From Christmas Candlesticks to Deathbeds: The Material Culture of the Male ‘Middling Sort’ in Late Medieval English Wills

This article analyses how men of the rural 'middling sort' in late medieval England used movable goods to perform their status and gender by applying relational approaches from material culture studies to bequests in their wills and testaments. It is based on analysis of 403 wills produced by husbandmen, yeomen and gentlemen from Norfolk and Suffolk, c. 1425–1538. Ranking between the gentry and peasantry, these men were major landholders, administrators and consumers in the English countryside, but their mentalities and wills have received little attention. Wills provide evidence for how rural men interpreted their belongings in life and how they imagined objects could help them prolong their patriarchal authority after death. By focusing on three moments when wills intervened in the lifecycles of things – commodity exchange, gift-giving and animation – this analysis models the relational interpretation of medieval material culture and reveals how objects helped create male, middling-status identities.