ABSTRACT
The old society was firmly based on the twin principles of property and patronage. One’s place in that society was wholly determined by the amount and kind of one’s own property-‘the great source’, as John Millar observed, ‘of distinction among individuals’1-or that of one’s relations and friends. Whereas in feudal society, property, in theory at least, followed status-the knight invested with his fee in return for military service which only he was qualified to perform, the serf with his holding in return for servile labour which only he was lowly enough to render-in post-feudal England status followed property. The English gentry, unlike their Continental counterpart, the minor aristocracy, possessed no legal privilege except the readily purchased coat of arms. Land alone granted them their status. ‘Gentility is nothing but ancient riches,’ Sir John Holles could say as early as Elizabeth I’s reign: his descendants became dukes of Newcastle.2 His contemporary Sir Thomas Smith declared: ‘Who can live idly and without manual labour, and will beare the port, charge and countenaunce of a gentleman, hee…shal be taken for a gentleman.’3
