This thesis looks at aspects of the family life of three gentry families and their kin throughout the seventeenth century. The families were chosen because a sufficient number of personal family documents survive to make it possible to discover a great deal beyond the bare facts of family structure. They are representative in the sense that they are a random sample taken from approximately the same class, the gentry, in three different counties. The selection was guided by a desire to find the norm rather than the exception.