was a landed wealth with large estate mansions. They employed many
servants and could live a life of leisure. Their lady wives often
managed the household with many servants and freely visited
friends and went out shopping, riding, or walking. They conversed
with neighbors and made merry with them at childbirths,
christenings, churchings, and funerals. Gentlemen usually had
positions of responsibility such as lords of manors and leaders in
their parishes. These families often sent the oldest son to
university to become a Justice of the Peace and then a member of
Parliament. They also served as justices and as county officers
such as High Constable of their hundred and grand jury member.
Their social, economic, and family ties were at least county-wide.
They composed about 700 gentle families, including the peers, who
had even more landed wealth, which was geographically dispersed.
After the peers were: baronets (created in 1611), knights,
esquires, and then ordinary gentlemen. These titles were acquired
by being the son of such or purchase. Most gentry had a house in
London, where they spent most of their time, as well as country
mansions. About 4/5 of the land was in the hands of 7,000 of the
nobility and landed gentry due in part to entails constructed by
attorneys to favor hereditary interests. The gentry had also
profited by commerce and colonial possessions. The country life of
a country squire or gentleman dealt with all the daily affairs of
a farm. He had men plough, sow, and reap. He takes part in the
haying and getting cut grass under cover when a rain came. His sow
farrows, his horse is gelded, a first lamb is born. He drags his
pond and takes out great carps. His horses stray and he finds them
in the pound. Boys are bound to him for service. He hires
servants, and some work out their time and some run away. His hog
is stabbed. Knaves steal his sheep. He and a neighbor argue about
the setting up of a cottage. He borrows money for a daughter's
dowry. He holds a leet court. He attends church on Sunday and
reads the lesson when called upon. He visits the local tavern to
hear from his neighbors. Country folk brawl. Wenches get pregnant.
Men commit suicide, usually by hanging. Many gentlemen spent their
fortunes and died poor. New gentlemen from the lower classes took
their place.
The second class included the wealthier merchants and professional
men of the towns. These men were prominent in town government.
They usually had close family ties with the gentry, especially as
sons. When wealthy enough, they often bought a country estate. The
professional men included military officers, civil service
officials, attorneys, some physicians, and a few clergymen. The
instabilities of trade, high mortality rates in the towns, and
high turnover rate among the leading urban families prevented any
separate urban interest group arising that would be opposed to the
landed gentry. Also included in this second group were the most
prosperous yeomanry of the countryside.
The third class was the yeomanry at large, which included many
more than the initial group who possessed land in freehold of at
least 40s., partly due to inflation. Freehold was the superior
form of holding land because one was free to sell, exchange, or
devise the land and had a political right to vote in Parliamentary
elections. Other yeomen were those who possessed enough land, as
copyholder or leaseholder, to be protected from fluctuations in
the amount of the annual harvest, that is, at least 50 acres. A
copyholder rented land from a lord for a period of years or lives,
usually three lives including that of the widow, and paid a
substantial amount whenever the copyhold came up for renewal. The
copyholder and leaseholder were distinguished from the mere
tenant-at-will, whose only right was to gather his growing crop
when his landlord decided to terminate his tenancy. The average
yeoman had a one and a half story house, with a milkhouse, a
malthouse, and other small buildings attached to the dwelling. The
house would contain a main living room, a parlor, where there
would be one or more beds, and several other rooms with beds. No
longer was there a central great hall. Cooking was done in a
kitchen or over the open fire in the fireplace of the main room.
Furniture included large oak tables, stools, settes or forms,
chests, cupboards, and a few hard-backed simple chairs. Dishware
was wood or pewter. The yeomen were among those who governed the
nation. They often became sureties for recognizances, witnesses to
wills, parish managers, churchwardens, vestrymen, the chief civil
officers of parishes and towns, overseers of the poor, surveyors
of bridges and highways, jurymen and constables for the Justices
of the Peace, and sheriffs' bailiffs. The families and servants of
these yeomen ate meat, fish, wheaten bread, beer, cheese, milk,
butter, and fruit. Their wives were responsible for the dairy,
poultry, orchard, garden, and perhaps pigs. They smoked and cured
hams and bacon, salted fish, dried herbs for the kitchen or of
lavender and pot-pourri for sweetening the linen, and arranged
apples and roots in lofts or long garrets under the roof to last
the winter. They preserved fruits candied or in syrup. They
preserved wines; made perfumes, washes for preserving the hair and
complexion, rosemary to cleanse the hair, and elder-flower water
for sunburn; distilled beverages; ordered wool hemp, and flax to
spin for cloth (the weaving was usually done in the village);
fashioned and sewed clothes and house linens; embroidered; dyed;
malted oats; brewed; baked; and extracted oils. Many prepared herb
medicines and treated injuries, such as dressing wounds, binding
arteries, and setting broken bones. Wives also ploughed and sowed,
weeded the crops, and sheared sheep. They sometimes cared for the
poor and sold produce at the market. Some yeomen were also
tanners, painters, carpenters, or blacksmiths; and as such they
were frequently brought before the Justices of the Peace for
exercising a craft without having served an apprenticeship. The
third class also included the freemen of the towns, who could
engage independently in trade and had political rights. These were
about one-third of the male population of the town.
The fourth class included the ordinary farmer leasing by copyhold,
for usually 21 years, five to fifty acres. From this class were
drawn sidesmen [assistants to churchwardens] and constables. They
had neither voice nor authority in government. Their daily diet
was bacon, beer, bread, and cheese. Also in this class were the
independent urban craftsmen who were not town freemen. Their only
voice in government was at the parish level.
The fifth and lowest class included the laborers and cottagers,
who were usually tenants at will. They were dependent on day
labor. They started work at dawn, had breakfast for half an hour
at six, worked until dinner, and then until supper at about six;
in the summer they would then do chores around the barns until
eight or nine. Some were hedgers, ditchers, ploughmen, reapers,
shepherds, and herdsmen. The cottagers' typical earnings of about
1s. a day amounted to about 200 shillings a year, which was almost
subsistence level. Accordingly they also farmed a little on their
four acres of land with garden. Some also had a few animals. They
lived in a one or two room cottage of clay and branches of trees
or wood, sometimes with a brick fireplace and chimney, and few
windows. They ate bread, cheese, lard, soup, and greens. If a
laborer was unmarried, he lived with the farmer. Theirs was a
constant battle for survival. They often moved because of
deprivation to seek opportunity elsewhere. The town wage-earning
laborers ranged from journeymen craftsmen to poor casual laborers.
The mass of workers in London were not members of guilds, and the
crime rate was high.
The last three classes also contained rural craftsmen and
tradesmen, who also farmed. The variety of trades became very
large, e.g. tinsmiths, chain smiths, pewterers, violin makers, and
glass painters. The curriers, who prepared hides for shoemakers,
coachmakers, saddlers, and bookbinders, were incorporated.
The fourth and fifth classes comprised about three fourths of the
population.
Then there were the maritime groups: traders, shipowners, master
and seamen, and the fishers.
Over one fourth of all households had servants. They were the
social equals of day laborers, but materially better off with food
and clothing plus an allowance of money of two pounds [40s.] a
year. Those who sewed got additional pay for this work. There was
no great chasm between the family and the servants. They did not
segregate into a parlor class and a kitchen class. The top
servants were as educated as their masters and ate at the same
table. Great households had a chaplain and a steward to oversee
the other servants. There was usually a cook. Lower servants ate
together. Servants were disciplined by cuffs and slaps and by the
rod by master or mistress. Maids wore short gowns, a large apron,
and a gypsy hat tied down over a cap. Chamber maids helped to
dress their mistresses. Servants might sleep on trundle beds
stored under their master's or mistress's bed, in a separate room,
or on the straw loft over the stables. A footman wore a blue tunic
or skirted coat with corded loop fasteners, knee-britches, and
white stockings. He walked or ran on foot by the side of his
master or mistress when they rode out on horseback or in a
carriage and ran errands for him, such as leading a lame horse
home or running messages. A good footman is described in this
letter: "Sir, - You wrote me lately for a footman, and I think
this bearer will fit you: I know he can run well, for he has run
away twice from me, but he knew the way back again: yet, though he
has a running head as well as running heels (and who will expect a
footman to be a stayed man) I would not part with him were I not
to go post to the North. There be some things in him that answer
for his waggeries: he will come when you call him, go when you bid
him, and shut the door after him; he is faithful and stout, and a
lover of his master. He is a great enemy to all dogs, if they bark
at him in his running; for I have seen him confront a huge
mastiff, and knock him down. When you go a country journey, or
have him run with you a-hunting, you must spirit him with liquor;
you must allow him also something extraordinary for socks, else
you must not have him wait at your table; when his grease melts in
running hard, it is subject to fall into his toes. I send him to
you but for trial, if he be not for your turn, turn him over to me
again when I come back..."
Dress was not as elaborate as in Elizabethan times. For instance,
fewer jewels were worn. Ladies typically wore a brooch, earrings,
and pearl necklaces. Men also wore earrings. Watches with
elaborate cases were common. Women's dresses were of satin,
taffeta, and velvet, and were made by dressmakers. Pockets were
carried in the hand, fastened to the waist by a ribbon, or sewn in
petticoats and accessible by a placket opening. The corset was
greatly reduced. Women's hair was in little natural-looking curls,
a few small tendrils on the forehead with soft ringlets behind the
ears, and the back coiled into a simple knot. Men also wore their
hair in ringlets. They had pockets in their trousers, first as a
cloth pouch inserted into an opening in the side seam, and later
sewn into the side seam. The bereaved wore black, and widows wore
a black veil over their head until they remarried or died. Rouge
was worn by lower class women. The law dictating what clases could
wear what clothes was difficult to enforce and the last one was in
1597.
Cotton chintzes, calicoes, taffetas, muslins, and ginghams from
India were fashionable as dress fabrics. Simple cotton replaced
linen as the norm for napkins, tablecloths, bed sheets, and
underwear. Then it became the fashion to use calicoes for
curtains, cushions, chairs, and beds. Its inexpensiveness made
these items affordable for many. There was a cotton-weaving
industry in England from about 1621, established by cotton workmen
who fled to England in 1585 from Antwerp, which had been captured.
By 1616, there were automatic weaving looms in London which could
be operated by a novice. Toothbrushes, made with horsehair, were a
new and costly luxury.
Even large houses now tended to do without a courtyard and became
compacted into one soaring and stately whole. A typical country
house had deep-set windows of glass looking into a walled green
court with a sundial in it and fringed around with small trees.
The gables roofs are steep and full of crooks and angles, and
covered with rough slate if there was a source for such nearby.
There was an extensive use of red tile, either rectangular or
other shapes and with design such as fishscales. The rooms are
broad and spacious and include hall, great parlor, little parlor,
matted chamber, and study. In the hall was still the great, heavy
table. Dining tables were covered with cloth, carpet, or printed
leather. Meals were increasingly eaten in a parlor. Noble men
preferred to be waited upon by pages and grooms instead of by
their social equals. After dinner, they deserted the parlor to
retire into drawing rooms for conversation and desserts of sweet
wine and spiced delicacies supplemented by fruit. Afterward, there
might be dancing and then supper. In smaller parlors, there was
increasing use of oval oak tables with folding leaves. Chests of
drawers richly carved or inlaid and with brass handles were coming
in. Walls were wainscotted and had pictures or were hung with
tapestry. Carpets, rugs, and curtains kept people warm. There were
many stools to sit on, and some arm chairs. Wide and handsome open
staircases separated the floors, instead of the circular stone
closed stairwells. Upstairs, the sitting and bedrooms open into
each other with broad, heavy doors. Bedrooms had four-post beds
and wardrobes with shelves and pegs. Under the roof are garrets,
apple-lofts, and root-chambers. Underneath is a cellar. Outside is
a farmyard with outbuildings such as bake house, dairy, cheese-
press house, brewery, stilling house, malt house, wood house, fowl
house, dove cot, pig stye, slaughter-house, barns, stable, and
sometimes a mill. There were stew-ponds for fish and a park with a
decoy for wild fowl. There was also a laundry, carpenter's bench,
blacksmith's forge, and pots and equipment of a house painter.
In the 1600s, towns were fortified by walled ditch instead of
relying on castles, which couldn't contain enough men to protect
the townspeople. Also in towns, water was supplied by local pumps
and wells. Also, floors were of polished wood or stone and strewn
with rushes in the country. A ladies' attendant might sleep the
same bedroom on a bed which slid under the ladies' bed.
Apprentices and shop boys had to sleep under the counter. Country
laborers slept in a loft on straw. Bread was made in each
household. There were bedroom chairs with enclosed chamber pots.
Wood fires were the usual type. Coal was coming in to use in the
towns and near coal mines. Charcoal was also used. Food was
roasted on a spit over a fire, baked, or broiled. People still
licked their fingers at meals. The well-to-do had wax candles.
Tallow dips were used by the poor and for the kitchen. People
drank cordials and home-made wines made with grapes, currants,
oranges, or ginger. Some mead was also drunk.
Tobacco, potatoes, tea, asparagus, kidney beans, scarlet runners,
cardoons (similar to artichokes), horse-radish, sugar-cane, and
turkeys for Christmas, were introduced from the New World, China,
and India. Tea was a rare and expensive luxury. Coffee was a new
drink. With the cane sugar was made sweetened puddings, pies, and
drinks. The potato caused the advent of distillation of alcohol
from fermented potato mashes. There was a distiller's company by
1638. Distilleries' drinks had higher alcoholic content than wine
or beer.
The Merchant Adventurers sold in town stores silks, satins,
diamonds, pearls, silver, and gold. There were women peddlers
selling hats and hosiery from door to door and women shopkeepers,
booksellers, alehouse keepers, linen drapers, brewers, and ale-
wives. London had polluted air and water, industrial noise, and
traffic congestion.
Work on farms was still year-round. In January and February,
fields were plowed and harrowed and the manure spread. Also, trees
and hedges were set, fruit trees pruned, and timber lopped. In
March and April, the fields were stirred again and the wheat and
rye sown. In May gardens were planted, hop vines trained to poles,
ditches scoured, lambs weaned, and sheep watched for "rot". In
June sheep were washed and sheared, and fields were spread with
lime and clay, and manured. In July hay was cut, dried, and
stacked. In August crops were harvested, which called for extra
help from neighbors and townsmen who took holidays at harvesting.
Then there was threshing, and the sowing of winter wheat and rye.
In the autumn, cider from apples and perry from pears may be made.
By November the fall planting was finished and the time had come
for the killing of cattle and hanging up their salted carcasses
for winter meat. Straw would be laid down with dung, to be spread
next spring on the fields. Stock that could not live outdoors in
winter were brought into barns.
Government regulated the economy. In times of dearth, it ordered
Justices of the Peace to buy grain and sell it below cost. It
forbade employers to lay off workers whose products they could not
sell. It used the Star Chamber Court to enforce economic
regulations.
There were food riots usually during years of harvest failure, in
which organized groups seized foodstuffs being transported or in
markets, and enclosure riots, in which organized groups destroyed
hedges and fences erected in agrarian reorganization to restrict
access to or to subdivide former common pasture land. These self-
help riots were last resorts to appeals and were orderly. The
rioters were seldom punished more than a fining or whipping of the
leaders and action was taken to satisfy the legitimate grievances
of the rioters.
The poor came to resent the rich and there was a rise in crime
among the poor. Penal laws were frequently updated in an effort to
bring more order.
Enclosures of land were made to carry on improved methods of
tillage, which yielded more grain and more sheep fleece. Drainage
of extensive marsh land created more land for agriculture. Waste
land was used to breed game and "fowling" contributed to farmers'
and laborers' livelihoods. Killing game was not the exclusive
right of landowners, but was a common privilege. The agricultural
laborer, who worked for wages and composed most of the wage-
earning population, found it hard to make ends meet.
In 1610, weekly wages for a mason were 8s. or 5s., for a laborer
were 6s. or 4s., for a carpenter 8s. or 6s. An unskilled laborer
received 1s. a day.
There were conventions of paternalism and deference between
neighbors of unequal social status. A social superior often
protected his lessers from impoverishment For instance, the
landlord lessened rents in times of harvest failure. A social
superior would help find employment for a lesser person or his
children, stand surety for a recognizance, intervene in a court
case, or have his wife tend a sick member of his lesser's family.
A social obligation was felt by most of the rich, the landlords,
the yeomen farmers, and the clergy. This system of paternalism and
social deference was expressed and reinforced at commonly attended
village sports and games, dances, wakes and "ales" (the proceeds
of which went to the relief of a certain person in distress),
"rush-bearings", parish feasts, weddings, christenings,
"churchings" to give thanks for births, and funerals. Even the
poor were buried in coffins. Also there was social interaction at
the local alehouse, where neighbors drank, talked, sung, and
played at bowls or "shove goat" together.
Quarrelling was commonplace. For instance, borough authorities
would squabble over the choice of a schoolmaster; the parson would
carry on a long fight with parishioners over tithe hens and pigs;
two country gentlemen would continue a vendetta started by their
great-grandfathers over a ditch or hunting rights; the
parishioners would wrangle with the churchwardens over the
allocation of pews. The position of one's pew reflected social
position. Men tried to keep the pews of their ancestors and the
newly prosperous wanted the recognition in the better pews, for
which they had to pay a higher amount. But, on the other hand,
farmers were full of good will toward their neighbors. They lent
farm and kitchen equipment, helped raise timbers for a neighbor's
new barn, sent food and cooked dishes to those providing a funeral
feast and to the sick and incurable.
Village standards of behavior required that a person not to drink
to excess, quarrel, argue, profane, gossip, cause a nuisance,
abuse wife or children, or harbor suspicious strangers, and to pay
scot and bear lot as he was asked. Neighbors generally got along
well and frequently borrowed and loaned small sums of money to
each other without interest for needs that suddenly arose. Bad
behavior was addressed by mediation and, if this failed, by
exclusion from holy communion. There was also whipping and the
stocks.
Marital sex was thought to be good for the health and happiness of
the husband and enjoyable by wives. The possibility of female
orgasm was encouraged. Both women and men were thought to have
"seed" and drank certain potions to cause pregnancy or to prevent
birth. Some argued that orgasm of both partners was necessary for
the "seed" of the male and female to mix to produce pregnancy.
Most women were in a virtual state of perpetual pregnancy. Both
Catholics and Protestants thought that God wanted them to multiply
and cover the earth. Catholics thought that the only goal of sex
was procreation. Men were considered ready for marriage only when
they could support a family, which was usually at about age 30.
Brides were normally virgins, but there was bridal pregnancy of
about 20%. Women usually married at about age 25. Marriages were
usually within one's own class and religion. The aristocracy often
initiated matches of their children for the sake of continuity in
the family estates and tried to obtain the consent of their
children for the match in mind. The age of consent to marry was 14
for boys and 12 for girls. Girls in arranged marriages often
married at 13, and boys before they went to university. But the
girls usually stayed with their parents for a couple of years
before living with their husbands. If married before puberty,
consummation of the marriage waited for such time. In other
classes, the initiative was usually taken by the child. Dowries
and marriage portions usually were given by the parents of the
bride. Wet-nurses frequently were used, even by Puritans. There
were no baby bottles. Many babies died, causing their parents much
grief. About 1/4 of women's deaths occurred during childbirth. A
child was deemed to be the husband's if he was within the four
seas, i.e. not in foreign lands, for an agreed length of time.
Illegitimacy was infrequent, and punished by church-mandated
public penance by the mother and lesser penance and maintenance by
the father. Adultery was subject to church court sanctions as was
defamation for improper sexual conduct.
The established church still taught that the husband was to be the
authority in marriage and had the duty to provide for, protect,
and maintain his wife. Wives were to obey their husbands, but
could also admonish and advise their husbands without reproach. In
literature, women were portrayed as inferior to men intellectually
and morally as well as physically. In reality wives did not fit
the image of women portrayed by the church and literature.
Quarrels were not uncommon and were not stopped by a husband's
assertion of authority. Wives were very active in the harvesting
and did casual labor of washing, weeding, and stone-picking.
Farmers' and tradesmen's wives kept accounts, looked after the
garden, orchard, pigs, and poultry; brewed beer; spun wool and
flax; and acted as agents in business affairs. Wives of craftsmen
and tradesmen participated actively in their husbands' shops.
Wives of weavers spun for their husband's employers. Wives of the
gentry ran their households with their husbands. The lady of a
large mansion superintended the household, ordering and looking
after the servants, and seeing to the education of her children.
Mothers handed down their recipes to their daughters. Women still
did much needlework and embroidering for clothing and house, such
as cushions, screens, bed curtains, window curtains, hangings,
footstools, book covers, and small chests of drawers for
valuables. Liking simplicity, Puritan women did less of this work.