Elizabeth I - Society in Elizabethan England

Society: continuity and change

• Highest peerage title = Duke -> had inherent danger -> Somerset, Northumberland, Suffolk, Norfolk suffered traitors' deaths -> 1572 Elizabeth didn't create anymore Dukes
• Nobility became more peaceable
• 4 other peerage ranks sought to increase prestige through massive building projects
• Below peerage = gentry -> ranged from knights to figures of national importance -> county gentlemen + esquires dominated local government -> gentry increased in size
• Landed incomes increased after 1570 -> poor vulnerable to enclosure and declining real wages

Poverty and poor relief

• 1572 Act = local ratepayers required to pay relief of poor
• Poor Law Act 1576 = attempted to make national system of poor relief financed and administered locally -> towns required make provision for employment of deserving poor
• Elizabethan Poor Law Act 1601 = parish required to raise rates for poor relief -> each parish appoint overseer of poor = main tasks: relieving impotent poor + apprenticing poor children

• Treatment of undeserving poor remained harsh -> Act against vagracy 1547 ->1572 Act added branding to punishments
• 1597 Act = 1st time offenders get whipped + sent to parish of their birth -> repeat offenders could be executed

Social discontent and rebellions

• 1 significant rebellion in north 1569 -> social stability upheld
• Food riots in London, Kent, Hampshire, Norfolk
• Heavy-handed response to 'Oxfordshire rising' -> not actually = 4 men schemed to seize armaments + march on London -> reflected fear of social dislocation

Northern Rebellion , 1569-70

• Mainly in Durham + North Riding of Yorkshire 1569 -> linkd to Cumberland rising 1570
• Led by earls of Northumberland + Westmorland -> dishonoured by being displaced from controlling northern government -> conspiracy Duke of Norfolk marry Mary, Queen of Scots = restored to Scottish throne

• 9 November = marched on Durham -> seized city 14 November + heard mass in cathedral -> marched on York, didn't attempt to capture -> returned to Durham + besieged Crown's Barnard Castle 14 December
• News of Crown force approaching = earls disbanded their forces + fled into Scotland
• Next month, Leonard Dacre restarted rebellion in Cumberland -> heavily defeated at Naworth by Lord Hunsdon
• Rebellion was disorganised + lack of clarity of objectives -> poor leadership -> expected foreign support
• Cecil studied map of Durham to come to decisions about appropriate course of actions
• Revealed government's problems managing localities + difficulty raising forces to deal with threats -> demonstrated ruthlessness of Elizabeth = mass executions of rebels
• Little enthusiasm to get rid of Elizabeth
• Council of the North reconstituted 1572 under control of Earl of Huntingdon -> no local ties -> but had committment to values of religious reform