Social hierarchy at Coley (c. 1700)

Life around Coley Park in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was sharply hierarchical. Power, land and the means of coercion were concentrated at the top; dependence, hard work and vulnerability were concentrated at the bottom. Ideas of democracy or social rights in a modern sense simply did not exist. From a social-historical perspective, the Coley estate can be seen as a small but very clear pyramid of crown and peers, gentry, clergy, yeomen, tradespeople, servants and the poor, all tied together by land, law and custom.

1. Crown and great peers

Example: Queen Anne (r. 1702–1714)

At the summit stood the monarch and the high nobility who dominated national politics and law. In the early eighteenth century, the world of Coley Park unfolded under Queen Anne, whose government set the legal and fiscal framework within which manorial estates like Coley operated.

2. Manorial lords and county gentry – the Vachells of Coley

Example: Dorothy Breton Vachell and her son Thomas Vachell

On the ground at Coley, this level was occupied by the Vachell family. After the death of Tanfield Vachell II, his widow Dorothy Breton Vachell managed the Coley and Reading properties for their heir, Thomas Vachell. They appear at the centre of the inheritance dispute "Vachell v Breton" and in the early eighteenth-century parliamentary bill that sets out the Vachell lands, and together they embody the "Lord of the Manor" tier in this period.

3. Clerical and professional elite

Example: William Lloyd, rector of St Mary's, Reading

Just below the gentry stood the educated elite: senior Church of England clergy and major professionals. William Lloyd (1627–1717), who served as rector of St Mary's in Reading and later became a bishop, is a good example of this group in the Coley area. Men like Lloyd lived off benefices, fees and offices rather than manorial rents, but moved in much the same social world as the local gentry.

4. Substantial yeomen and major tenants

Example: Mary and William Barrett

Beneath them were substantial yeomen and large farming tenants. In the 1705 draft bill describing the Vachell estate, Mary and William Barrett are named as tenants of land attached to Battel Farm and other fields. They represent the "big farmer" tier: well-off leaseholders farming significant acreages under the Vachells, employing labourers and playing a visible role in parish life.

5. Lesser proprietors, tradespeople and small landlords

Example: Elizabeth Fellow

A step lower we find small property owners, tradesmen and shopkeepers. The same 1705 material lists Elizabeth Fellow with four houses in Little Coley "and her undertenants". She stands for that middling group whose income came from a handful of houses, a workshop or a small business – clearly above day labourers, but below the substantial yeomen and gentry.

6. Estate servants, labourers and cottagers

Example: John and Margaret Bushell

Further down the pyramid were estate servants, farm labourers and cottagers with little or no land of their own. John and Margaret Bushell, long-serving senior servants at Coley House in the mid-seventeenth century, appear in Vachell wills as trusted dependants. They illustrate this layer: socially dependent on the Vachells, but essential to the daily running of the house and estate.

7. Paupers and charity recipients

Example: George Phillips, Vachell almshouse resident (1696)

At the base were those living on parish relief and private charity. In 1696 George Phillips was elected, together with Robert Eustace, to occupy places in the Vachell almshouse on Castle Street, reserved for poor, no longer able-bodied men of good character. His name survives only because the Vachell charity recorded his admission. He stands for the narrow stratum of "respectable" paupers whose last years depended on manorial and parish support.

Taken together, these examples show how a complete social ecosystem closed around Coley. At one end stood a distant queen and a county gentry family who held land, courts and charitable endowments; at the other a handful of poor men whose lives are only visible at the moment they enter an almshouse. By placing real names at each level, the abstract class pyramid becomes a human map of how Coley's past was structured – and, indirectly, a reminder of how different our own assumptions about democracy and social protection are today.

References:

• Hadland, T. (1992). Thames Valley Papists: From Reformation to Emancipation 1534–1829. Catholic Record Society.
• Ounsley, M. (2024). Various posts on the Vachell family and Coley, including "The arrival of the Vachells", "Consolidation: The Vachells, 1309–1410", "Thomas Vachell II: Cromwell's man in Reading", "Lady Vachell's House", "The Vachell almshouse", and "Ownership and residence of Coley House, 1298–1937: An overview." Coley Notebook (blog).
• Stirnet. (n.d.). Vachell1: Vachell of Coley (Colley). Families Database.
• Metcalfe, W. C. (Ed.). (1901). The Visitation of Berkshire in the Years 1532, 1566, and 1623. Harleian Society.
• Crawfurd, G. P. (1893). "The Vachells of Coley." Berkshire Archaeological Journal, 3, 87–92.