By God's will you were born into a particular rank (your lot in life). You were expected to know your place, keep it and work at whatever calling came within the scope of your family's position. Each family might rise, through hard work and God's grace. Small status rises were not too disturbing for one's neighbours. However, great success provoked envy, jealousy and suspicion of overreaching ambition. Doubts about the means by which you rose might arouse accusations of magic and devilish assistance. People would be all too ready to credit the Bible's view: ‘he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent’ (Proverbs 28:20). The industrious, careful man, slowly improving his position, was safe from negative gossip, for ‘wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase’ (Proverbs 13:11). The rapid increase in bourgeois wealth created an interplay between envy, condemnation of luxury, suspicion of avarice and dishonesty, and fears of an upstart, ambitiously aspirational group rivalling the traditional ruling class.

The Elizabethans and Jacobeans were suspicious about social movement. If God made the world, putting each man in his place, was it not counter to God's will to change your social status? A poor man becoming poorer was thought punished for some unnamed sin, but a man going up in the world was usually not thought of as being rewarded for virtue, but rather guilty of sinful means. Some argued that God gave men abilities or talents, expected them to be used and rewarded hard work. If that meant you could climb out of your birth rank and better yourself then you could be said to be doing God's will and worshipping him by developing the talents he gave you. This was a popular view among Non- Conformists for whom the work ethic was central. They believed in industry, thrift and found the idea of making money acceptable. A rise in fortunes, place and public status should not, however, be accompanied by a complacent attitude to making money at any cost.