This is the first scholarly history of the rise of the Townshends, who were to become the most famous landowning family in Norfolk. C. E. Moreton exploits to the full the rich family archives in order to tell the story of individuals such as Roger Townshend I, a prominent lawyer of the late fifteenth century, and his son, also Roger, a leading country gentleman. Dr Moreton traces the growth in the Townshends' wealth and power in the late Middle Ages, and sets them
in their context as a major gentry family. Their lawsuits, their estates policy, and their sheep-farming activities reveal much about the nature of the gentry's relationship to land and its role in local society in late medieval and early Tudor England.
- ISBN10 0198202997
- ISBN13 9780198202998
- Publish Date 30 July 1992
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 294
- Language English