ABSTRACT
Diversity was the keynote to urban society: diversity of occupation and social status, diversity of economy, diversity of religious and political affiliation. The mobility and instability of urban society accentuated these tendencies. There was continual immigration to towns, not just to London and the major provincial towns, but over the urban hierarchy as a whole, as people were drawn by the opportunities for employment, or the prospect of more generous poor relief. Instability was inherent in the social structure; long established family dynasties were the characteristic of rural, not urban society, and there was a high turnover in urban elites. Higher mortality rates contributed to the transience of family fortunes, as did the vagaries of commercial enterprises. Extended credit networks meant that indebtedness was inherent in all business life, and bankruptcy was a perpetual threat which hung over all trading concerns. The road from rags to riches could be easily reversed. Represented within urban society were the uttermost extremes of rich and poor. The possibility of making one’s fortune and rising up the social ladder, in the style of Dick Whittington, was an important and enduring element in the urban mythology. But the numbers who achieved such success were few, and the descent could be equally precipitous as moralists were eager to point out. Between the two polarities lay infinite gradations of wealth and status. The complexities of organizing the hierarchies was one of continual interest to contemporaries – the harder it became to distinguish social rank with certainty, the more important it was to do so. Twentieth-century historians are not much better off, but we will discuss below some of the more important features of the three major divisions of urban society: the labouring sort, the middling sort, and the better sort or gentry. We will look at their working patterns, lifestyles and 164cultural pursuits, and the evidence for the emergence of a class-based society in this period. In the second part of this chapter we will consider other variables in the composition of society, in particular the difference made by gender and the role played by religion and the churches in urban life. Urban society depended upon collaborative action and a sense of common identity for its effectual functioning, a goal made all the harder to achieve by the socio-economic, religious/political and gender differences inherent in all communities.
