British (1485-1603)

Jane Whittle

Tudor England, English, Cornish

England occupies the island of Great Britain south of Scotland and east of Wales. Great Britain lies in northwest Europe. The modern United Kingdom of Great Britain is comprised of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This culture summary considers England only.

From a high of 4-6 million in the early fourteenth century, the population of England was reduced by between a third and a half by the outbreak of plague known as the Black Death, in 1348-49. Repeated epidemics meant the population levels declined further, reaching low point of 2 million in the mid fifteenth century, and was still at this level in 1485. Reasonably accurate population estimates are available from 1524 onwards, when England’s population stood at 2.4 million. During the sixteenth century it increased rapidly, to 3.1 million by 1551 and 4.2 million in 1601.

English was spoken within England, with the exception of the far west of Cornwall in the southwest, where Cornish was used. Cornish is a Brittonic language related to Breton and Welsh. In Tudor England most legal documents were written in Latin.

England’s capital city, London, had a population of 55,000 around the year 1520, while the largest provincial cities—Norwich, Bristol and York—had populations of 8,000-9,000. London grew more rapidly than the population as a whole to reach 200,000 by 1600, but England remained primarily a country of scattered farmsteads, villages and small market towns.

England had many distinctive styles of regional vernacular domestic architecture, and houses from this period survive in significant numbers. In the late fifteenth century houses were typically constructed around the “hall” which was the main living space heated by a central hearth, open to the roof, with smoke escaping through the thatch. During the sixteenth century chimneys, ceilings, staircases and glazed windows were added to older houses and incorporated in those newly built, substantially changing the style of accommodation. Both upstairs rooms and ground floor service rooms multiplied, but the hall remained the main living space. In upland areas the “longhouse” housed animals and people in the same unit, divided by a cross passage.

It is estimated that in 1600 seventy percent of England’s population belonged to rural agricultural households, twenty-two percent to rural non-agricultural households engaged in manufacture and service occupations, and eight percent were urban. As there were few imports of food in this period, the number of non-agricultural households indicate that agriculture was already commercialized and producing a significant surplus. England’s farming system combined the cultivation of grain crops (primarily wheat, barley and oats) with the raising sheep and/or cattle, within each farm. Less significant in terms of land use, but vital to diet, were fruit, vegetables, pigs and poultry raised on small plots close to the farm house. Land was cultivated by plough, drawn by oxen or horses. Livestock provided manure, returning nutrients into the soil. Fuel was collected from hedges, managed woodlands, and rough pasture.

The main elements of the ordinary English diet in this period were bread, butter, cheese and meat; beer was the main drink. Wheaten bread dominated in southern and midland England, but in the north and west bread or flat-cakes were made from oats or a barley/oat mixture. Beer was brewed from barley throughout the country. The quantity and type of meat consumed was governed by wealth, with elite households consuming large quantities of beef, venison, mutton and poultry, and poorer households eating small amounts of ham and bacon.

Although some farming households had the potential to be self-sufficient, this was rarely the case. Poorer households supplemented their income through wage labor. Bread, cheese and beer were readily available for purchase from commercial producers. Weekly markets in local towns provided a forum for small producers and consumers to meet and exchange products. Medium-sized farms typically marketed some of their products, and larger farms made significant profits from selling large quantities of grain and/or livestock. The robustness of the market economy is demonstrated by the lack of famine in England during this period, in comparison with Scotland and continental Europe. Nevertheless, a series of poor harvests was experienced in the 1590s, with repeated crop failures. This resulted in economic distress in some areas, yet only some isolated cases of starvation reported in the north-west of England. In comparison, similar conditions in the early fourteenth century had resulted in an excess mortality of around fifteen percent. The growing prosperity of the middling section of England’s population is also indicated by changing consumption patterns. These included the use of pewter tableware rather than wooden vessels, the adoption of featherbeds and pillows rather than straw, and the addition of chimneys and glass windows to ordinary houses.

England’s main industry was the production of woolen cloth. The wool was cleaned, carded and spun into yarn, then was woven, fulled and dyed to produce a heavy, high-quality cloth for export. Broadcloth of this type was produced in Kent, Berkshire, and the West Country (Wiltshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire). Somewhat lighter woolens were produced in Devon, Yorkshire and Lancashire, while worsted was produced in Norfolk. Linen cloth made from flax was used for under-clothing. Linen was produced in Lancashire, but most linen cloth was imported from continental Europe during this period. Mining was locally important, with coal mined in the Newcastle area of northeast England, lead in Derbyshire, and tin in Cornwall. There were areas specializing in metal-working in the west Midlands, and in Yorkshire around Sheffield. These regional industries can be contrasted with crafts found across England. Market towns were distinguished from villages by their greater variety of occupations, and typically contained specialist clothing producers (tailors, shoemakers, glovers, hatters), producers of food and drink (butchers, bakers, brewers, victuallers), woodworkers (carpenters, joiners, turners, coopers) and metalworkers (smiths), as well leather curers (tanners) and candle makers (chandlers). There were also specialist retailers, particularly in the textile trades, often selling imported goods (mercers, drapers, haberdashers, and grocers).

England’s main trading partner during this period was continental Europe. Spices and silks had been reaching England from South and East Asia since the medieval period, via the Middle East and the Mediterranean. From the late fourteenth century onwards, increasing quantities of goods were imported from continental Europe in return for exports of wool and cloth. These included foodstuffs from the Mediterranean, especially raisins which had become a staple part of the English diet by 1600, but also smaller quantities of citrus fruit and olive oil; also, various types of cloth—linens in large quantities, but also fine woolens, silks, and decorative textiles such as carpets, tapestries and painted cloths. Some of these textile imports, like spices, were from beyond Europe, imported via other European countries such as Portugal and Italy.

Court cases from mid sixteenth-century Norfolk in which men stated their occupational title indicate around forty-five percent were farmers, thirty percent were wage laborers, and twenty-five percent had craft or specialist occupations. However, occupational titles do not reveal the household economy. Wage laborers might own land or animals. Some craftsmen owned substantial farms. Women did not necessarily work in the same occupations as their husband. Many women spun yarn for cash income; others made malt, brewed beer and engaged in small scale retailing. The production of butter and cheese was exclusively female. Much of the wage labor in the economy during this period was provided by servants rather than laborers. Servants were mostly young, unmarried people aged between fifteen and twenty-four who lived with their employer and were paid in food and lodging as well as a small cash wage; this form of service made much of wage labor a life-cycle stage rather than a social class. Servants did all kinds of work, including agricultural labor and craft production, as well as domestic chores. Men and women worked as servants in roughly equal numbers.

English land tenure in the sixteenth century continued to be shaped by the medieval manorial system. All land belonged to a lord, and lay within a particular manor. Lordship gave the manorial lord rights of jurisdiction over his tenants as well as rights to rent and other payments. A manor was typically comprised of four types of land: demesne, freehold, customary, and common land. Demesne was the lord’s private landholding which s/he could farm directly or rent out on commercial terms. Freehold tenure gave the tenant the right to use, buy and sell land in return for a small fixed rent. In the medieval period customary tenure was held by unfree tenants (serfs). By the sixteenth century most of these tenants were personally free. There were two main types of customary tenure. In eastern England copyhold of inheritance dominated, which allowed tenants to buy and sell their tenancies as long as a payment was made to the lord on each transaction and recorded in the manorial court roll. In western England copyhold for lives was more common—tenancy was granted for three lives (the tenant, his wife and their son). When one of the lives expired, a new life term could be added with an additional payment. These payments were sometimes very substantial, and rights to land were finite. A family could be gradually dispossessed of land if the lord so chose. Due to monetary inflation during the sixteenth century, freeholds and copyholds became increasingly privileged tenures, owing rents and other payments far below their market values. Rather than transfer the status of land and face lengthy lawsuits, lords often found it easier simply to purchase freehold and customary land from tenants, after which it could be sublet for market rents.

Kinship terminology was the same as modern English usage, with some minor exceptions. “Cousin” was used loosely to refer to all more distant relations, “kinsman” or “kinswoman” was also used in this way. “In law” was used to refer to step-children and step-parents. The term “family” was used in two ways. One was to refer to everyone living in a particular household. This included non-related servants and apprentices. The other way was to refer to the wider family of people related by blood and marriage beyond the household.

By 1600 England was part of the “northwest European marriage system” (commonly abbreviated as “EMP”). This was characterized by: (1) the couple setting up a new household on marriage; (2) relatively late marriage for women (around the age of twenty-five); (3) a high proportion of women never marrying (by 1651 twenty-four percent of women reached the age cohort of forty to forty-four without marrying); (4) young people circulating between households as servants before marriage. The EMP was also characterized by a high degree of choice exercised by women and men in choosing their marriage partner. The amount of choice had an inverse relationship to the quantity of inherited wealth. While poorer women had only their own earnings, women of middling wealth typically brought a dowry of cash and/or goods (her inheritance) into marriage. The nobility had the most wealth and the least choice in marriage. By 1600 a noblewoman’s dowry could amount to thousands of pounds, and marriages in which the wife was aged twelve to sixteen and had no choice in her prospective husband remained the norm. Among ordinary people marriage was a process rather than a single event. Marriage occurred if a man and woman swore to marry each other in the present (as opposed to future) tense. Sexual relations could follow the exchange of vows. The church wedding occurred sometime later. Comparisons between dates of marriage and baptism of the first child show that many women were pregnant by the time of their church marriage. However, the birth of children to unmarried mothers remained very rare.

Typical household size in England in the seventeenth century was between four and five people. Evidence is very scarce for the sixteenth century, but in Ealing in the countryside outside London the average household size was 4.75 people in 1599. The typical domestic unit consisted of a married couple, children aged between newborn and fifteen, and one or two servants or apprentices aged between fifteen and twenty-four. Elderly people with married children usually retired into their own accommodation. Households containing more than two generations were rare. Wealthier households were larger because they employed more servants, and because they married younger and had more children.

There were three different systems of inheritance in operation in Tudor England: one relating to real property (land), one relating to moveable property (goods and cash), and a third system which could override the first two (bequests in a last will and testament). Manorial land and freehold land was inherited by the eldest son; if there was no son it was inherited jointly by the daughters. Where there were no children it would pass to siblings, but this was rare, as people typically made other provisions. Customary land (a form of tenancy with some rights of perpetuity for the tenant) was inherited according to the custom of the manor—typically going to the eldest son, but in some manors land was partible between sons, and in others the land passed to the youngest son. Provision for widows also varied; most commonly they received a third of the land for their lifetime only. The widow also received a third of all moveable property, and the rest was divided equally between the children. These measures could be overridden by making a will, however. Around twenty-five percent of adult men dying in Tudor England made a will. The rate for women was much lower, as married women technically owned no property (it belonged to the husband during marriage). English law gave men sweeping powers to dispose of property as they wished in a will. In southern England they could dispose of all their moveable property in this way. Rights to bequeath real property in wills varied according to tenure. While men could disinherit their widow and children this was extremely rare, and most commonly wills were used to favor the widow, especially if the children were young. The usual pattern was one third to the widow, cash and goods to daughters and younger sons, and real property to the eldest son, but poorer men often gave everything to their widow, trusting her to do the best possible for their children.

While gentlewomen sent their babies to be cared for by wet-nurses from birth until the age of between two and three, ordinary mothers cared for their own children. Coroner’s reports demonstrate that risk of accidental death was highest between the ages of two and five, when children became mobile but were loosely supervised around the home while parents worked. From around the age of seven children accompanied the parent of the same sex in their work tasks, learning what to do and working themselves. From the age of eight or nine children were capable of earning some income, for instance scaring birds or spinning. Records relating to the care of orphaned children suggest it was not until around the age of thirteen or fourteen, however, that a child was capable of earning their keep. It is no coincidence therefore that many left home to enter service soon after, around the age of fifteen. Service offered a practical education in a range of work tasks in different households. Boys destined to craft work entered into more formal apprenticeships for a period of seven years, for which a premium was paid to the employer. Employers had a duty to educate servants and apprentices, sometimes teaching them to read and write, and providing religious instruction. Boys destined for careers in the church or in trade might be sent to school to learn reading, writing and Latin, but they were a small minority.

William Harrison, writing in the late sixteenth century, distinguished four “degrees of people” in English society, roughly in order of wealth and status. The first degree was the gentry and nobility, wealthy landowners who also possessed political power. The second was citizens and burgesses, townspeople of higher status who held political roles within larger towns. The third was yeomen, wealthy farmers who dominated local society at the level of the village. The fourth degree consisted of the majority of society: small farmers, wage laborers, ordinary craftsmen, and servants.

Tudor England was a hereditary monarchy, the crown passing to the eldest son or to the eldest daughter in the absence of sons. The monarch’s power was tempered by Parliament. In 1215 the Magna Carta laid down the principle that taxes could not be levied without the consent of Parliament. From the fourteenth century Parliament was divided into two “houses”: the upper house (House of Lords) contained the aristocracy and senior clergy while the lower house (House of Commons) held the gentry and urban elite. The gentry and urban elite also played an important part in local government, staffing local and county law courts, and holding responsibility for suppressing popular unrest or rebellion. In villages and small towns the wealthiest inhabitants were chosen to hold the offices of constable and church warden with responsibility for enforcing law and order. There was no police force or standing army, but also no democratic representation for the majority of male householders, let alone the population as a whole.

Tudor England possessed many law courts with overlapping jurisdictions, and was a highly litigious society. Thousands of legal records survive from this period. Courts were neither outwardly corrupt nor entirely impartial in their operation, as wealth and legal training gave members of the social elite advantages in accessing the law. Nonetheless, if they could obtain the necessary evidence and fund a legal case, the courts did uphold the interests of ordinary people against the gentry in some cases. Local courts had wide-ranging powers to enforce their own regulations controlling social behavior. People could be charged and fined for being overly argumentative, overly litigious, acting suspiciously, housing outsiders, and sexual misconduct. The government also tried to regulate economic behavior and geographical mobility via laws that aimed to control wage labor and suppress vagrancy. It was illegal to be unemployed or to wander the country looking for work. Maximum wage rates were set in law. If these laws had been rigidly enforced their impact would have been substantial, but this was not the case.

Outbreaks of rioting and other forms of protest were not unusual in Tudor England. The period was also marked by a number of large popular rebellions. The usual sequence of events was: particular communities decided to resist government directives such as taxation; they took up arms, marched to the local city and took control of government there; they marched towards London to take their case to the King; they were dispersed by a hastily gathered army led by a nobleman; the ringleaders were prosecuted and hanged while other participants were pardoned. Rebellions of this type occurred in Yorkshire in 1489 (against taxation), Cornwall in 1497 (against taxation), the north of England in 1536-37 (against religious change), the southwest of England in 1549 (against religious change), and East Anglia in 1549 (against agrarian change and local corruption). The rebellions of 1536-37 and 1549 were particularly alarming for the government, which lost control of large parts of the kingdom for several months in each case, providing a stark reminder of the limits of governmental power.

The most significant social upheaval of Tudor England was the religious Reformation, in which England broke away from Catholic Christianity led by the Pope in Rome and established a Protestant Church of England. This process was begun by Henry VIII in 1529 and completed by 1537. However, Queen Mary (1553-1558) returned the country to Catholicism, only for this to be reversed by Queen Elizabeth in 1558, after which England remained Protestant. Other than changes in religious doctrine, the Reformation affected ordinary people in a variety of ways. Monasteries were closed and their land and property confiscated by the crown. This change lay behind the popular rebellion in the north of England in 1536-37. Monasteries had been an important source of education, charity and medical care, especially in more remote areas. In the 1540s Latin was replaced with English as the language for church services; also, paintings and images of saints were removed, and other precious goods were confiscated from parish churches. These changes provoked the Western Rebellion of 1549. Parish churches had been built, decorated and furnished by donations from parishioners, who objected to the crown taking their goods. Additionally, the worship of saints and the doctrine of purgatory were suppressed—both important elements of pre-Reformation popular beliefs.

Upholding religion was the responsibility of the clergy. The clergy were funded by tithes, a tenth of all agricultural produce. Every parish had a priest or clergyman. Bishops were responsible for regulating the parish clergy, while two archbishops, in York and Canterbury, regulated the bishops. Parish clergy held services every Sunday, and officiated over baptisms, marriages and burials. They had a duty to instruct their parishioners in religion and to report those who dissented from conventional beliefs.

Religious ceremonies acknowledged key life events: birth was celebrated with baptism, the creation of new families and households with marriage, and death commemorated with a burial service. From 1538 all baptisms, marriages and burials were recorded in parish registers. Before the Reformation the religious calendar included multiple saints’ days. After the Reformation celebrations were reduced to Easter, harvest, Christmas and the day of the saint to which the parish church was dedicated. Both before and after the Reformation a period of Lent was observed between February and Easter, during which people abstained from eating red meat and consumed fish instead.

Tudor England is particularly noted for two arts: the literature, especially drama, of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries; and the architecture of the Elizabethan country house.

Everyday medical care was the responsibility of women in Tudor England. As part of their skills as housewife, women were expected to understand how to treat common complaints, identifying herbal remedies and making medicines if necessary. Their work was supplemented by specialist practitioners—such as midwives, bone-setters, barber surgeons and apothecaries—all of whom would have received practical training in their field. The elite of medical practitioners were physicians, who were exclusively men.

The beliefs in death and afterlife in Tudor England were those of the Christian religion, with some folk beliefs in ghosts and other supernatural beings.

The culture summary was written by Jane Whittle in April 2018.

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