ABSTRACT
Social structure remained stable throughout the later Tudor period, despite the revolutions in Church and state between 1532 and 1559, and despite the crisis years of the 1590s. Although society contained extremes of wealth and poverty, it was not one in which a tiny number of enormously wealthy men dominated a mass of paupers. London was already far and away the wealthiest urban centre. Taking taxable wealth per acre to allow for varying county size, Middlesex was easily the richest shire in both 1515 and 1522, thanks largely to the presence of London. The poor, in the sense not merely of those with little wealth but of the destitute, the homeless, the unemployed and the vagabonds, undoubtedly aroused great alarm. The Tudor policy of dealing with poverty and vagrancy was twofold: to punish and deter the vagrants and to relieve the 'deserving' poor. The influence of municipal schemes, both continental and native, gradually had its effect on national legislation.
