The aim of this research is to gain insight into the society of Mechelen and its prevailing values during the late medieval and early modern periods. It will examine how city-dwellers presented themselves as honourable in different social settings by emphasizing their socio-economic, political and juridical profile, networks and behaviour. It will also investigate whether and how honour changed under the influence of the disciplinary processes emerging in the late Middle Ages. The methodological framework is a discourse analysis of pardon letters in which condemned wrongdoers strategically deployed their most honourable features in an effort to gain pardon. The project will make an innovative contribution by moving beyond one-dimensional and ahistorical approaches to honour as an ordering principle of society, currently practiced in scholarship on the subject. Therefore, it will synthetize several burgeoning perspectives concerning behaviour and networks in the concept of honour.