Elizabethan Society in the Age of Enlightenment 1558-88

• Arable farming - growing crops on farm land
• Subsistence farming - growing just enough to support yourself and family but not to sell
• Vagabonds/Vagrants - homeless and unemployed, who roamed around begging. Vagabonds would also do crime
• Recession - falling prices and businesses losing money, leading to unemployment
• Astrolabe - an instrument used by sailors for navigation
• Quadrant - navigation equipment used by sailors
• Colonies - lands under control of another country and occupied by the colonisers
• Monopoly - when one person or company controls the supply of something so they can charge what they wanted
• Education for nobility:

  • Private tutors at home
  • Both boys and girls
  • Languages, politics, sports (boys), needlework (girls)
• Grammar schools:

  • 72 founded during her reign
  • Private schools for middle class boys
  • Had to pay fees, but some poorer boys had fees paid for them
  • Long school days and years
  • Languages, politics etc
• Petty schools:

  • Run in a teacher's home
  • Younger boys, some would go to grammar school
  • Reading, writing, arithmetic
• Dame schools:

  • Most girls didn't go to school
  • Similar to petty schools, but run by a local, educated woman
  • Women were not expected to support themselves so only learned cooking and chores
• Labourers and poor children:

  • No formal education
  • Learned how to do farm jobs from their families
• Universities:

  • Oxford or Cambridge
  • Age 14/15
  • Geometry, philosophy, rhetoric etc
  • Preparing for positions in higher society
• Sports for nobility:

  • Hunting (men and women)
  • Fishing
  • Fencing
  • Real tennis
• Sports for working class:

  • Football - violent, large matches that could last hours and kill people
• Betting sports:

  • Bear-baiting - bears vs dogs
  • Cock-fighting - cockerel fights
  • All classes would watch and bet on matches
• Elizabethan theatre:

  • Religious plays lost favour
  • Comedies and tragedies
  • All classes would watch and nobility owned groups of actors
  • Only men could act all the parts
• Elizabethan poverty increase:

  • Population growth (35%) caused overcrowding
  • Poor harvests meant high prices but wages stayed low
  • Increase in sheep over crop farming, causing job cuts
  • Enclosure - fields were broken up into smaller chunks and no longer public for subsistence farming
• Elizabethan poor:

  • Spent 80%+ of wages on bread
  • Could get 'poor relief' money from charity
  • Some sympathy to ill people, but they thought unemployed were lazy
  • Vagrants/vagabonds harshly punished
• Statute of Artifices (1568):

  • To make sure poor relief was collected
  • If the rich didn't pay it they would go to prison
  • Officials were punished if they didn't enforce the poor relief payments
• Vagabonds Act (1572):

  • Vagrant could be whipped
  • Given death penalty if they were caught begging three times
  • Register of the poor
  • Towns had to find work for them
• Poor Relief Act (1576):

  • Telling the difference between the able poor and those who were faking illness
  • Able poor were given raw materials to make things to sell
  • Those who refused to work were sent to a correctional prison
• Impact of the Poor Laws:

  • Poverty continued
  • More people moved to towns for work
  • Less than 10% of Vagrants were punished due to sympathy
  • Proved that unemployment was a problem instead of laziness
  • A way for the poor to earn some money
• Why did Elizabethan's explore:

  • Expanding trade as conflict with Spain ruled out areas
  • Triangular trade and beginning of the slave trade
• New technology:

  • More accurate navigation
  • Longitude and latitude created for maps
  • Larger ships that could carry more and make long journeys
• Significance of Drake's circumnavigation:

  • Showed England as a courageous sea-faring nation
  • Boosted English morale
  • Claiming Nova Albion encouraged further colonisation
• Sir Walter Raleigh:

  • From the gentry and popular with Elizabeth
  • Elizabeth gave him money to explore North America
  • Raleigh investigated and organised funds for an English colony in Virginia
• Virginia colonisation attempts:

  • Hoped to aid trade and economic benefits, and have a base to attack Spanish colonies
  • 1st attempt in 1585
  • After the failure, 2nd colony in 1587
• Virginia 1st Colonisation failure:

  • Set out too late to plant crops.
  • Colonists were higher classes and unused to the hard farming and building labour that was needed
  • Didn't have enough supplies for building or establishing a colony
  • They had to rely on the natives and became too needy, leading to animosity and the colonists leaving
  • When the new colonists arrived, natives were openly hostile