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

The gentry

提示Knights, esquires and gentlemen.

为什么They 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

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

为什么The 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

提示The name comes from the Latin for expense.

为什么The 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

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

为什么The 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

提示It began in the fields, with flocks.

为什么Woollen 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

提示The year after players were expelled from the City of London.

为什么Before 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

提示They stood on the earth floor, open to the weather.

为什么Wealthier 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

提示A law of that year treated wandering players like beggars.

为什么So 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

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

为什么They 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

提示Thousands of people packed together, with pickpockets among them.

为什么The 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

提示A flock needs less looking after than a ploughed field.

为什么Other 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

提示Villagers lost the land where they had grazed their animals.

为什么It 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

提示The first word now usually means 'powerless'.

为什么They 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

提示Overseers gathered it from householders.

为什么It 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

提示Bands of jobless strangers alarmed those responsible for keeping order.

为什么There 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

提示It took nearly three years, in the decade before the Armada.

为什么He 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

提示It began the voyage under another name, the Pelican.

为什么Five 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

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

为什么The 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

提示It is remembered as the 'Lost Colony'.

为什么The 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

提示To the Spanish such a man was simply a pirate.

为什么It 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.