The Elizabethans

A.N. Wilson has written an overview of the years of Elizabeth I that covers the more famous events of her reign, as well as far few forays into social history. Not having read too much on the Elizabethan era in any great since depth for very a long time, it was interesting to read again on the likes of Drake and Raleigh and others. I did want more social history.

Released in 2012 Wilson writes his first sentence in the preface as follows:-

We have lived to see the Elizabethan world come to an end. This makes now a very interesting time to be reconsidering the Elizabethans, but it also makes for some difficulties. As human societies and civilisations change, it is natural for them to suppose that what they do, what they think, what they eat and drink and believe is superior to what went before. While the Elizabethan world was still going on and in some respects it was still continuing, in modified form, until the Second World War British and American historians were able to see the reign of Queen Elizabeth I as a glory age. This was how the Elizabethans saw themselves.

If one is comfortable that that age from the crowning of Elizabeth I to 2012 was a ‘glory age’ then I would suggest that history has moved on rapidly in the last decade in my opinion. Glory years these are not.

Wilson has written a history of the Elizabeth I era that is not influenced by hagiography, as some Tudor writers are prone to be. He has had no issue pointing out the failures of Elizabeth I even with what is seen by many as a Golden Age in English history. For example, the Irish issues are covered with balance and those so-called swashbuckling mariners of those times are given the respect they deserve within the norms of those times.

Wilson is strongest in the social history areas that he covers, the literature and theatre of the times, the promiscuous sex lives that seemed to hardly bother anyone. I wanted more in this area. I was interested to read Chapter 21 London and the Theatres.

English migrants to London fell into two broad categories. There were those who came driven by ambition, and there were those who came driven by hunger. 'In London we find rich wives, spruce mistress pleasant houses, good diet, rare wines, neat servants, fashionable furniture, pleasures and profits the best of all sort', as one such ambition young man wrote.

On the other hand, there were those who had been driven off the land for the simple Malthusian reason that existent crops could not sustain country produced land an increased workforce. Population growth in the country produced land shortage, reduced the size of smallholdings and led to a fivefold increase in food prices. In the course of the sixteenth century the real value of wages halved. The poor became poorer. Living-in servants, apprentices and day-labourers were the lucky ones. Many simply drifted towards London with the vague hope that it would provide them with some form of livelihood. The number of homeless beggars was vast.

In 1581 Elizabeth was riding by Aldersgate Bars towards the fields of Islington when she found herself surrounded by a crowd of beggars, ‘which gave the queen much disturbance'. That evening, William Fleetwood, the Recorder, arrested seventy-four of them who had dispersed in the fields, where they lived in a kind of shanty-town. Eight years later, a mob of some 500 beggars threatened to disrupt Bartholomew Fair. They had formed their own collective and were trying to sell stolen goods at a fair of their own - Durrest Fair.

Yet it was a fluid underclass, never a settled one. No state-sponsored social-welfare system existed. In the absence of religious houses, there was nowhere for the indigent or the starving to find charity. The beggars took what they could, and then found work or moved on. It all had a cruel effectiveness. The authorities, ever anxious about the double dangers of plague and insurrection, kept a merciless eye on the swarming hordes.

Wilson has end noted his research throughout, and Durrest Fair is noted from Peter Ackroyd’s London – The Biography. Curiosity got me and I can find nothing on the www about Durrest Fair though plenty on Bartholomew Fair. I have only read one Ackroyd book and was not that sure on his research in Foundation his first volume of his history of England.

Wilson has supplied plenty of endnotes as stated and I will have to trust most of them. He has supplied an extensive bibliography that would be useful to anyone that is keen to read further on Elizabeth I and her times, and any also of his references to other events he discussed. I have found his style of delivery frustrating at times but others ideal. The occasional reference to modern culture and topical comparisons to the time of writing is not generally my style, but the first paragraph I have quoted above gave him opportunities to use historical comparisons.

Be all that as it may, this is a worthy read for those that have an interest in the subject, and they should enjoy this telling of the Elizabethan era.