London Merchants and the Middling Sort of People under the Tudor and Early Steuat Dynast

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London was the first place in the English society where the middling sort of people appeared in the era when aristocrats and gentry were the rulers of plebeians. But London was a stable urban community in the 16^<th> century which had the hierarchy of trades organized by livery companies, and tradesmen and industrialists in London could not make a social identity in the 16^<th> century, being separated by the regulated organization of each trade. This project is to show bow the middling sort of people was made in London.Firstly, surveying recent studies of stability and crisis of London, the author proves that the stability of urban community of 16^<th> century London began to break down in the early 17^<th> century through the polarization of social strata in the city, the expansion of suburb caused by the increase of population, and the penetration of power of central government into it.Secondly, the author investigates changes of livery companies, transformations of occupational str … More ucture, and export and import trends from the 16^<th> to the middle part of the 17^<th> century. It shows that London had some features of mono-industrial city of textile and cloth trade through the rapid growth of export of woolen cloth in the early 16^<th> century, completing the hierarchy of companies, and that livery companies did not decline in the late l6^<th> century, though the occupational structure changed through the stagnant export and the increasing import, and that, in the early 17^<th> century, merchants and wealthy industrialists made their ephemeral social identity through the decline of trade regulations in wealthy companies, which was brought about by the polarization of social strata, the expansion of suburb, and the increase of import from East India, West India, and Levant. They were the core of the middling sort of people, which were supporters of Parliamentarians opposing the Crown's policies.Lastly, it is proved that the decline of trade communities undermined the collective settlement of traders of same occupation at proper areas, and that wealthy merchants and traders of different occupations began to gather at the center of London. The residential pattern of London depended rather on wealth than on occupations by the middle of the 17^<th> century. After this project, the author will make a research of the culture of the middling sort of people, and the formation of public sphere. Less