Peter Coss
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199560004
- eISBN:
- 9780191723094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199560004.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Medieval History
The gentry were acutely law-minded. This was as true in the late 13th and early 14th centuries as ever it was to be later. At the heart of this law-mindedness was the need and the determination to ...
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The gentry were acutely law-minded. This was as true in the late 13th and early 14th centuries as ever it was to be later. At the heart of this law-mindedness was the need and the determination to protect their estates; perhaps one should say to protect their family and their estates, for in their thinking the two were essentially interchangeable. Protection has, of course, a purely physical dimension, and there can hardly have been a secular lord who would not have subscribed to the ethic of the strong, sword-bearing right arm in defence of one's rights. However, as historians have come to recognize, the real knee-jerk reaction if one's property was threatened was to the law, principally and increasingly throughout the 13th century and beyond to the courts of the English common law. It is a truism that this was a litigious age and that the gentry were litigious by predilection. Their law-mindedness, however, became so much a part of gentry behaviour as to be more than just a propensity to seek out writs and legal remedies. Rather it became deeply rooted in gentry culture itself. This aspect of gentry culture has a series of interlocking dimensions and an examination of these will be the subject of this chapter.Less
The gentry were acutely law-minded. This was as true in the late 13th and early 14th centuries as ever it was to be later. At the heart of this law-mindedness was the need and the determination to protect their estates; perhaps one should say to protect their family and their estates, for in their thinking the two were essentially interchangeable. Protection has, of course, a purely physical dimension, and there can hardly have been a secular lord who would not have subscribed to the ethic of the strong, sword-bearing right arm in defence of one's rights. However, as historians have come to recognize, the real knee-jerk reaction if one's property was threatened was to the law, principally and increasingly throughout the 13th century and beyond to the courts of the English common law. It is a truism that this was a litigious age and that the gentry were litigious by predilection. Their law-mindedness, however, became so much a part of gentry behaviour as to be more than just a propensity to seek out writs and legal remedies. Rather it became deeply rooted in gentry culture itself. This aspect of gentry culture has a series of interlocking dimensions and an examination of these will be the subject of this chapter.
