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Growing prosperity

Land ownership had always been a sign of wealth and social status. For the gentry life further improved in the 16^th century. They became more prosperous because the economy and patterns of commerce were changing as:

• Trade developed due to exploration and population growth.
• Production of woollen cloth created wealth.
• Rising food prices helped landowners and farmers make bigger profits.
• Merchants made money by travelling and exploring new worldwide markets.
• Elizabeth supported entrepreneurs and gave the East India Company a monopoly on trade in the Indian Ocean region.

Regional differences

Farming continued to be the main occupation. Nine out of ten people lived in a village or small town.

Where you lived determined what opportunities were available to you. Nearly all of the richest towns were in the south. London was the financial capital, with its population almost quadrupling between 1503 and 1603.

Recent historians have started to look differently at the lives of Elizabethan families. They point to the similarities between the lives of people in Elizabethan times and our lives today and highlight these despite the more obvious differences.

Marriage

In Elizabethan England all marriages were recorded in the parish register of the church where the marriage took place. From these records it is possible to find the age that people were when they got married. Men were usually in their late-twenties and women were usually in their mid-twenties when they married. Most newly married couples needed to save up before they could get married in order to set up their own home. Those from gentry families tended to marry earlier as money was less of an issue. Parish registers also reveal that many babies were baptised a few months after their parents married which suggests that they were conceived prior to their decision to get married. There were few illegitimate children as single mothers would be brought before the church courts and punished.

In wealthy families, parents would expect to have a say over who their children married although this did not mean that they arranged marriages. In 'middling' families children would often wish to gain the blessing of their parents before they married as parents often gave sizeable gifts of money, land and furniture to their children. In most cases it would seem that children from 'middling' and labouring families were free to marry whom they wished.

Marriages rarely ended in divorce as this needed an Act of Parliament. Marriages did break down and this could lead to separation. More frequently marriages ended due to the death of the husband or wife in which case the surviving spouse would normally remarry.

How were women treated?

Despite being ruled by a queen Elizabethan England was a patriarchal society which meant that men were in control. However this did not mean that women were second-class citizens. Many women had some freedoms and certainly those from the ‘middling’ sort helped run farms and workshops. Although domestic violence did occur it was punished harshly. Wife beating was disapproved off and equally a nagging housewife could be accused of being a scold.

Parents and children

The nobility and the gentry could afford to have large families and although poorer families may have had a number of children there was high infant mortality. In fact, around one quarter of children died before they were ten. Most Elizabethan women looked after their children and it was only in the wealthiest families that people used wet nurses (a woman who would breast feed and care for someone else's child) to care for their children.

Children whose parents had money might be sent to school from the age of seven. In poorer families, children would work at home or on the farm from the age of seven. At the age of twelve or thirteen boys would leave home to become apprentices or to work as farm servants. Girls often left to become servants at the same age. Most young people lived with another family to learn the skills they would need in adult life.

Physical punishment was used more readily, particularly in the grammar schools. At home there does not seem to be a great deal of evidence that Elizabethan parents were violent towards their children.

Kinship

Historians often assumed that kinship (blood relationships) would be far more important to Elizabethan people. In fact, there is little evidence to suggest that people lived with their wider family and most Elizabethans lived in a nuclear family with parents and children. There were occasions where wider family members were taken in as a result of them being unable to care for themselves but this was not the norm.

Surprisingly perhaps, wider kin rarely lived in the same village. The practice of sending children away to be apprentices often resulted in them marrying and settling down away from home. Thus Elizabethan families were scattered although perhaps not as far as families today. Although kinship did matter to some, particularly the gentry and sometimes those of the ‘middling’ sort, for most people neighbours were as important. Studies of wills have shown that people were far more concerned about their own immediate family than their wider kin.