十五世紀前半のイングランドに於けるジェントリとアフィニティ : ジェントリの遺言書からの分析

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Discussions about "Bastard Feudalism" have thus far tended to portray a social system providing an essential tie between the greater and lesser aristocracy in later medieval England. There are some case studies which examine a particular lord's affinity and emphasize the importance of its social function in combining the nobility and the gentry. However, they apparently look at the problem from only one side, as they mainly rely on sources of noble households, e.g., annuitant books and indentures of service. Was a man of the gentry class usually in any lord's affinity at all? What did a lord's affinity mean for him? This paper is an attempt to answer these questions upon the evidence of the gentry's own records, i.e., mainly their wills. All testaments and last wills named executors and usually also surveyors and witnesses. In addition, many last wills written in the fifteenth century include names of feoffees who held lands to the use of the testator or his heir. So it is possible from these entries to reconstruct networks of a gentleman's acquaintances and to examine how he depended upon his lord's affinity when it protected his lands. Thus 125 gentlemen's wills proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury or other consistory courts were selected and 474 lay people were taken from these wills and their social connections investigated. The following results appear from this investigation. Almost all prominent testators who once held important offices for counties (e.g., Justices of the Peace, Members of Parliament and Sheriffs) were of affinity of at least one lord, and in a few cases, of several lords. Such testators chose their executors mainly from the fellow gentlemen of their lords' affinity. They chose their surveyors from people who were well-connected, being of affinity of several lords. Above all, a gentleman whose estates were scattered about in a county or in several counties chose exclusively from the fellow gentlemen of his lord's affinity. Thus the importance of a lord's affinity is shown from the gentry's viewpoint ; but at the same time, this investigation also reveals that, upon the evidence of the gentry's wills, the strongest power of attraction was observed not between the lord and his client but between the latter and his fellow clients of the same lord. In other words, the lord did not play a role as important as the testator's fellow clients in his will. Secondly, it should not be overlooked that some gentry testators chose his executors among his neighbours of the same class without affinity, though the latter's positions in the wills were not so important. If we consider these facts together with "the County Community of the Gentry" in the fifteenth century, it appears that the significance for a gentleman of being of a lord's affinity laid in the mutual tie which was forged between him and men of his own class, rather than in the tie between him and his lord.
1986-08-20

十五世紀前半のイングランドに於けるジェントリとアフィニティ : ジェントリの遺言書からの分析

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