Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English

language.

This is Episode 138, Family Matters.

In this episode, we're going to look at the period of warfare in the mid-1400s, known

as the Wars of the Roses.

Their conflict was ultimately a family feud, as two different branches of the royal family

fought for control of the English crown.

But that wasn't the only family conflict that was taking place in England at the time.

Throughout the country, families were jockeying for position in a country where the old

feudal order had broken down, and where a new class of yeoman and gentry were acquiring

estates at the expense of the traditional landed nobility.

The past and family was one of those newly-rich families in the east of England, and

the various members of that family wrote letters to each other throughout the 1400s.

Most of those letters were saved, and they comprised the oldest collection of private letters

in the English language.

The letters not only highlight the struggles of this up-and-coming family, they also reveal

a great deal about the state of the English language in the 1400s.

So this time we're going to look at this unsettled period of English history through the

words and letters of the past and family of Norfolk.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com,

and you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes and transcripts at patreon.com

slash historyofenglish.

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