-Caveat Lector-
On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, William Hugh Tunstall wrote:
>England was divided into four sorts of people: gentlemen, citizens,
>yeomen, and laborers. At the top of the social pile were the gentlemen
>(monarch, dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons--who either
>inherited their exalted titles as the eldest male heirs of their families,
>or were granted them by the monarch). Below the gentlemen were the
>knights. In England, the mark of a gentleman was "idleness."
And these 'gentlemen' comprised a goodly number of the first immigrants
to the New World, especially to the southern colonies...usually minor
aristocracy, especially those who were not the first-born, and hence were
not in line to inherit the family estate...they thought they could make a
quick fortune in the Americas, and return to England after a few years
and live a life of rich idleness...
One of the problems with these colonists is that they were too used to a
life of 'idleness', and considered farming as 'beneath their station'...
>Below these aristocrats were the citizens or burgesses.
Which for the most part were the class the Pilgrims came from...again,
little experience actually living off the land, and with the same
attitude that doing so was for those of the 'lower classes'...
While forced to farm to survive in their first years in the New World,
these colonies quickly established their own 'class' system, where those
who were merchants and 'professionals' -- doctors, lawyers, etc. -- were
considered 'better' than lowly farmers...
>Below them was the great mass
>of ordinary people who in the words of Sir Thomas Smith"[have] no voice
>nor authority in our commonwealth and no account is made of them but only
>to be ruled" (qtd. in Greenblatt 7).
And few of these great masses had actual experience in living off the
land, either...the majority being laborers, servants, etc.
>But Shakespeare's MACBETH (1606), Middleton's WITCH (1616) and Dekker's
>WITCH OF EDMONTON (1621) are testaments to the widespread fear of
>witchcraft in early modern England.
>
>And some of you wonder why your ancestors wanted to leave the Old World?
Well, in the case of the Pilgrims, they thought that the Old World was
TOO LIBERAL, and wanted to establish their own fanatical vision of "God's
Word On Earth" in the 'untainted' New World...except those pesky pagan
Indians got in the way...
In the southern colonies, as I mentioned before, the INITIAL colonies
were not of people of the lower classes who were starving, but fairly
well-to-do people of the lower aristocracy and merchant classes, whose
plans were, for the most part, NOT to live out their lives in the
colonies, but to make a quick fortune and return to Mother England to
live a life of ease...
June
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The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
-- Wm. Cullen Bryant: The Death of the Flowers
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