Elizabeth section 5

Question 1

What was “Merry England”?

Answer 1

People from the industrialisation period imagined Elizabethan period to be the “golden age”

Question 2

What popular past times did the Elizabethan people enjoy?

Answer 2

• sports
• festivities
• ale house

Question 3

What sport did Elizabethan people do?

Answer 3

1. Football
   People played on streets between teams from different villages
2. Bear-Baiting
   Spectators bet on a pack of dogs attacking a bear

Question 4

What festivals did they celebrate?

Answer 4

1. Saints days were celebrated (parish ales) where drinking, food and dancing) (7 days)
2. Christmas lasted 12 days signing, dancing, eating.
3. May day- people danced around maypole and watched plays
4. Harvest home- celebrated once all crops had harvested (end of august)

Question 5

How did Elizabethan people enjoy the alehouse?

Answer 5

The alehouse was the most common pastime for labouring poor and middling sort to go with friends
Alehouse also had gambling and prostitution

Question 6

What did the Puritans do to attack popular pass times?

Answer 6

-Parish ales were stopped in many areas
Alehouses were closed
Marypoles were pulled down

Question 7

Why did Puritans attack popular past times?

Answer 7

As they wanted everyone to live a purer Christian life

Question 8

How did they stop popular past times?

Answer 8

They preached - - sermons attacking festivities
Persuaded JP’s to ban maypoles and introduce licenses for selling ale

Question 9

What drove puritan ministers to attack popular past times?

Answer 9

1. Protecting the sabbath
   - Puritans believed Sunday should be reserved for prayer, not drinking/dancing

Question 10

What drove Puritan ministers to attack popular past times? (2)

Answer 10

2. Stopping pagan patriarchies
   - Traditions such as May Day were pagan, not Christian

Question 11

What drove puritan ministers to attack popular past times? (3)

Answer 11

3. Preventing violent disorder
   - Crowds at festivals such as parish ales and harvest home often became drunk and violent. Puritans did not think this was Christian behaviour

Question 12

What drove puritans to attack popular past times? (4)

Answer 12

Preventing sex outside marriage
- Puritan ministers believed dancing and drinking at festivals such as May Day led to sin of sex out of marriage

Question 13

Why did Puritan ministers oppose to theatres?

Answer 13

As plays encouraged unholy behaviour and distracted ordinary people from prayer and bible reading

Question 14

Why did the London city authorities oppose theatres?

Answer 14

They opposed the theatre because they feared crowds of spectators would spread the plague or commit crimes

Question 15

Who supported the theatres?

Answer 15

The Queen enjoyed theatre and invited Shakespeare to perform at royal court

Ordinary people loved theatre for cheap entertainment

Question 16

Why were theatre companies formed?

Answer 16

As the government arrested actors as vagrants, they built theatre companies

Question 17

What were popular plays at the time?

Answer 17

Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth

Question 18

What did Elizabethan people believe about witches?

Answer 18

They believed witches could perform magic to cure illness, control actions of others and recover stolen goods

Question 19

What were “familiars” that were linked with the witches?

Answer 19

Small animals that helped the witches with their evil acts

Question 20

What was the law against witchcraft?

Answer 20

1563 Witchcraft law resulted in death for using “witchcraft” to kill and prison for damage to property

Question 21

How many cases of witchcraft were there in 1580s?

Answer 21

166 cases of witchcraft

Question 22

What are historians interpretations of the reasons for persecution of witches?

Answer 22

1. Tension between villagers
   - Power for powerless
   - lots of unexplained terrible things happen

Question 23

What are historians interpretations for persecution of witches (2)

Answer 23

2. Attacks on women
   - 90% of those accused were women
   - persecuting witches was a way to deal with women who did not have husband to control them

Question 24

What are historians interpretations of persecutions of witches? (3)

Answer 24

3. Puritans
   - Puritan ministers encouraged persecution to get rid of magical beliefs
   - Essex, (highly accused of witchcraft) was highly Puritan