IV AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 77 



old noble, the city tradesman buys the manor of the 

 impoverished squire, and in the next generation the mer- 

 chant has become a squire, the tradesman has become a 

 freeholder. But when greed for territorial acquisition is 

 strong in the higher class the yeoman has little chance. 1 

 In the Tudor and early Stuart age both these tendencies 

 were strong, and before them both smaller proprietor and 

 ancient family fell. 



Mr. Shirley has reminded us that only 330 of our nobles 

 and landed gentry can trace their descent back to a period 

 before the dissolution of the monasteries. 2 Moryson, in 

 the reign of James I, remarks that ( gentlemen disdaining 

 traffic and living in idleness doe in this course daily 

 sell their patrimonies, and that the buyers are for the 

 most part lawyers, or citizens and vulgar men'; 3 

 while Harrison, writing in 1506, reminds us 'that some 

 yeomen also do come to great wealth insomuch that many 

 of them buy land of unthrifty gentlemen and leave so 

 much to their sons that they become gentlemen '. 4 Simon 

 Degge, writing of Staffordshire in 1669, says that in the 

 previous sixty years half the lands had changed owners, 

 not so much as of old they were wont by marriage, but by 

 purchase, and attributes the decline of the old families 

 partly to Divine wrath at their having robbed the mona- 

 steries, partly to their living and taking pleasure to spend 

 their estates in London, and notices how many traders and 

 lawyers have risen on their ruin. 6 In Lincolnshire, we 

 are told, hardly a county family maintained its position 



1 Stubbs, Constitutional Hist., c. xxi, 802. 



2 Evelyn Shirley, The noble and gentle-men of England. 



3 Moryson, Itinerary, pt. iii, bk. iii, c. 11. 



4 Harrison, Description of England, ed. Furniss, p. 133 ; cf. the 

 plays of the time such as The Enforced Marriage ; Trevelyan, The 

 Stuarts, p. 6. 



8 Erdeswick, Survey of Stafford, ed. Harwood, p. 55. Degge names 



