The gentry and support for HT

As I said in my post about Rous I did a lot of ferreting around the gentry as part of some other research. It took me back to the end of the fourteenth century and into the early 1500s. I would say I strayed into most counties north of the Thames, with the exception of Lancashire, which for some reason didn't feature much. I'd meandered into Somerset and Wiltshire before as part of the 'Stillington thing'. Here's what I found.

1. The gentry were (perhaps understandably) more robust and pragmatic than the nobility. They flexed with the regime. So you could have been a favorite of Richard II, escheator for HIV, lent HV money and your son would present legal cases to EIV. The Catesbys are a marvellous example of this - keep your head down, become a favorite of the nobility and dodge the battles. Or you went to Oxbridge and into the Church.

2. By the end of the fourteenth century some of the old Norman families were beginning to die out, either because of the Black Death or because they were unfortunate in not producing sons. Lands divided between their daughters were insufficient to attract the attention of the nobility, but the gentry had the foresight to marry into such families and so obtain property portfolios well outside their home district. This went on by stealth until well into the sixteenth century.

3. The nobility seem also to be having difficulty finding suitors of the same class for all their daughters. So we get John Andrews of Kilsby Northants marrying the daughter of Sir John Welles and finding himself cousin by marriage to the Earls of Ormonde.

4.The same John Andrews didn't come from Northants though; his family originated from Yorkshire. As you move around counties just north of London you find more and more families who have their roots in Yorkshire - the Clarells, the Leventhorpes, the Danvers, the Comberfords to name but a few. Why? I don't know unless it's the affinity with the wool trade?

All this makes it quite difficult to support the distinct north/south divide with regard to Richard and HT as mooted by Horrox and others and I found the same in Somerset/Wiltshire where admittedly there was a greater link with Wales. By rights Richard should/could have been popular in a good proportion of the country. Was it that actually all but a few with a grievance kept their heads down as ever before? In some ways their attitude seems quite modern but then you learn that they aren't beyond raiding a neighbour's property and stealing from him. And getting away with it - going back to AJ's Commissions.

Perhaps that's what they really didn't like about Richard; that he might have a mind to do something about such lawlessness? HVII seems to have chosen to ignore it as well - the 'Hastings camp' were still raiding Dorset's property and stealing boats on the Thames well into the 1500s.

Hilary (apologies for formatting which is driving me mad)