Jointures were negotiated at the betrothal of ladies. Widows of
manorial tenants were guaranteed by law one-third of family real
property, despite creditors. But most testators went beyond this
and gave a life interest in the farm or family house. So it was
customary for a widow to remain in occupation of the land until
her death or remarriage. Few widow or widowers lived with one of
their children. Widows usually had their husband's guild rights
and privileges conferred upon them, e.g. to receive apprentices.
In London, custom gave 1/3 of a deceased husband's estate to his
wife on his death, but 2/3 if there were no children. The other
part went according to his will. If a widows did not remarry in
memory of her husband, she was esteemed. But remarriage was common
because the life expectancy after birth was about 35 years.
Sons of the well-to-do went into law, the Church, the army, or the
navy. If not fit for such, they usually went into a trade,
apprenticing, for instance, with a draper, silk-merchant, or
goldsmith. Sometimes a son was sent to the house of a great man as
a page or esquire to learn the ways of courtiers and perhaps
become a diplomat.
The guild with its master and their employees was being replaced
by a company of masters.
About 5% of the population was Catholic, although it was against
the law to practice this religion. Indeed it long been the
practice to sequester their lands, punish them for going to mass,
fine them for not attending the established church, banish their
priests, and imprison those who aided priests. There was a
Catholic plot in 1605 to blow up Parliament and the king with
gunpowder and to restore Catholicism as the state religion with a
Catholic king. It was discovered and the conspirators were
executed. Then there was a crack-down on Catholics, with houses
being searched for hiding places for priests. Also, legislation
was passed barring Catholics from many offices.
James I ruled over both England and Scotland. He had come from
Scotland, so was unfamiliar with English love of their rights and
passion for liberty and justice. When he came to the throne, he
had a conference with a group of Puritans who asked for certain
reforms: ceremonies such as the cross in baptism and the ring in
marriage should not be used, only educated men competent to preach
should be made ministers, bishops should not be allowed to hold
benefices that they did not administer, and minor officials should
not excommunicate for trifles and twelve-penny matters. He not
only denied their requests, but had the English Bible revised into
the King James version, which was published in 1611. This was to
replace the popular Geneva Bible written by English protestant
refugees from Catholic Queen Mary's reign, which he did not like
because some of its commentary was not highly favorable to kings.
Religion was much discussed by all and scripture was frequently
quoted. James didn't believe a king had to live by the law; he
hadn't as king of Scotland. He tried to imbue into England the
idea of a divine right of kings to rule that he had held in
Scotland. The established church quickly endorsed and preached
this idea.
The selection of the clergy of the parish churches was now often
in the hands of the parishioners, having been sold to them by the
patron lord of the manor. Some patrons sold the right of selection
to a tradesman or yeoman who wished to put in his son or a
relative. Some rights of selection were in the hands of bishops,
the colleges, and the Crown. The parish clergyman was appointed
for life and removed only for grave cause. Most parishoners wanted
a sermon created by their minister instead of repetitious homilies
and constant prayer. They thought that the object of worship in
church was to rouse men to think and act about the problems of the
world.
In 1622, the king mandated that clergymen quote scripture only in
context of the Book of Articles of Religion of 1562 or the two
Books of Homilies and not preach any sermon on Sunday afternoon
except on some part of the Catechism or some text out of the
Creed, Ten Commandments, or the Lord's Prayer.
The Puritan movement grew. About 5% of the Protestants were
Puritans. These included country gentlemen and wealthier traders.
They dressed simply in gray or other drab colors and wore their
hair short to protest the fashion of long curls. They lived simply
and disapproved of dancing because it induced lasciviousness and
of theater because of its lewdness. Theaters and brothels still
shared the same neighborhoods, the same customers, and sometimes
the same employees. Prostitutes went to plays to find customers;
men shouldered and shoved each other in competing to sit next to
attractive women to get to know them. The Puritans also
disapproved of cock fights because they led to gambling and
disorder, and Maypole celebrations because of their paganism.
There was less humor. Many became stoics. The Puritan church
ceremonies were plain, with no ornamentation. Puritans prayed
several times a day and read the Bible to each other in family
groups to look for guidance in their conduct and life. They asked
for God to intervene in personal matters and looked for signs of
his pleasure or displeasure in happenings such as a tree falling
close but not touching him, or his horse throwing him without
injury to him. When there was an illness in the family or
misfortune, they examined their past life for sins and tried to
correct shortcomings. They circulated records of puritan lives
including spiritual diaries. They believed in the equality of men
and that a good man was better than a bad peer, bishop, or king.
Puritan influence made families closer and not merely dependent on
the will of the husband or father. There was a sense of spiritual
fellowship among family members as individuals. They emphasized
the real need of a lasting love relationship between husband and
wife, so a mutual liking that could develop into love between a
young couple in an arranged match was essential.
Most Puritans felt that the bishops were as tyrannical as the pope
had been and that more reform was needed. They favored the
Presbyterian form of church government developed by John Calvin in
Switzerland. The presbyter was the position below bishop. Parishes
were governed by boards consisting of a minister and lay elders
elected by the parishioners. These boards sent elected
representatives to councils. All lay elders and ministers had
equal rank with each other. The Calvinist God preordained
salvation only for the elect and damnation and everlasting
punishment for the rest of humanity, but the Puritans had an
optimism about avoiding this damnation. They believed that at his
conversion a person received grace and became predestined for
salvation. They rejected all ecclesiastical institutions except as
established by each parish over its own elected pastor and
members. They rejected the established church's control from the
top by bishops. They believed in negotiating directly with God for
the welfare of the soul without the priest or church organization.
The fear of witchcraft grew with Puritanism. Poor decrepit old
defenseless women, often deformed and feeble-minded, were thought
to be witches. Their warts and tumors were thought to be teats for
the devil to suck or the devil's mark. Cursing or ill-tempers
(probably from old age pains) or having cats were further
indications of witchery.
When the king learned in 1618 that the Puritans had prevented
certain recreations after the Sunday service, he proclaimed that
the people should not be restrained from lawful recreations and
exercise such as dancing, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, May-
games, Whitsunales, Morris-dances, and May-pole sports. Also women
could carry rushes to decorate the church as they had done in the
past. (Still unlawful on Sunday was bear and bull baitings and
bowlings.) His stated purpose was to prevent people such as
Catholics from being deterred from conversion, to promote physical
fitness for war, and to keep people from drinking and making
discontented speeches in their ale houses.
Besides the Puritans, there were other Independent sects, such as
the Congregationalists, whose churches gathered together by the
inspiration of Jesus. This sect was started by English merchants
residing in Holland who set up congregations of Englishmen under
their patronage there; they kept minister and elders well under
their control. The Baptists emerged out of the Independents. They
believed that only adults, who were capable of full belief, and
not children, could be baptized. They also believed that it was
the right of any man to seek God's truth for himself in the
scriptures and that obedience to the state should not extend
beyond personal conscience.
One fourth of all children born did not live to the age of ten,
most dying in their first year. Babies had close caps over their
head, a rattle, and slept in a sturdy wood cradle that rocked on
the floor, usually near the hearth. Babies of wealthier families
had nurses. The babies of ladies were suckled by wet nurses.
Parents raised children with affection and tried to prepare them
to become independent self-sustaining adults. There was less
severity than in Tudor times, although the maxim "spare the rod
and spoil the child" was generally believed, especially by
Puritans, and applied to even very young children. In disciplining
a child, an admonition was first used, and the rod as a last
resort, with an explanation of the reasons for its use. There were
nursery rhymes and stories such as "Little Bo-Peep", "Jack and the
Beanstalk", "Tom Thumb", "Chicken Little", and Robin Hood and King
Arthur tales, and probably also "Puss in Boots", "Red Ridinghood",
"Cinderella", "Beauty and the Beast", "Bluebeard" and Aesop's
Fables. "Little Jack Horner" who sat in a corner was a satire on
the Puritan aversion to Christmas pudding and sense of conscious
virtue. Toys included dolls, balls, drums, and hobby horses.
Children played "hide and seek", "here we go around the Mulberry
bush", and other group games. School children were taught by "horn
books". This was a piece of paper with the alphabet and perhaps a
religious verse, such as the Paternoster prayer, that was mounted
on wood and covered with thin horn to prevent tearing. Little
girls cross-stitched the alphabet and numerals on samplers. Block
alphabets were just coming in. Most market towns had a grammar
school which would qualify a student for university. They were
attended by sons of noblemen, country squires [poor gentlemen],
merchants, and substantial yeomen, and in some free schools, the
poor. School hours were from 6:00 a.m. to noon or later.
Multiplication was taught. If affordable, families had their
children involved in education after they were small until they
left home at about fifteen for apprenticeship or service.
Otherwise, children worked with their families from the age of
seven, e.g. carding and spinning wool, until leaving home at about
fifteen.
There were boarding schools such as Winchester, Eton, Westminster,
St. Paul's, and Merchant Taylors'. There, senior boys selected for
conduct and ability supervised younger boys. They thereby got
experience for a future in public life. The system was also a
check on bullying of the weak by the strong. The curriculum
included Lilly's "Grammar", Aesop, Terence's Roman comic plays,
Virgil's "Aeneid", the national epic of Rome, Cicero's "Letters"
reflecting Roman life, Sallust's histories showing people and
their motives, Caesar's "Commentaries" on the Gallic and civil
wars, Horace's "Epistles" about life and poetry, poet Ovid's
"Metamorphoses" on adventures and love affairs of deities and
heros, or "Fasti" on Roman religious festivals and customs,
Donatus' grammar book, and other ancient Latin authors. Football,
with hog bladders, and tennis were played. These schools were
self-supporting and did their own farming.
Private schools for girls were founded in and around London. They
were attended by daughters of the well-to-do merchant class,
nobility, and gentry. They were taught singing, playing of
instruments, dancing, French, fine sewing, embroidery, and
sometimes arithmetic. Fewer served in the house of some noble lady
as before. Most commonly, the sons and daughters of gentlemen and
nobles were taught by private tutors. A tutor in the house
educated the girls to the same extent as the boys. There were not
many girls' boarding schools. Frequently, the mother educated her
daughters. A considerable number of girls of other backgrounds
such as the yeomanry and the town citizenry somehow learned to
read and write.
Boys began at university usually from age 14 to 18, but sometimes
as young as 12. The universities provided a broad-based education
in the classics, logic and rhetoric, history, theology, and modern
languages for gentlemen and gave a homogenous national culture to
the ruling class. There was a humanist ideal of a gentleman
scholar. The method of study based largely on lectures and
disputations. Each fellow had about five students to tutor. In
many cases, he took charge of the finances of his students, paying
his bills to tradesmen and the college. His reimbursement by the
students' fathers put them into friendly contact with the family.
The students slept in trundle beds around his bed and had an
adjacent room for study. Scholasticism was only starting to give
way to modern studies. Aristotle, whose authority was paramount,
remained the lynch pin of university studies, especially for logic
and dialectic. The study of rhetoric was based on Quintilian, the
Latin writer, and the Greek treatise of Hermogenes of Tarsus. Also
studyed was Cicero's orations as models of style. Examination for
degrees was by disputation over a thesis of the student. The B.A.
degree was given after four years of study, and the M.A. after
three more. There were advanced degrees in civil law (after seven
more years of study), medicine (after seven years), divinity
(required more than seven years), and music. Many of the men who
continued for advanced degrees became fellows and took part in the
teaching. Most fellowships were restricted to clerics. Oxford and
Cambridge Universities operated under a tutorial system. Access to
grammar schools and universities was closed to girls of whatever
class. Oxford University now had the Bodleian Library. In the
universities, there were three types of students: poor scholars,
who received scholarships and also performed various kinds of
service such as kitchen work and did errands for fellows such as
carrying water and waiting on tables; commoners, who paid low fees
and were often the sons of economical gentlemen or businessmen;
and the Fellow Commoners (a privileged and well-to-do minority,
usually sons of noblemen or great country gentlemen). The Fellow
Commoners paid high fees, had large rooms, sometimes had a
personal tutor or servant, and had the right to eat with the
Fellows at High Table. Here, gentlemen made friends with their
social equals from all over the country. Students wore new-
fashioned gowns of any colors and colored stockings. They put on
stage plays in Latin and English. The students played at running,
jumping, and pitching the bar, and at the forbidden swimming and
football. They were not to have irreligious books or dogs. Cards
and dice could be played only at Christmas time. Students still
drank, swore, and rioted, but they were disallowed from going into
town without special permission. Those below a B.A. had to be
accompanied by a tutor or an M.A. They were forbidden from
taverns, boxing matches, dances, cock fights, and loitering in the
street or market. Sometimes a disputation between two colleges
turned into a street brawl. Punishment was by flogging. Each
university had a chancellor, usually a great nobleman or
statesman, who represented the university in dealings with the
government and initiated policies. The vice-chancellor was
appointed for a year from the group of heads of college. He looked
out for the government of halls, enforced the rules of the
university, kept its courts, licensed wineshops, and shared
control of the town with the mayor.
Tutors were common. They resided at the boy's house or took boys
to board with them at their houses in England or on the continent.
The tutor sometimes accompanied his student to grammar school or
university. Puritans frequently sent their sons to board in the
house of some Frenchman or Swiss Protestant to learn the Calvinist
doctrines or on tour with a tutor. Certain halls in the
universities were predominately Puritan. Catholics were required
to have their children taught in a home of a Protestant, a
relative if possible.
The Inns of Court were known as "the third university". It served
the profession of law, and was a training ground for the sons of
nobility and the gentry and for those entering the service of the
commonwealth. Some American colonists sent their sons there. The
Inns were self-governing and ruled by custom. Students were
supposed to live within the Inn, two to a room, but often there
were not enough rooms, so some students lived outside the
quadrangles. Every student was supposed to partake of Commons or
meals for a certain fraction of the year - from eight weeks to
three months and there to argue issues in cases brought up by
their seniors. In hall the students were not allowed to wear hats,
though caps were permitted, nor were they to appear booted or
spurred or carrying swords. For the first two years, they would
read and talk much of the law, and were called Clerks Commoners.
After two years they became Mootmen or Inner Barristers. In five
or six years they might be selected to be called to the bar as
Utter Barristers, whose number was fixed. There was no formal
examination. The Utter Barrister spent at least three more years
performing exercises and assisting in directing the studies of the
younger men. After this time, he could plead in the general courts
at Westminster, but usually carried on law work in the offices of
other men and prepared cases for them. Participating in moots
(practice courts) was an important part of their education.
Lectures on statutes and their histories were given by Readers
Physicians were licensed by universities, by the local bishop, or
in London, by the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Most were
university graduates, and because of the expense of the education,
from well-to-do families. For the B.A., they emphasized Greek. For
the M.A., they studied the works of Greek physicians Claudius
Galen and Hippocrates, and perhaps some medieval authorities.
After the M.A., they listened to lectures by the Regius Professor
of Medicine and saw a few dissections. Three years of study gave
them a M.B., and four more years beyond this the M.D. degree. A
physician's examination of a patient cost 10s. and included asking
him about his symptoms and feelings of pain, looking at this eyes,
looking at his body for spots indicative of certain diseases,
guessing whether he had a fever, feeling his pulse, and examining
urine and stools, though there were no laboratory tests. Smallpox
was quickly recognized. It was treated by red cloth being wrapped
around the person and put up to cover the windows; this promoted
healing without scarring. Gout was frequent. Syphilis was common
in London and other large centers, especially in Court circles. It
was ameliorated by mercury. An imbalance of the four humors:
blood, phlegm, choler, bile was redressed by blood-letting,
searing, draining, and/or purging. Heart trouble was not easily
diagnosed and cancer was not recognized as a life-threatening
disease. Childbirth was attended by physicians if the patient was
well-to-do or the case was serious. Otherwise women were attended
only by midwives. They often died in childbirth, many in their
twenties.
The theory of nutrition was still based on the four humors and
deficiency diseases were not understood as such. Physician William
Harvey, son of a yeoman, discovered the circulation of the blood
from heart to lungs to heart to body about 1617. He had studied
anatomy at Padua on the continent and received an M.D. there and
later at Cambridge. Then he accepted a position at the hospital of
St. Bartholomew to treat the poor who came there at least once a
week for a year. He agreed to give the poor full benefit of his
knowledge, to prescribe only such medicines as should do the poor
good without regard to the pecuniary interest of the apothecary
accompanying him, to take no reward from patients, and to render
account for any negligence on his part. He also dissected animals.
Then he ascertained that the heart was a pump and that the valves
in the veins prevented backflow and he followed the course of the
circulation. The language of medicine became that of physics and
mechanics, e.g. wheels and pulleys, wedges, levers, screws, cords,
canals, cisterns, sieves and strainers. This diminished the
religious concept that the heart was the seat of the soul and that
blood had a spiritual significance and was sacred.
A visit by a physician cost 13s.4d. Melancholia, which made one
always fearful and full of dread, and mania, which made one think
he could do supernatural things, were considered to be types of
madness different from infirmities of the body. Despite a belief
held by some that anatomical investigation of the human body was a
sin against the holy ghost, physicians were allowed to dissect
corpses. So there were anatomy textbooks and anatomy was related
to surgery. Barber-surgeons extracted teeth and performed surgery.
The physicians turned surgery over to the surgeons, who received a
charter in 1605 by which barbers were excluded from all surgical
work except blood-letting and the drawing of teeth. Surgeons dealt
with skin disease, ulcers, hernia, bladder stones, and broken
bones, which they had some skill in setting. They performed
amputations, which were without antiseptics or anesthesia.
Internal operations usually resulted in death. Caesarian section
was attempted, but did not save the life of the mother.
Apprenticeship was the route to becoming a surgeon. A College of
Surgeons was founded. Students learned anatomy, for which they
received the corpses of four executed felons a year.
The apothecaries and grocers received a charter in 1607, but in
1618, the apothecaries were given the sole right to purchase and
sell potions, and to search the shops of grocers and stop the sale
by them of any potions. In London, the apothecaries were looked
over by the College of Physicians to see that they were not
selling evil potions or poisons. In 1618 was the first pharmacy
book.
There were three hospitals in London, two for the poor, and Bedlam
[Bethlehem] Hospital for the insane. Others were treated at home
or in the physician's home.
Theaters were shut down in times of plague to prevent spread of
disease there. Towndwellers who could afford it left to live in
the country.
Shakespeare wrote most of his plays. Most popular reading was
still Bibles, prayer books, psalm books, and devotional works.
Also popular were almanacs, which started with a single sheet of
paper. An almanac usually had a calendar; information on fairs,
roads, and posts; farming hints; popularized scientific knowledge;
historical information; sensational news; astrological
predictions; and later, social, political, and religious comment.
Many households had an almanac. Books tried to reconcile religion
and science and religion and passion or sensuality. Walter
Ralegh's "History of the World", written while he was in prison,
was popular. Ben Johnson wrote poetry and satiric comedies.
Gentlemen read books of manners such as James Cleland's
"Institution of a Young Noble Man (1607). In 1622, the first
regular weekly newspaper was started.
Although there was a large advance in the quality of boys'
education and in literacy, the great majority of the people were
unable to read fluently. Since writing was taught after one could
read fluently, literacy was indicated by the ability to sign one's
name. Almost all gentlemen and professional men were literate.
About half the yeomen and tradesmen and craftsmen were. Only about
15% of husbandmen, laborers, servants, and women were literate.