Key topic 3: Elizabethan society in the Age of Exploration, 1558–88 Flashcards
Education: home school and university
Home: private tutors; petty schools for children under 10 in the home.
Parish schools 10+ run by the Church, taught basic literacy and crafts
Grammar schools 10-14 boys; children of gentry, merchants and yeoman.
Universities boys 14+ geometry, music, philosophy, logic law, latin, medicine: Oxford or Cambridge.
More people becoming better educated; literacy imprived supported by the printing press - books and newsheets
Leisure sport and pastimes and theatre
Nobles: Hunting, tennis, fencing, bowls, fishing
Lower classes: bear baiting, cock fighting, wrestling and football.
Theatres popular with everyone: wealthy sponsored professional companies of players e.g. the Queen’s Men
Purpose- built theatres Red Lion and The Globe and professional playwrights like Shakespeare
All classes attended th theatre.
Music and dancing also popular pastimes
The problem of the poor: reasons for increase in poverty etc
Enclosure - landowners enclosed common land in order to farm sheep - employ fewer people.
Increasing population - leads to shortages of food and supplies increased demands - led to inflation; but wages dropped as more labour. Increased population - more people needed land.
Bad harvests 1562, 1565, 1573, 1586
The changing attitudes to the poor
Attitudes changed: deserving poor, the old and sic couldn’t work; the idle poor - who could work but didn’t.
Poverty was more visible and Government worried about rebellion.
Vagabonds Act 1572 - stopped vagrancy - vagrants punished heavily
Poor Relief Act 1576 - JPs required to help the deserving poor with wool and raw materials so they could make and sell things.
Refusal meant you went to the House of Correction,
Factors prompting exploration, including the impact of new technology on ships and sailing and the drive to expand trade.
Factors for Exploration:
- Britain needs to open new trades as trading with Spain is no longer viable
- Elizabeth also rewarded enormous sums of money and funded many voyages
- triangular trade - buying slaves from Africa with guns and iron, selling them for sugar, spices, pearls, tobacco.
Technologies
navigation became more precise:
- eg 1584 Harriot worked out an easier way of using the sun to calculate the true sailing direction -> safer faster voyages
- Quandrant and Astrolable
improved voyage records:
- more accurate maps
- eg in 1569 Mercator maps was developed labelled with longitude and latitude
ship design:
- larger more stable ships -> making longer voyages possible
- faster, more manoeuvrable ships
- better firepower
politics:
-triangular traders improved England’s economy
- many journeys funded by Elizabeth -> rivalry with space for naval dominance.
- no trade with Spain
opportunity: massive reward the profitable transatlantic slave trade north-west passage adventure - key motivation for many young nobels
The reasons for, and significance of, Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe.
why:
- the main purpose was to raid Spanish colonies
- Drake wanted to revenge Spain on the attack at st Juan de Ulua where 325/400 soldiers were killed
- great profit to be made and many invested in his expeditions
- source estimate his treasure haul at 0.5B pounds in today’s money
began with 5 ships by the time he reached pacific in 1578 only 1 was left
captain Thomas Doughty executed for mutiny
56 men survived in 1580
English gained a reputation for having fine sailers
David Ingram wrote an account of fascinating things of the Americas which encouraged more voyages of exploration
Nova Albion in June 1579
English started to establish colonies
The significance of Raleigh and the attempted colonisation of Virginia.
who was Walter Raleigh?
background: well-connected protestant, Gentry
work: adventurer, sailor, courtier, author, poet
achievement: planned the first English colony in Virginia however was disliked by James 1 and were executed.
why was he significant:
- he raised the funds
- persuaded people to go
- appointed governor Ralph Lane
- a developed blueprint developed that was for colonisation used in later attempts
- bought back Manteo and Wanchese
why was establishment for colonies important:
- England no longer need to rely on European trades
- base to attack Spanish from
- base for privateering
- the benchmark for future colonies
- natives chose English over Spanish
Reasons for the failure of Virginia
set sail in 1585
unsuccessful voyage:
disaster struck and the largest ship damaged -> food ruined. Pea and beans saved but can no longer be planted
inexperience and bad selection of people:
reliant on native Americans
most were merchants who heard the idyllic description of the place -> hoping to find precious metals+ make wealth instead of willing to put in the groundwork
only men came
107/300 came
lacked labourers
native resistance:
although Manteo and Wanchese were there to help communicate and create stronger bonds, this wasn’t enough o convince Wingina who was the chief of Roanoke Island.
believed English had bad intentions
carried novel diseases
left England too late to arrive on time to plant crops
