The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England

by Mortimer, Ian

  Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley: the queen’s principal secretary and for forty years her most trusted advisor. Also an architect, art patron, garden designer, antiquary, bibliophile, educationalist and loving husband.

  Sir William Cecil presiding over the Court of Wards and Liveries – one of the many ways in which the Crown exercises power and influence.

  Most Elizabethan painting is portraiture: miniatures and formal portraits. Therefore most English artists only achieve domestic fame. This allegory of conjugal love from the early 1590s is by Isaac Oliver, arguably the most accomplished painter in England.

  Isaac Oliver also drew this lamentation over the dead Christ. Religious art is rare after the Reformation and generally created only for private collectors, so you will need to ask to see many of the finest works.

  Sir Walter Raleigh: lawyer, courtier, writer, soldier, shipbuilder, explorer, historian, wit and all-round Elizabethan polymath. Executed in the next reign for failing to find El Dorado.

  Christopher Marlowe: maverick, atheist and all-round controversialist but a literary genius. Killed in a fight over a supper bill.

  Henry Percy, 9th earl of Northumberland: the man who managed to get himself £15,000 in debt within eighteen months of inheriting an annual income of £3,363.

  This image of a young man by Isaac Oliver shows the new taste for full-length portraits at the end of the reign – and the dandyish fashions, with high, wide-brimmed hats, short doublets worn without breeches, and delicate garters.

  For the wealthy, music, food and dancing regularly go together. The gentleman here is just about to jump high, leap, kick and cavort energetically. In that dress, the lady will be considerably more restrained.

  For ordinary people, meals are a more sedate affair. Most eating, cooking, food preservation, childcare and household work all takes place in a single hall.

  The contemporary map showing the passage taken by Francis Drake on his circumnavigation in 1577–80. Most of his men die, he executes one of his captains and threatens to hang his own chaplain. A pleasure cruise it is not.

  Native Americans from the North Carolina area dancing at a celebration. Awareness of the world outside Europe advances at a truly phenomenal rate in the late sixteenth century.

  The 700-ton Ark Royal, built by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586 and sold to the queen to be the flagship of the royal navy the following year.

  For many Englishmen, the defeat of the Spanish Armada is the most important event of the reign. This image is not supposed to show the actual battle but simply to remind viewers of a glorious victory.

  Queen Elizabeth receiving Dutch ambassadors. Note the painted wall hangings, the woven rush matting, the birds in cages by the windows and the ennui of the courtiers. Life at court can sometimes be quite tedious.

  Gentlemen and ladies out for a stroll along the Thames, entertained by morris dancers performing with a hobby horse. In the background is Richmond Palace, where the queen dies in 1603.

  From this image of old London houses, you can imagine the low quality of life enjoyed by families renting a third- or fourth-floor room.

  Plans of tenements owned by the Merchant Taylors Company. Fireplaces are marked out in red, latrines are also marked. You get a clear impression of how closely the buildings (and people) are pressed up against each other.

  Sir Francis Willoughby’s residence, Wollaton Hall, near Nottingham. It is designed by Robert Smythson, who is also responsible for Hardwick Hall and Longleat.

  Most people use linen to clean their bodies, so it is important to secure the services of a good washerwoman. All around a town you will see washing drying on bushes, hedges and the ground.

  If you have plenty of money, opiates are available for pain control. If not, then wine or beer will have to suffice. This amazingly placid patient can clearly afford opiates.

  Travelling is dangerous if you are poor. If you are deemed to be a vagrant, you may be whipped out of town until starvation forces you to steal food – and then you will be hanged for theft.

  The Puritan writer Philip Stubbes loathes this dance, la volta, due to its unseemingly groping of the lady by the man lifting her. He’s not too keen on men in white suits, white tights and oversized ruffs either.

  Primero is one of the most popular card games. If you are invited to take a hand, it will cost you – especially if you play with the queen, who loves to gamble and always seems to win.

  An example of secretary hand, the script that most well-educated people use. However, this is not just any example; it is an addition to Anthony Munday’s play Sir Thomas More, in the handwriting of William Shakespeare.

  Notes

  Introduction

  1. The story of William Hacket is to be found in Richard Cosin, A conspiracie for pretended reformation (1592). I came to this piece after reading Alexandra Walsham’s article on the events of 16 July 1591. See Walsham, ‘Hacket’.

  2. Eliz. People, p. 45, quoting Conyers Read, Mr Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth (1955), p. 124.

  3. With reference to ‘the most powerful Englishwoman in history’, Elizabeth personally ruled over England and had huge influence over the entire anti-Catholic community of Europe. This personal rule, not subject to the pope, is the reason for saying she was the most powerful woman in British history. While Anne, Victoria and Elizabeth II all ruled over greater dominions, they were supported and controlled by a constitution that allowed them very little direct power. The power lay rather with the constitution that supported the monarchy, not in their own control of it. As for Margaret Thatcher, no elected secular politician can possibly have the authority of a hereditary and divinely appointed monarch, who can redirect the faith of the kingdom. A modern political leader simply has bigger bombs and better surveillance at her disposal.

  1. The Landscape

  1. These figures are based on an area of 50,337 square miles for England and the population estimate of 2,984,576 for 1561 in Wrigley & Schofield, p. 528. The modern population figure is the 2008 estimate by the Office for National Statistics of 51,460,000.

  2. The regular layout of Stratford’s centre still reflects its charter of 1196, which stipulated that all the tenements or burgage plots should be a standard 3½ × 12 perches (57¾ feet × 198 feet). See Bearman, Stratford, p. 37.

  3. Jones, Family, pp. 22–3.

  4. Platt, Rebuildings, p. 20, quoting Harrison’s Description.

  5. Dyer, ‘Crisis’, p. 90.

  6. Wilson, ‘State’, p. 11. For modern research into the number of market towns, see the ‘Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516: Full Introduction, table 2’, maintained by the Centre for Metropolitan History, available online freely at http://www.history.ac.uk/cmh/gaz/gazweb2.html. This states that 675 of the 2,022 markets granted or functioning prior to 1516 were still active in 1600, one less than Wilson.

  7. Vanessa Harding has suggested that the population, which most historians agree reached 55,000 in 1524 and 200,000 in 1600, could have reached 75,000 by 1550. See Harding, ‘London’, p. 112.

  8. Sacks, ‘Ports’, p. 383.

  9. Sacks, ‘Ports’, p. 384, using table 7.1 in E. A. Wrigley, ‘Urban growth and agricultural change: England and the continent in the early modern period’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 15 (1985).

  10. England’s coastline (not including any of its numerous islands) is about 5,581 miles long, and Wales, including Anglesey and Holyhead, is 1,680 miles long, a combined total of 7,261 miles. The total coastline of the kingdom of Denmark and Norway is in the region of 20,000 miles. Greece and Italy, which both have long coastlines, were not political states in their own right in the sixteenth century, Greece being part of the Ottoman Empire and Italy a series of smaller states. Spain’s coastline is about 3,100 miles long, as is that of Iceland; France’s is about 2,140 miles.

  11. In addition to the 336,000 in the table, my own rough estimates are as follows. The next sixty largest towns (with 2,500–6,000 people in 1600,
and an average of about 3,000) represent another 180,000 citizens. The next hundred towns (of 2,000–2,500, average 2,200) are home to another 220,000. About two hundred towns have populations of 1,000–2,000 (300,000); and the approximately three hundred remaining towns with 500–1,000 inhabitants (average 700) represent about 210,000 more. This total means that 1.2 million people, out of a population of 4.11 million, were living in towns (29 per cent). Checking this against the Cambridge Urban History figures, which are most detailed for the 1660s onwards, even the rural south-west had achieved an overall proportion of 26 per cent by 1660 (see Jonathan Barry, ‘South-West’, in CUH, p. 68). A proportion of one in four is reasonable for 1600. For the medieval figures, see Mortimer, TTGME, p. 11 and note 3 on pp. 293–4. Note that the rise in urban populations was not a constant. In the early sixteenth century there was a significant downturn in the prosperity and size of the major towns.

  12. Villeinage still survived as a description of status in 1 per cent of the population. See Black, Reign, p. 251. A rare example of it having legal force is published in DEEH, p. 126.

  13. Wilson, ‘State’, p. 11.

  14. Hoskins, Landscape, p. 139.

  15. For the role of towns in supplying their hinterlands, see Mortimer, ‘Marketplace’.

  16. Tudor Tailor, p. 9, quoting B. Fagan, The Little Ice Age (New York, 2000).

  17. Dyer, ‘Crisis’, p. 89.

  18. M. A. Havinden, ‘Agricultural Progress in Open-Field Oxfordshire’, Agricultural History Review, 11 (1961), 73–83, at p. 73; Mortimer, Glebe, pp. ix, xxviii; Ross Wordie (ed.), Enclosure in Berkshire 1485–1885, Berkshire Record Society, vol. 5 (2000), p. xvii.

  19. These figures are adapted from those of Gregory King, computed at the end of the seventeenth century, given in Thirsk, Documents, p. 779. Hoskins, Landscape, p. 139, calculated that the woodland in the early sixteenth century must have been a million acres greater than in King’s day (a total of four million acres). The million acres of lost woodland were probably mostly put to pasture and parkland by 1695, so this area has been deducted from those totals. The amount of arable was probably within 500,000 acres of King’s estimate, as that which had been turned into parkland by 1695 is very unlikely to have all been taken from arable. Besides, many enclosures of arable fields would have resulted in consolidated arable holdings, not just pasture, and thus be included as arable by King. The figure for Berkshire waste is from Hoskins, Landscape, p. 141.

  20. Black, Reign, p. 237. The other major exports included in that 18.4 per cent were lead, tin, corn, beer, coal and fish.

  21. This is the number estimated for the sheep population of England in 1500. Hoskins, Landscape, p. 137.

  22. Rowse, Structure, p. 97; Dawson, Plenti & Grase, p. 85. Thomas Platter notes that the heaviest sheep he sees on his journey weigh 40–60lbs. See Platter, Travels, p. 185.

  23. Hoskins, Landscape, p. 138.

  24. Damian Goodburn, ‘Woodworking aspects of the Mary Rose’, in Marsden, Noblest Shippe, p. 68.

  25. For the Acts, see 1 Elizabeth, cap. 15; 23 Elizabeth, cap. 5; 27 Elizabeth, cap. 19. For prices, see Overton, ‘Prices’, esp. tables 6.1 (cupboards), 6.5 (bedsteads and coffers), 6.8 and 6.9 (coffers) and 6.11 (all wood).

  26. Williams, Life, p. 40 (Warwickshire); Hoskins, Landscape, p. 154 (Leicestershire).

  27. Tim Carder, Encyclopaedia of Brighton (1990), quoting Brighton’s ‘Book of Auncient Customs’.

  28. For the expansion of fishing in the south-east, see CUH, p. 54.

  29. See Magno, esp. p. 147.

  30. Emmison, HWL, pp. 290–3.

  31. Hoskins, ‘Towns’, p. 5.

  32. Platter, Travels, p. 153.

  33. Machyn, Diary, p. 259.

  34. For the prohibition of houses within three miles, see 35 Elizabeth I, cap. 6. For the spread of housing: DEEH, p. 46.

  35. Simon Thurley, ‘The Lost Palace of Whitehall’, History Today, 48, 1 (January 1998).

  36. Platter, Travels, pp. 153–4.

  37. In the order they appear in Stow, Survay, these are: (1) Portsoken, (2) Tower Street, (3) Aldgate, (4) Lime Street, (5) Bishopsgate, (6) Broad Street, (7) Cornhill, (8) Langbourn, (9) Billingsgate, (10) Bridge Within, (11) Candlewick Street, (12) Walbrook, (13) Dowgate, (14) Vintry, (15) Cordwainer Street, (16) Cheap, (17) Coleman Street, (18) Basinghall, (19) Cripplegate, (20) Aldersgate, (21) Farringdon Within, (22) Bread Street, (23) Queenhithe, (24) Castle Baynard, (25) Farringdon Without and (26) Bridge Without (including Southwark).

  38. Schofield, ‘Topography’, p. 300.

  39. Magno, p. 142.

  40. Machyn, Diary, p. 263.

  41. 24 Henry VIII, cap. 11 (Strand); 25 Henry VIII, cap. 8 (Holborn High Street).

  42. All the cries mentioned here are from plates 26 and 27 reproduced in Picard, London.

  43. Nicoll, Elizabethans, p. 49, quoting W. Burton, ‘The Rowsing of the Sluggard’.

  44. Orlin, ‘Disputes’, at p. 347. Houses of six storeys are visible in several early seventeenth-century woodcuts and engravings of the city and are specified in Ralph Tressell’s surveys.

  45. For sales of fish in Old St Paul’s, see Holmes, London, p. 41.

  46. As often noted, the stories of the drinking club at The Mermaid attended by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Donne etc. are somewhat romantic. However, the landlord, William Johnson, was a friend and business partner of Shakespeare’s, for they both took part in what proved to be Shakespeare’s last property investment in 1613. See Schoenbaum, Shakespeare, p. 208.

  2. The People

  1. According to Wrigley & Schofield, p. 528, the greatest compound annual growth rate for the sixteenth century was 1.13 in 1581–6. This was not equalled until 1786–90, when it reached 1.20. By then the population was well in excess of seven million.

  2. William Lambarde’s charge at the commission for almshouses, etc., at Maidstone, 17 January 1594, in Conyers Read (ed.), William Lambarde and Local Government, p. 182 (quoted in Eliz. People, p. 47).

  3. Carew, Survey, f. 37v.

  4. Wrigley & Schofield, pp. 229, 383, 399–400, 425, 477; Laslett, WWHL, p. 15. This model omits the factor of migration to the towns and the increase in real wages due to the increased manufacturing that accompanies increased urbanisation, which is another reason for the rise in wage rates and the independence of men who otherwise would have been in service of some sort or other. See Wrigley & Schofield, esp. p. 477.

  5. Herbert Moller, ‘The Accelerated Development of Youth: Beard Growth as a Biological Marker’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29, 4 (October 1987), pp. 748–62.

  6. Quoted in Picard, London, p. 174.

  7. Harrison, Description, quoted in Picard, London, p. 181.

  8. Dyer, ‘Crisis’, p. 92.

  9. Wrigley & Schofield, p. 249. Half of those dying aged under one died in the first month of life. See ibid., p. 363. Child mortality grew even worse in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

  10. Pelling, ‘Old age’, p. 78.

  11. Wrigley & Schofield, p. 250.

  12. See G. E. Cokayne, revised by V. Gibbs, H. A. Doubleday, D. Warrand, Lord Howard de Walden and Peter Hammond (eds), The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britian and the United Kingdom extant or dormant (14 vols, 1910–88), iv, p. 250. Her husband was born in 1454 but his first wife was still living in 1505, so she did not marry him until after that date. He died aged eighty in 1534; If she married him when he was sixty, and if she was then in her early twenties (as most brides were), she was born about 1490, and so could have been a centenarian.

  13. Pelling, CL, p. 74.

  14. Carew, Survey, f. 63r.

  15. See Harrison, Description, chapter one; Wilson, ‘State’, at p. 17.

  16. Platter, Travels, p. 228.

  17. Black, Reign, pp. 47–8 (Cecil); 223–4 (parliament). For her dressing-down of an archbishop, see her rebuke of Edmund Grindal in 1577, ibid., p. 197.

  18. The reasons for saying this are: Eng
land had Calais until 1558 and Gascony until 1453. The tenure of Gascony overlaps with the inheritance of Normandy, which was lost in 1204. Prior to 1066, Scandinavian kings played a major role in English affairs. One could even say that England had never before been so isolated, for prior to the Viking settlements the kingdom of England did not exist; England was a series of smaller kingdoms.

  19. Rowse, Structure, p. 37; John J. Manning (ed.), The First and second Parts of John Hayward’s The Life and Raigne of King Henrie IIII, Camden Fourth Series, vol. 42 (1991), p. 1.

  20. John Harington, Nugae Antiquae, vol. 1 (1804), p. 362 (quoted in Eliz. People, p. 17).

  21. Emmison, Disorder, p. 40.

  22. Emmison, Disorder, pp. 40–3.

  23. J. Bruce (ed.), Leycester Correspondence, Camden Society, vol. 27 (1844), p. 237.

  24. Details of the royal processions 1550–63 are to be found in Machyn, Diary. See for example, pp. 263–4.

  25. Wilson, ‘State’, pp. 26–9, has a higher figure, £347,587, but this is generally thought to be an overestimate. Black, Reign, p. 366, suggests about £300,000. Hill, Reformation, p. 81, suggests £250,000 until 1588. The royal revenue was about £300,000 at the death of Henry VIII: £200,000 from the lands and rights acquired at the Reformation and Dissolution to add to the earlier royal income of £100,000; but huge amounts of land, to the value of £1,500,000, were given away or sold under Edward VI (ibid., p. 21).