The second class included the wealthier merchants and professional men of the towns. These men were prominent in town government. They usually had close family ties with the gentry, especially as sons. When wealthy enough, they often bought a country estate. The professional men included military officers, civil service officials, attorneys, some physicians, and a few clergymen. The instabilities of trade, high mortality rates in the towns, and high turnover rate among the leading urban families prevented any separate urban interest group arising that would be opposed to the landed gentry. Also included in this second group were the most prosperous yeomanry of the countryside.
The third class was the yeomanry at large, which included many more than the initial group who possessed land in freehold of at least 40s., partly due to inflation. Freehold was the superior form of holding land because one was free to sell, exchange, or devise the land and had a political right to vote in Parliamentary elections. Other yeomen were those who possessed enough land, as copyholder or leaseholder, to be protected from fluctuations in the amount of the annual harvest, that is, at least 50 acres. A copyholder rented land from a lord for a period of years or lives, usually three lives including that of the widow, and paid a substantial amount whenever the copyhold came up for renewal. The copyholder and leaseholder were distinguished from the mere tenant-at-will, whose only right was to gather his growing crop when his landlord decided to terminate his tenancy. The average yeoman had a one and a half story house, with a milkhouse, a malthouse, and other small buildings attached to the dwelling. The house would contain a main living room, a parlor, where there would be one or more beds, and several other rooms with beds. No longer was there a central great hall. Cooking was done in a kitchen or over the open fire in the fireplace of the main room. Furniture included large oak tables, stools, settes or forms, chests, cupboards, and a few hard-backed simple chairs. Dishware was wood or pewter. The yeomen were among those who governed the nation. They often became sureties for recognizances, witnesses to wills, parish managers, churchwardens, vestrymen, the chief civil officers of parishes and towns, overseers of the poor, surveyors of bridges and highways, jurymen and constables for the Justices of the Peace, and sheriffs' bailiffs. The families and servants of these yeomen ate meat, fish, wheaten bread, beer, cheese, milk, butter, and fruit. Their wives were responsible for the dairy, poultry, orchard, garden, and perhaps pigs. They smoked and cured hams and bacon, salted fish, dried herbs for the kitchen or of lavender and pot-pourri for sweetening the linen, and arranged apples and roots in lofts or long garrets under the roof to last the winter. They preserved fruits candied or in syrup. They preserved wines; made perfumes, washes for preserving the hair and complexion, rosemary to cleanse the hair, and elder-flower water for sunburn; distilled beverages; ordered wool hemp, and flax to spin for cloth (the weaving was usually done in the village); fashioned and sewed clothes and house linens; embroidered; dyed; malted oats; brewed; baked; and extracted oils. Many prepared herb medicines and treated injuries, such as dressing wounds, binding arteries, and setting broken bones. Wives also ploughed and sowed, weeded the crops, and sheared sheep. They sometimes cared for the poor and sold produce at the market. Some yeomen were also tanners, painters, carpenters, or blacksmiths; and as such they were frequently brought before the Justices of the Peace for exercising a craft without having served an apprenticeship. The third class also included the freemen of the towns, who could engage independently in trade and had political rights. These were about one-third of the male population of the town.
The fourth class included the ordinary farmer leasing by copyhold, for usually 21 years, five to fifty acres. From this class were drawn sidesmen [assistants to churchwardens] and constables. They had neither voice nor authority in government. Their daily diet was bacon, beer, bread, and cheese. Also in this class were the independent urban craftsmen who were not town freemen. Their only voice in government was at the parish level.
The fifth and lowest class included the laborers and cottagers, who were usually tenants at will. They were dependent on day labor. They started work at dawn, had breakfast for half an hour at six, worked until dinner, and then until supper at about six; in the summer they would then do chores around the barns until eight or nine. Some were hedgers, ditchers, ploughmen, reapers, shepherds, and herdsmen. The cottagers' typical earnings of about 1s. a day amounted to about 200 shillings a year, which was almost subsistence level. Accordingly they also farmed a little on their four acres of land with garden. Some also had a few animals. They lived in a one or two room cottage of clay and branches of trees or wood, sometimes with a brick fireplace and chimney, and few windows. They ate bread, cheese, lard, soup, and greens. If a laborer was unmarried, he lived with the farmer. Theirs was a constant battle for survival. They often moved because of deprivation to seek opportunity elsewhere. The town wage-earning laborers ranged from journeymen craftsmen to poor casual laborers. The mass of workers in London were not members of guilds, and the crime rate was high.
The last three classes also contained rural craftsmen and tradesmen, who also farmed. The variety of trades became very large, e.g. tinsmiths, chain smiths, pewterers, violin makers, and glass painters. The curriers, who prepared hides for shoemakers, coachmakers, saddlers, and bookbinders, were incorporated.
The fourth and fifth classes comprised about three fourths of the population.
Then there were the maritime groups: traders, ship owners, master and seamen, and the fishers.
Over one fourth of all households had servants. They were the social equals of day laborers, but materially better off with food and clothing plus an allowance of money of two pounds [40s.] a year. Those who sewed got additional pay for this work. There was no great chasm between the family and the servants. They did not segregate into a parlor class and a kitchen class. The top servants were as educated as their masters and ate at the same table. Great households had a chaplain and a steward to oversee the other servants. There was usually a cook. Lower servants ate together. Servants were disciplined by cuffs and slaps and by the rod by master or mistress. Maids wore short gowns, a large apron, and a gypsy hat tied down over a cap. Chamber maids helped to dress their mistresses. Servants might sleep on trundle beds stored under their master's or mistress's bed, in a separate room, or on the straw loft over the stables. A footman wore a blue tunic or skirted coat with corded loop fasteners, knee-britches, and white stockings. He walked or ran on foot by the side of his master or mistress when they rode out on horseback or in a carriage and ran errands for him, such as leading a lame horse home or running messages. A good footman is described in this letter: "Sir, - You wrote me lately for a footman, and I think this bearer will fit you: I know he can run well, for he has run away twice from me, but he knew the way back again: yet, though he has a running head as well as running heels (and who will expect a footman to be a stayed man) I would not part with him were I not to go post to the North. There be some things in him that answer for his waggeries: he will come when you call him, go when you bid him, and shut the door after him; he is faithful and stout, and a lover of his master. He is a great enemy to all dogs, if they bark at him in his running; for I have seen him confront a huge mastiff, and knock him down. When you go a country journey, or have him run with you a-hunting, you must spirit him with liquor; you must allow him also something extraordinary for socks, else you must not have him wait at your table; when his grease melts in running hard, it is subject to fall into his toes. I send him to you but for trial, if he be not for your turn, turn him over to me again when I come back..."
Dress was not as elaborate as in Elizabethan times. For instance, fewer jewels were worn. Ladies typically wore a brooch, earrings, and pearl necklaces. Men also wore earrings. Watches with elaborate cases were common. Women's dresses were of satin, taffeta, and velvet, and were made by dressmakers. Pockets were carried in the hand, fastened to the waist by a ribbon, or sewn in petticoats and accessible by a placket opening. The corset was greatly reduced. Women's hair was in little natural-looking curls, a few small tendrils on the forehead with soft ringlets behind the ears, and the back coiled into a simple knot. Men also wore their hair in ringlets. They had pockets in their trousers, first as a cloth pouch inserted into an opening in the side seam, and later sewn into the side seam. The bereaved wore black, and widows wore a black veil over their head until they remarried or died. Rouge was worn by lower class women. The law dictating what classes could wear what clothes was difficult to enforce and the last one was in 1597.
Merchants who had become rich by pirating could now afford to extend their trading ventures well beyond the Atlantic sea. Cotton chintzes, calicoes, taffetas, muslins, and ginghams from India now became fashionable as dress fabrics. Simple cotton replaced linen as the norm for napkins, tablecloths, bed sheets, and underwear. Then it became the fashion to use calicoes for curtains, cushions, chairs, and beds. Its inexpensiveness made these items affordable for many. There was a cotton-weaving industry in England from about 1621, established by cotton workmen who fled to England in 1585 from Antwerp, which had been captured. By 1616, there were automatic weaving looms in London which could be operated by a novice. Toothbrushes, made with horsehair, were a new and costly luxury.