Sick bodies, social bonds: health, care, and gentry family dynamics in England, c.1630-1750

Since the 1980s, historians of early modern England have understood the importance of the home as a site of medical practice, and of family members as healthcare providers. However, they often discuss such activities as the natural manifestation of love and benevolence. This thesis offers a fresh perspective. It uses select sociological concepts to argue that health and healthcare were dynamic, generative elements within the ‘process’ or ‘practice’ of family, which had power as well as emotion at its crux. The study examines how experiences and discourses of sickness and care shaped, and were shaped by, familial notions of identity, authority, and order between 1630 and 1750. Analysis is rooted in extensive archival research. Although it centres on correspondence, exploring expressions of care at different degrees of distance, the thesis discusses a wide range of manuscript and printed material. It thereby deconstructs barriers between social, medical, cultural, and political historiographies. Focusing on the gentry, an elite group whose lifestyles were changing in this period, reveals that negotiation of power began with the individual body. Individuals’ roles within domestic hierarchies informed reactions to sickness, be it acute or chronic, serious or mild. However, obligations could be unclear, multifaceted, or contested. Consequently, while quotidian practices of physical and emotional care formed and maintained families, they could also be fraught with tension. This research encompasses gentry relations with servants, tenants, and neighbours, critically neglected in many previous studies. Close reading of archival fragments and documentary silences shows how issues of status, hegemony, and dependency were central to cross-social healthcare interactions. Overall, the thesis makes important contributions to histories of the family and household, the body and illness, letter writing, and class. It reconceptualises family life and sickness as interrelated political processes, and demonstrates how health experiences both strengthened and strained social bonds.