ABSTRACT
Perhaps only the aristocracy operated as a self-conscious national class: the ruling class. Their superiority was no accident. It had been ordained by God. Society was equated with the christian community. It had been created by God for the benefit of the individuals within it. Society was a mechanism designed to serve the interests of all, in which each invested his or her labour or skills in exchange for the benefits that accrued in return. Everybody’s role was essential: without the contribution of each individual, something would be lacking and all needs would not be met. Whereas the peasants supplied their labour and food, the clergy prayed for all and aristocrats protected all. Here we have the notion of the three estates, to which some contemporaries made reference. To achieve these ends, God had organised society in a hierarchy of ranks, each individual in their place. Employment law, tax assessment and wages varied with rank. So too did dress, manners and speech. Almost everyone had inferiors. The greatest men, earls and dukes, also had superiors to whom they were subordinated and for whom they performed services. It was the top ranks of society whose role it was, as God’s representatives and his natural councillors, to exercise that rule through government, which was God’s instrument. Superiors commanded inferiors. They acted on their behalf in parliament, when they spoke for all. Let ‘the commonalty … nor presume above their own degree’, enjoined Edmund Dudley in 1509, ‘not let any of them presume or counterfeit the state of his betters’.1
