Wealth: Income

Abstract

Francis Harris was a knight, of an armigerous family of Southminster, Essex and allied to many of the leading county families. By the late 1620s he had sold the ancestral estate, and was living in a series of very temporary lodgings in London. In 1629 he had beer reduced to pawning his doublet and hose, and was begging cast-of clothing, occasional hospitality and small sums from his country relatives. He repaid them by running errands in the city and forwarding news, and by seeking out suitable matches for younger cousins in the marriage market. He retained not only his gentry networks, but his sense of honour; in 1628 he fought in its defence — with the lamentable result that he broke his sword and could not afford to replace it. Sir Francis Harris, a threadbare gentleman, was an embarrassment to his relatives and an anomaly in terms of contemporary theories of gentility. So, too, were Eusebius Andrewes and Sir Popham Southcote. Andrewes, a prisoner in the Fleet for debt, insisted that he and his wife should be accorded the status and precedence due to his ‘21 descents’. The warden of the prison responded to his pretensions by loading him with chains, incarcerating him in less salubrious quarters, and seizing his books, his papers, and his precious pedigree.