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THE AUSTREY VILLAGERS 1550-1700

The increase in population of the late Tudor and early Stuart periods accentuated a trend towards economic and social polarisation throughout the midlands. Population growth forced food prices to rise putting increasing pressure on the more vulnerable sections of the population.  Living costs rose three or fourfold between 1550 and 1700. This was matched by increases in rents and entry fines for holdings. While the more substantial farmer grew rich fattening livestock for urban markets, the smallholder with only a modest surplus faced increasingly lean times. His greatest problem was to avoid being ‘squeezed out’ by his more prosperous neighbours seeking to enlarge their holdings. Day-labourers and others on fixed incomes who had no land of their own were particularly affected. Inflation tended to widen the social gap between rich and poor. In Appleby these changes were reflected in the growing social divisions within the village population. Disparities in wealth hardened social divisions and made men more aware of rank and status.

Changes in contemporary views of status and rank

The period from 1550 to 1700 witnessed major changes in social relationships at village level. R.H. Hilton’s studies of the English peasantry suggest that there was relative cultural homogeneity of ordinary villagers below the rank of gentry until the late medieval period -   there was little economic or social distinction, for example, between labourers, husbandmen and craftsmen. Late seventeenth century England was, by contrast, a highly stratified society with marked inequalities of wealth, status and power. Contemporary writers describe a society obsessed with social status. Two famous Elizabethan social commentators, John Harrison and Sir Thomas Smith, echoed the conventions of their day when they divided society into four ‘degrees of people’. First came ‘those whom their blood doth make noble and known’, next the citizens and burgesses, then the yeomanry, ‘who commonly live wealthily’ as freeholders or farm tenants. Finally, listed together in no particular order were ‘the fourth sort of men which do not rule’ -  ‘day-labourers, poor husbandmen, landless merchants, retailers, copyholders, and artificers’. This was how the gentry saw society, their emphasis was upon the minority of the wealthy and powerful rather than the vastly more numerous group at the lower end of the social spectrum,. The gentry’s wealth and pre-eminence pushed other groups into the background. Later interpretations introduce some fluidity into the order of precedence. In 1600, for example, Thomas Wilson remarked that the yeomanry is ‘decayed and sunk into the commonality’, their place taken by a rapacious breed of common lawyer. Others, like John Hooker in Devonshire, combined yeomen and husbandmen together as social equals. But the emphasis remained. Social distinction were rarely drawn, for example, between a skilled craftsman such as a shoemaker, and an unskilled day-labourer. Women, apprentices and servants, who together comprised more than half the rural population, were scarcely mentioned. While allowance is made for social mobility, particularly the social aspirations of the yeomanry, the consensus of opinion before 1600 saw society as an immutable, ordered hierarchy.

By the late Elizabethan period writers were writing about how society was being changed by upstart wealth and influence. Harrison  complained how easy it was for wealthy merchants and freeholders to ascend into the ranks of the gentry, either through their own merit, ‘or by setting their sons to school at the Universities, to the laws of the realm or otherwise leaving them sufficient lands whereon they may live without labour’. His contemporary, Philip Stubbes, railed against the presumption of people even lower on the social scale, the desire of ‘every Butcher, Shoemaker, Tailor, Cobbler and Husbandman, yea every Tinker, Pedler and Swineheard [to] be called by the vaine name of Maisters at every woorde'. While some allowance should be made for exaggeration, these accounts suggest that villagers were seeking to improve themselves.

Gregory King's famous table of 'Ranks, Degrees, Titles and Qualifications', shows how much the social order had changed by 1695.  King's table, dividing society into those increasing and those decreasing the national wealth, reflects a new mercantile division of society.  Although he makes obeisance to old forms of rank, by placing for example, the lesser clergymen earning £50 a year above freeholders worth £60 a year, wealth is regarded as important as breeding in the status hierarchy. But even while it smoothed the path to social advancement, wealth did not automatically guarantee a rise in status. 

Change in the Village Social Hierarchy

At village level the inhabitants themselves defined the social hierarchy.  A statute of Henry V's time, required all litigants to be identified according to their 'Estate, Degree or Mystery'. Practically speaking the functionally literate - those who drew up wills, appraised inventories or witnessed land transactions ­- assigned social position.  Their perception of a man as a yeoman. husbandman, craftsman or labourer assigned him to his social niche although the meaning of various status terms was often blurred by usage . Parish registers and probate records commonly identify parishioners in four different ways: by rank (husbandman, yeoman, gentleman), by occupation (labourer, servant, craftsman), by wealth (pauper), and by social status (widow, spinster).

The emerging social order as compiled from entries in the Austrey register around 1700 is summarised in the table below which shows  a summary of occupations. The table shows that somewhere around three quarters of the householders were farmers, if day-labourers are included.  The number and diversity of craftsmen, particularly cottage craftworkers manufacturing clothing and footware (weavers, hatters, tailors and cordwainers) was actually reduced in contrast to Appleby, where there had been an influx of cottage craftworkers.  Austrey had its traditional craftsmen working as blacksmiths and wheelwrights, but only two shoemakers and one weaver. One of  the Austrey day-labourers is described as a ‘herdsman or common pinner’. Most of the craftsmen were comparatively new to the parish.  The earlier pre Civil War period from 1600-1642 was one of relative stability with little change in occupational status. Only seven new families were introduced to the parish, compared to the period 1642-1700 which saw the introduction of thirty new families.

Sources and Notes

‘Economic polarization … may well be the most readily identifiable indicator of positive ecological reaction’: V.H.T. Skipp, Crisis and Development, 93-99; Wrightson, English Society, 17-38

Figures for the price of a ‘composite unit of foodstuffs’ compared in E.H. Phelps-Brown and S.V. Hopkins, ‘Seven Centuries of the Price of Consumables compared with Builders’ Wages’: E.M. Carus Wilson (ed.) Essays in Economic History (London, 1962), 183.

Some rents in Warwickshire rose threefold in the period 1556-1613, and threefold again 1613-48. See M. Campbell, The English Yeoman under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts (New Haven, 1942), 84-5

K. Wrightson, ‘Aspects of Social Differentiation in Rural England, c.

1580-1660’, Journal of Peasant Studies, v No. 1 (1977), 33.

Harrison, Description I, chp. 5 p. 18; Sir Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum (London, 1583), pp. 26, 29-30, 33.

The State of England Anno Dom. 1600 by Thomas Wilson, Ed. F.J. Fisher, Camden Miscellany, 3^rd Series, lii (1936), pp.17, 25.

John Hooker’s, ‘Synopsis Choreographical of Devon­shire’, Transactions of the Devonshire Association, xlvii (1915), p. 324.

Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses (London, 1583).

See Table from Gregory King's 'Natural and Politicall Conclusions Upon the State and Conditions of England' (1696) in Laslett, World We Have Lost, pp. 36-7.

The importance of Henry V's statute is discussed by Mildred Campbell, English Yeoman, pp. 4-5.

For value of status see V.B. Elliott, 'Marriage and Mobility' thesis, 41-56.