Kingship, Nobility and Gentry: The Uses and Abuses of Wardship from Edward III to Henry IV (1350-1413)

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This thesis is the first comprehensive analysis of the development, use and impact of wardships during the late fourteenth-century. 'Wardship' is a legal term used to define the practice of arranging custodianship for the land and body of an heir (i.e. the 'ward') who inherited while still underage. Wardships brought the crown and landholding-classes into close contact and sometimes even conflict as the king used them to manipulate the land market while landholders attempted to limit the disruption to their estates and their line of succession. Studying wardships opens an important window onto a number of key areas of social, economic and politic life in late medieval England. My thesis addresses three principal strands:1. It investigates how wardships were used by the king as a mechanism to shape landed society to serve royal interests. The king could use wardships as a way of rewarding loyal servants. They were therefore a crucial aspect of the distribution of patronage. But granting wardships to third parties denied the crown valuable income. My study will investigate how three medieval English kings balanced these competingpriorities.2. It considers wardships from the perspective of those who received them as grants from the crown. I investigate who the custodians were and why they were chosen. I also consider how they managed the lands in their custody: did they discharge their obligations responsibly or did they abuse their position and exploit the lands for their own benefit? 3. It explores the experiences of families whose heirs became wards. Wardships had a profound impact on those landowning families whose lands transferred into the custody of the crown or third parties. There is a crucial social dimension to this strand since wards - sometimes as young as 6 months - were usually placed into the care of the family of the custodian. While this could sometimes be highly disruptive, it could equally result in mutually advantageous social and political networking.