ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the context, so there is no doubt there were high levels of convergence between ideas and political and social structures. The Church, it is widely acknowledged, provided a great deal of the fabric that held together the body social from top to bottom. The three-estate scheme was broadly correct in stressing the power of the clergy and aristocracy, for members of both groups enjoyed positions of exceptional wealth and authority. The clergy's mantle covered much besides landholding. The faith included great arcana of rules and rituals governing wide areas of social life. Many of the Church's precepts, even including the Ten Commandments, may have been ignored. Certainly, some were attacked by the proto-Protestant Lollards. The principles of fixed social hierarchies were firmly established in the world of lordship. So, too, was the principle of mutual aid, which was apparent in guilds in town and country and in manorial custom.
