ABSTRACT
By the second half of the fourteenth century the English peerage, those sixty to seventy lords each of whom was entitled to an individual summons to parliament, had emerged as a distinct and privileged group at the top of English lay society. Their social and political pre-eminence stemmed firstly from their role as the chief military commanders and advisers of the king, and secondly from the lordship of land and men which they exercised in their localities-or, as they sometimes described them, their ‘countries’. In a sense, England was a federation of lordly spheres of influence. It was largely for their local authority that the king valued his peers. It was for the same local authority that the gentry, without whose consent and cooperation it could hardly be exercised, valued them.
