Key industries Flashcards
What does ‘Our multitudes do infect our country with poverty. Our land hath not milk sufficient in the breast to nourish all’ mean?
-the need to feed the growing population and rising food prices that this caused were the major challenges for agriculture in the period
What 2 major agricultural developments are needed to be considered:
-the continued move to enclose fields
-the local embrace of new agricultural methods
What does ‘The poor at enclosing do grutch because of the abuses that fall, Lest some men should have but too much and some again nothing at all’ mean?
-suggests enclosure is a general term for the act of hedging, ditching and fencing the medieval open fields, common land and wasteland into consolidated and self-contained private farms->controversial process which predated Elizabeth’s reign and continued into and beyond the Stuart age
-it was clearly unpopular to many and was often blamed for rising grain prices
Why were enclosures so unpopular? (4)
-the fencing and hedging of common land meant that the very poorest post their rights to graze their livestock->in times of shortage owning a goat or cow could be the difference between life and death->labourers fought hard to defend their common land rights
-tenants (people who rented their land) had no legal claim to the land that they rented->they could face eviction and the destruction of their way of life due to enclosures
-if enclosures led to a move away from arable (crop) farming to pastoral (sheep) farming->many of the evicted would be left without jobs->often increased the ranks of the urban poor->concern for both the government and contemporaries
-enclosures were wrongly blamed for rising prices
Why did landlords want to enclose their fields?
-very profitable
-increased demand for English wool->move to sheep farming was rarely a risk and it required less labourers so had lower overheads
-increase the amount of land under cultivation
Was enclosures really a problem?
-turned crops into sheep pastures because wool was a more profitable commodity->landowners profiting at the expense of the tenant farmers and labourers so they were driven away
-was blamed for rising prices in the food riots
What do historians think about enclosures being a problem?
-historians argue that enclosures were usually carried out to increase the efficiency of arable farming due to the increase in population resulting in wool being more profitable
What other changes were there in agriculture in Elizabethan England?
-selective breeding
-new fertilisers were used
-extension of the amount of land under cultivation
-practising up and down husbandry
-as London grew the countryside of the Home Counties increasingly saw the development of specialised market gardens to keep the capital supplied with fresh fruit and veg
What was selective breeding?
-farmers started to improve their livestock by selective breeding and the importing of foreign breeds
What new fertilisers were used?
-in addition to animal dung mari (white and red clay) was increasingly used to great effect
What was the extension of the amount of land under cultivation?
-Saltmarshes in Caernarvon, Forests in Cumbria, Parkland in Kent and Sussex and the draining of the Fens
What was the practising of up and down husbandry?
-alternating land between arable and pasture farming->no need for fallow land
What happened as London grew the countryside of the Home Counties?
-increasingly saw the development of specialised market gardens to keep the capital supplied with fresh fruit and veg
What was the most significant industry in Elizabethan England besides agriculture?
the textile industry
What was included in the textile industry? What skills?
-spinning, weaving and dyeing as well as tailoring and hatting
What type of source of employment was the textile industry?
-biggest source of employment after agriculture and particularly important in East Anglia, the West Country and Yorkshire
What was the textile industry like at the start of Elizabeth’s reign?
-England was noted throughout Europe for the production of broadcloths ->thick woollen cloths which were usually exported unfinished
How did migration impact the textile industry?
-no major technical innovation in the industry->migration of fleeing European Protestants from northern France and the Spanish Netherlands brought new skills and trading links
-led to the development of lighter fabrics known as the new draperies
What was the textile industry like in the 1560s?
-in the 1560s this industry sprang up in East Anglia and the South East-> thinner product was very popular in the warmer (and rich) southern European markets
How did enclosures benefit the textile industry?
-enclosures ensured that the English textile industry had the cheapest raw wool in Europe->this was a time of growth and progress for the English textile industry
By what year was the production of coal and iron already well established?
1558
What were the main coal producing areas?
-Tyneside
-Durham
What was the reason for the rising coal production?
rising population
