ABSTRACT
The enacting clause of the Black Book begins with a splendid flourish, which hails the king’s household as ‘the new house of houses principal of England in time of peace’. English society was created by the interaction between Smith’s pattern of social classification and the household. The household performed three main tasks: it supervised the estate administration on which the master’s wealth depended; it provided him with the daily necessities of food and drink on the one hand and body service on the other; and it maintained his social position. The household, then, was the core of bastard feudalism, but its essential flavour was given by the armed bands that were largely made up of indentured retainers. By origin, of course, the court was no more than the greatest of the great households: the ‘house of houses principal of England’, as the Black Book had called it.
