A particular concern for the education and future of their children may be the most distinctive single characteristic of the middle classes in modern British society, yet it is surprising how often we ignore the fact that in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this same worry about how to enable the next generation to establish itself was a problem common to all those social groups who had to work for their livings, the husbandmen and yeomen farmers, the merchants and the lawyers, the artisans and the doctors. Indeed, although social mobility in the early modern period is almost invariably discussed by historians in terms of the desire and ability of the middling sector of the population to buy into the landed elite, this way of formulating the question puts the cart before the horse. While it would be foolish to claim that owning broad acres was not an aspiration, the truly significant move for most people came not at the end of their lives, but at the beginning, when they set out in their teens on working careers. For the majority of parents, finding a niche for their children which would eventually enable them to set up and maintain a household, to provide for a wife and children and keep poverty at bay, was the overriding imperative.¹

^{2. Apprenticeship, Social Mobility and the Middling Sort, 1550-1800} 

^{A particular concern for the education and future of their children may be the most distinctive single characteristic of the middle classes in modern British society, yet it is surprising how often we ignore the fact that in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this same worry about how to enable the next generation to establish itself was a problem common to all those social groups who had to work for their livings, the husbandmen and yeomen farmers, the merchants and the lawyers, the artisans and the doctors. Indeed, although social mobility in the early modern period is almost invariably discussed by historians in terms of the desire and ability of the middling sector of the population to buy into the landed elite, this way of formulating the question puts the cart before the horse. While it would be foolish to claim that owning broad acres was not an aspiration, the truly significant move for most people came not at the end oftheir lives, but at the beginning, when they set out in their teens on working careers. For the majority of parents, finding a niche for their children which would eventually enable them to set up and maintain a household, to provide for a wife and children and keep poverty at bay, was the overriding imperative. 1 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the exact process through which this task of preparing for the next generation was carried out depended on the gender of the child as well as on the wealth and occupations of individual families. For the eldest sons of the gentry or yeomanry, there was of course an intergenerational transferral of landed property. But for younger sons and daughters of such families, and for the children of the poor and urban social groups, some form of service in a household other than that of the biological family was likely to be involved.s For those with little wealth, service in husbandry for boys or domestic service for girls was a preparation for a career in agricultural labour or housewifery, and this was also the course most often chosen by parish officials when they made provision for orphans or pauper children of either sex by placing them in apprenticeships." Higher up the social scale , amongst the husbandmen, yeomen, and lesser gentry in rural society, or the merchants, tradesmen, artisans and professionals in towns , the gender of the child probably had a much greater influence. Fathers in such families frequently made money available for their daughters' marriage portions, a practice which reflects the reality that matrimony was considered the primary objective for most girls.' At the same time, however, throughout the period, a significant, but so far indeterminate, number of girls were formally apprenticed into trades, especially the various branches of sewing, weaving and needlecraft. Female occupations were largely, but by no means exclusively, distinct from those of males, and they are difficult to study because women are not well represented in the documents produced by largely male-dominated institutions such as guilds and urban corporations." This was the world of their brothers, boys from similar backgrounds, who had been launched towards a potential livelihood by means of a formalised indenture of apprenticeship. This legal agreement, which was accompanied by a payment of money by the parents, set out the parameters of a process in which the young person, usually a male in his mid or late teens, was placed in a new family with a view to learning the details of an occupation and eventually setting up as a practitioner in his own right. In the well-known phrases of the indenture itself, the master was to instruct the apprentice in the 'craft, mastery, and occupation which he useth' and provide him with meat, drink, linen, shoes, and anything else requisite for an apprentice in a particular trade. In return, the apprentice agreed to serve his master, keep his secrets, obey his commandments and to refrain from fornication, gambling, or the haunting of alehouses.}