of survival, but better off than the old, the diseased, the
widows, and the orphans. However, the 1400s were the most
prosperous time for laborers considering their wages and the
prices of food. Meat and poultry were plentiful and grain prices
low.

Social mobility was most possible in the towns, where distinctions
were usually only of wealth. So a poor apprentice could aspire to
become a master, a member of the livery of his company, a member
of the council, an alderman, a mayor, and then an esquire for
life. The distance between baron and a country knight and between
a yeoman and knight was wider. Manor custom was strong. But a
yeoman could give his sons a chance to become gentlemen by
entering them in a trade in a town, sending them to university, or
to war. Every freeman was to some extent a soldier, and to some
extent a lawyer, serving in the county or borough courts. A
burgess, with his workshop or warehouse, was trained in warlike
exercises, and he could keep his own accounts, and make his own
will and other legal documents, with the aid of a scrivener or a
chaplain, who could supply an outline of form. But law was growing
as a profession. Old-established London families began to choose
the law as a profession for their sons, in preference to an
apprenticeship in trade. Many borough burgesses in Parliament were
attorneys.

In London, shopkeepers appealed to passersby to buy their goods,
sometimes even seizing people by the sleeve. The drapers had
several roomy shops containing shelves piled with cloths of all
colors and grades, tapestries, pillows, blankets, bed draperies,
and 'bankers and dorsers' to soften hard wooden benches. A rear
storeroom held more cloth for import or export. Many shops of
skinners were on Fur Row. There were shops of leather sellers,
hosiers, gold and silver cups, and silks. At the Stocks Market
were fishmongers, butchers, and poulterers. London grocers
imported spices, canvas, ropery, potions, unguents, soap,
confections, garlic, cabbages, onions, apples, oranges, almonds,
figs, dates, raisins, dyestuffs, woad, madder (plant for medicine
and dye), scarlet grains, saffron, iron, and steel. They were
retailers as well as wholesalers and had shops selling honey,
licorice, salt, vinegar, rice, sugar loaves, syrups, spices,
garden seeds, dyes, alum, soap, brimstone, paper, varnish, canvas,
rope, musk, incense, treacle of Genoa, and mercury. The Grocers
did some money lending, usually at