ABSTRACT
Shine the historical torch on any segment of society which is neither selling its labour for wages nor farming a small patch to feed the family, on the one hand, nor living usually very well from the value of rents paid by others for working hereditarily owned land, on the other, and people identify the middle classes or the middle ranks. Tenant farmers might also be considered as members of the middle classes. It is a historical truism that, whatever the period being studied, the British middle classes are always on the rise. Similarly precise figures for domestic trade do not exist but information from trade directories, advertisements in newspapers, domestic accounts and probate inventories all tell a similar, if less dramatic, story of growth and diversity. The influence of the professional middle classes grew markedly. Unitarianisms influence grew during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason and rational enquiry rather than an acceptance of tradition.
