being greater than expenditure. King thought merchant traders were the most productive group, their income being a quarter more than their expenditure, followed by the ‘temporal and spiritual lords’, then by a variety of prestigious professions. On the boundary were farmers, who earned almost no more than they spent. Firmly on the ‘unproductive’ side were seamen, labourers, servants, cottagers, paupers and ‘common soldiers’.12 In King’s view, the unproductive masses, representing slightly more than half the total population, were leeches on the public wealth because they consumed more than
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