Abstract
Magna Carta mentions the honour of Wallingford twice. Exploring the context of this shows how a tenurial relationship predating John's accession to the throne led to minor ‘gentry’ landholders experiencing the king's manipulation of marriages, wardships and escheats directly, and resulted in many serving in John's military expeditions. All this was in addition to the increasingly onerous demands of royal government also felt by many of their neighbours in the localities. This combination of networks, tenurial and local, helps explain the politicization of minor landholders such as William fitz Ellis of Waterperry, who was present at Runnymede in 1215, and the nature of political society in the early thirteenth century.
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