England in the 1600 By: Helene

Life in England; Year 1600

By: Helene

    England was a time for kings and queens, but not everybody was living the high life. England was an agriculture society where most people lived in villages. The bigger the villages where the more important they get. Villages would mine coal, tin, and lead, which made the country really rich and flourish. Pretty quickly the population of England grew to about 4 million people. Even though England was rich, it soon became a place where there was beggars; jobs where not easy to get.

    Barley anyone lived in towns; mostly villages. The largest town in England was London with the population of 250,000. Now a day London may sound really nice, but back then rats where really common, so having the plague was very common. Towns where also very dangerous when it was dark, or night. If you ever went out at night you would go with someone or hire someone to come with you. If you where to travel by night you would travel by horse or carriage. To yours or someone else’s home.

    In England, the average person’s house was made from a wooden frame and plaster. Glass windows where very expensive, so most windows where made from little pieces of glass put together. If you did have a glass window it would come with you to whatever house that you lived in. Along with windows, chimneys where also considered a luxurious item. Since furniture was not a completely available item, it was expected to passed through generations of the family. Most people sat on stools, but if a family had chairs, the adults would sit on them. Now a days we have rugs to cover our floors, but in the 1600’s rugs where so expensive and luxurious they where hung on the walls in the houses of the rich. So instead of rugs people covered their floors with mats of reeds and rushes. Electrical lights didn’t exist, so for light, the average person made candles out of an animal fat called tallow. Only the rich and the middle classes housing changed into the Tutor time period.

    Housing wasn’t the only thing that changed. Games and hobbies changed a bit too. Most people in the 1600’s loved to watch and do wrestling. It was a main game that was done through all of the classes in the social hierarchy. Everybody also gambled. The rich and some of the middle class usually gambled with money, but the other people that couldn’t afford to lose money gambled with animals, clothes, sometimes even their own daughters. Only the rich thought of hunting as a sport. If the weapons where available, fresh caught meat would be a treat to the other classes.

   
    Clothes where made from hunted animals as well and where a vary big part in daily life. People would wear cat, rabbit, beaver, bear, badger, and polecat, but never fox. Everybody wore hats.  Hats where the main trend back then. They even had laws for hats, like only rich men could wear wool hats on Sunday. Wigs could also be considered hats, but not always. Few people wore wigs; mostly kings and queens did. The average man wore a loose tunic and the women wore a bodice and then a skirt, and then a linen apron, and then finally a type of petticoat called a smock shift or chemise. People had their clothes dyed, mostly from vegetables, and usually had buttons for decoration. These fashion styles where very popular.

    In that time arranged marriages where also a very big part in daily life. Girls would usually get married at the age of 15 or 16 and boys would usually get married at the age of 18-21. In some places people where very about arranged marriages. If a girl would refuse to get married she would be beaten until she changed her mind about the marriage.

    Before a man in a rich family would get married, he would probably go to  school. Boys would go to petty school until the age of 7 and then went to grammar school. School is much different from today; it was very diciplened. If you did something wrong, you would get a spanking on your bare bottom. When   you would turn 15 or 16 you could be chosen to go to Oxford or Cambridge. A lot of boys still didn’t go to school, but still knew how to read. Middle class girls where taught how to read, write, do math ect. at home by their mothers. Kids that didn’t go to school where expected to work at home for their parents.