For a tiny number of extremely lucky or crafty families, of course, the Tudor era could scarcely have been more fruitful. These were the families that gathered up into their own hands, thanks either to royal favor or skillful speculation in real estate, the immense wealth that Henry VIII was so recklessly throwing away. Two centuries of privilege would transform them into the genteel teasipping characters who populate the novels of Jane Austen—and still own vast expanses of countryside in an overcrowded England today. But for most people—for almost all of the ordinary people—it was a
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