The Peer and the Alderman’s Daughter
Lawrence Stone describes how, towards the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign, a young nobleman laid violent and successful suit to the only daughter of a wealthy merchant and money-lender, whose will he is thought to have advantageously suppressed.
English historians never tire of observing that in this country there has always been a high degree of mobility within the middle and upper ranges of society, an important cause, they allege, of the avoidance of bloody revolution. There is some truth in the argument, although both the rigidity of continental systems and the fluidity of our own can easily be exaggerated. For three hundred years the English aristocracy has been accustomed to giving itself periodic transfusions of mercantile blood—and mercantile money.
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