Thomas Starkey, the sixteenth-century English political theorist and humanist, famously published A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset between 1529 and 1532. This dialectic – taking its precedent from classical works – was an attempt to gain royal favour from Henry VIII. Instead, it was Thomas Cromwell who took notice of Starkey and commissioned him to write a lengthy sermon entitled An exhortation to the people instructynge theym to Unitie and Obedience, published in 1535. Both works used the idea of the body politic to endorse the ‘natural’ hierarchy of society while enhancing the authority of the monarch, and, undoubtedly, both were written with the contemporary affairs of the Tudor court and the wider European events of the Reformation in mind. In the Dialogue Starkey makes the argument that all forms of governance derive from the king, stating that ‘from the pryncys & rularys of the state commyth al lawys ordur & pollycy, al jusyce virtue & honesty’. The metaphor of the body politic – the concept of understanding the nation and governance functioning as a body, with the ruler as the head – popularised by John of Salisbury in his twelfth-century Policraticus, was subsequently employed by numerous writers, including Starkey. These writings argued that it was the head, or the ruler, who controlled the health and wellbeing of the rest of the body, or the kingdom. If the king – physically or symbolically – was ill, then his kingdom would also suffer the consequences. The importance of the ruler in early modern society has been echoed by scholarship focusing on politics, governance, and power, with the king as the central focus. This chapter will move away from the head of governance and look instead to the king's wider support network, which helped him to govern in the localities: the nobility. Four principal themes will be considered in order to explore the ways in which the nobility attempted to consolidate and expand their power on a regional level. The first is the ownership of lands and the acquisition of royal patronage. Land ownership was pivotal for maintaining control of a specific area and one way to bulk out a small inheritance was to obtain royal grants that added to a lord's income. The second is the military duties that would have been expected from the leading families in the localities.