In the early modern period, the first sign that a person was a member of the underclass was lack of the kind of rights that membership in an elite estate conferred: in towns, for example, the underclasses did not share in municipal shared governance or enjoy political rights such as access to the privileged craft guilds (see 3.1. below). In rural areas, their rights to use the common land were limited; in the enclosures of the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Common lan…