Below the peers in the Tudor hierarchy (there were only about fifty-five of them in the sixteenth century) came the gentlemen, the citizens, the yeomen and the labourers. William Harrison in 1577 described these four divisions in society, and their respective roles: the labourers and servants, for example, had ‘neither voice nor authority’. Each person knew exactly where they fitted in, and would attempt to decorate their own living rooms appropriately.
