Lawrence Stone facts for kids

Lawrence Stone (born December 4, 1919 – died June 16, 1999) was an English historian. He studied the early modern period in Britain, especially the English Civil War. He also looked closely at the history of marriage, families, and the rich noble class (the aristocracy).

About Lawrence Stone

Lawrence Stone was born in Epsom, England, on December 4, 1919. He went to Charterhouse School, which was a private boarding school for boys. In 1938, he studied for a short time in Paris at the Sorbonne.

He then studied history at Christ Church, Oxford from 1938 to 1940. His studies were paused because of World War II. He served as a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. After the war, he returned to Oxford in 1945. He finished his studies and earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1946. Later, his BA degree was changed to a Master of Arts (MA) degree, which is common at Oxford.

After graduating, Stone stayed at Oxford University. From 1946 to 1947, he was a research student. Then, he worked as a teacher at University College, Oxford from 1947 to 1950. In 1950, he became a Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford. This meant he was a history tutor at the college. He shifted his focus from medieval history to Tudor history. For two years (1960-1961), he was also part of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He was chosen to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968 and the American Philosophical Society in 1970.

In 1963, Stone left Oxford and joined Princeton University as a history professor. He led the Department of History from 1967 to 1970. In 1968, he helped start the Davis Center for Historical Studies. This center was created to find new ways to research history. He retired in 1990.

Lawrence Stone passed away on June 16, 1999, in Princeton, New Jersey. He was 79 years old and had been living with Parkinson's disease.

Stone's Historical Research

Lawrence Stone first studied medieval art and sculpture. His first book was about medieval sculpture in Britain. It was a bold choice for the book series, but it was well-received.

The Gentry Debate

In 1948, Stone started studying the rise of the "gentry" (a class of wealthy landowners below the nobility) and the decline of the "aristocracy" (the highest noble class). He used numbers and data for his research. He believed that the nobility faced a big money crisis in the 1500s and 1600s.

However, other historians disagreed with Stone's methods and findings. For example, Christopher Thompson showed that the nobles' actual income was higher in 1602 than in 1534. Many scholars joined this debate, which became known as the "storm over the gentry" in English history.

In 1970, Stone summarized the reasons for the English Revolution. He pointed to three main things:

• The king's government did not have a strong army or many officials.
• The gentry became richer, more educated, and more confident.
• The spread of Puritanism (a strict form of Protestantism).

Many historians today agree with Stone's ideas on this topic.

Exploring Family History

Stone moved from studying the political power of families to looking at their inner lives. This helped create the field of "new social history." In his book The Family, ... and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (1977), Stone used data to study family life. The book was very popular.

Stone suggested that "affective individualism" (marrying for love and personal connection) became common in England only in the 1700s. Some historians disagreed, pointing to signs of loving marriages before that time. However, Stone never said that love did not exist in marriages before the 1700s.

Stone strongly supported the new social history. This meant using methods from social sciences to study history and looking at larger groups of people. Stone believed that using numbers and data could help historians make general statements about different time periods. However, he did not think history had strict "laws" like some other thinkers. Stone was also interested in understanding the mentalité (the way people thought and felt) in the early modern period. He liked combining history with anthropology, which is the study of human societies and cultures.

The Return of Narrative History

Lawrence Stone believed that storytelling, or "narrative," is a key way historians share information. In 1979, when many historians were focusing on social science methods, Stone noticed that narrative history was becoming popular again.

Stone described narrative history as:

• Told in time order (chronological).
• Focused on one clear story.
• More about describing than analyzing.
• About people, not just ideas.
• Dealing with specific events, not just statistics.

He said that "more and more of the 'new historians' are now trying to discover what was going on inside people's heads in the past, and what it was like to live in the past." These questions naturally lead back to using narrative.

Stone's idea that the British political elite was quite "closed" (meaning it was hard for new people to join) was widely accepted. However, a recent book by Ellis Wasson (2000) argued that the ruling class was actually open to new members throughout the early modern period. It seems the difference is more about how much it was open, rather than if it was open at all.

Works by Lawrence Stone

• Sculpture in Britain: The Middle Ages, 1955 (2nd edn. 1972)
• An Elizabethan: Sir Horatio Palavicino (1956)
• The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 (1965)
• The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 (1972)
• Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1973)
• "Early Modern Revolutions: An Exchange: The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642: A Reply," Journal of Modern History Vol. 46, No. 1, March 1974
• The Family, ... and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (1977)
• "The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History," Past and Present 85 (Nov. 1979) pp 3–24
• The Past and the Present (1981)
• An Open Elite? England 1540-1880 (1984) with Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone
• Road to Divorce: England, 1530-1987 (1990)
• Uncertain Unions: Marriage in England, 1660-1753 (1992)
• Broken Lives: Separation and Divorce in England, 1660-1857 (1993)
• An Imperial State at War: Britain from 1689 to 1815 (1994) editor

See also

In Spanish: Lawrence Stone para niños