Cement or Solvent? Kinship and Politics in Late Medieval England: The Case of the Nevilles

1998/01/01 by Michael Hicks · 2 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Arts and Humanities · #Historical Economic and Social Studies #Medieval Literature and History #Historical Studies of British Isles

paper · doi:10.1111/1468-229x.00061

Abstract

This article examines the significance of kinship among the late medieval English nobility through a case study of the Nevilles of Middleham, one of the most prolific and best‐matched noble houses which also, notoriously, failed to co‐operate in politics. It argues that it is wrong to treat the whole kinship network (lineage) as a family, an approach which raises unreal expectations of solidarity among quite distant relatives, substitutes instead the nuclear family, and suggests a life‐cycle of evolution from family of origin to new family. It illustrates the development of distinct and even contradictory identities with the Warwick inheritance dispute of 1449–61 and Edward IV's fostering of political divisions among the Neville brothers in 1469–70. Kinship was a cement that dissolved with the passage of time. It was not itself a source of division.

Cited by

• Explaining mobilization for revolts by private interests and kinship relations
• A clan detector algorithm to identify independent clans in the kinship networks of elite family dynasties

Related

• Of Kith and Kin: Correlations Between the Medieval Family Under Feudalism and the Colonial Family
• Questions of Scottish medieval kinship: the ties of Isabel Stewart to the families of Mar, Balliol, Barclay and Ross
• Lordship in the Later Middle Ages: A Round Table Discussion
• Ancient genomes reveal cosmopolitan ancestry and maternal kinship patterns at post-Roman Worth Matravers, Dorset
• Intrafamilial relations between clergy and laity: the case of the Nemours family at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries