Since Philippe Aries's groundbreaking work in the late 1960s and early 1970s on the history of childhood, historians have paid attention to boyhood in early modern times. Initially the approach chiefly concerned the education of boys, formal and informal. In my work in the early 1980s I argued that Tudor and Stuart education was regarded primarily as a tool to prepare both boys and girls for their roles in adult life. The relationship between parents and sons was considered by historians in general principally through the evidence provided by books of advice to sons. Lawrence Stone's Family, Sex and Marriage, drawing upon a wealth of sources, made bold assertions about the changing nature of family bonds over the centuries. Then came the important work of Linda Pollock, who studied in more detail the actual relationships that parents enjoyed with both sons and daughters.

The growing emphasis in the period after 1980 on the history of women diverted historians momentarily from the subject of men. It was not long, however, before a discipline obsessed with the issue of early modern patriarchy turned its collective mind to the issue of how males were prepared for patriarchal roles. This, in its turn, was followed by detailed and subtle work on manhood, following on from the suggestion by Linda Pollock that male relationships with other men within the family were all important. Simple models of patriarchy proposed by earlier historians were challenged. Elizabeth Foyster pinpointed the construction of manhood in early modern England, explaining in the meantime the relevance of their sexual relationships, and also of the reputation of their wives and daughters to this process. Alexandra Shepard showed that not all men were born to be patriarchs and discussed how men fitted into various categories that stood in different relationships to patriarchy. Karen Harvey continued the discussion for a later period. Most of this work concentrated upon the middling ranks of society. A collection of primary sources has furthered our understanding of elite manhood in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The chapters in this part of the book make a contribution to these debates. Chapter 15 considers in detail the ways in which Sir Thomas Temple sought to educate his eldest sons for manhood and for a future as patriarchs and masters of estates.