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Early Modern Wales, c.1525–1640 pp 7–46Cite as

Social and Economic Foundations

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Part of the book series: British History in Perspective ((BHP))

Abstract

It would not be inappropriate to describe the period between the Tudor legislation of 1536–43 and the outbreak of the Civil Wars as the assertive age in the history of the Welsh gentry. A. H. Dodd, in his classic Studies in Stuart Wales (1952), ventured to label the history of Wales in the seventeenth century ‘in the main, the history of a class’. To a degree that observation can be justified since most written sources have a direct or indirect bearing on families who claimed gentility and on aspects of gentle life, and reveal features of social ranks that had gradually formed following the decline of the medieval clan and feudal systems in the Welshries and Englishries respectively. Given the nature of the social structure of England and Wales in that period, this background is not difficult to explain. The large group of families who prided themselves on illustrious ancestry and who were often subject to economic pressures that compelled them to seek or defend status, considered that their main asset — besides a slender stake in property — was a claim to impeccable ancestry.1

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© 1994 J. Gwynfor Jones

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Jones, J.G. (1994). Social and Economic Foundations. In: Early Modern Wales, c.1525–1640. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23254-3_2

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