The Golden Age

• The Chain of Being

  • Nobility
  • Gentry (wealthy landowners)
  • Peasantry
  • Animals and plants
• • The hierarchy goes:
  • God
  • Queen Elizabeth
  • Nobles and Lords
  • Gentry and Merchants
  • The Rest Of The Population
• • Nobles and Lords:
  • Archbishops/Bishops
  • Judges - heard cases in main law courts
  • The court and the privy council
  • Parliament - house of commons and the house of lords
  • Quarter sessions - (this class and the gentry)
• • Gentry and Merchants:
  • 900 parish priests
  • Local law courts
  • Lord lieutenants (very high up in this class)
  • Quarter sessions (mix between this class and nobility)
  • Justices of peace - town councils (mayors and elder man elected by wealthy citizens), local officials (constables oversaw taxes, arrested criminals, oversees the poor)
• • The rest of the population:
  • Local law courts
  • Churchwardens
• • Nobility:
  • they made up the most respected members of society, you had to be born into this group or if you were awarded a title by the monarch (the queen). If nobility committed treason they would be beheaded - not publically hanged.
• • Nobility:
  • The average income was £6000 a year (1 million in today's money). Nobility has special protection from torture, the population is 1% nobility out of all England. 14% of the countrie's incomes go to the nobility.
• • Gentry:
  • They were the landlords of the countryside, they lived on the rents of their tenants and did no manual labour themselves.
  • Some members were wealthier than the poorest nobles.
• • Gentry:
  • Income of a member of the gentry would range from £10 to £200 per year (£1,200 to £34,000 in today's money).
• • Doublet (long-sleeved silk shirt with ruffles at the end)
  • Woolen/silk stockings
  • Trunk-hose (padded out with horse hair to make bulges and cut in strips to give 2 tone effect)
  • Jerkin (A colourful velvet jacket decorated with embroidery, fastened at the front with buttons)

  
• • Ruff (narrow strip of starched linin ironed into pleats and worn around the neck as a collar)
  • Shoes (leather with cork soles)
  • Hat
  • Cloak
  • Sword
  • Beard

  
• • Farthingale (a petticoat with wooden hoops sewn into it)
  • Ruff (A lace collar with a wire frame worn around the neck)
  • Undergown (made of silk or satin and heavily pattered and embroidered, with wide sleeves with ruffles at the end)
  • Gown (satin or velvet, sleeveless, and slashed to show the undergown through)
  • An over-gown (a cape with armholes for cold weather or going out)

  
• • Dyed hair with false hair piled on top Heavy white make up (lead based and highly poisonous)
  • Blackened teeth (mad fashionable by the queen, whose teeth were rotten because of sugar consumption)
  • Shoes (embroidered silk or velvet or light Spanish leather)
  • A small hat (designed to show off as much hair as possible)

  
• • Sumptuary Laws:
  • People had to wear wooly hats on Sunday's to promote the buying of british wool.
  • The colour purple was restricted to the royal family.
  • Restrictions on who could wear silk and furs.
• Houses were built for comfort and the rich had a Great Chamber as the main room
• Houses were designed to be symmetrical with an E or H shape
• Houses used rich oak panelling and geometric plasterwork set off walls hung the colourful tapestries
• Glass was expensive so the richer you were the more windows you had which led to the introduction of window tax
• Breakfast became popular
• The Queens courtiers had diets high in meat, eating things such as sheep, dears, pigs and oxen
• The courtiers had food served on gold and silver to demonstrate wealth
• The wealthy had exotic foods imported such as spices, cinnamon, ginger, pineapples, chillies, tomatoes, potatoes, chocolate and sugar which was popular with Elizabeth and she put it on salad
• Tennis was known to be wealthy and official shoes were only for the rich and forbidden for the poor
• The Queen enjoyed horse riding and Henry VIII enjoyed hunting and spent 6am-10pm on the hunt
• Tournaments and jousting popular way for monarch and nobility to celebrate and was played by knights and lords whilst nobility looked on
• People liked the theatre because it was new, sense of community, rich
• Religion did not play a part in theatre
• The rich sat behind the stage in the theatre and all shows had to be approved by Elizabeth so it was a form of propaganda
• Original plays were in the Medieval times by priests who used their plays to teach the Bible as very few could read
• The cheapest seats in the theatre were the pit
• By 1595, 15000 people visited the theatre a week
• The wealth saw the theatre as profitable whilst court patronage was wanted as people wanted Elizabeth to see their plays
• Plays had the approval of the Queen and government so useful for positive messages
• There were clever playwrights and theatre was a distraction for the poor
• Opposition to the theatre included a fear of disease so in 1593 all closed due to plague
• Government worried about rebellions as Earl of Essex went to Richard II play about a monarch being overthrown the day before his rebellion
• Strolling actors were banned
• The first theatre was built by the Earl of Leicester in 1577
• Europeans discovered new lands and people and England became a great power
• Poetry became very popular such as sonnets and are still read and performed today