Tudor society and economy: population growth and inflation, enclosure and rural change, the rise of the gentry, and the development of poor relief culminating in the Elizabethan Poor Laws.

What this dot point is asking

You need to explain how Tudor society and the economy changed from 1485 to 1603: population growth and inflation, enclosure and rural change, the rise of the gentry, and the growth of poor relief culminating in the Elizabethan Poor Laws.

Population and inflation

Rising prices and a growing workforce meant falling real wages for many, fuelling hardship. The "price revolution" was severe: the index of consumables compiled by Phelps Brown and Hopkins suggests prices rose roughly five or sixfold across the century while wages lagged far behind. Economists debate the mix of causes (the monetarist stress on debased coinage and bullion versus the demographic stress on population pressure), but the human result was clear: those on fixed wages, the landless and the day labourer suffered, while landlords and farmers who produced a surplus for the market often gained.

Enclosure and rural change

Rural change, enclosure and population growth combined to create landless labourers and migration in search of work, feeding contemporary fears of vagrancy.

The rise of the gentry

The gentry rose in wealth and influence, buying up former monastic lands sold by the crown after the dissolution and benefiting from rising rents and market farming. They became the backbone of local government as Justices of the Peace, the unpaid workhorses who enforced statute in the shires, and increasingly dominated the House of Commons. The "rise of the gentry" was the subject of a famous mid-twentieth-century historians' quarrel (Tawney's thesis of a rising gentry and declining aristocracy, challenged by Trevor-Roper), which makes the topic a rich one for interpretations work, even if the simple model has since been qualified.

Poverty and the Poor Laws

Government attitudes shifted across the century from punishment towards organised, parish-based relief, partly because the dissolution had removed monastic charity and because fear of disorder grew:

• Early measures punished "sturdy beggars" (the 1531 and 1547 vagrancy laws prescribed whipping, branding and even temporary slavery) while licensing the impotent poor to beg.
• A growing distinction emerged between the deserving (impotent) poor, who merited relief, and the idle poor, who must be set to work or punished; towns such as London, Norwich and York pioneered local schemes and a compulsory poor rate.
• The Elizabethan Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601 systematised relief nationally, making each parish responsible for its own poor through a compulsory poor rate levied by overseers, with work provided for the able-bodied, relief for the impotent, and apprenticeships for pauper children. This framework lasted, with amendment, until 1834.

Try this

Q1. What did the Elizabethan Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601 establish? [2 marks]

• Cue. Parish-based poor relief funded by a poor rate, with work for the able-bodied and relief for the impotent.

Q2. Name two causes of Tudor inflation. [2 marks]

• Cue. Population growth and the debasement of the coinage (also New World bullion).