Lifestyles of rich and poor
A Society of Stark Contrasts
Elizabethan England was a society of striking inequality. A small number of landowners — the nobility and gentry — enjoyed wealth, fine houses and elaborate fashions, while at the bottom of society a growing number of the poor struggled to survive. The gap between these extremes widened during the sixteenth century, largely because of rising population, inflation and changes in agriculture. Understanding this contrast is central to understanding the Elizabethan age.
The Lives of the Wealthy
The Elizabethan period saw a wave of great country house building. The great houses built by nobles and wealthy gentry were statements of power and loyalty. Houses such as Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire (built by Bess of Hardwick, completed 1597) and Burghley House in Lincolnshire (built by William Cecil) were designed to impress — and to accommodate the Queen on her summer progresses. Large windows — glass being expensive — were a mark of wealth, leading to the saying “Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall.”
Inside these houses, the wealthy enjoyed lavish feasting. Banquets could last for hours, featuring meat, game, spiced dishes, elaborate sugar sculptures and imported wines. The wealthiest kept their own deer parks for hunting and employed large numbers of servants. A great noble’s household might contain dozens of staff — stewards, cooks, grooms, ladies-in-waiting and more — all reflecting the master’s status.
Dress in Elizabethan England was not merely personal taste — it was a public statement of rank. Sumptuary laws regulated what each social class could wear, reserving certain colours and fabrics for the highest ranks. Purple silk and gold cloth of gold were restricted to royalty. The ruff — the distinctive pleated collar of linen or lace — became a hallmark of the Elizabethan age, growing ever larger and more elaborate across the reign. Wealthy women wore the farthingale, a hooped underskirt that gave skirts their wide, structured shape. These fashions were expensive, time-consuming to maintain and deliberately impractical — they advertised that their wearer did not need to do physical work.
The Lives of the Poor
For the majority of Elizabethans — tenant farmers, labourers, craftsmen and their families — life was far harder. Most people lived in modest timber-framed cottages, working long hours in agriculture or craft trades. Their diet was plain: bread, pottage (a thick vegetable and grain stew), cheese and occasional meat. A poor harvest could mean genuine hunger.
Below the working poor sat an even more desperate group: the vagabonds and vagrants. A rising population — from around 2.8 million in 1551 to approximately 4.1 million by 1601 — combined with inflation (prices rose sharply throughout the reign), enclosures of common land, and the dissolution of the monasteries (which had previously provided some charity) created a growing pool of the homeless and unemployed. Contemporaries feared vagrants as a threat to social order and distinguished between the “impotent poor” (those who could not work due to age, disability or sickness) and the “sturdy beggars” (those deemed capable of work but unwilling to find it).
Four main causes drove the rise of vagrancy: population growth, inflation (rising prices outpacing wages), enclosures of common land (removing livelihoods from rural labourers), and the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII (removing a traditional source of poor relief).
Government Legislation: The Poor Laws
The Elizabethan government’s response to poverty evolved across the reign. Early measures were harsh: the 1547 Vagrancy Act under Edward VI had briefly enslaved persistent vagrants, though this was quickly repealed. Tudor attitudes were complex — the government felt genuine pity for the “impotent poor” but fear and hostility towards the able-bodied vagrant. A series of poor laws attempted to separate these groups and deal with each differently.
The culmination of Elizabethan poor law legislation came with the 1601 Poor Law (formally the Act for the Relief of the Poor). This act established a national framework by placing responsibility for poor relief on each parish. Overseers of the Poor were appointed in every parish to collect a compulsory “poor rate” from householders and distribute it as follows: the impotent poor (elderly, sick, disabled) received “outdoor relief” — money or goods to allow them to survive at home; the able-bodied poor who genuinely could not find work were to be set to work (in a “house of correction”); and the “idle poor” (sturdy beggars who refused work) were to be punished.
The 1601 Poor Law was landmark legislation: it created a compulsory poor rate in every parish, appointed Overseers of the Poor, and distinguished between the impotent poor (to be helped), the able-bodied unemployed (to be set to work) and idle vagrants (to be punished). It remained the basis of English poor relief for over two hundred years.
The 1601 Poor Law was genuinely significant in the long term. It was the first national, compulsory system of poor relief in English history — a shift from voluntary charity to state obligation. It remained largely in force until the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. However, its significance in the short term should not be overstated: implementation was uneven, depending on the willingness of local parish officers, and the law did little to address the root causes of poverty such as enclosure and inflation. Critics argue it was more concerned with controlling the poor than genuinely relieving suffering.