The Early Tudor Gentry

Ihis essay is not an attempt to re-open the controversy about the fortunes of the gentry in the century or so leading up to the revolution of i640. Nor does it set out to break the deadlock between the distinguished scholars with whose names it is chiefly associated, 2 for, as Professor J. H. Hexter has argued with some force, 3 the 'storm over the gentry' was based on insecure premises. The fundamental weakness in the theories of Tawney on the one hand and Trevor-Roper on the other is that neither tried systematically to define the gentry as an economic entity. Thus we are variously told that as a class they rose or declined between I540 and i640, but on the vital question from what point, and to what point did they rise, or decline, both writers are silent. Now it would seem that until this is settled there is nothing of real value to be said about the fortunes of the gentry during this long and crucial period. It is necessary, therefore, to make a fresh start by answering the questions: how many men were involved, how much property did they own and what proportion of the national wealth did it form, and finally were they a uniform class, and, if not, how were they differentiated? This is a large order, for it demands not merely the tracking down, as nearly as possible, of every person with pretensions to gentility within the period, but also the finding of the evidence necessary to compile a statistical survey of considerable dimensions. It is my intention here to begin with an analysis of the gentry in the I520'S extending over five counties which then contained a little more than io per cent of the population of the kingdom.4 The sample is neither as large nor as varied as one could wish, but it nonetheless includes a sufficient range of contrast to enable undue bias to be avoided. The date is apt too, for it enables us to survey the scene before the redistribution of Church land and before the economic storms of the mid-sixteenth century both of which had a material effect on the fortunes of the gentry. Later, it is to be hoped that it will be practicable to consider the position around the i640's in a similar manner

Archaeology · Gentry · Geography · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Scottish History and National Identity

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