The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603

To what extent did people recognize their wider kin, and did kinship create bonds of alliance, loyalty,
friendship, duty? In Gaelic Ireland kinship lay at the heart of society, of politics, of justice; it was
the primary social bond. There, ancestral piety and a preoccupation with the cult of the dead were
even more deeply entrenched than elsewhere in Europe. People were defined by membership of
their clan - literally, 'offspring', a corporate family claiming descent from a common male ancestor -
and of their sept, a branch of the clan. Still in 1589, as centuries earlier, annalists recorded the
death of a lord thus: 'Turlough, the son of Teige, son of Conor, son of Turlough, son of Teige O'Brien
of Bel-atha-an chomraic, died; and his death was the cause of great lamentation.' The obligations
and loyalty due to kin, this natural affinity, were fundamental. This was a world which knew the
extent of kinship, even to the most distant cousins, because there were advantages to knowing it.
Knowledge of kin was no mere genealogical curiosity: power and inheritance depended upon it, and
kin made real claims on each other, on their possessions, even on their lives. Succession to lordships
was elective. It passed, in theory, to the eldest and worthiest among the descendants of former lords
within four generations - the derbfine group oof early Irish law. The whole system of justice in
Gaelic Ireland was predicated upon the principle of 'kincogish', the responsibility of the clan for the
actions of its members. Kinship was a powerful force in the extreme instability of late medieval
and early modern Ireland. So it was also on the borders with Scotland, in Cumberland, and in Redesdale and North Tynedale in Northumberland, where the 'surnames' - kin groups organized for
the mutual protection and security of near neighbours related by blood - had formed, perhaps in the
fourteenth century, perhaps earlier, to contain the effects of constant warfare between England and
Scotland. In Weardale the unity and strength of the family groupings of the upland kin gave the communities power to mobilize against external aggression. In all these regions, where pastoral farming was practised, the custom of partible inheritance was widespread. Here this pattern of inheritance - gavelkind - promised sons a share in family lands, and encouraged them to stay at home.
Nowhere else in England were the ties of kinship so binding; certainly not among the lower orders.