0308A

In many respects Britain in 1600AD was much as it had been for centuries. Much of the country was covered with forest and heathland, moor and bog. Where the land had been cleared, much was unsuitable for arable farming and was grazed by cattle and sheep. Since 1500 the population had risen substantially. There were still outbreaks of plague, but they tended to be confined to towns and the biggest killer of the century was the influenza epidemic of 1556-58. As a consequence of population growth, much land which had fallen out of cultivation after the Black Death was reclaimed and more forest and scrub were cleared for grazing; in parts of south-east England wood became scarce and there were complaints of shortages of timber for naval use.
The population growth was initially most apparent in the countryside. The great majority of people lived in villages and earned at least part of their living from agriculture. In arable villages especially, young people could find neither land to rent nor paid labour and moved on, to less crowded villages in forest or pasture regions or to the towns. Growing competition for land and food led to inflation. Rents and food prices rose. Small farmers, who produced barely enough to feed their families, failed to profit from rising food prices and faced increased demands for rent. In normal years they just about got by. They could survive a bad harvest by borrowing to pay the rent, but a run of bad harvests (as in 1594-97) ruined many. Meanwhile, landlords preferred to rent land out in larger units to farmers who produced a substantial surplus for sale and who could afford to pay higher rents. Farms tended to become larger and many small farmers were forced to give up their tenancies and work for wages, in agriculture or rural industry. But labour was plentiful. Wage rates lagged behind prices and underemployment was endemic. Regular work at a single occupation was the exception, not the rule.
Economic forces worked against the poor in other ways. At times (notably the 1530s and 1540s) a burgeoning demand for wool encouraged landlords, where the soil was suitable, to convert arable land into sheep pasture, which greatly reduced the demand for labour. As good arable land became more valuable, it seemed uneconomic to allow it to be used as common grazing, so some landlords enclosed it and leased it out to farmers. Faced with rising rents, evictions, conversion of arable land to pasture and loss of common rights, peasants rose in protest, from Cumbria to East Anglia, notably in 1536 and 1549. The revolts were bloodily put down and although there were still occasional protests against agrarian change, most were small-scale: when an Oxfordshire peasant called for a rising against the gentry in 1596, only four people turned up. Agrarian problems were most acute in those arable villages where most of the fertile land was already being cultivated. Villages where there was extensive grazing or room to expand, as in the Cambridgeshire fen or the woodlands of Shropshire, could, for the moment, accommodate an increased population. An Act of Parliament of 1589 forbade the building of cottages except where the cottager had four acres of land. This seems to have been enforced more rigorously in arable villages than in forest communities, where it was possible to clear land for grazing and exploit natural resources including wood for fuel; the fens provided wildfowl, eels an reeds for thatching.
In the century before 1600, the rural population grew where there was space for newcomers - or where the parish authorities allowed them to settle. While in some purely arable villages the population remained static or fell, in many pastoral, woodland and upland villages newcomers built shacks and hovels and eked out a living as best they could. The standard of living of the majority of rural people, never lavish, deteriorated in the later 16th century. As population threatened to outstrip resources, England faced the prospect of famine and demographic catastrophe. But it did not happen. Many people went hungry and contracted diseases associated with malnutrition and poor hygiene, but few starved. Although agricultural techniques remained primitive and yields were low, the area under cultivation increased and there were improvements in the marketing and distribution of food. Despite the rebellions this was a century without major internal wars. Taxation tended to fall in real terms and by the end of the century the poor were effectively exempt. Meanwhile Parliament was creating the system of parish-based poor relief which came to serve as a safety-net for the poorest in society.
Many who could not find work in rural areas headed for the towns. These acted as marketing and, sometimes, administrative centres, but in many cases their role in manufacturing had declined in the later Middle Ages. England's main export industry (woollen clothmaking) had moved into the countryside, to escape gild regulations and take advantage of a population whose agricultural work was seasonal. The massive churches and opulent houses of Suffolk wool-villages like Lavenham or Long Melford offered a stark contrast to the physical decay and declining population of towns like Coventry. Some towns which retained a manufacturing role enjoyed prosperity in the first half of the 16th century. Cloth exports boomed in the 1540s, but then suffered a devastating slump. Demand on the continent for heavy English broadcloths collapsed, and from the 1560s traditional markets in the Netherlands and France were disrupted by war. In Norwich, England's second city, broadcloth production had practically ceased by 1560 yet rural unemployment and the hope of finding work (or scratching a living from begging or charity) encouraged many, especially young adults, to migrate from the countryside, creating a serious problem of poverty and, potentially, public disorder.
Faced with this problem, the city fathers of Norwich, and other major towns, organised surveys of their poor. Incomers without visible means of support were sent back to their home parishes. Native poor who could not support themselves (the young, the very old, the lame and sick) were supported using money raised by rates paid by the better-off. The able-bodied native poor were �set on work�, using materials provided by the city's parishes. Throughout these systems of municipal relief which served as models for the national system established between 1572 and 1601 - ran a strong work ethic and concern for moral discipline. Thrift, hard work, sobriety and self-reliance were encouraged; idleness, drunkenness and begging were punished. Outsiders unwilling to conform to these rules were expelled.

For a work ethic to be truly established, there had to be opportunities for work; and those who paid the poor rate needed to generate wealth. In some towns in south-east England one source of regeneration was the mass emigration of Protestants from the war-zones of the Netherlands and France. Craftsmen from the most advanced textile centres in Europe, such as Valenciennes and Lille, were an attractive proposition for towns desperate to resuscitate their cloth industries. Thus, while Norwich was expelling its English unemployed, it welcomed several thousand Flemish- and French-speaking refugees. The city insisted that they should (with the exception of a few bakers and, reluctantly, distillers) be clothworkers. The newcomers were to teach their skills to the English and to establish the reputation of Norwich �stuffs� through a rigorous system of quality control, which would be respected by continental buyers. They were not to trade locally or compete with the natives. They were to have their own churches and their own system of self-government; and they were to maintain their own poor. These were by no means the first migrant workers to come to England, but they were more numerous, many were religious refugees, rather than economic migrants or traders, and there was a systematic attempt to keep them separate from the natives. By 1600 London, Norwich, Colchester, Canterbury and Sandwich had substantial 'Stranger' populations. There was some friction with the natives, but in Norwich especially the 'Strangers' revitalised the textile industry, with new techniques and new products, and laid the foundations of the city's prosperity in the following century.
More in Part B....