Presidential Address: Feudal Society and the Family in Early Medieval England: III. Patronage and Politics

Abstract

ON a previous occasion I posed a question: family relations mattered, or did they? I now intend to investigate in what way they mattered. It is a complex problem. In the middle ages men were reminded more frequently than now by the varied representation of the tale of Cain and Abel that family relations are not always easy; they could be supportive, cohesive, quarrelsome or murderous. So it is reasonable to ask: why the one rather than the other? Behind that there are other questions: when did the family matter and when not? Why did it matter when it did and why when not? A long established tradition in Anglo-Saxon scholarship has been concerned with the respective roles of kinship, lordship and local association. What can be said on the same topics for the post-Conquest period? For it is plain that there can be no secure conclusions about the family unless it is correctly located and properly embedded in the matrix of social and political relationships within which men lived their lives.