The concern of this chapter is some fundamental elements of the structure of local society in the marches. At the outset we highlighted the theoretical importance of kinship and lordship in conflict management, and now we return to these themes with the goal to address directly the vague generalisations that have been made concerning ‘the clannish loyalties of border society’, and which build on certain (and enduring) assumptions about the strength of kinship in the region and its correlation with weak governmental structures. By evaluating the importance of social relationships of lordship and kinship, the aim is to build the ground upon which to assess local conflict in the marches. More broadly, it is to explore how kinship was conceived and expressed at different social levels, beginning with landed society and then extending the analysis to encompass common inhabitants of the border shires. This discussion relies heavily for its source materials on court records, which will be introduced in the course of discussion below and more fully in a subsequent chapter.