Defining an Aristocracy, 1000-1300
How did feudal warlords acquire good breeding and the refinements of culture? David Crouch looks beyond the images of Hollywood and Sir Walter Scott in a revealing new study of how manners and mores developed in the early Middle Ages
Large in the south transept of Sherborne Abbey stand the pedestals, urns, pillars and statuary of the monument to John Digby, 3rd Earl of Bristol (died 1698). The statue of the earl himself stands elevated in full-bottomed wig and coronation robes L above those of his former wife and relict. Though Lord Bristol had been an earl of the backwoods, his private virtues are nonetheless trumpeted by his epitaph:
His distinction from others never made him forget himself or them. He was kind and obliging to his neighbours, generous and condescending to his inferiors, and just to all Mankind.
The composer of the epitaph tells us about much more than Lord Bristol's amiability. He betrays unconscious attitudes of mind that have only begun to stand out as strange in the past few generations. Talk of an earl's 'distinction' and the goodness of his condescension to his inferiors would not pass by unnoticed nowadays, even in the Daily Telegraph.
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