8 - Identity and the gentry

Summary

Central to the formation of the gentry, I have argued, is a developed sense of territorial identity: a collective identity which both involved the expression of shared interests and led to the development of status gradations. The county was crucial to the process, and its role was considerably enhanced when it came to interact with the Commons in parliament. As the Commons emerged as a real political force during the 1320s and 1330s, so the county's capacity to articulate local interests was correspondingly strengthened.

This argument may be thought, at least at first sight, to be moving against the grain of recent studies. The notion of the shire as the embodiment of social cohesion in the localities has taken something of a hammering of late. Robert Palmer's powerful and influential study of the county court has shown how it was dominated, most notably by the reign of Edward I, by lawyers who were often also the stewards and bailiffs of lords. These were the men who were largely responsible for the judgements of the courts, and who ‘made the county court a professional and legally respectable institution, rather than the amateur court presented by historians’. Looking at the early thirteenth century I have suggested that local society operated at some remove from the county court, and that most knights avoided its detailed business except when specifically called upon.