A new perspective on family strategy in tenth- and eleventh-century England: ealdorman status and the Church

In a close prosopographical examination of the five 'great' aristocratic families of tenth- and eleventh-century England, as pieced together by a study of contemporary charters, wills, chronicles and saints' vitae, this article will show that they all appear to have followed similar familial strategies which focused on obtaining political and social standing through secular office alone. Overall, the young men of such kin groups did not enter the Church as an alternative career path to political power. This fresh look at familial strategies reveals more about the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy as a whole including possible insights into group self-perception.