The Magnate Household in Medieval England

A radical reappraisal of lord-follower relations in the Middle Ages.


Orthodox scholarship holds that "feudalism", based on land tenure, dominated lord-follower relations during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, developing in the later Middle Ages into "bastard feudalism", based on life annuities and cash fees awarded in contracts. This study, conversely, suggests that there was no such evolution from one system to another. Instead, it was the magnate household - the familia or meisnie - that provided the structure for these relationships from the Norman Conquest until at least the end of the fourteenth century, and was usually identified as the lord's following, in peace and war alike. The customary terms of household service could be modified, and it was these modifications that were incorporated in the service contracts that begin to survive from the late thirteenth century. The study also reviews the continuities over the longer period in the ways followers were rewarded, and the frequency with which individuals moved between the service of different lords, typically serving more than one over the course of a career. Ultimately, the magnate household emerges as the defining institution of aristocratic life and lordly power, reshaping our understanding of how power, loyalty and service were organised in medieval England.