THEME 4 - ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE, 1509 - 88

What was one of the most significant industries in England?

The wool and cloth trade, making some parts of England very wealthy

What was the cloth trade reliant on?

Cheap rural labour and selling in London

What was the income generated by the English cloth?

mid-15th century = 55,000 cloths

mid-16th century = 130,000 cloths

Elizabeth’s reign brought in £750,000 a year

What did the difficulty of relying on Antwerp lead to?

The arrival of Protestant refugees with new cloth-making techniques

Increased English interest in exploration and opening up new markets

How were the new techniques different?

They used lighter-weight fabrics that involved mixing woollen and worsted yarns, or woolen yarn with silk.

This new cloth was cheaper and more colourful than traditional English broadcloth

It sold well in the Mediterranean markets that had been neglected by English cloth merchants, who focused on Antwerp (but as it was declining the new techniques boosted the market)

The new lighter cloths lasted less well but this increased demand for replacements

Provided new opportunities for employment as required more workers

How has the population of London changed over the years?

Henry VIII’s reign = 60,000

1570 = between 86,000 and 100,000

What was the problem with London being a large city?

It could not feed everyone without supplies from other regions. The demand grew steadily during this period and encouraged the development of agricultural industries in the region around London.

The presence of the wealthy elite in London meant there was a demand for exotic and luxury goods from abroad

What key part of London meant a variety of goods could be traded?

The River Thames

Improvements to the navigation of the Thames in the 1540s meant that London began to overtake and undermine the trade of other ports. Increasingly, both domestic and foreign traders used London as the base for their activity

What was the main focus of English exploration from the mid 16th century till the end?

Find a sea route to Asia through ‘north-western and ‘north-eastern’ passages, however this failed.

Who are two famous explorers/privateers?

John Hawkins

Francis Drake

What did John Hawkins do?

Between 1553 and the early 1570s there was a series of English expeditions to the Guinea Coast which aimed to bring back gold and pepper. These expeditions were violent because they led to confrontations with the Portuguese, who controlled trading rights there.

They also led to the beginning of the African slave trade. Hawkins would transport slaves captured in Africa to the West Indies.

Hawkins was confronted and defeated by the Spanish navy in 1568

What did Francis Drake do?

He launched a series of attacks on Spanish shipping in the early 1570s and in 1577 he began circumnavigation of the globe. His mission was to find the north-west passage to Asia but failed, however his contact with the Sultan of Ternate in Indonesia led to the eventual formation of the East India Company in 1600

Which sections of society gained from the dissolution of the monasteries?

The crown itself gained temporarily because it acquired the former monastic land, worth £1.3 million, some of which was sold to fund Henry’s war in the 1540s.

The nobility and gentry who bought this land from the crown

Abbots and priors who did not resist the dissolution were either given pensions or found another role within the church

What were the negative consequences of the dissolution of the monasteries?

7,000 ex-monks and nuns had to find a new life and way to support themselves

Nuns and friars received smaller pensions than monks

Former nuns were still not able to break their vow of chastity (they could not get married) as insisted by Henry

Monasteries had been a source of learning, education and charity, and Richard Rex has describe it as cultural vandalism

It was a removal of a safety net in a period of increasing poverty

What was common land?

It was land that could be used by everyone and often used to graze animals

What was the aim of enclosure?

It aimed to create larger profits from the land. Landlords saw the financial opportunities that rearing sheep for the cloth trade could bring. They were also under pressure from rising inflation

What was the growth of professional classes because of?

Increasing literacy

Opportunities to receive an education at grammar schools and uni

What were some jobs that got increasingly popular?

Employment at Church

Law careers and what they led to

Doctors

What was the result of the growth of grammar schools and unis?

To raise levels of literacy and the standards of education

Illiteracy rates: 1550 = men is 80% and women is 98% 1600 = men is 72% and women is 92%. These varied according to the region

When was the first printing press introduced in London?

1476

Why was the printing press so hard to control?

Because it could print books and pamphlets so quickly and it was also outside of the control of the church

How did the gov respond to the lack of control?

They tightened censorship laws.

In 1529, the first list of censored books was created

In 1538, the laws were extended to include secular as well as religious works

In 1557, a new London company was founded by the gov, and was given a monopoly on licensed presses in return it was to monitor and prevent unlicensed printing

How did the Tudor governments use the printing press?

They used it to spread their own propaganda. For example:

Cromwell used it to justify the break with Rome and spread reformist ideas

The publication of the English Bible was made possible and most English parishes received a copy within 5 years

How did the printing press help with the rising literacy levels?

Books could be printed much faster and cheaply, meaning book ownership increased as lots of people were keen to buy and read printed word. Printers also responded to popular demand for all kinds of reading material

What did Henry VIII’s theory that England was an empire and that a ruler should not be subject to any outside intervention lead to?

Anti-Catholicism xenophobia and an increased sense of what it meant to be English. This helps to explain the negative reaction to Mary’s proposed marriage to Philip II of Spain, who was both Catholic and a foreigner

What was the traditional medieval forms of entertainment (like art and poetry) replaced by?

A culture that emphasised the new Protestant religion, increasing the use of the English language and sense of an English nation-state

What does a patron do?

Pay an annuity to a writer, musician or artist in order to fund them. They might also give them employment at court or in their household and subsidies performances.

What were all of the Tudor monarchs keen on supporting?

Portrait artist (provided that they depicted the monarch in a way that was politically acceptable).

Most came from Europe which meant many new techniques were introduced

Why was patronage important for Tudor monarchs?

It allowed them to control their popular image and spread propaganda. For this reason, all of the monarchs took particular interest in court entertainment, both private ‘disguising’ and the public tournaments

What image did QE want projected?

She was older and still unmarried and the issue of succession became harder to avoid and so her painter was tasked with the job of to create a ‘mask of youth’ so QE could preserve the myth of the ageless Gloriana, the ‘V Queen’