- - - Chapter 13 - - -

- The Times: 1558-1601 -

Queen Elizabeth I was intelligent, educated, and wise about human nature. When young, she was a brilliant student and studied the Bible, and Greek and Roman history, philosophy, literature, and oratory. She wrote in English, Latin, French, and Italian. She read Greek, including the Greek Testament, Greek orators, and Greek dramatists at age seven, when the first professorship of Greek was founded at Cambridge University. Learning from books was one of her highest values throughout her life.

She was so influenced by her reading of Cicero that she acquired his style of writing. Her Chief Secretary William Cecil was so guided by Cicero's "Offices" that he carried a copy in his pocket. Cicero opined that government officials' duty was to make the safety and interest of citizens its greatest aim and to design all their thoughts and endeavors without ever considering personal advantage. Government was not to serve the interest of any one group to the prejudice or neglect of the rest, for then discord and sedition would occur. Furthermore, a ruler should try to become loved and not feared, because men hated those whom they feared, and wished dead those whom they hated. Therefore obedience proceeding from fear could not last, whereas that which was the effect of love would last forever. An oppressor ruling by terror will be resented by the citizens, who in secret will choose a worthier person. Then liberty, having been chained up, would be unleashed more fiercely than otherwise. To obtain the peoples' love, a ruler should be kind and bountiful. To obtain the peoples' trust, a ruler should be just, wise, and faithful. To demonstrate this, a ruler should be eloquent in showing the people an understanding better than theirs, the wisdom to anticipate events, and the ability to deal with adverse events. And this demonstration should be done with modesty. One cannot get the peoples' trust by vain shows, hypocritical pretenses, composed countenances, and studied forms of words. The first goal of a ruler is to take care that each individual is secured in the quiet enjoyment of his own property. The second goal is to impose taxes that are not burdensome. The third goal is to furnish the people with necessaries. The law should be enforced keeping in mind that its fundamental purpose is to keep up agreement and union among citizens.

Elizabeth cared deeply for the welfare of all citizens of whatever class. She was sensitive to public opinion and was loved by her people. She respected truth and was sincere, avoiding guile or fraud. She claimed that she had never dishonored her tongue with a falsehood to anyone. She expected that any covert manipulations by monarchs would be found out and therefore would damage their credibility. "It becometh therefor all of our rank to deal sincerely; lest if we use it not, when we do it we be hardly believed."

She was frugal and diplomatically avoided unnecessary wars, saying that her purse was the pockets of her people. England was a small Protestant nation threatened by the larger Catholic nations of France and Spain. When Elizabeth flirted and talked of marriage with foreign princes, they laid aside any thoughts of conquering England by war, hoping to obtain it my marriage. Not only did she not seek to conquer other lands, but she turned down an invitation to rule the Netherlands. Her credit reputation was so good that she could always get loans at small rates of interest from other countries.

Tudor government was paternalistic, curtailing cutthroat competition, fixing prices and wages, and licensing production under grants of monopoly to achieve a stable and contented society and a fair living for all.

Elizabeth prayed for divine guidance as in this prayer: "Almighty God and King of all kings, Lord of heaven and earth, by whose leave earthly princes rule over mortals, when the most prudent of kings who administered a kingdom, Solomon, frankly confessed that he was not capable enough unless Thou broughtst him power and help, how much less am I, Thy handmaid, in my unwarlike sex and feminine nature, adequate to administer these Thy kingdoms of England and of Ireland, and to govern an innumerable and warlike people, or able to bear the immense magnitude of such a burden, if Thou, most merciful Father didst not provide for me (undeserving of a kingdom) freely and against the opinion of many men. Instruct me from heaven, and give help so that I reign by Thy grace, without which even the wisest among the sons of men can think nothing rightly. Send therefore, O inexhaustible Fount of all wisdom, from Thy holy heaven and the most high throne of Thy majesty, Thy wisdom to be ever with me, that it may keep watch with me in governing the commonwealth, and that it may take pains, that it may teach me, Thy handmaid, and may train me that I may be able to distinguish between good and evil, equity and iniquity, so as rightly to judge Thy people, justly to impose deserved punishments on those who do harm, mercifully to protect the innocent, freely to encourage those who are industrious and useful to the commonwealth. And besides, that I may know what is acceptable to Thee alone, vouchsafe that I wish, dare, and can perform it without paying respect to any earthly persons or things. So that when Thou Thyself, the just Judge, who askest many and great things from those to whom many and great things are entrusted, when Thou requirest an exact accounting, charge me not with badly administering my commonwealth and kingdom. But if by human thoughtlessness or infirmity Thy handmaid strays from the right in some thing, absolve me of it by Thy mercy, most high King and most mild Father, for the sake of Thy Son Jesus Christ; and at the same time grant that after this worldly kingdom has been exacted of me, I may enjoy with Thee an eternity in Thy heavenly and unending kingdom, through the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son and the Assessor of Thy kingdom, our Lord and Mediator. To whom with Thee and with the Holy Spirit, one everlasting King, immortal, invisible, only-wise God, be all honor and glory forever and ever, amen.

Elizabeth promoted commercial speculations, which diffused a vast increase of wealth among her people. The Elizabethan era was one of general prosperity. Her good spirits and gayness created a happy mood in the nation. She loved dancing and madrigal music was popular. She came to dress elaborately and fancifully. Her dresses were fitted not only at the waist, but along the torso by a long and pointed bodice stiffened with wood, steel, or whalebone. Her skirt was held out with a petticoat with progressively larger hoops. There were two layers of skirt with the top one parted to show the bottom one. The materials used were silks, satins, velvets, and brocades. On her dress were quiltings, slashings, and embroidery. It was covered with gold ornaments, pearls, gems, and unusual stones from America. She wore decorated gloves. Ladies copied her and discarded their simple over-tunics for elaborate dresses. The under-tunic was now becoming a petticoat and the over-tunic a dress. Their under-tunics became petticoats. Often they also wore a fan with a mirror, a ball of scent, a miniature portrait of someone dear to them, and sometimes a watch. Single ladies did not wear hats, but had long, flowing hair and low cut dresses showing their bosoms. Married ladies curled their hair and wore it in high masses on their heads with jewels interwoven into it. Both gentlemen and ladies wore hats both indoors and outside and large, pleated collars around their necks (with the newly discovered starch), perfume, rings with stones or pearls, and high-heeled shoes. Gentlemen's' tight sleeves, stiffened and fitted doublet with short skirt, and short cloak were ornamented and their silk or velvet hats flamboyant, with feathers. At their leather belts they hung pouches and perhaps a watch. They wore both rapiers [swords with cutting edges] and daggers daily as there were many quarrels. There were various artistic beard cuts and various lengths of hair, which was often curled and worn in ringlets. Barbers sought to give a man a haircut that would favor his appearance, for instance a long slender beard for a round face to make it seem narrower and a broad and large cut for a lean and straight face. Men now wore stuffed breeches and stockings instead of long hosen. Some wore a jewelled and embroidered codpiece between their legs to emphasize their virility. Both gentlemen and ladies wore silk stockings and socks over them and then boots. Coats dipped in boiled linseed oil with resin served as raincoats. Both men and women wore velvet or wool full length nightgowns with long sleeves and fur lining and trimming to bed, which was the custom for the next 150 years. Fashions changed every year due to the introduction of cheaper, lighter, and less durable cloths by immigrant craftsmen. When Elizabeth became old, she had a wig made to match her youthful long red hair. Other ladies then began wearing wigs.

Every few years, Elizabeth issued a proclamation reminding people of the apparel laws and reiterating certain provisions which had been disregarded. For instance, only the royal family and dukes and marquises in mantles of the garter could wear the color purple. One had to be at least an earl to wear gold or silver or sable. Only dukes, marquises, earls and their children, barons, and knights of the order could wear imported wool, velvet, crimson, scarlet, or blue, or certain furs. Except that barons' sons, knights, or men that could dispend at least 200 pounds yearly could wear velvet in gowns or coats, embroidery, and furs of leopards. Spurs, swords, rapiers, daggers, and woodknives were restricted to knights and barons' sons or higher. A man who could dispend at least 100 pounds per year could wear taffeta, satin, damask, or cloth made of camels' hair and silk, in his outer garments. One had to be the son and heir or the daughter of a knight or wife of said son or a man who could dispend 20 pounds yearly or had 200 pounds worth in goods to wear silk in one's hat, bonnet, nightcap, girdle, scabbard, or hose. Yeomen, husbandmen, serving men, and craftsmen were very restricted in what they could wear. Poor men wore skirted fustian tunics, loose breeches, and coarse stockings or canvas leggings.

Women spent much of their time doing needlework and embroidery. Since so many of the women who spent their days spinning were single, unmarried women became known as "spinsters".

Children wore the same type of apparel as their elders. They were given milk at meals for good growth. It was recognized that sickness could be influenced by diet and herbs. Sickness was still viewed as an imperfect balance of the four humors.

There were many lifestyle possibilities in the nation: gentleman, that is one who owned land or was in a profession such as a attorney, physician, priest or who was a university graduate, government official, or a military officer; employment in agriculture, arts, sciences; employment in households and offices of noblemen and gentlemen; self-sufficient farmers with their own farm; fisherman or mariner on the sea or apprentice of such; employment by carriers of grain into cities, by market towns, or for digging, seeking, finding, getting, melting, fining, working, trying, making of any silver, tin, lead, iron, copper, stone, coal; glassmaker.

Typical wages in the country were: fieldworkers 2-3d. a day, ploughmen 1s. a week with board, shepherd 6d. a week and board, his boy 2 1/2 d., hedgers 6d. a day, threshers 3-7d. depending on the grain, thatching for five days 2d., master mason or carpenter or joiner 4d. a day and food or 8d. without food, a smith 2d. a day with food, a bricklayer 2 1/2 d. a day with food, a shoemaker 2d. a day with food. These people lived primarily on food from his own ground.

There was typical work for each month of the year in the country: January - ditching and hedging after the frost broke, February - catch moles in the meadows, March - protect the sheep from prowling dogs, April - put up hop poles, sell bark to the tanner before the timber is felled, fell elm and ash for carts and ploughs, fell hazel for forks, fell sallow for rakes, fell horn for flails, May - weed and hire children to pick up stones from the fallow land, June - wash and shear the sheep, July - hay harvest, August - wheat harvest, September and October - gather the fruit, sell the wool from the summer shearing, stack logs for winter, buy salt fish for Lent in the town and lay it up to dry, November - have the chimneys swept before winter, thresh grain in the barn, December - grind tools, repair yokes, forks, and farm implements, cover strawberry and flower beds with straw to protect them from the cold, split kindling wood with beetle and wedge, tan their leather, make leather jugs, make baskets for catching fish, and carve wood spoons, plates, and bowls.

There was a wave of building and renovation activity in town and country. Housing is now, for the first time, purely for dwelling and not for defense. Houses were designed symmetrically with decorative features instead of a haphazard addition of rooms. Windows were large and put on the outer walls instead of just inside the courtyard. A scarcity of timber caused proportionally more stone to be used for dwelling houses and proportionately more brick to be used for royal palaces and mansions. The rest of the house was plaster painted white interspersed with vertical, horizontal, and sloping timber, usually oak, painted black. There were locks and bolts for protection from intruders. The hall was still the main room, and usually extended up to the roof. Richly carved screens separated the hall from the kitchen. The floors were stone or wood, and sometimes tile. They were often covered with rushes or plaited rush mats, on which incomers could remove the mud from their boots. Some private rooms may have carpets on the floor. Walls were smoothly plastered or had carved wood paneling to control drafts. Painted cloths replaced tapestries on walls. Iron stands with candles were hung from the ceiling and used on tables. Plastered ceilings and a lavish use of glass made rooms lighter and cozy. Broad and gracious open stairways with carved wood banisters, which replaced the narrow winding stone steps of a circular stairwell. Most houses had several ornamented brick chimneys and clear, but uneven, glass in the windows. There were fireplaces in living rooms, dining rooms, kitchen, and bedrooms, as well as in the hall and great chamber. Parlors were used for eating and sitting only, but not for sleeping. Closets were rooms off bedrooms in which one could read and write on a writing table, and store one's books, papers, maps, calendar, medals, collections, rarities, and oddities. Sometimes there was a study room or breakfast room as well. A gentleman used his study not only to read and to write, but to hold collections of early chronicles, charters, deeds, copied manuscripts, and coins that reflected the budding interest in antiquarianism; and to study his family genealogy, for which he had hired someone to make an elaborate diagram. He was inclined to have a few classical, religious, medical, legal, and political books there. Rooms were more spacious than before and contained oak furniture such as enclosed cupboards, cabinets, buffets from which food could be served, tables, chairs and benches with backs and cushions, sometimes with arms, lidded chests for storing clothes and linens, and occasionally chests of drawers or wardrobes, either hanging or with shelves, for clothes. Chests of drawers developed from a drawer at the bottom of a wardrobe. Carpeting covered tables, chests, and beds. Family portraits decorated some walls, usually in the dining room. Great houses had a wardrobe chamber with a fireplace in front of which the yeoman of the wardrobe and his assistants could repair clothes and hangings. Separate bedchambers replaced bed-sitting rooms. Bedrooms all led out of each other. The lady's chamber was next to her lord's chamber, and her ladies' chambers were close to her chamber. But curtains on the four poster beds with tops provided privacy and warmth. Beds had elaborately carved bedsteads, sheets, and a feather cover as well as a feather mattress. Often family members, servants, and friends shared the same bed for warmth or convenience. Each bedroom typically had a cabinet with a mirror, e.g. of burnished metal or crystal, and comb on top. One brushed his teeth with tooth soap and a linen cloth, as physicians advised. Each bedroom had a pitcher and water bowl, usually silver or pewter, for washing in the morning, and a chamber pot or a stool with a hole over a bucket for nighttime use, and also fragrant flowers to override the unpleasant odors. The chamber pots and buckets were emptied into cesspits. A large set of lodgings had attached to it latrines consisting of a small cell in which a seat with a hole was placed over a shaft which connected to a pit or a drain. The servants slept in turrets or attics. Elizabeth had a room just for her bath.

More than medieval castles and manor houses, mansions were designed with privacy in mind. Breakfast was substantial, with meat, and usually eaten in one's bedroom. The great hall, often hung around with bows, pikes, swords, and guns, was not abandoned, but the family took meals there only on rare occasions. Instead they withdrew to a parlor, for domestic use, or the great chamber, for entertaining. Parlors were situated on the ground floor: the family lived and relaxed there, and had informal meals in a dining parlor.

The formal or "state" rooms were on the first floor above the ground floor, usually comprising a great chamber, a withdrawing chamber, one or more bedchambers, and a long gallery. Each room had carved chairs and cabinets. Taking a meal in the great chamber involved the same ceremonial ritual as in the manorial great chamber dating from the 1400s. The table was covered with a linen cloth. Some sat above the fancy silver salt cellar and pepper, and some sat below. Grace was said before the meal. Noon dinner and supper were served by sewer, carver, cupbearer, and assistants. The lady of the house sat in a chair at the upper end of the table and was served first. Fine clear Italian glass drinking vessels replaced even gold and silver goblets. They ate from silver dishes with silver spoons. Some gentry used two-pronged forks. There was great plenty and variety of meats to all but the poorer classes: beef, mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, hare, capon, red deer, fish and wild fowl as well as the traditional venison and brawn [boar]. Kitchen gardens and orchards supplied apricots, almonds, gooseberries, raspberries, melons, currants, oranges, and lemons as well as the traditional apples, pears, plums, mulberries, quinces, pomegranates, figs, cherries, walnuts, chestnuts, hazel nuts, filberts, almonds, strawberries, blackberries, dewberries, blueberries, and peaches. Also grown were sweet potatoes, artichokes, cabbages, turnips, broad beans, peas, pumpkins, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, celery, parsnips, onions, garlic, leeks, endive, capers, spinach, sorrel, lettuce, parsley, mustard, cress, sage, tarragon, fennel, thyme, mint, savory, rhubarb, and medicinal herbs. The well-to-do started to grow apricots, peaches, and oranges under glass. Sugar was used to make sweet dishes. Toothpicks made of brass or silver or merely a stiff quill were used. After the meal, some men and women were invited for conversation in a withdrawing or drawing chamber. Some might take a walk in the gardens. After the upper table was served, the food was sent to the great hall to the steward and high household officers at the high table and other servants: serving men and women, bakers, brewers, cooks, pot cleaners, laundresses, shepherds, hogherds, dairy maids, falconers, huntsmen, and stable men. What was left was given to the poor at the gates of the house. Great chambers were used primarily for meals, but also for music; dancing; plays; masques; playing cards, dice, backgammon, or chess; and daily prayers if there was no chapel.

The idea of a long gallery was copied from Henry VII and was used for exercise, recreation such as music and dancing, and private conversations. Without the necessity of fortifications, the estate of a noble or gentleman could spread out to include not only a garden for the kitchen, but extensive orchards and beautiful formal gardens of flowers and scrubs, sometimes with fountains and maybe a maze of hedges. Trees were planted, pruned, and grafted onto each other.

Householders had the responsibility to teach their family and servants religion and morals, and often read from the Bible to them. Many thought that the writers of the Bible wrote down the exact words of God, so the passages of the Bible should be taken literally. A noble lord made written rules with penalties for his country household, which numbered about a hundred, including family, retainers, and servants. He enforced them by fines, flogging, and threats of dismissal. The lady of the house saw that the household, held together as an economic and social unit. The noble's family, retainers, guests, and the head servants, such as chaplain and children's tutor, and possibly a musician, dined together at one table. The family included step children and married sons and daughters with their spouses. Young couples often lived with the parents of one of them. Chandeliers of candles lit rooms. There were sandglass clocks. Popular home activities included reading, conversation, gardening, and music-making. Smoking tobacco from a clay pipe and taking snuff became popular with men. For amusement, one of the lord's household would take his place in managing the estate for twelve days. He was called the "lord of misrule", and mimicked his lord, and issued comic orders. Clothes were washed in rivers and wells. At spring cleanings, windows were opened, every washable surface washed, and feather beds and pillows exposed to the sun.

Most dwellings were of brick and stone. Only a few were of wood or mud and straw. The average house was now four rooms instead of three. Yeomen might have six rooms. A weaver's house had a hall, two bedrooms, and a kitchen besides the shop. Farmers might have two instead of one room. A joiner had a one-room house with a feather bed and bolster. Even craftsmen, artificers and simple farmers slept on feather beds on bed frames with pillows, sheets, blankets, and coverlets. Loom tapestry and painted cloth was hung to keep out the cold in their single story homes. They also had pewter spoons and plates, instead of just wood or earthenware ones. Even the poorer class had glass drinking vessels, though of a coarse grade. The poor still used wooden plates and spoons. Laborers had canvas sheets. Richer farmers would build a chamber above the hall, replacing the open hearth with a fireplace and chimney at a wall. Poorer people favored ground floor extensions, adding a kitchen or second bedchamber to their cottages. Kitchens were often separate buildings to reduce the risk of fire. Roasting was done on a spit and baking in irons boxes placed in the fire or in a brick oven at the side of the fireplace. Sometimes dogs were used to turn a spit by continual running in a treadmill. Some people lived in hovels due to the custom in many places that a person could live in a home he built on village waste land if he could build it in one night.

Yeomen farmers still worked from dawn to dusk. Mixed farming began. In this, some of the arable land produced food for man and the rest produced food for sheep, cattle, pigs, and poultry. This was made possible by the introduction of clover, artificial grasses, and turnip and other root crops for the animals. Since the sheep ate these crops in the field, they provided manure to maintain the fertility of the soil. This meant that many animals could be maintained throughout the winter instead of being slaughtered and salted.

Farmers' wives used looms as well as spinning wheels with foot treadles. Since animals could now be kept through the winter, salted meat and salted fish were no longer the staple food of the poorer people during the winter. Farm laborers ate soup, porridge, milk, cheese, bacon, and beer or mead (depending on the district), and dark barley or rye bread, which often served as his plate. Gentlemen ate wheat bread. There was a scarcity of fruits and vegetables that adversely affected the health of the affluent as well as of the poor due to the overall decline in farming. During winter, there were many red noses and coughing.

The value of grain and meat rose compared to wool. Grain became six times its value in the previous reign. Wool fell from 20s.8d. per tod to 16s. So sheep-farming, which had taken about 5% of the arable land, was supplanted somewhat by crop-raising and the rural population could be employed for agriculture. In some places, the threefold system of rotation was replaced by alternating land used for crops with that used for pasture. The necessity of manuring and the rotation of crops and grasses such as clover for enrichment of the soil were recognized. Wheat, rye, barley, peas, and beans were raised. There was much appropriation of common land by individual owners by sale or force. Many farms were enclosed by fences or hedges so that each holder could be independent of his neighbors. Red and black currants, rhubarb, apricots, and oranges were now grown. These independent farmers could sell wool to clothiers, and butter, cheese, and meat to the towns. They also often did smithwork and ironwork, making nails, horseshoes, keys, locks, and agricultural implements to sell. A laborer could earn 6d. a day in winter and 7d. a day in summer. Unfree villeinage ceased on the royal estates. But most land was still farmed in common and worked in strips without enclosure. Elizabeth made several proclamations ordering the enclosure of certain enclosed land to be destroyed and the land returned to tillage. Windmills now had vanes replacing manual labor to change the position of the sails when the wind direction changed. Prosperous traders and farmers who owned their own land assumed local offices as established members of the community.

The population of the nation was about five million. Population expansion had allowed landlords to insist on shorter leases and higher rents, instead of having to choose between accepting a long lease and good rent or allowing their estates to pass out of cultivation. Over 50% of the population were on the margin of subsistence. 90% of the population lived in the countryside and 5% in the London and 5% in the other towns. Life expectancy was about 40 years of age. Over 50% was under the age of 23, while only about 9% were over 60. Fluctuations in rates of population growth were traceable back to bad harvests and to epidemics and the two were still closely related to each other: "first dirth and then plague".

Most of London was confined within the city wall. There were orchards and gardens both inside and outside the walls, and fields outside. Flower gardens and nurseries came into existence. No part of the city was more than a ten minute walk to the fields. Some wealthy merchants had four story mansions or country houses outside the city walls. The suburbs of the City of London grew in a long line along the river; on the west side were noblemen's houses on both sides of the Strand. East of the Tower was a seafaring and industrial population. Goldsmiths' Row was replete with four story houses. A few wealthy merchants became money- lenders for interest, despite the law against usury. The mayor of London was typically a rich merchant prince. Each trade occupied its own section of the town and every shop had its own signboard, for instance, hat and cap sellers, cloth sellers, grocers, butchers, cooks, taverns, and book-sellers. Many of the London wards were associated with a craft, such as Candlewick Ward, Bread St. Ward, Vintry Ward, and Cordwainer Ward. Some wards were associated with their location in the city, such as Bridge Ward, Tower Ward, Aldgate Ward, Queenhithe Ward, and Billingsgate Ward. People lived at the back or on the second floor of their shops. In the back yard, they grew vegetables such as melons, carrots, turnips, cabbages, pumpkins, parsnips, and cucumbers; herbs; and kept a pig. The pigs could still wander through the streets. Hyde Park was the Queen's hunting ground. London had a small zoo of ten animals, including a lion, tiger, lynx, and wolf.

London was England's greatest manufacturing city. By 1600 the greatest trading companies in London ceased to be associated only with their traditional goods and were dominated by merchants whose main interest was in the cloth trade. Ambitious merchants joined a livery company to become freemen of the city and for the status and social benefits of membership. The companies still made charitable endowments, had funeral feasts, cared for the welfare of guild members, and made lavish displays of pageantry. They were intimately involved with the government of the city. They supplied members for the Court of Aldermen, which relied on the companies to maintain the City's emergency grain stores, to assess and collect taxes, to provide loans to the Crown, to control prices and markets, to provide armed men when trouble was expected, and to raise armies for the Crown at times of rebellion, war, or visits from foreign monarchs. From about 1540 to 1700, there were 23% involved in cloth or clothing industries such as weavers, tailors, hosiers, haberdashers, and cappers. 9% were leatherworkers such as skinners; tanners; those in the heavy leather crafts such as shoemakers, saddlers, and cobblers; and those in the light leather crafts such as glovers and pursers. Another 9% worked in metals, such as the armorers, smiths, cutlers, locksmiths, and coppersmiths. 8% worked in the building trades. The victualling trades, such as bakers, brewers, butchers, costermongers [sold fruit and vegetables from a cart or street stand], millers, fishmongers, oystermen, and tapsters [bartender], grew from 9% before 1600 to 16% by 1700. Of London's workforce, 60% were involved in production; 13% were merchants before 1600; 7% were merchants by 1700; 7% were transport workers such as watermen, sailors, porters, coachmen, and shipwrights; and 5-9% were professionals and officials (this number declining). Life in London was lived in the open air in the streets. The merchant transacted business agreements and the attorney saw his clients in the street or at certain pillars at St. Paul's Church, where there was a market for all kinds of goods and services, including gentlemen's valets, groceries, spirits, books, and loans, which continued even during the daily service. Some gentlemen had offices distant from their dwelling houses such as attorneys, who had a good income from trade disputes and claims to land, which often changed hands. Plays and recreation also occurred in the streets, such as performances by dancers, musicians, jugglers, clowns, tumblers, magicians, and men who swallowed fire. The churches were continuously open and used by trades and peddlers, including tailors and letter-writers. Water carriers carried water in wood vessels on a shoulder from the Thames River or its conduits to the inhabitants three gallons at a time. A gentleman concocted an engine to convey Thames water by lead pipes up into men's houses in a certain section of the city. Soldiers, adventurers, physicians, apprentices, prostitutes, and cooks were all distinguishable by their appearances. An ordinance required apprentices to wear long blue gowns and white breeches with stockings, with no ornamentation of silk, lace, gold or silver and no jewelry. They could wear a meat knife, but not a sword or dagger. Apprentices lived with their masters and worked from 6 or 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Some people knitted wool caps as they walked to sell when finished. There were sections of town for booksellers, butchers, brewers, hosiers, shoemakers, curriers, cooks, poulters, bow makers, textwriters, pattenmakers, and horse and oxen sellers. Large merchant companies had great halls for trade, such as the mercers, grocers, drapers, fishmongers, and goldsmiths. The other great guilds were the skinners, merchant tailers, haberdashers, salters, ironmongers, vintners, and clothworkers. Smaller guilds were those of the bakers, weavers, fruiterers, dyers, Thames watermen and lightermen, carpenters, joiners, turners, and parish clerks. The guilds insured quality by inspecting goods for a fee.

About 1571, mercer and Merchant Adventurer Thomas Gresham established the Royal Exchange as a place for merchants and brokers to meet for business purposes. It became the center of London's business life. Its great bell rang at midday and at 6 p.m. Its courtyard was lined with shops that rented at 50s. yearly and became a popular social and recreational area. Gresham formulated his law that when two kinds of money of equal denomination but unequal intrinsic value are in circulation at the same time, the one of greater value will tend to be hoarded or exported, i.e. bad money will drive good money out of circulation.

The work-saving knitting frame was invented in 1589 by minister William Lee; it knit crosswise loops using one continuous yarn and was operated by hand. The stocking knitters, who knitted by hand, put up a bitter struggle against its use and chased Lee out of the country. But it did come into use. Some frame-work stocking knitters paid frame rent for the use of their knitting frames. Frame knitting became a scattered industry.

By 1600 basement services were frequently found in town houses built on restricted sites in London. Lastly, provision of water supplies and improved sanitary arrangements reflected concern with private and public health. There was virtually no drainage. In the case of town houses, some owners would go to considerable effort to solve drainage problems, often paying cash to the civic authorities, but sometimes performing some service for the town at Court or at Westminster, in return for unlimited water or some drainage. Most affluent households, including the Queen's moved from house to house, so their cesspits could be cleaned out and the vacated buildings aired after use. A few cesspits were made air tight. Otherwise, there was extensive burning of incense. Refuse was emptied out of front doors and shoveled into heaps on street corners. It was then dumped into the Thames or along the highways leading out of town. People put on perfume to avoid the stench. By 1600, the first toilet and water closet, where water flushed away the waste, was built. This provided a clean toilet area all year round. But these toilets were not much used because of sewer smells coming from them. The sky above London was darkened somewhat by the burning of coal in houses.

Taverns served meals as well as ale. They were popular meeting places for both men and women of all backgrounds to met their friends. Men went to taverns for camaraderie and to conduct business. Women usually went to taverns with each other. Two taverns in particular were popular with the intelligentsia. Music was usually played in the background and games were sometimes played. Beer made with hops and malt was introduced and soon there were beer drinking contests. Drunkenness became a problem.

At night, the gates of the city were closed and citizens were expected to hang out lanterns. The constable and his watchmen carried lanterns and patrolled the streets asking anyone they saw why they were out so late at night. Crime was rampant in the streets and criminals were executed near to the crime scene.

There were a few horse-drawn coaches with leather flaps or curtains in the unglazed windows to keep out the weather. The main thoroughfare in London was still the Thames River. Nobles, peers, and dignitaries living on the Thames had their own boats and landings. Also at the banks, merchants of all nations had landing places where ships unloaded, warehouses, and cellars for goods and merchandise. Swans swam in the clear bright water. Watermen rowed people across the Thames for a fee. In Southwark were theaters, outlaws, cutpurses, prostitutes, and prisons. In 1550 Southwark became the 26th and last ward of the city. In the summer, people ate supper outside in public.

As of old times, brokers approved by the Mayor and aldermen made contracts with merchants concerning their wares. Some contracts included holding wares as security. Some craftsmen and manual workers extended this idea to used garments and household articles, which they took as pawns, or security for money loaned. This began pawn brokerage, which was lucrative. The problem was that many of the items pawned had been stolen.

Elizabeth had good judgment in selecting her ministers and advisors for her Privy Council, which was organized like Henry VIII's Privy Council. The Queen's Privy Council of about twelve ministers handled foreign affairs, drafted official communiques, issued proclamations, supervised the county offices: the 1500 justices of the peace, chief constables, sheriffs, lord lieutenants, and the county militias. It fixed wages and prices in London, advised Justices of the Peace on wages elsewhere, and controlled exports of grain to keep prices down and supplies ample. It banned the eating of meat two days a week so that the fishing industry and port towns would prosper. When grain was scarce in 1596, Elizabeth made a proclamation against those ingrossers, forestallers, and ingraters of grain who increased its price by spreading false rumors that it was scarce because much of it was being exported, which was forbidden. There were labor strikes in some towns for higher wages after periods of inflation. In 1591, London authorities rounded up the sturdy vagabonds and set them to work cleaning out the city ditches for 4d. per day.

Elizabeth did not allow any gentleman to live in London purely for pleasure, but sent those not employed by the Court back to their country manors to take care of and feed the poor of their parishes. Her proclamation stated that "sundry persons of ability that had intended to save their charges by living privately in London or towns corporate, thereby leaving their hospitality and the relief of their poor neighbors, are charged not to break up their households; and all others that have of late time broken up their households to return to their houses again without delay." She never issued a license for more than 100 retainers. She was partially successful in stopping justices of the peace and sheriffs from wearing the liveries of great men. She continued the policy of Henry VII to replace the rule of force by the rule of law. Service of the crown and influence at court became a better route to power and fortune than individual factions based on local power structures. At the lowest level, bribery became more effective than bullying. The qualities of the courtier, such as wit, and the lawyer became more fashionable than the qualities of the soldier.

Most of the men in Elizabeth's court had attended a university, such as Francis Bacon, son of the Lord Keeper, who became a writer, attorney, member of the Commons, and experimental philosopher, and Walter Ralegh, the sea-fighter and writer, who had a humble origin. Many wives and daughters of Privy Councilors attended the Queen in her privy chamber. Most of the knights or gentlemen of the royal household were also members of Parliament or Justices of the Peace for certain districts in the counties. Instead of the office of Chancellor, which was the highest legal office, Elizabeth appointed a man of common birth to be Lord Keeper of the Great Seal; she never made a Lord Keeper a peer. Elizabeth encouraged her lords to frankly make known their views to her, in public or in private, before she decided on a course of action. She had affectionate nicknames for her closest courtiers, and liked to make puns. The rooms of the Queen were arranged as they had been under Henry VIII: the great hall was the main dining room where the servants ate and which Elizabeth attended on high days and holidays; the great chamber was the main reception room, where her gentlemen and yeomen of the guard waited; the presence chamber was where she received important visitors; beyond lay her privy chamber and her bedchamber. She ate her meals in the privy chamber attended only by her ladies. She believed that a light supper was conducive to good health. The Lord Chamberlain attended the Queen's person and managed her privy chamber and her well-born grooms and yeomen and ladies-in-waiting. The Lord Steward managed the domestic servants below the stairs, from the Lord Treasurer to the cooks and grooms of the stable. The court did not travel as much as in the past, but became associated with London. Elizabeth took her entire court on summer visits to the country houses of leading nobility and gentry. Courtiers adopted symbolic "devices" as statements of their reaction to life or events, e.g. a cupid firing arrows at a unicorn signified chastity under attack by sexual desire. They carried them enamelled on jewels, had them painted in the background of their portraits, and sometimes had them expressed on furniture, plate, buildings, or food.

The authority of the Queen was the authority of the state. Elizabeth's experience led her to believe that it was most important for a monarch to have justice, temperance, magnanimity, and judgment. She claimed that she never set one person before another, but upon just cause, and had never preferred anyone to office for the preferrer's sake, but only when she believed the person worthy and fit for the office. She never blamed those who did their best and never discharged anyone form office except for cause. Further, she had never been partial or prejudiced nor had listened to any person contrary to law to pervert her verdicts. She never credited a tale that was first told to her and never corrupted her judgment with a censure before she had heard the cause. She did not think that the glory of the title of monarch made all she did lawful. To her, clemency was as eminent in supreme authority as justice and severity.

Secular education and especially the profession of law was now the route for an able but poor person to rise to power, rather than as formerly through military service or through the church.

The first stage of education was primary education, which was devoted to learning to read and write in English. This was carried out at endowed schools or at home by one's mother or a tutor. The children of the gentry were usually taught in their homes by private teachers of small classes. Many of the poor became literate enough to read the Bible and to write letters. However, most agricultural workers and laborers remained illiterate. They signed with an "x", which represented the Christian cross and signified its solemnity. Children of the poor were expected to work from the age of 6 or 7.

The next stage of education was grammar [secondary] school or a private tutor. A student was taught rhetoric (e.g. poetry, history, precepts of rhetoric, and classical oratory), some logic, and Latin and Greek grammar. English grammar was learned through Latin grammar and English style through translation from Latin. As a result, they wrote English in a latin style. Literary criticism was learned through rhetoric. There were disputations on philosophical questions such as how many angels could sit on a pin's point, and at some schools, orations. The students sat in groups around the hall for their lessons. The boys and some girls were also taught hawking, hunting and archery. There were no playgrounds. The grammar student and the undergraduate were tested for proficiency by written themes and oral disputations, both in Latin. The middle classes from the squire to the petty tradesman were brought into contact with the works of the best Greek and Roman writers. The best schools and many others had the students read Cicero, the "De Officiis", the epistles and orations, and some of Ovid, Terence, Sallust, Virgil, some medieval Latin works, the "Distichs" of Cato, and sometimes Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. The students also had to repeat prayers, recite the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, and to memorize catechisms. Because the students came from the various social classes such as gentlemen, parsons, yeomen, mercers, and masons, they learned to be on friendly and natural terms with other classes. A typical schoolday lasted from 7:00 am to 5:00 PM. There were so many grammar schools founded and financed by merchants and guilds such as the Mercers and Fishmongers that every incorporated town had at least one. Grammar schools were headed by schoolmasters, who were licensed by the bishop and paid by the town. Flogging with a birch rod was used for discipline.

Many grammar schools had preparatory classes called "petties" for boys and girls who could not read and write to learn to do so. The girls did not usually stay beyond the age of nine. This was done by a schoolmaster's assistant, a parish clerk, or some older boys. However, the grammar schools did not become the breeding grounds for humanist ideas because the sovereigns were faced with religious atomism and political unrest, so used the grammar schools to maintain public order and achieve political and religious conformity.

Some founders of grammar schools linked their schools with particular colleges in the universities following the example of Winchester being associated with New College, Oxford, and Eton with King's College, Cambridge. The new charter of Westminster (1560) associated the school with Christ Church, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge.

The government of Oxford University, which had been Catholic, was taken from the resident teachers and put into the hands of the Vice-Chancellor, Doctors, Heads of Colleges, and Proctors. Cambridge already had a strong reformed element from Erasmus' influence. Oxford University and Cambridge University were incorporated to have a perpetual existence for the virtuous education of youth and maintenance of good literature. The Chancellors, masters, and scholars had a common seal. Oxford was authorized to and did acquire its own printing press. Undergraduate students entered about age 16 and resided in rooms in colleges rather than in scattered lodgings. The graduate fellows of the college who were M.A.s of under three years standing had the responsibility, instead of the university, for teaching the undergraduates. This led many to regard their fellowship as a position for life rather than until they completed their post-graduate studies. But they were still required to resign on marrying or taking up an ecclesiastical benefice. The undergraduates were poor scholars or fee-paying members of the college. Some of the fee-paying members or gentlemen-commoners or fellow-commoners were the sons of the nobility and gentry and even shared the fellows' table. The undergraduate students were required to have a particular tutors, who were responsible for their moral behavior as well as their academic studies. It was through the tutors that modern studies fit for the education of a Renaissance gentleman became the norm. Those students not seeking a degree could devise his own course of study with his tutor's permission. Less than about 40% stayed long enough to get a degree. Many students who were working on the seven year program for a Master's Degree went out of residence at college after the four year's "bachelor" course. Students had text books to read rather than simply listening to a teacher read books to them.

In addition to the lecturing of the M.A.s and the endowed university lectureships, the university held exercises every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in which the student was meant through disputation, to apply the formal precepts in logic and rhetoric to the practical business of public speaking and debate. Final examinations were still by disputation. The students came to learn to read Latin easily. Students acted in Latin plays. If a student went to a tavern, he could be flogged. For too elaborate clothing, he could be fined. Fines for absence from class were imposed. However, from this time until 1945, a young man's university days were regarded as a period for the "sowing of wild oats".

All students had to reside in a college or hall, subscribe to the 39 articles of the university, the Queen's supremacy, and the prayer book. Meals were taken together in the college halls. The universities were divided into three tables: a fellows' table of earls, barons, gentlemen, and doctors; a second table of masters of arts, bachelors, and eminent citizens, and a third table of people of low condition. Professors, doctors, masters of arts and students were all distinguishable by their gowns.

Undergraduate education was considered to be for the purpose of good living as well as good learning. It was to affect the body, mind, manners, sentiment, and business, instead of just leading to becoming a better disputant. The emphasis on manners came mostly from an Italian influence. The university curriculum included Latin and Greek languages and was for four years. The student spent at least one year on logic (syllogizing, induction, deduction, fallacies, and the application of logic to other studies), at least one year on rhetoric, and at least one year on philosophy. The latter included physics, metaphysics, history, law, moral and political philosophy, modern languages, and ethics (domestic principles of government, military history, diplomatic history, and public principles of government), and mathematics (arithmetic, geometry, algebra, music, optics, astronomy). The astronomy taught was that of Ptolemy, whose view was that the celestial bodies revolved around a spherical earth, on which he had laid out lines of longitude and latitude. There were lectures on Greek and Latin literature, including Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero. There were no courses on English history in the universities.

About 1564, the curriculum was changed to two terms of grammar, four terms of rhetoric, five terms of dialectic (examining ideas and opinions logically, e.g. ascertaining truth by analyzing words in their context and equivocations), three terms of arithmetic, and two terms of music. There were now negative numbers, irrational numbers such as square roots, and imaginary numbers such as square roots of negative numbers. The circumference and area of a circle could be computed from its radius, and the Pythagorean theorem related the three sides of a right triangle. Also available were astrology, alchemy (making various substances such as acids and alcohols), cultivation of gardens, and breeding of stock, especially dogs and horses. Astronomy, geometry, natural and moral philosophy, and metaphysics were necessary for a master's degree. The university libraries of theological manuscripts in Latin were supplemented with many non-religious books.

There were graduate studies in theology, medicine, music, and law, which was a merging of civil and canon law together with preparatory work for studying common law at the Inns of Court in London.

In London, legal training was given at the four Inns of Court. Students were called to dinner by a horn. Only young gentry were admitted there. A year's residence there after university gave a gentleman's son enough law to decide disputes of tenants on family estates or to act as Justice of the Peace in his home county. A full legal education gave him the ability to handle all family legal matters, including property matters. Many later became justices of the Peace or members of Parliament. Students spent two years in the clerks' commons, and two in the masters' commons. Besides reading textbooks in Latin, the students observed at court and did work for practicing attorneys. After about four more years' apprenticeship, a student could be called to the outer barre. There was a real bar of iron or wood separating the justices from the attorneys and litigants. As "Utter Barrister" or attorney, he would swear to "do no falsehood in the court, increase no fees but be contented with the old fees accustomed, delay no man for lucre or malice, but use myself in the office of an Attorney within the Court according to my learning and discretion, so help me God, Amen". Students often also studied and attended lectures on astronomy, geography, history, mathematics, theology, music, navigation, foreign languages, and lectures on anatomy and medicine sponsored by the College of Physicians. A tour of the continent became a part of every gentleman's education. After about eight years' experience, attorneys could become Readers and Benchers, the latter of whom made the rules. Readers gave lectures. Benchers, who were elected by other Benchers, were entrusted with the government of their Inn of Court, and usually were King's counsel. Five to ten years later, a few of these were picked by the Queen for Serjeant at Law, and therefore eligible to plead at the bar of common pleas. Justices were chosen from the Serjeants at Law.

Gresham left the Royal exchange to the city and the Mercer's Company on condition that they use some of its profits to appoint and pay seven lecturers in law, rhetoric, divinity, music, physics, geometry, and astronomy to teach at his mansion, which was called Gresham College. They were installed in 1598 according to his Will. Their lectures were free, open to all, and often in English. They embraced mathematics and new scientific ideas and emphasized their practical applications. A tradition of research and teaching was established in mathematics and astronomy.

Many people kept diaries. Letter writing was frequent at court. All forms of English literature were now in print, except for plays. Many ladies read aloud to each other in reading circles and to their households. Some wrote poetry and did translations. Correctness of spelling was beginning to be developed. Printers tended to standardize it. There was much reading of romances, jest books, histories, plays, prayer collections, and encyclopedias, as well as the Bible. In schools and gentry households, favorite reading was Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queen" about moral virtues and the faults and errors which beset them, Erasmus' New Testament, "Paraphrases", "Colloquies", and "Adages", Sir Thomas North's edition of Plutarch's "Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans", Elyot's "The Book Named the Governor", and Hoby's translation of "The Courtier". Gentlemen read books on the ideals of gentlemanly conduct, such as "Institucion of a Gentleman" (1555), and Laurence Humphrey's "The Nobles: or of Nobilites". Francis Bacon's "Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral" were popular for their wisdom. In them he commented on many subjects from marriage to faction. He cautioned against unworthy authority, mass opinion, custom, and ostentation of apparent wisdom. He urged the use of words with their correct meaning.

At a more popular level were Caxton's "The Golden Legend", Baldwin's "Mirror for Magistrates", Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" about English protestant who suffered at the stake, sensational stories and pamphlets, printed sermons (including those of Switzerland's Calvin), chronicles, travel books, almanacs, herbals, and medical works. English fiction began and was read. There were some books for children. Books were copyrighted, although non-gentlemen writers needed a patron. At the lowest level of literacy were ballads. Next to sermons, the printing press was kept busiest with rhymed ballads about current events. Printed broadsheets on political issues could be distributed quickly. In London, news was brought to the Governor of the News Staple, who classified it as authentic, apocryphal, barber's news, tailor's news, etc. and stamped it. Books were also censored for matter against the state church. This was carried out through the Stationers' Company. This company was now, by charter, the official authority over the entire book trade, with almost sole rights of printing (e.g. excluding schools). It could burn other books and imprison their printers.

There were language schools teaching French, Italian, and Spanish to the aspiring merchant and to gentlemen's sons and daughters.

Italian business techniques were set forth in textbooks for merchants, using Italian terms of business: debit (debito), credit (credito), inventory (inventorio), journal (giornal), and cash (cassa). The arithmetic of accounting operations, including multiplication, was described in "An Introduction for to Lerne to Reckonwith the Penne or Counters" in 1537. Accounting advice was extended to farmers as well as merchants in the 1569 "The Pathway to Perfectness in the Accomptes of Debitor and Creditor" by James Peele, a salter of London. It repeated the age-old maxim: …receive before you write, and write before you pay, So shall no part of your accompt in any wise decay. The 1589 "Marchants Avizo" by Johne Browne, merchant of Bristol, gave information on foreign currencies and keeping of accounts, and included specimens of various business documents such as insurance policies, and bills of exchange. It also advised: Take heed of using a false balance or measure…covet not over familiarity amongst men it maketh thee spend much loss of time. Be not hasty in giving credit to every man, but take heed to a man that is full of words, that hath red eyes, that goeth much to law, and that is suspected to live unchaste … When thou promiseth anything be not stuck to perform it, for he that giveth quickly giveth double … Fear God…know thy Prince…love thy parents …give reverence to thy betters …be courteous and lowly to all men… be not wise in thine own conceit. The old prohibitions of the now declining canon law were still observed. That is one should not seek wealth for its own sake or beyond what was requisite for a livelihood in one's station, exploit a customer's difficulties to extract an extravagant price, charge excessive interest, or engross to "corner the market".

The printing press had made possible the methodizing of knowledge and its dissemination to a lay public. Knowledge associated with the various professions, occupations, and trades was no longer secret or guarded as a mystery, to be passed on only to a chosen few. The sharing of knowledge was to benefit the community at large. Reading became an out-of-school activity, for instruction as well as for pleasure.

In 1565, graphite was discovered in England, and gave rise to the pencil. Surveying accuracy was improved with the new theodolite, which determined directions and measured angles and used a telescope that pivoted horizontally and vertically. Scientists had the use of an air thermometer, in which a column of air in a glass tube sitting in a dish of water contracted or expanded with changes in the temperature, causing the water to move up or down the tube.

William Shakespeare, a glove-maker's son, wrote plays about historical events and plays which portrayed various human personalities and their interactions with each other. They were enjoyed by all classes of people. His histories were especially popular. The Queen and various earls each employed players and actors, who went on tour as a troupe and performed on a round open-air stage, with people standing around to watch. In London, theaters such as the Globe were built specifically for the performance of plays, which before had been performed at inns. The audience applauded and hissed. There were costumes, but no sets. Ordinary admission was 2d. Before being performed, a play had to be licensed by the Master of the Revels to make sure that there was nothing detrimental to the peace and public order. Elizabeth issued a proclamation forbidding unlicensed interludes or plays, especially concerning religion or government policy on pain of imprisonment for at least fourteen days. The common people still went to morality plays, but also to plays in which historical personages were portrayed, such as Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V. Some plays were on contemporary issues. Musicians played together as orchestras. Music and singing was a popular pastime after supper; everyone was expected to participate. Dancing was popular with all classes. Gentlemen played cards, dice, chess, billiards, tennis, and fenced and had games on horseback. Their deer-hunting diminished as forests were cut down for agriculture and the deer was viewed as an enemy eating crops. Falconry diminished as hedges and enclosures displaced the broad expanses of land.

Country people enjoyed music, dancing, pantomime shows with masks of mythological or symbolic characters, riddles, wrestling, hurling, running, swimming, leap frog, blind man's buff, shovelboard played with the hands, and football between villages with the goal to get the ball into one's own village. Football and shin-kicking matches often resulted in injuries. The bought ballads from traveling pedlars. Early morning dew gathered in May and early June was thought to have special curative powers. There were many tales involving fairies, witches, devils, ghosts, evil spirits, angels, and monsters enjoyed by adults as well as children. Many people still believed in charms, curses, divination, omens, fate, and advice from astrologers. The ghosts of the earth walked the earth, usually because of some foul play to be disclosed, wrong to be set right, to warn those dear to them of peril, or to watch over hidden treasure. Fairies blessed homes, rewarded minor virtues, and punished mild wrongdoing. When fairies were unhappy, the weather was bad. There were parties for children.

The merry guild-feast was no longer a feature of village life. There were fewer holydays and festivals. The most prosperous period of the laborer was closing. An agricultural laborer's yearly wage was about 154s., but his cost of living, which now included house rent, was about 160s. a year. In 1533, daily wages in the summer for an agricultural laborer were about 4d. and for an artisan 6d. In 1563 in the county of Rutland, daily wages for laborers were 7d. in summer and 6d. in winter; and for artisans were 9d. in summer and 8d. in winter. Unemployment was widespread.

There were endowed hospitals in London for the sick and infirm. There were others for orphans, for derelict children, and for the destitute. They worked at jobs in the hospital according to their abilities. There was also a house of correction for discipline of the idle and vicious by productive work. Elizabeth continued the practice of touching people to cure scrofula, although she could not bring herself to fully believe in the reality of such cures, contrary to her chaplain and her physician.

In the towns, shop shutters were let down to form a counter. Behide this the goods were made and/or stored. The towns held a market once a week. Fairs occurred once or twice a year. At given times in the towns, everyone was to throw buckets of water onto the street to cleanse it. During epidemics in towns, there was quarantine of those affected to stay in their houses unless going out on business. Their houses were marked and they had to carry a white rod when outside. The quarantine of a person lasted for forty days. The straw in his house was burned and his clothes treated. People who died had to be buried under six feet of ground. There was an outbreak of plague in London roughly every ten years.

There was a pity for the distressed that resulted in towns voting money for a people of a village that had burned down or been decimated by the plague.

Communities were taxed for the upkeep and relief of the prisoners in the gaols in their communities.

Queen Elizabeth was puzzling over the proper relationship between the crown and the church when Richard Hooker, a humble scholar, theologian, and clergyman, attempted to find a justification in reason for the establishment of the Church of England as an official part of the governing apparatus of the nation. His thinking was a turning point from the medieval notion that God ordered society, including the designation of its monarch and its natural laws. The belief in a divine structure with a great chain of being, beginning with God and working down through the hierarchy of angels and saints to men, beasts, and vegetables, did foster order in society. Hooker restated the concept of Aristotle that the purpose of society is to enable men to live well. He wrote that although the monarch was head of state and head of religion, the highest authority in civil affairs was Parliament, and in religion, the Convocation. The monarch had to maintain divine law, but could not make it. From this came the idea that the state derives its authority from the will of the people and the consent of the governed.

Protestant women had more freedom in marriage and were allowed to participate in more church activities compared to Catholic women, but they were not generally allowed to become pastors. Due to sensitivities on the part of both Catholics and Protestants about a female being the head of the church, Elizabeth was given the title of "Supreme Governor" of the church instead of "Supreme Head". Elizabeth was not doctrinaire in religious matters, but pragmatic. She always looked for ways to accommodate all views on what religious aspects to adopt or decline. Images, relics, pilgrimmages, and rosaries were discouraged. But the Catholic practice of kneeling at prayer, and bowing and doffing caps at the name of Jesus were retained. Also retained was the place of the altar or communion table at the east end of churches, special communion wafers instead of common bread, and elaborate clergy vestments. The communion prayer contained words expressing both the Catholic view that the wafer and wine contained the real presence of the body and blood of Christ, and the Protestant view that they were commemorative only. Communion was celebrated only at Easter and other great festivals. Church services included a sermon and were in accordance with a reformed prayer book and in English, as was the Bible. Care was even taken not to use words that would offend the Scots, Lutherans, Calvinists, or Huguenots. People could hold what religious beliefs they would, even atheism, as long as they maintained an outward conformity. Attendance at state church services on Sunday mornings and evenings and Holydays was enforced by a fine of 12d. imposed by the church wardens. Babies were to be baptized before they were one month old or the parents would be punished.

Still, the new religion had to be protected. Members of the House of Commons, lawyers, schoolmasters were to take the oath of supremacy or be imprisoned and make a forfeiture; a second refusal brought death. When numerous Anabaptists came from the continent to live in the port towns, the Queen issued a proclamation ordering them to leave the realm because their pernicious opinions could corrupt the church. The new church still accepted the theory of the devil causing storms, but opposed ringing the holy church bells to attempt to drive him away. The sins of people were also thought to cause storms, and also plagues.

In 1562, the Church of England wrote down its Christian Protestant beliefs in thirty-nine Articles of Religion, which specifically excluded certain Catholic beliefs. They were incorporated into statute in 1571 establishing them as the tenets of the official religion of England. The first eighteen endorsed the ideas of one God, Christ as the son of God who was sacrificed for all the sins of men, the resurrection of Christ from the dead and ascension into heaven, the Holy Ghost proceeding from the father and the son, the books of the Bible, the original sin of Adam and his offspring, justification of man by faith in Christ rather than by good works, goods works as the inspired fruit and proof of faith in Christ, Christ in the flesh as like man except for the absence of sin, the chance for sinners who have been Baptised to be forgiven if they truly repent and amend their lives, the predestination of some to be brought by Christ to eternal salvation and their minds to be drawn up to high and heavenly things, and salvation only by the name of Christ and not by a sect. Other tenets described the proper functions of the church, distinguishing them from Roman Catholic practice. Specifically, the church was not to expound one place of scripture so that it was inconsistent with another place of scripture. Because man can err, the church was not to ordain or enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salvation. Explicitly renounced were the Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardons, worshipping, adoration of images or reliques, invocation of saints, and the use in church of any language, such as Latin, not understood by the people. Only the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper were recognized. The Lord's Supper was to be a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves and a sacrament of redemption by Christ's death. The wine in the cup of blessing as well as the bread of the Lord's Supper was to be taken by lay- people and to be a partaking of Christ; there was no Romish mass. Excommunication was limited to those who openly denounced the church. Anyone openly breaking the traditions or ceremonies of the church which were approved by common authority were to be rebuked. Elizabeth told the bishops that she wished certain homilies to be read in church, which encouraged good works such as fasting, prayer, alms-giving, Christian behavior, repentance, and against idolatry, gluttony, drunkenness, excess of apparel, idleness, and rebellion. These she considered more instructive and learned that ministers' sermons, which were often influenced by various gentlemen and were inconsistent with each other. Consecration of bishops and ministers was regulated; and they were allowed to marry. The standard prayer was: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our offenses as we forgive those who have offended against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever, amen."

There was difficulty persuading educated and moral men to be church ministers, even though Elizabeth expressed to the bishops her preference for ministers who were honest and wise instead of learned in religious matters. The Bible was read at home and familiar to everyone. This led to the growth of the Puritan movement. The Puritans believed in the right of the individual Christian to interpret the Scriptures for himself by spiritual illumination. They opposed the mystical interpretation of the Communion service. The Puritans complained that the church exerted insufficient control over the morals of the congregation. Their ideas of morality were very strict and even plays were thought to be immoral. The Independent Puritans were those Protestants who had fled from Mary's Catholic reign to the continent, where they were persuaded to the ideas of John Calvin of Geneva. He stressed the old idea of predestination in the salvation of souls, which had in the past been accepted by nearly all English Christian leaders, thinkers, and teachers, but not stressed. The act of conversion was a common experience among the early Puritans. The concomitant hatred of past sins and love of God which was felt in thankfulness for mercy were proof of selection for salvation. The good works that followed were merely an obligation showing that one's faith was real, but not a way to salvation.

But the puritans also accepted Calvin's idea of independent church government. They therefore thought that ministers and lay elders of each parish should regulate religious affairs and that the bishops, who were "petty popes", should be reduced to an equality with the rest of the clergy, since they did not rule by divine right. The office of archbishop should be eliminated and the head of state should not necessarily be governor of the church. These ideas were widely disseminated in books and pamphletts. The puritans disrupted the established church's Sunday services, tearing the surplice off the minister's back and the wafers and wine from the altar rail. The puritans arranged "lectures" on Sunday afternoons and on weekdays. These were given gratuitously or funded by boroughs. They were strict about not working on the sabbath, which day they gave to spiritual exercises, meditations, and works of mercy. The only work allowed was preparing meals for themselves, caring for their animals, and milking the cows. They enforced a strict moral discipline on themselves. The puritan movement included William Brewster, an assistant to a court official who was disciplined for delivering, upon pressure from the council, the Queen's signed execution order for Mary of Scotland after the Queen had told him to hold it until she directed otherwise. The puritans formed a party in the House of Commons.

The debased coinage was replaced by a recoinage of newly minted coins with a true silver weight.

Goldsmiths, who also worked silver, often acted as guardians of clients' wealth. They began to borrow at interest at one rate in order to lend out to traders at a higher rate. This began banking.

Patents were begun to encourage the new merchant lords to develop local manufactures or to expand import and export trade. Patents were for a new manufacture or an improved older one and determined the wages of its trades. There was chartering of merchant companies and granting of exclusive rights to new industries as monopolies. Some monopolies or licenses were patents or copyrights of inventors. Others established trading companies for trade to certain foreign lands and supporting consular services. People holding monopolies were accountable to the government. There were monopolies on certain smoked fish, fish oil, seal oil, oil of blubber, vinegar, salt, currants, aniseed, juniper berry liquor, bottles, glasses, brushes, pots, bags, cloth, starch, steel, tin, iron, cards, horn, ox shinbones, ashes, shreds of gloves, earth coal, calamite stone, powder, saltpeter, lead manufacturing by- products, and transportation of leather.

For far-flung enterprises and those where special arrangements with foreign countries was required, there was sharing of stock of companies, usually by merchants of the same type of goods. In joint-stock companies each member took a certain number of shares and all the selling of the goods of each merchant was carried on by the officials of the company. The device of joint stock might take the form of a fully incorporated body or of a less formal and unincorporated syndicate. The greatest joint-stock company was East India Company, chartered in 1600 to trade there in competition with the Dutch East India Company. It was given a fifteen year monopoly on trade east of the southern tip of Africa. Unlike the Muscovy Company, and Merchants of the Staple, individual members could not trade on their own account, but only through the corporate body on its voyages. It was regulated as to each particular voyage and helped with problems by the Crown and Privy Council, for instance when further subscriptions were needed, or when carpenters were needed to be pressed into service for fitting out ships, or to deal with an unsuccessful captain. Its charter retained many of the aspects of the medieval trade guild: power to purchase lands, to sue and be sued, to make by- laws, and to punish offenders against them by fine or imprisonment. Admission was by purchase of a share in a voyage, redemption, presentation, patrimony (sons of members who were twenty-one), and apprenticeship. Purchase of a share in a voyage was the most common method. A share for the first ship cost 100 pounds. When share purchase did not suffice, redemption for such cash payments as could be obtained was resorted to. Occasionally presentation or a faculty "for the making of a freeman" was granted to some nobleman or powerful member. Members' liability was limited to their individual subscriptions. Each voyage had 1) a Royal Commission authorizing the Company to undertake the expedition and vesting in its commanders powers for punishing offences during the voyage, and quenching any mutiny, quarrels, or dissension that might arise; 2) a code of instructions from the Company to the Admiral and to commanders of ships setting forth in great detail the scope and objects of the voyage together with minute regulations for its conduct and trade; 3) authorization for coinage of money or export of specie (gold or silver); and 4) letters missive from the sovereign to foreign rulers at whose ports the ships were to trade. The first voyage brought back spices that were sold at auction in London for ten times their price in the Indies and brought to shareholders a profit equivalent to 9 1/2% yearly for the ten years when the going interest rate was 8% a year.

Town government was often controlled by a few merchant wholesalers. The entire trade of a town might be controlled by its drapers or by a company of the Merchant Adventurers of London. The charter of the latter as of 1564 allowed a common seal, perpetual existence, liberty to purchase lands, and liberty to exercise their government in any part of the nation. It was controlled by a group of rich Londoners, no more than 50, who owned the bulk of the cloth exported. There were policies of insurance given by groups of people for losses of ships and their goods. Marine insurance was regulated.

New companies were incorporated for many trades. They were associations of employers rather than the old guilds which were associations of actual workers. The ostensible reason was the supervision of the quality of the wares produced in that trade. (Shoemakers, haberdashers, saddlers, and curriers exercised close supervision over these wares.) They paid heavily for their patents or charters.

There was no sharp line between craftsman and shopkeeper or between shopkeeper and wholesale merchant. In London, an enterprising citizen could pass freely from one occupation to another. Borrowing money for a new enterprise was common. Industrial suburbs grew up around London and some towns became known as specialists in certain industries. The building crafts in the towns often joined together into one company, e.g. wrights, carpenters, slaters, and sawyers, or joiners, turners, carvers, bricklayers, tilers, wallers, plasterers, and paviors. These companies included small contractors, independent masters, and journeymen. The master craftsman often was a tradesman as well, who supplied timber, bricks, or lime for the building being constructed. The company of painters was chartered with a provision prohibiting painting by persons not apprenticed for seven years.

The prosperous merchants began to form a capitalistic class as capitalism grew. Competition for renting farm land, previously unknown, caused these rents to rise. The price of wheat rose to an average of 14s. per quarter, thereby encouraging tillage once more. There was steady inflation.

With enclosure of agricultural land there could be more innovation and more efficiency, e.g. the time for sowing could be chosen. It was easier to prevent over-grazing and half-starved animals as a result. The complications of the open system with its endless quarrels and lawsuits were avoided. Now noblemen talked about manure and drainage, rotation of crops, clover, and turnips instead of hunting, horses, and dogs. The breed of horses and cattle was improved. There were specializations such as the hunting horse and the coach horse. By royal proclamation of 1562, there were requirements for the keeping of certain horses. For instance, everyone with lands of at least 1,000 pounds had to keep six horses or geldings able for demilances [rider bearing a light lance] and ten horses or geldings for light horsemen [rode to battle, but fought on foot]. One with under 100 pounds but over 100 marks yearly had to keep one gelding for a light horseman. Dogs had been bred into various types of hounds for hunting, water and land spaniels for falconry, and other dogs as house dogs or toy dogs. There were no longer any wild boar or wild cattle. The turkey joined the cocks, hens, geese, ducks, pigeons, and peacocks in the farmyard. Manure and dressings were used to fertilize the soil. Hay became a major crop because it could be grown on grazing lands and required little care.

There are new and bigger industries such as glassware, iron, brasswares, alum and coppers, gunpowder, paper, coal, and sugar. The coal trade was given a monopoly. Coal was used for fuel as well as wood, which was becoming scarce. Iron smelters increasingly used coal instead of charcoal, which was limited. Iron was used for fire-backs, pots, and boilers. Good quality steel was first produced in 1565 with the help of German craftsmen, and a slitting mill was opened in 1588. Small metal goods, especially cutlery, was made, as well as nails, bolts, hinges, locks, ploughing and harrowing equipment, rakes, pitch forks, shovels, spades, and sickles. Lead was used for windows and roofs. Copper and brass were used to make pots and pans. Pewter was used for plates, drinking vessels, and candlesticks. Competition was the mainspring of trade and therefore of town life.

The mode of travel of the gentry was riding horses, but most people traveled by walking. People carried passes for travel that certified they were of good conduct and not a vagrant or sturdy rogue. Bands of roving vagabonds terrorized the countryside. After a land survey completed in 1579 there arose travel books with maps, itineraries, and mileage between towns in England and Wales. Also, the Queen sent her official mail by four royal postal routes along high roads from London to various corners of the nation. Horses are posted along the way for the mail-deliverer's use. However, private mail still goes by packman or common carrier. The nation's inland trade developed a lot. There were many more wayfaring traders operating from town inns. In 1564, the first canal was built with locks at Exeter. More locks and canals facilitated river travel. At London Bridge, water-wheels and pumps are installed.

New sea navigation techniques improved voyages. Seamen learned to fix their positions, using an astrolabe or quadrant to take the altitude of the sun and stars and to reckon by the north star. They used a nocturnal, read by touch, to help keep time at night by taking the altitude of the stars. They calculated tides. To measure distances, they invented the traverse board, which was bored with holes upon lines, showing the points of the compass; by means of pegs, the steersman kept an account of the course steered. A log tied to a rope with knots at equal intervals was used to measure speed. There were compasses with a bearing dial on a circular plate with degrees up to 360 noted thereon. Seamen had access to compilations of Arab mathematicians and astronomers and to navigational manuals and technical works on the science of navigation and the instruments necessary for precision sailing. For merchants there were maps, books about maps, cosmographical surveys, and books on the newly-discovered lands. In 1569 John Mercator produced a map taking into account the converging of the meridians towards the pole. On this chart, a straight line course would correspond to a mariner's actual course through the water on the earth's sphere, instead of having the inaccuracies of a straight line on a map which suggested that the world was flat. It was in use by 1600.

Christmas was an especially festive time of good fellowship. People greeted each other with "Good cheer", "God be with you", or "Against the new year". Carols were often sung and musicians played many tunes. There was dancing and gambling. There were big dinners with many kinds of meat and drink. A hearty fire heated all the house. Many alms were given to beggars.

Parliament enacted laws and voted taxes. The Queen, House of Lords, and House of Commons cooperated together. There was relatively little dissension or debating. Bills were read, voted on, discussed, and passed with the lords, peers, bishops, and justices sitting in their places according to their degree. The justices sat on the wool sacks. A bar separated this area from the rest of the room, where the members of the commons stood. There were many bills concerning personal, local, or sectional interests, but priority consideration was given to public measures. The House of Lords still had 55 members. The Queen appointed and paid the Speaker, Clerk, and Sergeant at Arms of the Commons. The knights in the Commons were almost invariably from the county's leading families and chosen by consensus of knights with free land of at least 40s. in the county court. In the towns, the electors might be the town corporation, holders of certain properties, all the freemen, all the ratepayers, or all the male inhabitants. Disputed elections were not usually concerned with political issues, but were rivalries for power. The Commons gradually won for its members freedom from arrest without its permission and the right of punishing and expelling members for crimes committed. Tax on land remained at 10% of its estimated yearly income. The Queen deferred to the church convocation to define Christian faith and religion, thus separating church and state functions.

The Treasury sought to keep a balanced budget by selling royal land and keeping Crown expenditures down. The Crown carried a slight debt incurred before the Queen's accession.

Theft and robbery were so usual that there were names for various techniques used. A Ruffler went with a weapon to seek service, saying that he was a servitor in the wars, but his chief "trade" was to rob poor wayfaring men and market women. A Prigman went with a stick in his hand like an idle person, but stole clothes off hedges. A Whipjack begged like a mariner, but with a counterfeit license (called a "gibe"); he mostly robbed booths in fairs or pilfered ware from stalls, which was called "heaving of the booth". A Frater had a counterfeit license to beg for some hospital, but preyed upon poor women coming and going to market. A Quire Bird was a person recently let out of prison, and was commonly a horse stealer. An Upright Man carried a truncheon of a staff and called others to account to him and give him a share or "snap" of all that they had gained in one month, and he often beat them. He took the chief place at any market walk and other assemblies. Workers at inns often teamed up with robbers, telling them of wares or money travelers were carrying so the robber could profitably rob them after they left the inn.

Violence was still a part of the texture of everyday life. Private armories and armed gangs were not uncommon. Agricultural laborers kept sword and bow in a corner of their fields in the first part of Elizabeth's reign. Non-political brutal crime and homicides were commonplace. There were frequent local riots and disturbances, in the country and in the towns. Occasionally there were large-scale rebellions. But the rebellion of the Earl of Essex in 1601 had no aftermath in violence. In 1590, the Queen issued a proclamation enforcing curfew for London apprentices, who had been misruly. The Queen issued proclamations to certain counties to place vagrant soldiers or vagrants under martial law because of numerous robberies. She ordered the deportation of vagrant Irishmen in 1594.

After exhausting every other alternative, the Queen reluctantly agreed with her Privy Council on the execution in 1572 of Mary, Queen of Scots, who had been involved in a plot to assassinate her and claim the throne of England. Her Council had persuaded her that it was impossible for her to live in safety otherwise.

Francis Drake sailed around the world from 1577 to 1580. Walter Ralegh made an expedition to North America in 1584 with the Queen's authority to "discover barbarous countries, not actually possessed of any Christian prince and inhabited by Christian people, to occupy and enjoy". He found and named the land of Virginia in honor of the Queen, who was a virgin, and started a colony on Roanoke Island there. Drake and Ralegh plundered Spanish ships for cargo such as American gold and silver, much of which was used to pay for the war with Spain and much going to investors. There experience fighting Spanish ships led to improvements in ship design; building ships was no longer merely by copying another ship or a small model. In 1588, the Spanish Armada came to invade England, and was for the most part destroyed. In that battle, Drake and other experienced sea- fighters led two hundred English ships, of which about 20 were built to sink other ships rather than to board and capture them. These new English ships were longer and narrower and did away with the towering superstructures at bow and stern. This made them more maneuverable and easier to sail. Also, the English guns were lighter, more numerous, and outranged the Spanish guns. So the smaller English ships were able to get close enough to fire broadside after broadside against the big Spanish troop-transport galleons, without being fired upon. The direction of the wind forced the Spanish galleons northward, where most of them were destroyed by storms. The English seamen had been arbitrarily pressed into this service.

A royal proclamation of 1601 offered a reward of 100 pounds for information on libels against the Queen. There had been mounting demonstrations against her monopolies, which mostly affected household items. There had been abuses of monopolies, such as the steel monopoly had been sold for 12 pounds 10s., but steel was then sold at 5d. per pound instead of the former 2 1/2 d. per pound. Further the steel was mixed and of a lesser quality. This so damaged the knife and sword industry that about 2000 workers lost their jobs from it and became beggars. Monopoly was a severe burden to the middle and poorer classes. Also, the power of patent holders to arrest and imprison persons charged with infringing upon their rights was extended to any disliked person.

When the House of Commons protested against monopolies in 1601, Elizabeth reduced them. She addressed her Council and the Commons saying that "Mr. Speaker, you give me thanks, but I doubt me that I have more cause to thank you all than you me; and I charge you to thank them of the Lower House from me. For had I not received a knowledge from you, I might have fallen into the lapse of an error only for lack of true information. Since I was queen yet did I never put my pen to any grant but that upon pretext and semblance made unto me, it was both good and beneficial to the subject in general, though a private profit to some of my ancient servants who had deserved well. But the contrary being found by experience, I am exceedingly beholding to such subjects as would move the same at the first. And I am not so simple to suppose but that there be some of the Lower House whom these grievances never touched; and for them I think they speak out of zeal to their countries and not out of spleen or malevolent affection, as being parties grieved. And I take it exceedingly gratefully from them, because it gives us to know that no respects or interests had moved them other than the minds they bear to suffer no diminution of our honor and our subjects' love unto us, the zeal of which affection tending to ease my people and knit their hearts unto me, I embrace with a princely care. For above all earthly treasures I esteem my people's love, more than which I desire not to merit. That my grants should be grievous unto my people and oppressions to be privileged under color of our patents, our kingly dignity shall not suffer it. Yea, when I heard it I could give no rest unto my thoughts until I had reformed it. Shall they (think you) escape unpunished that have thus oppressed you, and I have been respectless of their duty and regardless of our honor? No, no, Mr. Speaker, I assure you, were it not more for conscience' sake than for any glory or increase of love that I desire, these errors, troubles, vexations, and oppressions done by these varlets and low persons (not worthy the name of subjects) should not escape without condign punishment. But I perceive they dealt with me like physicians who, ministering a drug, make it more acceptable by giving it a good aromatical savor; or when they give pills, do gild them all over. I have ever used to set the Last Judgment day before my eyes and so to rule as I shall be judged, to answer before a higher judge. To whose judgment seat I do appeal that never thought was cherished in my heart that tended not unto my people's good. And now if my kingly bounties have been abused and my grants turned to the hurts of my people, contrary to my will and meaning, or if any in authority under me have neglected or perverted what I have commited to them, I hope Good will not lay their culps [sins] and offenses to my charge. Who, though there were danger in repealing our grants, yet what danger would I not rather incur for your good than I would suffer them still to continue? I know the title of a king is a glorious title, but assure yourself that the shining glory of princely authority hath not so dazzled the eyes of our understanding but that we well know and remember that we also are to yield an account of our actions before the great Judge. To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it. For myself, I was never so much enticed with the glorious name of a king or royal authority of a queen as delighted that God hath made me His instrument to maintain His truth and glory, and to defend this kingdom from peril, dishonor, tyranny, and oppression. There will never queen sit in my seat with more zeal to my country, care to my subjects, and that will sooner with willingness venture her life for your good and safety, than myself. For it is not my desire to live or reign longer than my life and reign shall be for your good. And though you have had and may have many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had or shall have any that will be more careful and loving."

About 1584, Richard Hakluyt, a Bristol clergyman, wrote "A Particular Discourse concerning Western Discoveries". This was to become the classic statement of the case for English colonization. It held out hope that the English would find needed timber for masts, pitch, tar, and ashes for soap.

In Rome in 1600, Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk and priest, was burned alive at the stake by a court of the inquisition for not recanting, although tortured, his heretical and blasphemous philosophy. He had opined that Christianity was irrational and had no scientific basis, that Christ was only a skillful magician, that the Bible could not be taken literally, that God and nature were not separate as taught by Genesis, that the Catholic church encouraged ignorance from the instinct of self-preservation, and that the earth and planets revolved around the sun, as did other planets around other suns.

The Jesuits, a new Catholic order brimming with zeal, sent missionaries to England to secretly convert people to Catholicism. The practice of Catholicism had gone underground in England, and some Catholic house-holders maintained Catholic priests in hidden places in their homes.

- The Law -

Although estate tails (estates descendible only to the heirs of the body of the original feofee) by law could not be sold or given away, this was circumvented by use of a straw man. In collaboration with the possessor of the property, this straw man sued the possessor asserting that the property had been wrongfully taken from the straw man. The possessor pleaded that the crier of the court who had warranted it should be called to defend the action. He failed to appear until after judgment had been given to the straw man. Then the straw man conveyed it to the possessor or his nominee in fee simple.

No one shall make false linen by stretching it and adding little pieces of wood, which is so weak that it comes apart after five washings.

Timber shall not be felled to make logs for fires for the making of iron.

No one may take small fish to feed to dogs and pigs. Only nets with mesh leaving three inches spaces may be used to catch fish.

No attainder shall result in the forfeiture of dower by the offender's wife nor disinheritance of his heirs.

The following statute of artificers regulated labor for the next two centuries: No master or mistress may employ a servant for a term less than one year in the crafts of clothiers, woolen cloth weavers, tuckers, fullers, clothworkers, shearmen, dyers, hosiers, tailors, shoemakers, tanners pewterers, bakers, brewers, glove- makers, cutlers, smith, farriers, curriers, saddlers, spurriers, turners, cappers, hatmakers, feltmakers, bow-makers, arrow-makers, arrow-head-makers, butchers, cooks, or millers, so that agriculture will be advanced and idleness diminished. Also, every craftsman unmarried or under age 30 who is not working must accept employment by any person needing the craft work. Also, any common person between 12 and 60 who is not working must accept employment in agriculture. And, unmarried women between 12 and 40 may be required by town officials to work by the year, the week, or day for wages they determine.

All artificers and laborers hired by the day or week shall work from 5 am to 7 PM. All artificers must labor at agriculture at haytime and harvest to avoid the loss of grain or hay. Every householder who raises crops may receive as an apprentice a child between 10 and 18 to serve in agriculture until he is age 21. A householder in a town may receive a child as an apprentice for 7 years, but merchants may only take as apprentices children of parents with 40s. freehold. (This was designed to inhibit migration to the towns. It excluded three fourths of the rural population.)

No one may be a craftsman until he has served seven years as an apprentice. These artificers may have children as apprentices: smith, wheelmaker, ploughmaker, millmaker, miller, carpenter, rough mason, plasterer, a timber sawer, an ore burner, a lime burner, brickmaker, bricklayer, tilemaker, tiler, layer of slate roofs, layer of wood shingle roofs, layer of straw roofs, cooper, earthen potter, linen weaver, housewife who weaves wool for sale or for household use.

Fish, but no meat, may be eaten on Wednesdays so that there will be more fishermen and mariners and repair of ports. (This was done because fishing had declined since the dissolution of the monasteries. Eating fish instead of meat in Lent in the springtime remained a tradition.)

For repairing of highways, the supervisors may take the rubbish or smallest stones of any quarry along the road in their precinct.

Embezzlement or theft by a servant of his master's goods of 40s. or more is a felony.

No one shall forge a deed of land, charter, sealed writing, court roll or will.

No one shall libel or slander so as to cause a rebellion.

Cut-purses and pick-purses shall not have benefit of clergy.

A debtor may not engage in a fraudulent collusion to sell his land and goods in order to avoid his creditors.

A person robbing a house of 5s. by day when no one is there shall not have benefit of clergy, because too many poor persons who cannot hire a servant to look after their house when they go to work have been robbed.

When the hue and cry is raised for a robbery in a hundred, and other hundreds have been negligent, faulty, or defective in pursuit of the robber, then they must pay half the damages to the person robbed, while the hundred in which the robbery occurred pays the other half. Robbers shall be pursued by horse and by foot.

The price of barrels shall be set by mayors of the towns where they are sold.

No man under the degree of knight may wear a hat or cap of velvet. Caps may not be made of felt, but only knit wool. Only hats may be made of felt. This is to assist the craft of making wool caps.

Every person over 6 years of age shall wear on Sundays a wool knitted cap made by the cappers, except for maidens, ladies, gentlewomen, noble persons, and every lord, knight, and gentlemen with 2,667s. of land, since the practice of not wearing caps has damaged the capping industry. This employed cappers and poor people they had employed and the decrepit and lame as carders, spinners, knitters, parters, forsers, thickers, dressers, dyers, battelers, shearers, pressers, edgers, liners, and bandmakers.

Rugs shall weigh 44 pounds at least and be 35 yards at least in length and at most 3/4 yard wide.

The incorporated company of ship masters may erect beacons and marks on the seashores and hills above, because certain steeples and other marks used for navigation have fallen down and ships therefore have been lost in the sea.

There shall be one sheriff per county, because now there are enough able men to supply one per county.

Trials of noblemen for treason shall be by their peers.

A native or denizen merchant in wholesale or retail goods who leaves the nation to defraud his creditors shall be declared a bankrupt. The Chancellor may conduct an investigation to ascertain his land, house, and goods, no matter who may hold them. They shall be appraised and sold to satisfy his debts.

Loan contracts for money lent may not be for more than 200s. for each 2000s. yearly. All loans of money or forbearing of money in sales of goods for less than this shall be punishable by forfeit of the interest only.

No cattle may be put in any enclosed woods that have been growing less than five years. At the end of five years growth, calves may be put in. At the end of six years growth, cattle may be put in.

The mother and reputed father of any bastard who has been left to be kept at the parish where born must pay weekly for the upkeep and relief of such child, so that the true aged and disabled of the parish get their relief and to punish the lewd life.

No master at a university may lease any land unless 1/3 of it is retained for raising crops to supply the colleges and halls for food for their scholars.

Persons with 100s. in goods or 40s. in lands shall find two able men in their parish community to repair the highways yearly.

Landowners of Oxford shall be taxed for the repair of the highway and bridge there.

Woods around London shall not be felled to be converted to coals for iron-works because London needs the wood to make buildings and for fireplaces.

Every melter and maker of wax from honeycombs shall put his mark on every piece of his wax to be sold. Wrought wax such as in lights, staff-torches, red wax or sealing wax, book candles, or searing candles shall bear its maker's mark. All barrels of honey shall bear the mark of the honeymaker.

Wool cloth, cotton cloth, flannel cloth, hose-yarn, hats, and caps shall be dyed black only with dye from the woad plant and not with any false black dye.

No one shall take or kill any pheasants with nets or devices at nighttime because such have become scarce.

Lands, tenements, goods and chattels of accountants teller, or receiver who are in debt may be obtained by court order to satisfy the debt by garnishing the heir of the debtor after the heir has reached 21 and for the 8 years next ensuing.

Fraudulent and secret conveyances made to retain the use of one's land when one sells the land to a bona fide purchaser for value in fee simple, fee tail, for life, for lives, or for years are void.

No new iron mills or furnaces for making or working of any iron or iron metal shall be established in the country around London and the owners of carriages of coals, mines and iron which have impaired or destroyed the highways shall also carry coal ashes, gravel, or stone to repair these highways or else make a payment of 2s.6d. for each cart load not carried.

No one shall bribe an elector to vote for a certain person for fellow, scholar, or officer of a college, school, or hall or hospital so that the fittest persons will be elected, though lacking in money or friends, and learning will therefore be advanced.

Cottage and dwelling houses for workmen or laborers in mineral works, coal mines, or quarries of stone or slate for the making of brick, tile, lime, or coals shall be built only within a mile from such works. Dwelling houses beyond this must be supported by four acres of land to be continually occupied and manured as long as the dwelling house is inhabited or forfeit 40s. per month to the Queen. Cottages and dwelling houses for sailors or laborers working on ships for the sea shall be built only within a mile of the sea. A cottage may be built in a forest or park for a game keeper of the deer. A cottage may be built for a herd-man or shepherd for the keeping of cattle or sheep of the town. A cottage may be built for a poor, lame, sick, aged, or disabled person on waste or common land. More families than one may not be placed in one cottage or dwelling house.

A vagabond or mighty strong beggar [able to work] shall be whipped.

Any person with land in fee-simple may establish a hospital, abiding place, or house of correction to have continuance forever as a corporation for the sustenance and relief of the maimed, poor, or disabled people as to set the poor to work. The net income shall not exceed 40,000s. yearly.

Troops of vagabonds with weapons in the highways who pretend to be soldiers or mariners have committed robberies and murders. So all vagabonds shall settle down in some service or labor or trade.

Pontage [toll for upkeep and repair of bridges] shall be taken at certain bridges: carts 2d., horse and pack 1d., a flock of sheep 2d.

Crown officials such as treasurers, receivers, accountants, and revenue collectors shall not embezzle Crown funds and shall be personally liable for arrears.

Persons forcibly taking others across county lines to hold them for ransom and those taking or giving blackmail money and those who burn barns or stacks of grain shall be declared felons and shall suffer death, without any benefit of clergy or sanctuary.

No bishop may lease land for more than twenty-one years or three lives.

No bishop may alienate any possession of their sees to the crown.
Such are void.

Stewards of leet and baron courts may no longer receive, in their own names, profits of the court over 12d. since they have vexed subjects with grievous fines and amercements so that profits of justice have grown much.

Incorrigible and dangerous rogues shall be branded with an "R" mark on the left shoulder and be put to labor, because banishment did not work as they came back undetected. If one is caught again begging, he shall be deemed a felon.

Any innkeeper, victualler, or alehouse keeper who allows drinking by persons other than those invited by a traveler who accompanies him during his necessary abode there and other than laborers and handicraftsmen in towns upon the usual working days for one hour at dinner time to take their diet in an alehouse and other than laborers and workmen following their work to any given town to sojourn, lodge, or victual in any inn, alehouse or victualling house shall forfeit 10s. for each offense. This is because the use of inns, alehouses, and victualling houses was intended for relief and lodgings of travelling people and people not able to provide their own victuals, but not for entertainment and harboring of lewd and idle people who become drunk.

If a person marries a second time while the first spouse is still living, it shall be a felony and thus punishable by death.

Watermen transporting people on the Thames River shall have served as apprentice to a waterman for five years or have been the son of a waterman. This is to prevent the loss of lives and goods by inexperienced watermen.

No one may make any hat unless he has served as apprentice for at least seven years. This is to prevent false and deceitful hat- making by unskillful persons.

Spices and potions, including pepper, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, almonds, and dates, which have usually been garbled shall be garbled, cleaned, sorted, and sealed by the Garbler before sale. This is to prevent mingled, corrupt, and unclean spices and potions from being sold.

Plasterers shall cease painting because it has intruded upon the livelihoods of painters who have been apprenticed as such.

Pawn brokers accepting stolen goods shall forfeit twice their value to the owner from whom stolen.

No butcher may cut any hide or any ox, bull, steer, or cow so that it is impaired or may kill any calf under five weeks old. No butcher may be a tanner. No one may be a tanner unless apprenticed as such for seven years or the son or wife of a tanner who has tanned for four years or a son or daughter of a tanner who inherits his tanhouse. Tanners may not be shoemakers, curriers, butchers, or leatherworkers. Only tanners may buy raw hides. Only leatherworkers may buy leather. Only sufficiently strong and substantial leather may be used for sole-leather. Curriers may not be tanners. Curriers may not refuse to curry leather. London searchers shall inspect leather, seal and mark that which is sufficient, and seize any that is insufficiently tanned, curried, wrought, or used.

Fishermen and their guides may continue to use the coastland for their fishing activities despite the trespass to landowners.

Since sails for ships in recent years have been made in the realm instead of imported, none shall make such cloth unless he has been apprenticed in such or brought up in the trade for seven years. This is to stop the badness of such cloth.

Any person killing any pheasant, partridge, dove, pigeon, duck or the like with any gun, crossbow, stonebow, or longbow, or with dogs and nets or snares, or taking the eggs of such from their nests, or tracing or taking hares in the snow shall be imprisoned for three months unless he pays 20s. per head or, after one month's imprisonment, have two sureties bound for 400s. This is because the past penalty of payment hasn't deterred offenders, who frequently cannot pay.

Persons affected by the plague may not leave their houses or be deemed felons and suffer death. This is to avoid further infection. The towns may tax their inhabitants for the relief of infected persons.

Tonnage [tax per ton] and poundage [tax per pound] on goods exported and imported shall be taken to provide safeguard of the seas for such goods.

All persons must go to the established church on Sundays and holy days. The penalty was at first forfeiture 12d. along with church punishment, and later, 20 pounds per month and being bound by two sureties for 200 pounds for good behavior, and if the 20 pounds is not paid, then forfeiture of all goods to be applied to the amount due and two-thirds of one's land.

These laws were directed against Catholicism, but were laxly enforced as long as worship was not open and no one wore priestly clothes:

The writing, preaching, or maintaining of any foreign spiritual jurisdiction shall be punished by forfeiture of goods or, if the goods are not worth 20 pounds, one year imprisonment, for the first offence; forfeiture of goods and lands and the King's protection, for the second offence; and the penalty for high treason for the third offence.

Any person leading others to the Romish [Catholic] religion is guilty of high treason. The penalty for saying mass is [2,667s.] 200 marks and one year's imprisonment. The penalty for hearing mass is [1,333s.] 100 marks and one year's imprisonment. If one is suspected of being a Jesuit or priest giving mass, one must answer questions on examination or be imprisoned.

Papists [those who in conscience refused to take the oath of supremacy of the Crown over the church] must stay in their place of abode and not go five miles from it, unless licensed to do so for business, or forfeit one's goods and profits of land for life. If a copyholder, land is forfeited to one's lord. But if the goods are not worth 800s. or the land is not worth at least 267s., the realm must be abjured. Otherwise, the papist is declared a felon without benefit of clergy.

If a child is sent to a foreign land for Catholic education, he cannot inherit lands or goods or money, unless he conforms to the established church on his return. There is also a 100 pound penalty for the persons who sent him.

Devising or speaking seditious rumors are penalized by the pillory and loss of both ears for the first offense; and 200 pounds and six months imprisonment for the second offence. Slandering the Queen is penalized by the pillory and loss of one ear, or by [1,333s.] 100 marks and three months imprisonment, at the choice of the offender. The second offence is a felony. Printing, writing, or publishing seditious books is a felony without benefit of clergy. Wishing the Queen dead, prophesying when she would die, or who would succeed her to the Crown is a felony without benefit of clergy. Attainders for these felonies shall not work corruption of the blood [heirs may inherit the property of the felon].

Because the publication of many books and pamphlets against the government, especially the church, had led to discontents with the established church and to the spreading of sects and schisms, the Star Chamber in 1585 held that the printing trade was to be confined to London, except for one press at Oxford and one at Cambridge. No book or pamphlet could be printed unless the text was first seen, examined, and allowed by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London. Book publishers in violation were to be imprisoned for six months and banned from printing; their equipment was to be destroyed. Wardens were authorized to search wherever "they shall have reasonable cause of suspicion", and to seize all such books and pamphlets printed. But printers continued to print unlicensed material.

- Judicial Procedure -

Jurors shall be selected from those people who have at least 80s. annual income instead of 40s. because sheriffs have been taking bribes by the most able and sufficient freeholders to be spared at home and the poorer and simpler people, who are least able to discern the causes in question, and most unable to bear the charges of appearance and attendance in such cases have been the jurors. Also there had been inflation.

Defendants sued or informed against upon penal statutes may appear by attorney so that they may avoid the inconvenience of traveling a long distance to attend and put to bail.

No only sheriffs, but their employees who impanel juries or execute process in the courts shall take an oath of office.

A hundred shall answer for any robbery therein only if there has been negligence or fault in pursuit of the robber after a hue and cry is made because the past law has been too harsh and required payment for offenses from people unable to pay who have done everything reasonable to catch the robber.

The Star Chamber became the central criminal court after 1560, and punished perjury, corruption, malfeasance throughout the legal system such as jury corruption and judicial bribery, rioting, slander, and libel. Its procedure was inquisitory rather than accusative. It heard witnesses in camera [not in the presence of the suspected]. Trial was by systematic interrogation of the suspected on oath, with torture if necessary in treason cases. Silence could be taken for a confession of guilt. There was no jury. Queen Elizabeth chose not to sit on this court. Punishments were imprisonment, fines, the pillory, ear cropping or tacking, whipping, stigmata on the face, but not death or any dismemberment except for the ears. (The gentry was exempt from whipping.)

The Ecclesiastical High Commission [later called the Court of High Commission or High Court of Ecclesiastical Causes] took over criminal cases formerly heard by the church courts. It also heard matters of domestic morals. It was led by bishops and Privy Council members who in 1559 were authorized by a statute of Parliament to keep order within the church, discipline the clergy, and punish such lay offenses as were included in the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Obstinate heresy is still a capital crime, but practically the bishops have little power of forcing heretics to stand trial. If anyone maintains papal authority, he forfeits his goods; on a third conviction, he is a traitor. The clergyman who adopts a prayer book other that the prescribed one commits a crime. Excommunication has imprisonment behind it. Elizabeth gave this court the power to fine and imprison, which the former church courts had not had. At first, the chief work was depriving papists of their benefices.

Suits on titles to land were restricted to the common law courts and no longer to be heard in the Star Chamber, Chancery Court, or in the Court of Requests (equity for poor people).

The Queen's Privy Council investigated sedition and treason, security of the regime, major economic offenses, international problems, civil commotion, officials abusing their positions, and persons perverting the course of justice. It frequently issued orders to Justices of the Peace, for instance to investigate riots and crimes, to enforce the statutes against vagrancy and illegal games, to regulate alehouses, to ensure that butchers, innkeepers, and victuallers did not sell meat on fish days, and to gather information needed from the counties. The Justices of the Peace decided misdemeanors such as abduction of heiresses, illegal entry, petty thievery, damage to crops, fence-breaking, brawling, personal feuds, drunken pranks, swearing, profanation of the Sabbath, alehouse nuisances, drunkenness, perjury, and malfeasance by officials. They held petty and quarter sessions. The Justices of the Peace had administrative duties in control of vagrancy, upkeep of roads and bridges, and arbitration of lawsuits referred to them by courts. They listed the poor in each parish community, assessed rates for their maintenance, and appointed overseers to administer the welfare system, deploying surplus funds to provide houses of correction for vagrants. Raw materials such as wool, flax, hemp, and iron were bought upon which the able-bodied unemployed could be set to work at the parochial level. They determined wages in their districts, with no statutory ceiling on them, for all laborers, weavers, spinsters, workmen and workwomen working by the day, week, month, or year, or taking any work at any person's hand. There were about 50 Justices of the Peace per county. All were unpaid. They performed these duties for the next 200 years.

The Justices of Assize rode on circuit twice a year to enforce the criminal law and reported their assessment of the work of the Justices of the Peace back to the Privy Council.

The duty to hear and determine felonies was taken from Justices of the Peace by 1590. The Justices of Assize did this work. Accused people could wait for years in gaol before their case was heard. Felonies included breach of prison, hunting by night with painted faces, taking horses to Scotland, stealing of hawks' eggs, stealing cattle, highway robbery, robbing on the sea, robbing houses, letting out of ponds, cutting of purses, deer-stealing at night, conjuring and witchcraft, diminution of coin, counterfeiting of coins, and impenitent roguery and idleness. The penalty was death. Many people were hanged for the felony of theft over 12d. Some bold men accused of felony refused to plead so that they could not be tried and found guilty. They died of heavy weights being placed on their bodies. But then their property could go to their heirs.

The Court of Queen's Bench and Exchequer indirectly expanded their jurisdiction to include suits between citizens, formerly heard only the Court of Common Pleas or Chancery. Chancery interrogated defendants. Chancery often issued injunctions against suits in the common law courts. Trial by combat was very rare.

Benefit of clergy may not be had for stabbing a person who has no weapon drawn, if he dies within six months.

Pleadings had to be in writing and oral testimony was given by sworn witnesses. Case decisions are in books compiled by various reporters who sit in on court hearings rather than in year books.

In the common law, trespass has given rise to the offshoot branch of "ejectment", which becomes the common means of recovering possession of land, no matter what kind of title the claimant asserts. Trespass on the case has given rise to the offshoot branch of "trover" [finding another's goods and converting them to one's own use]. Trover gradually supplants detinue, in which there is compurgation.

In the common law courts, the action of assumpsit for enforcing certain promises is used more than the action of debt in those cases where there is a debt based on an agreement. The essential nature of "consideration" in contract is evolving from the procedural requirements for the action of assumpsit. Consideration may consist in mutual promises, a precedent debt, or a detriment incurred by one who has simultaneously received a promise related to the detrimental action. Consideration must be something, an act, or forbearance of an act that is of value. For instance, forbearance to sue a worthless claim is not consideration.

The abstract concept of contract as an agreement between two parties which is supported by consideration is developing as the number of various agreements that are court enforceable expands. For instance the word "consideration" is used in Hayward's Case in 1595 in the Court of Wards on the construction of a deed. Sir Rowland Hayward was seised in fee of the Doddington manor and other lands and tenements, whereof part was in demesne, part in lease for years with rents reserved, and part in copyhold, by indenture, "in consideration of a certain sum of money" paid to him by Richard Warren and others, to whom he demised, granted, bargained and sold the said manor, lands and tenements, and the reversions and remainders of them, with all the rents reserved upon any demise, to have and to hold to them and their assigns, presently after the decease of Sir Rowland, for the term of 17 years. It was held that the grantees could elect to take by bargain and sale or by demise, each of which had different consequences.

In another case, A delivered 400s. to B to the use of C, a woman, to be delivered to her on the day of her marriage. Before this day, A countermanded it, and called home the money. It was held in the Chancery Court that C could not recover because "there is no consideration why she should have it".

In a case concerning a deed, A sold land to B for 400s., with confidence, that it would be to the use of A. This bargain "hath a consideration in itself … and such a consideration is an indenture of bargain and sale". It was held that the transaction was not examinable except for fraud and that A was therefore estopped.

A court reporter at the King's Bench formulated two principles on consideration of the case of Wilkes against Leuson as: "The heir is estopped from falsifying the consideration acknowledged in the deed of feoffment of his ancestor. Where a tenant in capite made a feoffment without consideration, but falsely alleged one in the deed on an office finding his dying seised, the master of the wards cannot remove the feoffees on examining into the consideration, and retain the land until &c. and though the heir tended, still if he do not prosecute his livery, the Queen must admit the feoffees to their traverse, and to have the farm, &c." The court reporter summarized this case as follows: Wilkes, who was merchant of the staple, who died in February last past, made a feoffment in the August before his death to one Leuson, a knight, and his brother, and another, of the manor of Hodnel in the county of Warwick; and the deed,(seen) for seven thousand pounds [140,000s.] to him paid by the feoffees, of which sum he made acquittance in the same deed (although in fact and in truth not a half-penny was paid), gave, granted, and confirmed &c "habendum eir et hoeredibus suis in perpetuum, ad proprium opus et usum ipsorum A. B. et C. in perpetuum," and not "hoeredum suorum," together with a clause of warranty to them, their heirs and assigns, in forma proedicta: and notwithstanding this feoffment he occupied the land with sheep, and took other profits during his life; and afterwards his death was found on a diem clausit extremum by office, that he died seised of the said manor in fee, and one I. Wilkes his brother of full age found his next heir, and a tenure in capite found, and now within the three months the said feoffees sued in the court of wards to be admitted to their traverse, and also to have the amnor in farm until &c. And although the said I. Wilkes the brother had tendered a livery, yet he had not hitherto prosecuted it, but for cause had discontinued. And whether now the master of the wards at his discretion could remove the feoffees by injunction out of possession upon examination of the said consideration of the said feoffment which was false, and none such in truth, and retain it in the hands of the Queen donec et quousque &c. was a great question. And by the opinion of the learned counsel of that court he cannot do it, but the Queen is bound in justice to give livery to him who is found heir by the office, or if he will not proceed with that, to grant to the tenderers the traverse, and to have the farm, &c. the request above mentioned. And this by the statutes … And note, that no averment can be allowed to the heir, that the said consideration was false against the deed and acknowledgment of his ancestor, for that would be to admit an inconvenience. And note the limitation of the use above, for divers doubted whether the feoffees shall have a fee-simple in the sue, because the use is not expressed, except only "to themselves (by their names) for ever;" but if those words had been wanting, it would have been clear enough that the consideration of seven thousand pounds had been sufficient, &c. for the law intends a sufficient consideration by reason of the said sum; but when the use is expressed otherwise by the party himself, it is otherwise. And also the warranty in the deed was "to them, their heirs, and assigns, in form aforesaid," which is a declaration of the intent of Wilkes, that the feoffees shall not have the use in fee simple; and it may be that the use, during their three lives, is worth seven thousand pounds, and more &c. And suppose that the feoffment had been "to have to them and their heirs to the proper use and behoof of them the feoffees for the term of their lives for ever for seven thousand pounds," would they have any other estate than for the term of their lives in the use? I believe not; and so in the other case.

A last example of a case concerning consideration is that of Assaby and Others against Lady Anne Manners and Others. The court reporter characterized the principle of the case as: "A. in consideration of his daughter's marriage covenants to stand seised to his own use for life, and that at his death she and her husband shall have the land in tail, and that all persons should stand seised to those uses, and also for further assurance. After the marriage he bargains and sell with fine and recovery to one with full notice of the covenants and use; this is of no avail, but on the death of A. the daughter and her husband may enter." The court reporter summarized this case as follows: A. was seised of land in fee, and in consideration of a marriage to be had between his daughter and heir apparent, and B. son and heir apparent of C. he covenanted and agreed by indenture with C. that he himself would have, hold, and retain the land to himself, and the profits of during his life, and that after his decease the said son and daughter should have the land to them and to the heirs of their two bodies lawfully begotten, and that all persons then or afterwards seised of the land should stand and be seised immediately after the marriage solemnized to the use of the said A. for the term of his life, and after his death to the use of the said son and daughter in tail as above, and covenanted further to make an assurance of the land before a certain day accordingly &c. and then the marriage took effect; and afterwards A. bargained and sold the land for two hundred marks [2,667s.](of which not a penny is paid) to a stranger, who had notice of the first agreements, covenants, and use, and enfeoffed divers persons to this last use, against whom a common recovery was had to his last use; and also A. levied a fine to the recoverers before any execution had, and notwithstanding all these things A. continued possession in taking the profits during his life; and afterwards died; and the son and daughter entered, and made a feoffment to their first use. And all this matter was found in assize by Assaby and others against Lady Anne Manners and others. And judgment was given that the entry and feoffment were good and lawful, and the use changed by the first indenture and agreement. Yet error was alleged. The judgment in the assize is affirmed.

The famous Shelley's Case stands for the principle that where in any instrument an estate for life is given to the ancestor, and afterwards by the same instrument, the inheritance is limited whether mediately, or immediately, to his heirs, or heirs of his body, as a class to take in succession as heirs to him, the word "heirs" is a word of limitation, and the ancestor takes the whole estate. For example, where property goes to A for life and the remainder goes to A's heirs, A's life estate and the remainder merge into a fee in A. A can sell or devise this interest.

Edward Shelley was a tenant in tail general. He had two sons. The older son predeceased his father, leaving a daughter and his wife pregnant with a son. Edward had a common recovery (the premises being in lease for years) to the use of himself for term of his life, after his decease to the use of the male heirs of his body, and of the male heirs of the body of such heirs, remainder over. After judgment and the awarding of the writ of seisin, but before its execution, Edward died. After his death, and before the birth of his older son's son, the writ of seisin was executed. The younger son entered the land and leased it to a third party. Afterwards, the son of the older son was born. He entered the land and ejected the third party. It was held that the younger son had taken quasi by descent until the birth of the older son's son. The entry by the older son's son was lawful. The third party was lawfully ejected. (Shelley's Case, King's Bench, 1581, English Reports - Full Reprint, Vol. 76, Page 206.)