The last years of Elizabeth

• Political condition in the last years of Elizabeth

  • Decline in royal authority and the quality of administration during the 1590s due to anxieties over the succession, problems in the Privy Council and factions e.g. Essex Rebellion
  • Despite this, there was broad political unity had been achieved by 1603
• The population was broadly loyal to the Crown, apart from a small group of militant Catholics
• Economic condition

  • Considerable economic continuity during the 16th century
  • Some of the economic circumstances of the early 17th century would inevitably lead to commercial domination e.g. the setting up of trading companies to challenge the domination of the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch
  • The organisation of English capitalism was crude in comparison with the commercial sophistication of the Dutch
  • Cottage industries e.g. nail making, flourished, which suggests that domestic demand was thriving
• The state of society

  • Socially divided
  • Huge differences between the wealthy few and poor majority
  • Most of the time the majority of the population could be fed
  • There was only one subsistence crisis in the 1590s where there was death due to starvation
  • Poverty and harvest failures from 1594-1597 helped to shape the reform of the poor law enacted in 1598 and 1601 which limited the worse effects of poverty (for the deserving poor)
  • In contrast with many continental societies, the nobility were subject to taxation
• The state of religion

  • Compared with the beginning of her reign, the level of popular Catholicism had declined
  • English Catholics were fundamentally divided between a majority who tried to accommodate conflicting loyalties to Crown and faith and a minority who identified wholly with the bull of excommunication and who sought a Catholic succession
  • The Church of England had become an institution which the majority could identify with
  • Puritanism as a dynamic movement had faded and the majority of Puritans had become assimilated within the Anglican mainstreams
  • Separatism, never a numerically strong movement, had virtually disappeared
  • Broad consensus surrounding the Church of England which ensured a substantial degree of religious unity