Historians interested in the political history of Durham and, in particular, in the question of what constituted local politics, have tended to approach the subject from opposite directions. One view of local politics in late medieval England is that the sources of conflict and tension within local society were indigenous and revolved around land, its acquisition, maintenance and consolidation. The language of this kind of politics drew upon the rhetoric of lordship, the family, neighbourliness, friendship, fidelity and service. Mervyn James, in his characterisation of late medieval Durham as a ‘lineage’ society defined by the cult of lordship, argued that local politics were of precisely this type. ‘One aspect of the bounded horizons and particularized modes of thought characteristic of the lineage society’, wrote James, ‘emerges in the rarity with which it was possible for lineage politics to be articulated in terms of generalized political principles or constitutional positions.’ In his view, few members of political society within the bishopric had access to the kind of education ‘which might have opened up a perspective wider than the grievances and aspirations of the lineage itself’. It is a line of thought which comes close to arguing that local society formed a sub-political (or non-political) world, only characterised by feuding among kin groups over land and office.