Definition of "peasantry"

They distressed her. They were so stolid. She had always maintained that there is no American peasantry, and she sought now to defend her faith by seeing imagination and enterprise in the young Swedish farmers, and in a traveling man working over his order-blanks. But the older people, Yankees as well as Norwegians, Germans, Finns, Canucks, had settled into submission to poverty. They were peasants, she groaned.

1920, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 3, in Main Street‎

Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the gray-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity.

1885, George Eliot, chapter 1, in Silas Marner‎

How much low pezantry would then be gleaned / From the true ſeede of honor? And how much honor, / Pickt from the chaffe and ruine of the times / To be new verniſh’d?

c. 1596–1598 (date written), W[illiam] Shakespeare, The Excellent History of the Merchant of Venice. […] (First Quarto), [London]: […] J[ames] Roberts [for Thomas Heyes], published 1600, [Act II, scene ix]

He ſhall be armed at all peeces from the mid-thigh vpward with a faire Sword by his ſide, and his Captaines Colours or Enſigne in his hand, which Colours if they belong to a priuate Captaine ought to bee mixt equally of two ſeuerall colours, that is to ſay (according to the rules of Herauldry) of Colour and Mettall, and not colour on colour, as Greene and Red, or Blacke and Blew, or ſuch like, nor yet mettall on mettall as White and Yellow, or Orangetawny and White: for colours ſo borne, ſhew Baſtardy, peaſantry, or diſhonor.

1622, Francis Markham, “The Office of the Ensigne”, in Fiue Decades of Epistles of VVarre, London: […] Augustine Matthewes, page 74

Whoever would appear at the Diet, muſt previouſly become a country-man, or aſſume the peaſantry, and alſo ſue for it with the laudable Land-ſtates and obtain it at the Land-diet.

1762, A[nton] F[riedrich] Busching, “The Dutchy of Carniola”, in [Patrick Murdoch], transl., A New System of Geography: In Which Is Given, a General Account of the Situation and Limits, the Manners, History, and Constitution, of the Several Kingdoms and States in the Known World; […], volumes IV (Containing, Part of Germany, viz. Bohemia, Moravia, Lusatia, Austria, Burgundy, Westphalia, and the Circle of the Rhine), London: […] A[ndrew] Millar […], § 5, page 208

For certainly Sir I am ſo charitable to believe it was your Paſſion that impoſed upon your Underſtanding; elſe as a Gentleman you could have never deſcended to ſuch peaſantry of Language, eſpecially againſt ſuch a Perſon, to whom (had he never been your Prince) no Law enjoyns (whatſoever his Offences were) the puniſhment of Ribaldry.

a. 1681, [Samuel] Butler, The Plagiary Exposed: or An Old Answer to a Newly Revived Calumny Against the Memory of King Charles I. […], London: […] Tho. Bennet […], published 1691, page 2

Or wherefore, else, O tattered and diminished ’Scutcheon that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely stairs, Blakesmoor! have I in childhood so oft stood poring upon thy mystic characters—thy emblematic supporters, with their prophetic “Resurgam”—till, every dreg of peasantry purging off, I received into myself Very Gentility?

1833, Elia [pseudonym; Charles Lamb], “Blakesmore in H⁠——⁠shire”, in The Last Essays of Elia. […], London: Edward Moxon, […], pages 6–7