1) The Social Order

Richard Gough lived from 1635-1723 and was born and educated in Myddle and Broughton, Shropshire. He wrote a list of all the people who attended church there and documented where they sat giving some of their background. Observations concerning the seats in Myddle and the families to which they belong. For example, the family of the Lloyds is an ancient, if not the most ancient, family in the parish. Because of this honour, they can sit towards the front of the church. But, in contrast, a couple sat on the ninth pew on the south side of the north isle sit there because she got pregnant outside of wedlock and thus were having sex before marriage. She claims they were married, but why else were they kicked out of service.

Those with more honour sit at the front of the church, and those with less sit at the back. Land was very important during this period, and the houses that belonged to the land also came with an assigned pew according to how much the land and the house was worth. The more expensive it was, the closer to the front the pew was in church.

Villages were the basic unit and often had agriculture at their core, although industry sometimes resided there. They were parish institutions where parishes became administrative units. They were strong civic units that were effectively like miniature republics or commonwealths. Everyone visibly belonged to a specific rank and gender through the way they conducted themselves, how they spoke and what they wore. Lurking behind this order was disorder though.

• The 'Great Chain of Being' ran through the middle of all spheres in the cosmos, including heaven and hell, trees and animals and human beings. There was a cycle of ascent and descent.
• Society was divided into 3 estates: those who pray (church), those who fight (aristocracy) and those who work (everyone else). Parliament was divided into states too with the House of Lords representing those who fight and the House of Commons representing those who work. Those who fight protected the social order, and those who pray protected the spirtual order. Clerics within this order had a near monopoly on literacy.
• Sir Thomas Smith, Elizabeth I's ambassador to France, established the changing order of degrees and sorts. He wrote De Republica Anglorum in 1853 establishing a new order that moved away from the 3 estates. This new order had noblemen at the top; then the citizens who had rights in cities and could effectively do anything; the yeomen who rented or leased land; and finally, those who didn't rule or own land like labourers and husbandmen etc.
• Thomas Hobbes, another thinker, explained the order of the centralised state in his Leviathan which tried to understand the order of the commonwealth in terms of the people. He said there were 3 types of commonwealth: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. There was no mention of a God-appointed ruler. He believed the ruler could be a usurper of the true God-appointed ruler, but this was fine as long as they still embodied the people.

• The order of God revolved around homilies to some extent which were sermons that could be read in church when a clergyman wasn't available. Everything was very hierarchical but everyone was also equal before God.
• The order of family and gender was very patriarchal. The father was the head of the family and the mother sat with him. His inheriting son was the next most important person and the daughters were at the bottom of the chain. This can be seen in the painting of the Gascoigne family by Joseph Hayman painted in 1740.
• The final order of society was the order of wealth. Upward social mobility was possible like Thomas Cromwell who was the son of a blacksmith but became a minister to Henry VIII and the First Earl of Essex, and Samuel Pepys who was a taylor's son but rose to be the administer of the Navy and an MP. But, downward mobility was also possible and this fear was deeply embedded. Even people who worked hard could fall and it was very easy to do as there was no banking system so people didn't really save money.

But, there was also disorder. Order was clearly preferred, but there were things like rebellions, like the Northern Rising in 1569, the Bishops' Wars in 1639-40, and the English Civil Wars in 1642-9.

Sexual lewdness was often referred to in political revolutionary ideas as both were seen as wrong or obscene. Women were also seen as being incapable of handling politics and so they should not be, under any circumstances, be given positions of power.