Coming of Age: Youth in England, c.1400-1600

This thesis draws upon three main ideas about adolescence from modern social-scientific research and determines how far thoughts about a concept of adolescence, youth culture and generational conflict can be usefully applied to gain a better understanding of youth and the process of becoming adult in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England. The focus of this study is principally urban. It is built upon evidence drawn from conduct literature, church court records, urban court records, civic records, verdicts from coroners’ inquests, churchwardens’ accounts, wills and private correspondence. This research offers a new perspective on existing debates within historical scholarship on youth in the pre-modern era. It challenges the artificial boundary between the late medieval and early modern periods that historians of childhood and youth have thus far tended to impose on the past. It also considers how far differences in gender, age and social status affected youthful experiences and assesses the extent of change and continuity over the two centuries in question.