The Rise of England 191An Elizabethan country house, late sixteenth century.
Yeomen stood beneath the gentry on the social ladder, but they could move
up if they were able to purchase and maintain large estates, and they could
vote in parliamentary elections.
Within the upper reaches of the “middling sort” were men considered “of
sufficiency,” even if they were not lords or gentlemen. They were believed by
virtue of steady income to be worthy of assuming some kind of public
responsibility. England’s precocious economic boom in the sixteenth cen
tury increased the wealth and status of merchants and manufacturers.
Wealthy merchants and artisans from the guilds served on town councils,
perpetuating their influence from generation to generation.
Lower on the social scale were smallholders, farmers who owned just
enough land to get by (“husbandmen”), poor clergymen depending for sur
vival upon small fees rendered for their services, and ordinary craftsmen. The
majority of the population owned neither land nor skills, and thus lay at the
bottom of the social hierarchy. Most laboring families lived in rented one
room cottages. Cottagers, employed as farmhands but also often employed as
spinners, weavers, carders, or nail makers, lived on bread, cheese, lard, soup,
beer, and garden greens, occasionally supplemented by harvest-time feasts
provided by their employers. Farm servants lived in Spartan accommo
dations. In London and smaller towns, the urban poor struggled to survive