The Rising Middle Class

Para1During the reign of Elizabeth I (1533–1603), a shift in socioeconomic classes occurred due to England’s growing prosperity. In the beginning of the 16th century, most of the population made their living through farming, but by the beginning of the 17th century, the feudal way of life, with farmers and artisans serving local lords, had been largely replaced with a commercial economy based in capitalism.

One Cause: Feudal Economy to Commercial Economy

Plague in the Middle Ages

Para2The first hit to feudal society occured in the Middle Ages, when the Black Plague struck in 1348. In Europe as a whole, historians estimate that the plague killed about 30% of the population, a level of death that affected everyone, from peasants to lords. This intense decimation of the population meant there were fewer laborers to work the fields and fewer lords to oversee them and pay wages. Because of this labor shortage, agricultural workers were able to ask for higher wages and, in some cases, move up the social ladder to fill in more skilled positions.

Mercantile Changes

Para3The apparent leveling due to plague was short-lived, though, as trade, especially in the cloth-making industry, grew and flourished into a profitable commercial economy. Many of late-medieval English landowners opted to raise sheep instead of crops. This new focus on profit caused many peasants to lose their agricultural livelihood and move to cities in search of new occupations. This shift in both types of earning and population reinforced a disparity between classes. As England’s economy prospered, the wealthy got wealthier from trade. Many merchants grew very prosperous and were able to associate with and live like nobility, building large homes and buying luxury goods.

Another Cause: The Reformation

Para4The Reformation, the split of the Church of England from the Church of Rome in 1533, gave secular institutions more power. This power crossed many levels of society and enriched the nobility and the gentry with the wealth seized by Henry VIII during the dissolution of the monasteries. Huge tracts of profitable land from the Church were taken by the Crown, which then awarded them to noblemen and gentlemen.
Para5The Protestant ideology fostered by the Reformation also placed strong emphasis on hard work, faith, individual effort, literacy, and self-discipline. This mindset, later called the Puritan work ethic, helped enrich the middle classes through economic success.

Social Levels

Nobility:

Para6In early modern England, social hierarchy remained crucial. At the head was the monarch, surrounded by a court of members of the nobility; these were people with hereditary titles such as baron, earl, and duke. Efforts were made to preserve the social structure as the growing middle class was able to afford many of the same clothing that had been distinguishing markers of the nobility. Sumptuary laws, which were proclamations that controlled which sorts of people could wear particular garments, fabrics, colors, and accessories, pre-dated early modern period, but they were strengthened and enforced during the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I claimed that the sumptuary laws were meant to preserve her subjects from wasting money on expensive clothes.

Gentry and Merchants:

Para7Below the nobility were the gentry and wealthy merchants. Gentry were landholders, including knights, who were considered gentleman. They owned land and some of their wealth derived from agriculture, but they did not need to do manual work and were generally well-educated. As trade became increasingly central to wealth, those members of the gentry that produced goods for trade became wealthier along with the merchants. The extreme wealth of some merchants, particularly those who imported luxury goods that the newly rich could afford, would rival some of nobility and brought a new tier to the hierarchical structure and interaction between classes.

Yeoman and Craftsman:

Para8Below the gentry and merchants were yeomen and craftsman. Yeomen owned their own lands; however, they worked alongside their laborers. Craftsmen included the many artisans who made and sold goods produced with skilled labor, including weavers, the cloth merchants known as drapers, the workers called glaziers who made and installed glass windows, stone masons, carpenters, and many more. Many yeomen and craftsmen were literate, although they did not always attend grammar school and almost never university.

Laborers:

Para9Those on the lowest rung of the social ladder were laborers. These individuals were generally unskilled and very poor. Agricultural laborers in the countryside lived very simply in small cottages. Urban laborers struggled more, due to the inconsistent work cities offered. Laborers were generally illiterate and poor. It was almost impossible to break out the cycle of destitution these individuals lived. The rising wealth of the many social classes did not trickle down to the lowest levels of society.

Key Print Sources

McDonald, Russ. Town and Country: Life in Shakespeare’s England. The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare. Bedford/St. Martins, 2001, pp. 219–233.
Picard. Liza. Elizabeth’s London. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003.
Wilson, Derek. Elizabethan Society: High and Low Life, 1558–1603. Robinson, 2014.

Key Online Sources

Best, Michael. The Rising Middle Class. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/history/elizabeth/middleclass.html. Accessed 11 Nov. 2018.
Daily Life in the Elizabethan Era. Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/daily-life-elizabethan-era. Accessed 20 Jun. 2023.
Lambert, Tim. Life in the 16th Century: Tudor England. Local Histories. https://localhistories.org/life-in-the-16th-century/. Accessed 11 Nov. 2018.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Kelsie Tylka

Kelsie Tylka was a student at Utah Valley University.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title The Rising Middle Class
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Kelsie Tylka, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status published, peer-reviewed
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globablink Research Internship
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