ENGLAND 1564 TO 1616 AD

Elizabeth I 1558 AD to 1603 AD. The Armada 1588 AD

Free England.

No longer linked to Plantagenet desire to spend energy devastating France. English mariners, trained on the harsh conditions of the English coats and the English Channel, started to follow the Portuguese and Spanish and explore the oceans. Puritanism had not yet hit England. The English language was in full flow. The Bible was no longer studied by the learned few. But printed and widely read. The monasteries had gone under the Reformation. And the land felt freedom like never before. Freedom from the old burden of the Catholic clergy.

Population.

About 4 million in England at the end of Elizabeth’s reign.

William Shakespeare’s London.

London was a powerhouse. The city and its finances to the gilds and their trade. The Home Counties led by Kent ‘the garden of England,’ supplied it with food. Size, wealth and power made it the biggest unit on the Isles.

Food and diet in Tudor England.

Meat and vegetables were staple. Bread too. Puddings and stewed fruit were beginning to appear. And when sugar came with the explosion marine exploration – the English took to it like a drug. The Queen’s teeth turned black with huge sugar consumption.

The Fenlands of Lincoln Cambridge Peterborough and King’s Lynn.

This was a world that stayed separate from the rest of England. It was a place of islands such as Ely. The Dutch led drainage projects of the Stuarts had not yet started, but were planned. The people of the fens were skilled at hunting wild fowl. Ely Isle and the great Cathedral there dominated the area.

The other two regions of note were the Principality of Wales and the Northern Border area.

Wales in Tudor times.

Wales was beginning to ‘calm’ down. The Marcher Lords had quelled much local discontent and the placing of a Welsh King on the English throne after the battle of Bosworth Field produced a strong alliance. The Welsh seemed content on their small tenant farms. So much so that their soldiers would fight alongside the English against the Scots and Irish. Their longbow men being useful additions to English soldiery.

The Council of Wales enforced a legal presence on the side of Crown representation. The old Welsh tribal chiefs settled alongside Marcher Lords. Wales became happy being part of England.

The Welsh did not object to the dissolution of the monasteries, certainly nothing like the Pilgrimage of Grace in northern England.

1536 AD. Northern Borders.

Look up 'Border Reivers' on the Internet for more on this subject.

The Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 AD was a reaction to the dissolution of the monasteries and was put down firmly. But the feeling of instability continued with the presence of possibly 1500 armed men in the valleys of the Cheviots and North Tyne between 1542 and 1550.

Loyalty to the Crown was upheld by the farmers of Cumberland and Northumberland giving military service to the Wardens of the Marches. Many locals joined the Crown to resist the excesses of the Mosstroopers, or the lawless bands operating in the valleys.

Scotland in Elizabethan times.

Border war all but stopped as both the Scots and English saw the benefit in the Reformation. Protestantism was growing in Scotland. The ‘Apostles of the North,’ like Bernard Gilpin, helped it. The Scots must already have been looking south at the growing prosperity of the lower Tyne and Durham. Comparing it to the own grim landscape of stone castles and peel-towers. That ‘looking south’ for inspiration has never stopped.

Elizabethan Country Houses.

German builders were brought to England to help build country houses like Audley End and Gresham’s Royal Exchange. Both Gothic and Classical architecture dominated.

Elizabethan dress and fashion.

‘Fashions from proud Italy’ and France were copied by men. Jewellery and gold chains adorned all. Both sexes wore round neck ruffs of various shapes and sizes. All classes wore beards and this would remain for a long time after Elizabeth. Gentleman could wear swords. This started to lead to duelling as another ‘fashion’.

English classes – the class system in Tudor times.

Gone now was the mediaeval England divide of the Lord and the Peasant. In many ways the system is familiar to that today. Peerage could be given. Rigid rules had gone as individuals moved from one class to another through acquisition or loss of property or moving job. It was a great age for the gentry.

1557 AD. Merchants and Yeomen and the Tudor English Militia.

Both these classes of English men. William Harrison acknowledges that increased and more diverse trade was changing.

‘And whereas in times past their chief trade was into Spain, Portugal, France, Danske, Norwaie, Scotland and Iceland, ………now the Canaries and New Spain, ….Cathia, Moscovia, Tartaria.’

Merchants were increasingly important. So we see the formula start. English Navy + English merchants + increased English power and wealth and religious freedom = trade expansion + conflict with Spain = need for more defence. Thus the need for more protection with the all rounder English Yeoman being augmented by the Militia commanded by the Lord Lieutenant in each county due to changes in 1557 AD. England had no regular Army – but was not defenceless. In 1557 AD the Lord Lieutenant took the place of the Sherriff as commander and organiser of the local militia. The Rising of the Northern Earls was suppressed by 20,000 trained and equipped Militia, wanting to protect the Queen and the Protestant faith. The Armada – contrary to popular myth would have faced 40,000 militia, which was growing by the day.

1595 AD. The demise of the English Long Bow.

The militias were increasingly armed with the caliver and the harquebus man was beginning to take precedence over the Long Bow and soon militia were mainly composed of heavily armoured Pikemen who protected men with firearms. In 1595 AD the Privy Council declared that Long Bows would no longer be issued as weapons of war. But they continued as sporting weapons – as did cross bows. To this day.

Law and Courts.

The reign of Elizabeth saw good order. The Start Chamber – the Council of Wales and of the North, the ecclesiastical courts – The Privy Council\ and the Prerogative Courts gave protection to Judges backed by the Queen’s Justices of the Peace. The Protestant religion was increasingly popular amongst the landed gentry who staffed all of the posts. That religion thus gained more and more converts. Sate was overcoming the church – gradually but surely. A pattern that was to be reflected across the western world. Backed by English legal culture.

1559 AD. The Clergy.

In poetry, discovery, seafaring, commerce and military victory, we see an England that is truly in a ‘Golden Age.’ The clergy less so. Since the anti-Clerical days of Henry VIII the clergy were less hated, a balance having been ‘restored’. But by 1559 AD the clergy were happy to follow parliament and its statutes. Protestant clergy who had escaped the Smithfield Fires were full of zeal Calvinist zeal; they were not Erastian at heart and knew that the Queen was an ally against Popish Rome. So she had their tenuous loyalty too.

Many Priests had been legally married (remember that Roman Catholic Priests cannot marry,) under Edward VI. Under Mary they had been deprived of their livelihoods. Under Elizabeth I they had been restored. Parsonages were soon filling with married Priests and children. A popular move. Although Priests wives were still not taken seriously in English society. Why would you marry a Priest? Elizabeth and her stiff Archbishop Whitgift weathered the Roman Catholic and Protestant storm and the Anglican Church slipped through like a vessel at sea. The extreme ‘Brownists’ had been despised and the – many ultra- Puritans had been hanged anyway.

Village Protestant Church and Music.

Congregational singing was a popular feature of Protestant worship. The church would have had a simple cloth covered table in the middle – there was no railing off of parts of the church – no intoning either of prayers or psalms. The old psalter was gone. The sermon was the Priests time to deliver. And weekly church attendance was a state duty enforced by fines. Sternhold and Hopkins psalms were sung. The ‘Geneva Jig’ as some called them. Rhythmic and popular. When Elizabeth succeeded her sister Mary to the throne, Puritanism was an import from Geneva and the Rhineland. By the end of the Elizabethan monarchy it was firmly rooted in the English Anglican church. Its philosophy was outlined in Hookers Ecclesiastical Policy, backed by poets such as George Herbert (1593 –1633 AD.)

The Universities and Colleges in Elizabethan times.

Universities had gone through a bad time in the economic troubles of 1530 to 1560 AD. But in Elizabeth’s time they grew. Oxford and Cambridge flourished. Gentlemen who wanted to work in the state would finish their education at one of the ‘learned Universities.’

But, class divides were extreme. – the rich students engaging in cards and dice, fencing, cock fighting and even the mediaeval sport of bear baiting. 1n 1587 William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, commented:

‘The great stipends of tutors, not only the poorer sort are not able to maintain their children at the University, but the richer be so corrupt with liberty and remissness that the tutor is afraid to displease his pupil through the desire of great pain’

Elizabethan Mining Wealds and Woods.

England is surprisingly rich in lead, copper, tin, coal, and iron. German miners and their families from the Rhine opened up the remote Lake District and part of Cornwall. Saltpans multiplied.

The English Elizabethan Navy demanded cannon. Gunpowder came from the East India Company. Glass works abounded as windows of all sorts increased in usage. The great Wealds of Surrey Kent and Sussex were running short keeping furnaces of all sorts burning hot.

The Elizabethan State and State control.

The industrial and commercial might of England was being brought under control of the state and away from the municipal control of towns. Laws such as the Statute of Artificers (1563) enacted that every craftsman had 7 years to learn his craft under a master. England needed craftsmen (and women) who could make the merchandise connected with the increasing trade from England’s growing overseas empire. Elizabeth I truly was the turning point in England’s fortunes abroad.

1584 AD. Elizabethan overseas expansion and the beginnings of Empire.

In Elizabeth’s lifetime, no colony was established, although Sir Humphrey Gilbert tried in Newfoundland and Raleigh in Virginia named after Elizabeth ‘he Virgin Queen’. In 1594 AD Hakluyt wrote a Discourse of Western Planting. He urged English westward expansion.

1588 AD The Spanish Armada and England’s War with Spain.

Agincourt was a distant memory, but as with modern times Henry V was seen as a hero. But the Elizabethan English heroes were not about conquering Spain. Hawkins Drake and Raleigh were about conquest, but about naval domination of sea routes. England avoided conquering land already taken. Clever tactics, which saw the ‘new’ colonies of Canada United States and Australia.

But, Spain lost because it lacked tactics. Unlike the Battle of Hastings in 1066 AD, England had learned new tactics. When Spain defeated the Turks in 1571 AD at Lepanto in the Mediterranean it used tactics that were the same when the Greeks fought the Persians. A land battle at Sea. Its sea borne soldiers outnumbered and bullied the skilful sailors. The English navy was by contrast a navy of sailors. Raleigh, Drake and Hawkins were first and foremost sailors and sea commanders and excellent navigators. They understood cannon and the Broadside. In Drake’s epic world voyage from 1577-1580 he expected gentlemen to haul ropes with sailors. Spanish sea ships would not be so egalitarian. They still had much class divide and lost ships because of it.

John Hawkins was put in charge of naval reconstruction. He did it with honesty, so money was well spent on good fast well armed ships. Disciplined English crew would add to any enemy’s woes at sea. From Saxon Sea Wolves on the their Wave Rider Kyul boats to fast Elizabethan interceptors. The English sailors would dominate and control.

Spain has no forests because Phillip of Spain cut them all down to build old style galleons. John Hawkins built the ships low, fast and well gunned. No longer were they the slow galleons with large ‘castles’ like the Mary Rose and Henry Grace a Dieu of Henry VIII time. When the Spanish Armada came, it would prove a worthy design in the day and night fighting in the English Channel. Should the Spanish Armada have landed? They would have met around 40,000 militia; with the electrifying presence of the Queen in full silver armour amongst them.  It is the opinion of this author that it could have been a massacre as Spaniards lumbered ashore in heavy armour.

The Elizabethan Stage – Marlowe and Shakespeare.

Plays, lyrics and love songs abounded in this time. Mainly based on the Bible and stories such as the Armada and other events. Now Marlowe and Shakespeare brought the world the drama. Sophisticated trained performers gave performances in the daytime. The privileged sat on ‘stools’ the others the ‘groundlings’ stood and watched. Shakespearian plays give an insight into the men and women of his age.

There are many books, social studies and academic works of the social study of the past.  Shakespeare is the greatest of them all.