Elizabeth I - Society

Question 1

What was the population of London like?

Answer 1

1520 - 60,000
1600 - 150,000

Question 2

What was the wage rate and cost of living?

Answer 2

1540s - money wage rate of 118 and cost of living of 167
1590s - money wage rate of 219 and cost of living of 443

Question 3

Why was there a population growth in London?

Answer 3

Expansion in trade
Increase in government officials and lawyers
Influx of people from countryside
Increasing number of unemployed and poor

Question 4

What was the Statute of Artificers?

Answer 4

1563 - seven year apprenticeships made compulsory in all urban crafts. This tried to create employment by tying a man to one trade, as unemployment meant vagrancy

Question 5

What was the vagabonds act?

Answer 5

Severe penalties were introduced for vagrancy, including whipping, boring of an ear and the death penalty for third offenses. JPs had to raise a poor rate and provide shelter for the elderly and the sick.

Question 6

What was the 1572 act for poor relief?

Answer 6

Established the principle that local ratepayers should be required to pay a rate for the relief of their own poor

Question 7

What was the poor law act of 1576?

Answer 7

The first act to attempt to create a national system of poor relief to be financed and administered locally. Towns were required to make a provision for the employment of the deserving poor.

Question 8

What was the poor law act of 1601?

Answer 8

The parish became designated as the institution required to raise the rates for, and to administer poor relief. Each parish was to appoint an overseer of the poor who was to ensure both the efficient collection of poor rates and the appropriate distribution of relief to the poor. Their key responsibilities were relieving the impotent poor, setting the able bodied to work and apprenticing poor children

Question 9

How long did the poor laws remain intact for?

Answer 9

1834

Question 10

What was the treatment of the undeserving poor like?

Answer 10

1572 - Act added branding to the range of punishments available to the authorities.
1597 - an Act was passed which laid down that first time offenders should be whipped and sent back to the parish of their birth and repeat offenders should be executed

Question 11

What was the act for maintaining tillage?

Answer 11

1563 - all land which had been under tillage for four years since 1528 must remain under tillage. Shows their dislike for enclosure
This was repealed in 1593 following a series of good harvests between 1587 and 93.

Question 12

What was the Statute regarding the export of corn?

Answer 12

1593 - a price limit was set on corn at twenty shillings a quarter. Export of corn was permitted when prices fell below this. This is a good indication that corn was sufficient in supply even for the growing population

Question 13

What was the Statute against conversions to pasture?

Answer 13

1598 - Acts to prevent further conversion of tillage into pasture. Parliament of 1598 was panicked into these measures by a spate of enclosures between 1591 and 1597.

Question 14

Who owned the income and land?

Answer 14

14% of national income belonged to 1.2% of families
Great landlords owned 17% of cultivated land
The richest 23% of the population owned 55% of taxable wealth

Question 15

How many people lived in poverty?

Answer 15

10% of people in the countryside and 20% of people in cities lived in absolute poverty

Question 16

Did Elizabeth create more dukes?

Answer 16

Between 1547 and to 1572 there were 4 dukes - Somerset, Northumberland, Suffolk and Norfolk. After 1572 Elizabeth was careful not to create any more dukes.

Question 17

How did nobility try to seek prestige?

Answer 17

Through massive building projects so that they could accommodate the queen. Houses such as Burghley, built by Lord Burghley in Northamptonshire and Wilton, built by the Earl of Pembroke in Wiltshire

Question 18

What was the situation in Ireland like in the 1560s?

Answer 18

Elizabeth was proclaimed Supreme Governor of the Church of Ireland in 1560. However she lacked the power to impose Protestantism on a population that was largely Catholic, where customary laws and landownership was hugely different from that of England. The get rich mentality of the English incomers and the frequent use of martial law led to bad relations with both the Gaelic Irish and the Old English.

Question 19

When were rebellions in Ireland?

Answer 19

Rebellions broke out in the South in 1569 to 1573 and 1579 to 1582, with the latter rebellion being linked with a Spanish incursion into County Kerry. Relations were further soured by the brutality of the response of the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Lord Grew of Wilton, to the latter rebellion

Question 20

What was the third Irish rebellion?

Answer 20

Centred on Ulster, where the clan chief Hugh O’Neill, created Earl of Tyrone by Elizabeth in 1585, rose up in rebellion in 1595 with the Spanish attempting to exploit the situation by including an Irish contingent in the Armada of 1596. This was unsuccessful. The rebels were victorious at the Battle of Yellow Ford in August 1598. Tyrone and his allies were in control of much of Ireland.

Question 21

How did Elizabeth respond to the third Irish rebellion?

Answer 21

She sent the Earl of Essex to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant in 1599. Instead of confronting Tyrone, he made a truce, defying the queen’s orders and returning to court. As soon as the truce expired, Tyrone moved south, and camped near Kinsale on the coast, hoping to link up with the Spanish army. This was to be the high point of his power.

Question 22

What happened after Essex returned to court?

Answer 22

Essex relieved of his position in 1600. Progress was made under the new Lieutenant, Lord Mountjoy and Sir George Carew. Tyrone was saved by Spanish forces landing in Kinsale in September 1601, but the English triumphed on Christmas Eve. Peace was negotiated in March 1603.

Question 23

How was Wales barely a problem?

Answer 23

Council of Wales and Marches remained in operation.
Book of Common Prayer and Bible were translated into Welsh.
Welsh gentry prospered under Elizabeth, although there was a disproportionate number of people implicated in the Essex rebellion

Question 24

What was border administration like?

Answer 24

Between 1578 and 1585, power of the Protestant Lords was tenuous. The murder of Francis Russel in 1585 looked like it might create long term problems. James VI accepted a pension of £4000 per annum.

Question 25

What was some social discontent of the period?

Answer 25

Food riots took place in London, Kent, Hampshire and Norfolk after harvest failures.
Oxfordshire rising of 1596 due to their experience of poverty.

Question 26

What was the northern rebellion?

Answer 26

1569
Took place mainly in Durham and the north riding of Yorkshire, which was linked to a rising in Cumberland in 1570. Headed by the leading northern nobility, the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland.

Question 27

What were the motives behind the northern rebellion?

Answer 27

Genuine religious further among the leaders and ordinary peasants.
The rebel leaders had political motives as they considered themselves dishonoured by having been displaced from their traditional aristocratic role of controlling the northern government. It could be argued that the rebellion was tied to a courtly conspiracy which proposed that the Duke of Norfolk should marry Mary Queen of Scots.

Question 28

What were the events of the northern rebellion?

Answer 28

Rebels marched on Durham and heard mass in the Cathedral in November. They then marched on York but they made no attempt to capture it. They moved back to Durham and besieged Barnard Castle in December. When the news broke that Crown forces were on their way, the earls disbanded their forces and fled to the border in Scotland. The rebellion in Cumberland but was heavily defeated at Naworth by the Queen’s cousin, Lord Hundson.

Question 29

Why did the northern rebellion fail?

Answer 29

Hopeless disorganisation with a lack of clarity concerning objectives
Poor leadership
Lack of expected foreign support
Decisive action by the authorities