The structure of society (4)

Question 1

What was the apex of the system under the monarch?

Answer 1

Comprised the great landowners and senior churchmen.

Question 2

What was the base of the system?

Answer 2

Comprised those who laboured on behalf of the great landowners and senior churchmen.

Question 3

What did society witness a growth of?

Answer 3

A professional and mercantile bourgeoisie who had become increasingly important in London and the major provincial cities such as Norwich and Bristol.

Question 4

What were still apparent in the law, social relationships and attitudes?

Answer 4

The remnants of the Feudal system.

Question 5

What had increasing since the Black Death of 1348 to 1349?

Answer 5

Economic pressures had increased social mobility and had created alarm amongst more conservative-minded members of the upper classes who attempted vainly to uphold traditional values by passing sumptuary laws which proved unenforceable.

Question 6

Who dominated landownership?

Answer 6

The nobility.

Question 7

Who were the peerage?

Answer 7

The nobility that were usually considerable landholders that exercised considerable power in their localities and were members of the House of Lords.

Question 8

How many members did the peerage comprise?

Answer 8

No more than about 50 or 60 men.

Question 9

What happened to peerage families that died out?

Answer 9

They were replaced by others who had acquired or bought the king’s favour.

Question 10

What did the Crown often rely on?

Answer 10

Families for the maintenance of order in the countryside.

Question 11

What was Henry VII reluctant to create and why?

Answer 11

New peerage titles because he was deeply distrustful of the nobility as a class.

Question 12

Who did Henry VII only trust?

Answer 12

Lancastrian military commanders such as the Earl of Oxford and Lord Daubeney.

Question 13

Who did Henry VII rely on to control the northeast of England on behalf of the Crown?

Answer 13

The Earl of Northumberland.

Question 14

What was Henry’s most important method of controlling the nobility?

Answer 14

Through bonds and recognisances.

Question 15

What was the key to the nobles’ power?

Answer 15

The system labelled bastard feudalism.

Question 16

What was the bastard feudalism?

Answer 16

Wealthy magnates recruiting knights and gentlemen to serve them as administrators or accountants, or sometimes for military purposes.

Question 17

Why did Henry sought to limit the military power of the nobility through the use of legislation against retaining?

Answer 17

Because noblemen could use their retained men to bring unlawful influence on other in a court case or use them against the Crown.

Question 18

Name 2 limits on retaining employed during Henry’s reign.

Answer 18

1) In 1487 a law against retaining was established.

2) The 1487 law was reinforced by an Act passed in 1504, under which licences for retaining could be sought.

Question 19

What immediately came below the peerage in status?

Answer 19

Came the greater gentry.

Question 20

What were the greater gentry in the late fifteenth century?

Answer 20

Great landowners in their own right.

Question 21

Name an important member of the gentry and what they did.

Answer 21

Sir Reginald Bray, sought kinghoods as confirmation of their social status.

Question 22

How many kinghoods were there in 1490?

Answer 22

About 375.

Question 23

What percentage of peers and knights together owned the country’s land?

Answer 23

15 to 20%

Question 24

Why was the Church hugely important?

Answer 24

Not merely for its spiritual role but also as a great landowner.

Question 25

Who were rewarded among the Church and what for?

Answer 25

Curates and chantry priests were modestly rewarded for dealing with the spiritual needs of ordinary folk.

Question 26

Who were also important figures among the Church?

Answer 26

Bishops and the abbots of larger religious houses who were entitled to sit in the House of Lords and who often had political roles to undertake.

Question 27

What did Henry VII use to appoint bishops?

Answer 27

He used the power that Martin V, Pope gave him from 1417 to 1431 when he famously declared that the king of England rather than the Pope governed the Church in England.

Question 28

Name two men Henry appointed as bishops?

Answer 28

John Morton and Richard Fox.

Question 29

What was Henry reluctant to do when appointing men?

Answer 29

Appoint men whose social background was aristocratic.

Question 30

Who were below the nobility, gentry and higher clergy?

Answer 30

The commoners.

Question 31

What was education among professionals like in the towns and cities?

Answer 31

Relatively small number of educated professionals, of whom the most numerous and influential group were lawyers.

Question 32

Who were lower down the social scale but still considered respectable?

Answer 32

Shopkeepers and skilled tradesmen.

Question 33

How did Shopkeeper and skilled tradesmen play an important role in society?

Answer 33

They dominated the borough corporations (town councils) and also played a key role in organisations such as guilds and lay confraternities which were a common feature of urban life in pre-Reformation England.

Question 34

In the countryside what did the middling sort compromise of?

Answer 34

Yeomen farmers who farmed substancial properties for an increasingly sophisticated market economy.

Question 35

What did the Black death result in?

Answer 35

Reduced the demand for land and resulting a drop in land values which enabled the emergence of Yeomen farmers.

Question 36

Who were below Yeomen and what did they do?

Answer 36

Husbandmen who typically kept smaller farms than yeomen and who supplemented their farming incomes through employment by yeomen or gentry.

Question 37

Who term can you use to describe the yeomanry and husbandmen?

Answer 37

Peasants

Question 38

What did Labourers usually depend on for income?

Answer 38

Their sale of their labour, though in some cases they could supplement their irregular income through the planting of vegetables or the exercise of grazing rights,.

Question 39

What were grazing rights?

Answer 39

A legal term referring to the right of a user to allow their livestock to feed in a given area.