ABSTRACT
The early Tudor gentry consisted of three, sometimes overlapping, subgroups, namely the knights, esquires and gentlemen. Individuals could move from one group to the next during the course of their lifecycle, while families could rise or fall in one or two generations. As the fortunes of his master, Thomas Grey, marquess of Dorset, declined, Henry Sadler hoped his son Ralph could secure Cromwell’s patronage for him.1 By the 1540s, Sir Ralph Sadler had moved from Cromwell’s service to that of Henry VIII. His success was reflected by 100 livered retainers in his service bearing the motto ‘I serve only the king’.2 This level of social mobility meant that the gentry was a difficult group for contemporaries to define, as indicated by the sumptuary legislation which provided a number of shifting alternatives over the 23-year period considered here. Even so, the three subgroups were usually distinguished in terms of land ownership and landed income as opposed to an income derived from trade or wealth invested in goods. This chapter will consider the evidence relating to the three groups, in turn evaluating what type of clothes they favoured, how dress defined them socially, how they related to each other and whether they conformed to the legislation or not.
