Life for the wealthy

Life became increasingly luxurious and flamboyant during Tudor times.

When describing the rich in Tudor times some things you might think about are:

• Meals in Tudor times consisted almost wholly of meat – no vegetables. Tudor people drank beer or wine, and ate and drank from pewter plates and mugs.

• Fashions – in Tudor times, men wore decorated doublets (jackets) with peascod bellies (rounded front) and slashed trunks (short trousers with cuts in the fabric). Women wore fancy kirtles (overskirts) over wooden frames called farthingales, with high collars. Women's fashion favoured white faces, so they painted white lead on their faces. Both sexes might wear elaborate ruffs.

• Rich lords built huge mansions in the countryside. One famous Tudor mansion is Hampton Court. The long gallery ran along the entire length of the house, where people could walk, or practise sword-fighting when the weather was bad. Keeping warm was a major consideration and Tudor mansions had many chimneys, for the many fires.

  The lord would have a parlour, luxuriously panelled, with painted ceilings and tapestries hanging on the wall, and with high-sided dark wooden chairs. The richest families might even have a carpet on the floor!

• In a Tudor garden the hedges and flower beds would be elaborately laid out in a pattern called a 'Tudor knot', or even a maze.

• Tudor entertainments were still energetic – jousting, hunting, dancing, and sports such as tennis.

 

 

Life for the poor

Life for the poor was difficult. Some things to bear in mind when thinking about poverty in Tudor and Stuart times are:

An average day for someone like a farm labourer would start at 5 am. Work was broken up by meal times when simple dishes like vegetable stew were eaten.

There was no welfare state in Tudor and Stuart England. If you lost your job or grew too ill or old to work, you had three options: beg, steal or die. There were some attempts to improve life for the poor, but these didn't always make much difference. In the towns, one in five people were living in extreme poverty. It has been estimated that in some places, a quarter of the population consisted of beggars. Some roamed in gangs stealing, or bullying people into giving them alms.

 

Criminals

There were no policemen so the law made punishments that were harsh and brutal to stop people thinking about committing crimes.

:

• stealing anything worth over one shilling (5 pence), was punished by hanging

• poisoners were boiled alive

• a gossip was put in a scold's bridle, which was like a metal cage that went over the head

• beggars were whipped through the streets

 

The Poor Laws

In the reign of Henry VIII, a number of laws were passed to try to prevent beggars, also known as vagrants, but they simply involved punishing poor people.

 

Elizabeth passed Poor Laws in 1597 and 1601, which said that:

• Each parish had to look after its own poor. If anyone was found without money, he was sent back to his own village. If he did not return to his own village, he was flogged.

• In each parish, Overseers for the Poor collected a tax called the Poor Rate. They could use this to buy tools and materials for the poor to work, and to see that pauper children were apprenticed to learn a trade.

• Anybody who refused to work was punished.

 

These laws remained in force for more than 200 years.

 

Recreation for poor people included singing, bowling, cock-fighting and dancing.