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A husbandman in England in the medieval and early modern period was a free tenant farmer or small landowner. The social status of a husbandman was below that of a yeoman. The meaning of "husband" in this term is "master of house" rather than "married man".
It has also been used to mean a practitioner of animal husbandry, or in perhaps more modern language, a rancher.
For a farmer or grower in general, see Farmers or Growers
Origin and etymology The term husband refers to Middle English huseband, from Old English hūsbōnda, from Old Norse hūsbōndi (hūs, "house" + bōndi, būandi, present participle of būa, "to dwell", so, etymologically, "a householder").
From Social Structure - Husbandman
The rural workforce
Below the yeoman came the husbandman This was a farmer working his own land and producing enough to feed his family and sell a small surplus on the market. The average husbandman's farm would have been about thirty acres and he would have had an income of c. £15 p.a.
Much of the seventeenth-century literature on agricultural improvement was directed at the husbandman as well as larger farmers.
In years of bad harvest, husbandmen might be forced to work as hired labor for others. But in good years they would have a disposable income of (perhaps) £3 after all expenses.
"Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck." (As you like it, 3.2)
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