Early modern Britain 1509–1745, Year 11: prosperity, theatre, poverty and the voyages (Elizabethan England option)

The gentry

HintKnights, esquires and gentlemen.

The whyThey served as Justices of the Peace and as Members of Parliament, and some made fortunes from trade, the law or royal service. Many built new country houses to display their success.

Glass

HintIt let light in, and let visitors see how much of it the owner could afford.

The whyThe new houses were built for comfort and show, not defence: symmetrical fronts, tall chimneys, long galleries and wide windows. Historians call the wave of new building the 'Great Rebuilding'.

Sumptuary laws

HintThe name comes from the Latin for expense.

The whyThe costliest materials, such as cloth of gold and purple silk, were reserved for the highest ranks. The laws aimed to keep the social order visible at a time when newly rich families could afford to dress like their betters.

The monasteries closed by Henry VIII

HintIt came on to the market a generation before Elizabeth's reign.

The whyThe Crown sold much of this land to raise money, and it passed into the hands of gentry and merchants. By Elizabeth's reign their families were established landowners.

Woollen cloth

HintIt began in the fields, with flocks.

The whyWoollen cloth was England's main manufacture and its main export. Its profits enriched merchants and landowners, while the spread of sheep farming drove some villagers from the land.

1576

HintThe year after players were expelled from the City of London.

The whyBefore then, companies of actors performed in inn yards, market places and great houses. Permanent playhouses meant a paying audience every afternoon and steady work for writers such as Marlowe and Shakespeare.

Groundlings

HintThey stood on the earth floor, open to the weather.

The whyWealthier people paid more to sit under cover in the galleries. Rich and poor watched the same play in the same building, which was unusual in a society so conscious of rank.

Without one, actors could be punished as vagabonds

HintA law of that year treated wandering players like beggars.

The whySo companies took their patrons' names, such as the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the Admiral's Men. The queen herself enjoyed plays and had her own company from 1583.

They thought plays were sinful and kept people from church

HintThe stage, in their eyes, was the Devil's work.

The whyThey also objected to boys playing women's parts. Their view won in the end: Parliament closed the theatres in 1642.

They feared the crowds would spread plague and cause disorder

HintThousands of people packed together, with pickpockets among them.

The whyThe playhouses were therefore built in the suburbs, beyond the City's control, many of them on the south bank of the Thames. In plague outbreaks they were shut by order.

Sheep needed far fewer workers, so farm labourers lost their work

HintA flock needs less looking after than a ploughed field.

The whyOther causes of rising poverty were a fast-growing population, rising prices, bad harvests in the 1590s, and the closing of the monasteries, which had once given alms to the poor.

Enclosure

HintVillagers lost the land where they had grazed their animals.

The whyIt made farming more profitable for the owner. Families who lost their rights to the common often had to leave the village to look for work.

The impotent poor

HintThe first word now usually means 'powerless'.

The whyThey were to be helped, with money, food or a place in an almshouse. The able-bodied who could not find work were to be given work. Those judged idle were to be punished.

Collect a compulsory tax, the poor rate, to support its own poor

HintOverseers gathered it from householders.

The whyIt built on earlier laws, above all an Act of 1597 that had created the overseers of the poor. The system lasted, with changes, until 1834. It rested on the idea that each parish had a duty to see that its own poor were provided for.

It feared they would cause crime and rebellion

HintBands of jobless strangers alarmed those responsible for keeping order.

The whyThere was no police force and no standing army. Under an Act of 1572 a vagrant could be whipped and marked by burning through the ear. Harsh punishment alone did not solve the problem, which is one reason the law moved towards organised relief.

1577; 1580

HintIt took nearly three years, in the decade before the Armada.

The whyHe was the first Englishman to do it. On the way he raided Spanish ports and treasure ships on the Pacific coast of America, and he came home with a rich cargo of spices and treasure.

The Golden Hind

HintIt began the voyage under another name, the Pelican.

The whyFive ships set out, and storms and disease took a heavy toll of them. In 1581 the queen went aboard at Deptford and Drake was knighted on its deck, an open sign of royal approval that angered Spain.

Carrying enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to sell

HintHe took captives from West Africa to Spain's American colonies.

The whyThe queen backed his second voyage and let him use one of her own ships. Later, as Treasurer of the Navy, he had faster, lower ships built, of the kind that fought the Armada. His career shows both the cruelty and the ambition of the age.

Roanoke

HintIt is remembered as the 'Lost Colony'.

The whyThe settlement, off the coast of what is now North Carolina, failed. When a supply ship returned in 1590 the colonists had vanished. Raleigh's ventures still pointed the way to later English colonies in America.

Privateer

HintTo the Spanish such a man was simply a pirate.

The whyIt was a cheap way for the queen to strike at Spain: private investors paid for the ships and shared the plunder with the Crown. Spain saw it as robbery with royal backing.