Sociability and Belonging: A Study of Social Interactions and Neighbours in Later Medieval England

People’s social experiences during the medieval period were shaped by everyday interactions and relationships. Whilst there exists a scholarship which examines social experiences and the construction of relationships in a variety of institutional settings, including fraternities or parishes, much less attention has been paid to quotidian, informal relationships. Focusing on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England, with an emphasis on London, this thesis seeks to remedy this lacuna by addressing two research strands. It asks how people interacted socially outside of any institutional grouping and considers how these relationships were constructed and maintained. Additionally, it asks how people understood relationships formed through spatial proximity, i.e. relationships of neighbours.
I explore a range of narrative sources including depositions, coroners’ rolls, and miracle narratives. I read these sources as fictive, recognising the motivations and distortions present in the texts’ construction. My research demonstrates how we need to appreciate everyday relationships as an essential part of medieval social experiences. How these relationships were configured was influenced by cultural norms and they overlapped with social ties in other contexts. Moreover, how social relationships and sociability were understood changed throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.