Webs of Significance: Some Reflections on Thomas Stonor II's Social Networks

Abstract

The fifteenth-century Stonors of Oxfordshire have left to the historian an extensive archive of family papers. This archive allows the family's relationships or networks to be studied in greater detail than is usual for gentry families. A transaction that concerned land (something of great importance for the gentry) and involving one of the Stonors, Thomas II, provides a case study of one particular network as defined by the participants' involvement in a property transfer. Thomas II's other links with those involved in the transaction are investigated as well, as are additional links among participants. Their cooperation for the purposes of conveying land helps to illuminate social and family contacts as well as commonly held values in late medieval England.