Conclusion: Gentry Networks, Culture, Mentality and Society

Summary

When Leland wrote of his visit to Stonor in the sixteenth century, he explained that ‘the Stoners hathe longe had it in possessiyon. Syns one Fortescue invadyd it by marriage of an heire generall of the Stoners but aftar dispocessyd’. Indeed, on 29^th January 1532, there had been something of a battle at Stonor, even if the accounts in the petitions to Star Chamber exaggerate the course of events. Sir Walter Stonor's supposedly peaceable visit to collect his revenues and profits, as he said, had turned into an altercation, with Sir Adrian Fortescue's second wife, ‘grete with child’, being cast out of the hall. The Fortescues had called in reinforcements, Sir Walter and his fellows had barred themselves within a chamber, and an overnight siege had ensued. During the affray, one of Sir Adrian's servants had been shot with a forked arrow and later died. The affair was finally resolved, however, through the sixteenth-century version of ‘networking’ and ‘good lordship’. In 1535 Sir Walter could write to the chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, saying ‘I thank you [my emphasis] for my good fortune in recovering the poor house at Stonore, with all the manors it has pleased the king to give me’. The sixteenth-century Stonors had not lost their capacity for utilising lords and retaining their ancestral lands.

Leland reported that ‘Syr Waltar Stonar now pocessor of it hathe augmentyd and strengthed the howse’. Stonor, he said, was a ‘mansion place standithe clyminge on an hille, and hathe 2 courtes buyldyd withe tymbar, brike and flynte … a fayre parke, and a waren of connes, and fayre woods’. The visitor today will indeed see an imposing house, far larger than that of the late-medieval period. While the interior of the chapel was refurbished out of all recognition in the Victorian era, its exterior still shows the flint and stone of which it was constructed in the early fourteenth century. The brick tower built by Thomas I remains in good repair, though it would have appeared far more imposing when the house itself was smaller.