Relations into Rhetorics: Local Elite Social Structure in Norforlk, England, 1540-1640.

Abstract

Bearman (sociology, U. of North Carolina) shows how from the mid-16th to the mid-17th century, kinship ties were replaced by client-patron relations as the primary mechanism of power within the gentry of the English countryside, and how that change laid the groundwork for the civil war. As the gentr