Everyday life in Tudor and Stuart times

Overview In 1696, Gregory King published The State and

Condition of England, in which he described the population of England and Wales.

He divided the population into the following categories:

He analysed the population by numbers and by income, and he also analysed it by age and gender.

He divided society vertically, into 'interests' – the land, traders etc. Into each group he put both rich and poor – eg seamen earning £14 a year alongside merchants earning £400 – because he thought they had more in common with each other than a seaman might have, say, with a farm labourer.

The people of England had not yet learned to think in terms of social 'class‘.

Life for the Tudor lords

Life for the wealthy became increasingly luxurious and flamboyant during Tudor times.

When describing the rich in Tudor times some things you might think about are:

Meals in Tudor times consisted almost wholly of meat – no vegetables. Tudor people drank beer or wine, and ate and drank from pewter plates and mugs.

Fashions – in Tudor times, men wore decorated doublets (jackets) with peascod bellies (rounded front) and slashed trunks (short trousers with cuts in the fabric). Women wore fancy kirtles (overskirts) over wooden frames called farthingales, with high collars. Women's fashion favoured white faces, so they painted white lead on their faces. Both sexes might wear elaborate ruffs.

Rich lords built huge mansions in the countryside. One famous Tudor mansion is Hampton Court. The long gallery ran along the entire length of the house, where people could walk, or practise sword-fighting when the weather was bad. Keeping warm was a major consideration and Tudor mansions had many chimneys, for the many fires.

The lord would have a parlour, luxuriously panelled, with painted ceilings and tapestries hanging on the wall, and with high-sided dark wooden chairs. The richest families might even have a carpet on the floor!

In a Tudor garden the hedges and flower beds would be elaborately laid out in a pattern called a 'Tudor knot', or even a maze.

Tudor entertainments were still energetic – jousting, hunting, dancing, and sports such as tennis.

Life for the Stuart lords Life for the wealthy also became

increasingly luxurious and flamboyant during Stuart times.

When describing the rich in Stuart times some things you might think about are:

Fashionable people began to eat salad, grown in their own greenhouses. They drank new drinks – tea from China, cocoa from Mexico, and coffee from Arabia. They would eat from porcelain dishes imported from China, and drink from glasses.

In Puritan households of the 17th century, clothes were very plain – black and white and made of hard-wearing cloth. Cavaliers still dressed flamboyantly. Many women wore a false crescent-shaped beauty spot on their faces.

Inigo Jones was the first architect to bring the Italian Renaissance style, based on classical Roman buildings, to England. Sash windows were introduced from Holland. Furniture started to become more stylish and delicate.

In Stuart times, gardens were still very formal and people often opted for geometric designs.

Entertainments became more refined. Gentlemen went to the horse races, and played cards and board games. Smoking became popular.

Life in the towns

Some important things to think about when looking at towns are:

90 per cent of people still lived in the country. But the Tudor and Stuart era has been

described as the 'golden age of the small town':› it served as a market place for the countryside

round about› local inns provided accommodation for travellers› leisure facilities were found in towns – theatres,

coffee houses, race courses, etc Merchants' houses were built of stone and

finely furnished. The houses of ordinary townspeople were timber-framed. Bricks were expensive and only used for the houses of the very wealthy.

London: There were some improvements

in London in the 17th century:› water was piped from reservoirs to

people who could pay› streets were lit by oil lamps after

1680 In September 1666, after a hot

summer, a fire broke out in a baker's shop. The fire was fanned by a strong wind and destroyed 13,000 houses and 88 churches, including St Paul's Cathedral. Only a few people died, but about 100,000 were made homeless.

London had to be rebuilt. Christopher Wren designed the new St Paul's Cathedral that still stands today. The government insisted that new houses were built of bricks and stone.

Most people travelled by boat on the River Thames. The ferrymen were called 'wherrymen'.

In 1570, Sir Thomas Gresham opened the Royal Exchange. After Queen Elizabeth I visited it, it became a fashionable shopping mall.

During the Great Frost of 1683–1684, the River Thames was completely frozen for two months, and fairs were held on it.

The theatre became popular. The most famous theatre of Tudor times was The Globe, where Shakespeare's plays were performed. Oliver Cromwell banned the theatre – he thought it was evil. During the reign of Charles II, the plays became sexy and funny. Women were allowed to be actors and one of them, Nell Gwyn, famously became Charles II's mistress.

The heads of executed people were put in spikes on the Tower of London for all to see.

Life for the poor Life for the poor was difficult. Some things to bear in mind

when thinking about poverty in Tudor and Stuart times are: An average day for someone like a farm labourer would

start at 5 am. Work was broken up by meal times when simple dishes like vegetable stew were eaten.

There was no welfare state in Tudor and Stuart England. If you lost your job or grew too ill or old to work, you had three options: beg, steal or die. There were some attempts to improve life for the poor, but these didn't always make much difference. In the towns, one in five people were living in extreme poverty. It has been estimated that in some places, a quarter of the population consisted of beggars. Some roamed in gangs stealing, or bullying people into giving them alms.

Criminals Punishments were harsh and brutal: stealing anything worth over one shilling (5

pence), was punished by hanging poisoners were boiled alive a gossip was put in a scold's bridle, which was

like a metal cage that went over the head beggars were whipped through the streets

The Poor Laws In the reign of Henry VIII, a number of laws were passed to

try to prevent beggars, also known as vagrants, but they simply involved punishing poor people.

Elizabeth passed Poor Laws in 1597 and 1601, which said that:

Each parish had to look after its own poor. If anyone was found without money, he was sent back to his own village. If he did not return to his own village, he was flogged.

In each parish, Overseers for the Poor collected a tax called the Poor Rate. They could use this to buy tools and materials for the poor to work, and to see that pauper children were apprenticed to learn a trade.

Anybody who refused to work was punished. These laws remained in force for more than 200 years. Recreation for poor people included singing, bowling, cock-

fighting and dancing.

Interpretations Merrie England In the 19th century, novelists looking for a

romantic theme, and reformers looking backwards to a golden age, invented the idea of Merrie England – an idyllic interpretation of England before the Industrial Revolution.

This is the image that Hollywood loves to portray, and films like Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) and Elizabeth (1998) show a court of fabulous dresses and courtly behaviour.

This mythical society never existed. The historian R H Tawney (1912) described how in Tudor and Stuart England enclosures, rising prices and greedy landlords had reduced people to poverty. His vision of chaos and suffering had such an impact that the years 1540 to 1640 are still often called 'Tawney's century'.

Many horror films – eg Witchfinder General (1968) – are set in these times, and show witch-burnings, torture and religious extremism.

In the 1940s and 1950s, members of the Communist Party Historians Group interpreted this in a Marxist way. They argued that developments such as enclosure represented a class war, and the beginning of capitalism. They suggested that the nobility lost power and wealth at this time, and were replaced by the gentry, who were lesser landowners who took power during the Civil Wars.

The World We Have Lost

In 1965, Peter Lazlett published The World We Have Lost. He was a member of the Cambridge Group which challenged the conclusions of the Marxist historians.

Laslett used statistics to prove that English society before 1710 did not fit the Marxist idea of a class war – 'class' did not exist, society was not as divided, and the poor were not as poor as the Marxists tried to say.

Recent historians have interpreted English society in this era as held together, not by class, but by 'affinities' – ties of friendship, family and patronage.