their lives, including marriage, the family, how they ran their estates and how they made friends and enemies, in an often very turbulent century that saw the reigns of the three Lancastrian kings (Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI), the Yorkist Edward IV, Edward V and Richard III, the first Tudor, Henry VII, and the Wars of the Roses.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521122849
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/12/2009
Pages:	812
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.90(d)

Table of Contents

List of figures and tables; Preface; List of abbreviations; Note on text; 1. Introduction; Part I. Structural: 2. Geography, economy and regional identity; 3. Who were the gentry?; 4. Social mobility and the creation of estates; 5. The exploitation of estates; 6. Expenditure and dispersal; 7. Conclusions: land, family and lineage; 8. The local officers; Part II. Chronological: 9. Social and political networks 1401–50; 10. Warwickshire under Richard Beauchamp: 1401–39; 11. The interregnum: 1439–49; 12. The period crisis I: Warwickshire under the Kingmaker: 1449–61; 13. The period of crisis II: Warwickshire under the Kingmaker and the Duke of Clarence: 1461–78; 14. The period of crisis III: Warwickshire under the crown: 1478–85; 15. The period of crisis IV. Warwickshire under the crown: 1485–99; 16. Politics and society c. 1449–1500; 17. Conclusions; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"The book's virtues are many, and it is difficult to single out any one as standing above the rest. Perhaps one should place at the head of the list her insistence that politics for the nobles was not simply something played out on a national stage with kings and fellow nobles as the supporting cast." James Masschaele, Canadian Journal of History

"Carpenter's book will stimulate more debate and discussion on this and other issues. It is an important work and will enrich the study of localities and polity in the history of England." John M. Currin, Sixteenth Century Journal

"This is an important book, not only for specialists in the later medieval period and the Tudor age but also for those seeking to understand the process that created a social structure so tough and so enduring that it lasted from the age of Sir Thomas Malory to that of George Eliot." Wallace T. MacCaffrey, American Historical Review

"Carpenter's massive work will surely become a reference point for all future studies on the gentry of late medieval England....This book is more than another gentry study. Social, political, and even economic, historians can learn from its rich and densely packed pages." Mavis Mate, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"This is not just a study of Warwickshire. It is a distinctive contribution to fifteenth-century studies; it mounts a head-on challenge to accepted ideas about Henry VII; and it brings a new dimension to the debate about county communities....This is one of the most exciting and stimulating books I have ever read. It is impossible, in the scope of a review, to do justice to the richness and subtlety of this book." Jenny Wormald, Renaissance Quarterly

From the Publisher