Honour among the Pastons: Gender and integrity in fifteenth-century English provincial society

Abstract

The concepts of honour and shame are frequently used as analytical tools for understanding the workings of late-medieval English society. This paper argues, however, that historians tend to attribute too narrow a concept of honour to fifteenth-century provincial society. Chivalric honour, with its classic accoutrements of war, tournament and pride of blood may not have been of great importance to provincial gentry such as the Pastons. On the contrary, judging by their letters, the forum of honour for these people lay in their quotidien relationships with tenants, servants, clients and fellow magistrates; and their means of attaining honour were likely to be legal, peaceful and mundane. This system allowed women to achieve actively a greater share of honour than would easily fall to them in the chivalric system, and placed more emphasis on the developing role of an individual's private conscience, as against his/her public shame. In turn, the notion of conscience, particularly, could be used to subvert the very basis of the honour of chivalry and lineage.

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