Elizabeth section 5 Flashcards
What was “Merry England”?
People from the industrialisation period imagined Elizabethan period to be the “golden age”
What popular past times did the Elizabethan people enjoy?
- sports
- festivities
- ale house
What sport did Elizabethan people do?
- Football
People played on streets between teams from different villages - Bear-Baiting
Spectators bet on a pack of dogs attacking a bear
What festivals did they celebrate?
- Saints days were celebrated (parish ales) where drinking, food and dancing) (7 days)
- Christmas lasted 12 days signing, dancing, eating.
- May day- people danced around maypole and watched plays
- Harvest home- celebrated once all crops had harvested (end of august)
How did Elizabethan people enjoy the alehouse?
The alehouse was the most common pastime for labouring poor and middling sort to go with friends
Alehouse also had gambling and prostitution
What did the Puritans do to attack popular pass times?
-Parish ales were stopped in many areas
Alehouses were closed
Marypoles were pulled down
Why did Puritans attack popular past times?
As they wanted everyone to live a purer Christian life
How did they stop popular past times?
They preached - - sermons attacking festivities
Persuaded JP’s to ban maypoles and introduce licenses for selling ale
What drove puritan ministers to attack popular past times?
- Protecting the sabbath
- Puritans believed Sunday should be reserved for prayer, not drinking/dancing
What drove Puritan ministers to attack popular past times? (2)
- Stopping pagan patriarchies
- Traditions such as May Day were pagan, not Christian
What drove puritan ministers to attack popular past times? (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
What drove puritans to attack popular past times? (4)
Preventing sex outside marriage
- Puritan ministers believed dancing and drinking at festivals such as May Day led to sin of sex out of marriage
Why did Puritan ministers oppose to theatres?
As plays encouraged unholy behaviour and distracted ordinary people from prayer and bible reading
Why did the London city authorities oppose theatres?
They opposed the theatre because they feared crowds of spectators would spread the plague or commit crimes
Who supported the theatres?
The Queen enjoyed theatre and invited Shakespeare to perform at royal court
Ordinary people loved theatre for cheap entertainment
Why were theatre companies formed?
As the government arrested actors as vagrants, they built theatre companies
What were popular plays at the time?
Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth
What did Elizabethan people believe about witches?
They believed witches could perform magic to cure illness, control actions of others and recover stolen goods
What were “familiars” that were linked with the witches?
Small animals that helped the witches with their evil acts
What was the law against witchcraft?
1563 Witchcraft law resulted in death for using “witchcraft” to kill and prison for damage to property
How many cases of witchcraft were there in 1580s?
166 cases of witchcraft
What are historians interpretations of the reasons for persecution of witches?
- Tension between villagers
- Power for powerless
- lots of unexplained terrible things happen
What are historians interpretations for persecution of witches (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
What are historians interpretations of persecutions of witches? (3)
- Puritans
- Puritan ministers encouraged persecution to get rid of magical beliefs
- Essex, (highly accused of witchcraft) was highly Puritan
