The Connection between Land aitd Trade. 269 



There were therefore no marked gaps between the various 

 social grades of the upper landed classes. The sons of peers 

 were, as commoners, on a level footing, not only with the 

 knights and esquires, but with the peasant class ; and the sons 

 of knights and esquires had no practical distinction from the 

 yeomen. Pedigree was tacitly allowed to be the sole arbiter of 

 precedence, and even pedigree failed as a social standard when 

 it placed the commoner knight above the mushroom-grown peer 

 of a later creation. Degrees of wealth constituted the towns- 

 man's social distinctions, but even the beardless trade appren- 

 tices could aspire higher than his social superior the country 

 yeoman ; for in his case there was no interclass gulf too wide 

 for a golden bridge, provided only he could collect sufficient 

 material for its construction. The yeoman, on the other hand, 

 could squeeze out of the soil neither the peer's patent nor the 

 hereditary right to wear armour, and since to become the 

 highest magnate in the landed interest it was necessary to 

 desert that interest for awhile, the soil must have lost many 

 of its worthiest sons. 



The burgesses, however, extended no welcoming hand to- 

 wards these restless immigrants. They grudged the stranger 

 both his enfranchisement and the education of his children 

 in their schools, and not once nor twice only did they peti- 

 tion Parliament to restrain this bucolic invasion.^ Their reluc- 

 tance, however, need cause us no surprise, if we remember that 

 a superabundance of unskilled labour not only tended towards 

 pauperism, but reduced wages low enough to enable smaller 

 men to set up an opposition trade, which brought the levelling 

 effects of competition into their hitherto sacred monopoly. On 

 the other hand, the villein preferred the townsman's cold- 

 shoulder to the unambitious monotony of field culture. He 

 readily left the home of his birth, where half-a-dozen masters 

 would have welcomed his labour, for the uncertainty of employ- 

 ment in the warehouse. He had seen his elders shudder as they 

 spoke of the old restrictive labour laws, and he remembered 

 their chuckling as they recounted some brilliant trade success of 

 a country playmate. There was no doubt, by now, hardly an 

 ^ Stubbs, Constit. Hist., ch. xxi. 



