Defining Hierarchy: The Production of Knowledge about Social Status and Political Authority in Early Modern England

At the centre of this project are the extensive manuscript collections compiled by the English heralds during the early modern period. Located at the College of Arms, not far from St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London, the heralds policed, or at least tried to police, the conventions and norms of the English nobility and at the same time organized most of the ceremonial occasions of the monarchy.

As part of their duties they amassed an assemblage of data on the social and political elites of England, from coats of arms and armorials to death registers, pedigrees, visitation records, and ceremonial files. The heralds expanded these institutional holdings with extensive private collections of handwritten copies, transcriptions, excerpts, and notes. Based on this ramified ‘archive’, which primarily served to resolve conflicts over status and protocol, I aim to gain insights into the social imaginaries of the time. In particular, the sources reveal reflections on societal stratification and political authority—often not yet fully articulated in abstract concepts—against the backdrop of a dissolving estate-based social order and a monarchical form of rule under intense pressure to justify itself.

In addition, the project pays particular attention to the practices of information gathering and the formation of the ‘archive’ mentioned above. Since the heralds were involved in the curation of state repositories too, the project also contributes to scholarly debates about the emergence of the English ‘information state’ since the late sixteenth century.