Elizabeth I: Society and Economy

• Population Growth: 4 million people by 1603. Over 50% pf the poor lived at or below subsistence level
• Inflation: Roughly 400%, but Elizabeth stopped debasement
• 1563 Statute of Artificers - Aimed to enforce potential workers to take on seven-year apprenticeships, enforce a minimum period on one year for any worker's job, and to fix wages and prices, enforced by JP's. Quickly became redundant

  1572 The Poor Relief Act - donations to impotent poor became compulsory, better distinction between genuinely unemployed and 'idle poor'
• 1576 Houses of Correction established - Punished those who refused to work, JP's ordered to buy raw materials to provide work for able-bodied workers

  1597 Act for the Relief of the Poor - Confirmed compulsory poor rate. Each county had to have at least one House of Correction. Impotent poor were to be provided for, vagrants still treated harshly

  1601 Elizabethan Poor Law - Amended version of the 1597 Act. Clear distinction between genuine poor and idle poor. Remained substantially intact until 1834
• Ireland:

  Rebellions in the South, Earl of Tyrone sided with Spanish in 1596.

  1598: 6,000 Ulster rebels win Battle of Yellow Ford

  1599: Earl of Essex sent to sort the situation but failed.

  1601-3: 3,500 Spanish troops landed in Ireland. 7,000 English under Lord-Lieutenant Lord Mountjoy defeated them, peace negotiated.
• 1585: Debt of £300,000 cleared and another £300,000 accumulated
• Privateering brought extra revenue - the capture of the 'Madre de Dios' brought in £77,000
• 1603: Only 9% of land enclosed
• Sales of Crown Lands raised £600,000. Rents of £100,000 a year, but inflation was such that this meant losing money
• Winchester and Leicester owed the Queen £70,000. 1599: Wardships sold for 4 times the original price.
• Joint Stock Companies - Caribbean trading to try to break spanish monopolies.

  Purveyance (selling supplies for lower than market value) called 'Bastard Revenues'

  London-Antwerp Cloth trade accounted for 75% of all English exports but trade collapsed.

  Muscovy company already set up. £25,000 a year.
• Attempted colonies in America, failed.
• Slave trade began in 1562. Traded with West Indies. Attacks on Spanish fleets in the Caribbean agitated Philip.
• 1579: Eastland Company for Baltics

  1581: Levant Company for the Ottoman Empire

  1600: British East India Company for India