Marriage and Family Life in the Seventeenth Century: A Study of Gentry Families in England

This thesis looks at aspects of the family life of three gentry families and their kin throughout the seventeenth century. The families were chosen because a sufficient number of personal family documents survive to make it possible to discover a great deal beyond the bare facts of family structure. They are representative in the sense that they are a random sample taken from approximately the same class, the gentry, in three different counties. The selection was guided by a desire to find the norm rather than the exception