Reconstructing the collective experience of an entire provincial nobility over a period of more than two centuries, James Wood finds current theories about the early modernFrench nobility inadequate. Concentrating on socio-economic structures and changes, he analyzes the composition and way of life of all the nobles--poor and prosperous, obscure and notable--who lived in the election of Bayeux between the mid-fifteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. Combining a regional historical perspective with the methods of quantitative social history, Professor Wood demonstrates the broader...