This thesis examines the relationship between the commemorative strategies of English noblemen in the period 1485-1572 and their identity both as individuals and as a social group. In particular, it will look at the Howard dukes of Norfolk in the context of their peers. The five chapters each address a different aspect of noble identity. The first two chapters deal with the importance of kinship and of status. The importance of kinship is evident across commemorative strategies from burial locations to the heraldry displayed at funerals to the references to ancestry in elegies. Having achieved a particular status, noblemen were defensive of their rank and the dues accorded to it. Funerals were designed to reflect social status and the choice of burial location could also indicate a concern with status. However, there was not always a correlation between the scale of commemoration and status. The third chapter examines the role that service to the Crown played in noble identity. Late medieval ideals of military service and a chivalric culture survived well in to the sixteenth century and traditional commemorative forms remained popular, even amongst noblemen newly ennobled from the ranks of the Tudor administration. Chapter four addresses the importance of local power to the nobility of the period. Burial and commemoration acted as a visible reminder of the social order and were of benefit in maintaining local stability. Noblemen could also use their death as a means of demonstrating good lordship through charity and hospitality. The final chapter examines the importance of religion to a nobleman's identity during a century of turbulent religious change. Studying commemorative strategies allows us to trace noble responses to religious change, the constraints on their public show of belief, and the ways in which they could express individuality.

Historians of political development in the High Middle Ages often focus on the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as the generations in which monarchy finally triumphed over aristocracy to create a monopoly on governing institutions in western Europe. However, it was precisely in this period that Simon of Montfort emerged from his modest forest lordship in France to conquer a principality stretching from the Pyrenees to the Rhône. A remarkable ascendancy in any period, it is perhaps especially so in its contrast with the accepted historiographical narrative. Nonetheless, Simon has been largely overlooked on his own terms, especially by English historiography. Despite the numerous works over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries devoted to the Albigensian Crusade, only a handful of biographies of Simon have been published, none of which are in English. Furthermore, those French works dedicated to his life have been little more than narrative retellings of the Albigensian Crusade from Simon's perspective, with an introductory chapter or two about his family background, participation in the Fourth Crusade, and life in France. French domination of the historiography has also prevented any deep exploration of Simon's English connexions, chiefly his inheritance of the earldom of Leicester in 1206. The substantial inquest regulating this inheritance awaits publication by David Crouch, but at least forty other acts from Simon's life remain unedited, despite increased interest in the Albigensian Crusade and several having been catalogued for over a century. Though one of the aims of this thesis is to correct the lack of Anglophone attention paid to this seminal figure of the early thirteenth century, a biographical study of Simon has consequences beyond the man himself. The inheritance of his claims to the Midi by the French Crown after his death means that his documents survive in a volume uncharacteristic of a baron of his station. The dedicated narrative history of his career provided by Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay's Hystoria albigensis is likewise the most intimate prose portrait of a comital figure available from the period. Thus Simon's life is perhaps the best recorded of his contemporary peers, offering a rare insight into the priorities and means of a baron's administration of his lands and leadership of a crusade. Moreover, despite the supposed triumph of monarchy during his lifetime, Simon's meteoric career took place largely outside of royal auspices and sought crowned approval for its gains only after the fact. Simon's experience was certainly exceptional, both in itself and in the volume of its narrative and documentary records, but it nevertheless provides a challenge to an uncomplicated or teleological understanding of contemporary politics as effectively national affairs directed by kings. Rather than spend his life in the train of one particular king, as did his contemporaries William the Marshal or William of Barres, Simon's career, in its various geographical manifestations, saw him in the lordship of three different Crowns: France, England, and Aragon. Though his relations with the first of these were almost entirely amicable - if not always harmonious - he was more often in open conflict with the latter two. As a crusader, Simon was also subject to a fourth lord, the pope, for the major events of his career. But even while executing papal mandates, Simon at times came into conflict with the distant will of Rome. However, none of these lords successfully prevented Simon's ascendancy. Angevin and Barcan influence in the Midi was drastically handicapped by the Albigensian Crusade, in the latter case, definitively. And while popes may have disagreed with some particulars of Simon's prosecution of the crusade, he remained their best hope for curbing the threat of heresy. One reason for Simon's success in the face of opposition was his ability to exploit the margins of monarchical authority, retreating from his obligations of fidelity to lord in favour of another, thus presenting himself as a legitimate actor while interfering with the designs of a nominal superior. Such independence, however, required alternative bases for his own power that could not be found in the largely rhetorical refuge offered by a distant overlord. In the absence of support from above, Simon worked to cultivate relationships with his social peers and the lesser French nobility. Notably, however, outside of his immediate family, adherence to his cause more often came from his socially inferior neighbours and those with common spiritual devotions than from his wider kinship network. His extended family, of roughly equivalent social standing to himself, were more interested in following the French king in his campaigns to consolidate royal power than investing deeply in Simon's crusade. However, those with similar ideological concerns or dependent on his success saw in Simon a charismatic and effective leader worthy of their allegiance. For Simon himself, the crusade was animated by the programme of reform advocated by the Cistercians and certain Parisian theologians. His context was permeated by the reformers, especially in his close connexions with the abbey of Vaux-de-Cernay. Concerns about just war, the liberation of the Holy Land, ecclesiastical liberty, sexual morality, and the purgation of heresy espoused by Cistercians and schoolmen were reflected in Simon's career. He was more than a simple cipher for ecclesiastical priorities: his campaigns and government were ambiguous in their attitude toward mercenaries and complicit in the problem of usury. Nevertheless, Simon's crusades to both Syria and the Midi demonstrated a remarkable dedication to building a Christian republic according to the vision of the reformers. But Simon was not always a crusader, and the majority of his career - though not the majority of its records - took place in his ancestral lands in France. Though his time in the shadow of Paris does not offer the same salient examples of baronial independence as his conquest of the Midi, it does provide a crucial glimpse at the ordinary exercise of aristocratic government on a more intimate scale. His forest lordship furnished lessons of administration that would prove relevant to his rule in the Midi, such as the diplomatic projection of authority, the value of seigneurial continuity, the economic benefit of thriving towns, the necessity of an intensively participating chivalric following, and the advantage of wide ecclesiastical patronage. Similarly, Simon's brief seisin and subsequent disseisin of the honor of Leicester demonstrated the fragility of his power when many of these elements were lacking. In addition to abstract lessons of governance, his northern lands also provided the financial backing necessary for at least the initial phases of his crusading career. Thus Simon's lordship in France and England, though not nearly as autonomous as in the Midi, is far from irrelevant to his later manifestations of independence: it rather informs his later government and even made it possible.

Entre le début du XVIe siècle et le commencement de la guerre de Trente Ans en Lorraine, en 1633, les conditions d’exercice du pouvoir d’État se transforment profondément dans les duchés de Lorraine et de Bar : un droit écrit et des procédures judiciaires formalisées sont élaborés, un impôt permanent est créé et une armée régulière est mise sur pieds. Ces évolutions impliquent une augmentation du nombre des officiers qui composent le service du Prince, officiers dont il est possible de connaître la carrière grâce aux lettres patentes de provision en office et aux registres des comptes depuis lesquels ils sont rémunérés. Pour ces hommes, le service du Prince est l’occasion d’un enrichissement personnel et d’un avancement dans la société lorraine, aussi s’efforcent-ils d’étendre les droits de leur maître pour obtenir de lui des faveurs diverses (dons, pensions,anoblissement, érections de terres en fief noble, etc.). À mesure que le nombre et la technicité des affaires à traiter s’accroissent, le Prince laisse à ces hommes une autonomie accrue, ce qui modifie considérablement les modalités de fonctionnement de l’État ducal. / Between the first years of the 16th century and the beginning of the Thirty Years War in Lorraine, in 1633, the shape of State power is deeply transformed in the duchies of Lorraine and Bar: a written law and judicial proceedings are defined, a system of permanent taxation is established and a standing army is raised. All these evolutions implies a higher number of State officers, for whom careers in the service of the prince can be known using the letters establishing them in office as well as the account books recording the payment of their wages. For those men, the service of the prince can be a mean to get rich and to improve their social position, which is the reason why they try to extend the rights of their master, hoping that he will reward them with favours (such as bounties, pensions, letters of ennoblement, conversions of land in fiefs, etc.). As the number and the technicality of the cases involving the State raise, the prince gives to those men an increasing autonomy, which leads to a drastic change in the operating processes of the ducal State.

This thesis focuses on conflict within families in Normandy, c. 1025 to 1135. Despite the occurrence of several acute struggles within the ducal house during this period, and a number of lesser known but significant disputes within aristocratic families, this topic has attracted little attention from historians. Kin conflict was cast by medieval commentators as a paradox, and indeed, it is often still regarded in these terms today: the family was a bastion of solidarity, and its members the very individuals to whom one turned for support in the face of an external threat, so for a family group to turn against itself was aberrant and abhorrent. In this thesis, I draw on significant narrative and documentary evidence to consider the practice and perception of family discord. When considered in its broader setting, it emerges that kin disputes were an expected and accepted part of Norman society at this time. I begin by introducing the topic, justifying my approach, considering the relevant historiography, and providing an overview of the sources. In chapter one, I examine the representations of family and conflict in a range of primary sources to glean contemporary views. In chapters two and three, I focus on the practice of conflict within the ducal family, considering the causes of disputes, and then the place of internal ducal dissension in the Norman world. Chapter four analyses the same issues in relation to discord within aristocratic families, before chapter five explores family disputes which arose from patronage of the Church. In the conclusion, I consider the Norman example within its comparative contemporary milieu and ponder the broader themes of family conflict.