Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Tables and Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Approaching the Stonors and their Papers
- 1 The Stonors: A Gentry Family Biography
- 2 Lineage
- 3 Landed Estate
- 4 The Stonors' Lords
- 5 Early Social Networks: Judge John to Thomas I
- 6 Later Social Networks and Gentry Values: Thomas II and William
- Conclusion: Gentry Networks, Culture, Mentality and Society
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Later Social Networks and Gentry Values: Thomas II and William
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Tables and Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Approaching the Stonors and their Papers
- 1 The Stonors: A Gentry Family Biography
- 2 Lineage
- 3 Landed Estate
- 4 The Stonors' Lords
- 5 Early Social Networks: Judge John to Thomas I
- 6 Later Social Networks and Gentry Values: Thomas II and William
- Conclusion: Gentry Networks, Culture, Mentality and Society
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
An increased volume of Stonor correspondence survives from the second half of the fifteenth century, and the correspondence is matched by a greater number of other types of documents, too, including memoranda, bills, estate and household accounts. The letters of this period in particular offer insight into part of what was shared in the culture, namely, cultural capital, by providing examples of some of the vocabulary, ideas and symbols that were circulating throughout the network. Not all members and not all parts of the network are represented in the correspondence, but to the extent that some members and parts are, then elements of this cultural capital, and the degree to which those elements were shared, can be discerned.
By the mid-fifteenth century, the Stonors' social connections, particularly with their peers, were no longer as focused on the honour of Wallingford, in part a result of the death in 1450 of its constable, the Duke of Suffolk. Nevertheless, the last two fifteenth-century Stonor family heads, Thomas II and William, through the Stonor family's lengthy presence in the region, and their appointments to county office, still had contact with a proportion of other gentry also holding office in the counties of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Some of these latter contacts claimed ties of kinship to the Stonors. Siblings and their spouses, step-uncles and step-cousins also figured in the later Stonor lives, the step-kin from the re-marriage of both Thomas II's widowed mother and grandmother (see Genealogical Table 2).
- Type
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- Information
- The World of the StonorsA Gentry Society, pp. 160 - 191Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009