Elizabeth I: Society - Continuity, Change & Rebellion (AQA A Level History: Component 1: Breadth study): Revision Note

Summary

• Elizabethan society was built on a rigid social hierarchy

  • This structure changed little, but its composition shifted as the gentry grew in wealth and influence

    • Rising trade, land purchases and access to education increased the numbers of the gentry and their role in local government

• The Northern Rebellion (1569) was the most serious large-scale domestic rebellion of the reign

  • It was led by the Catholic Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland and collapsed without a major battle

• Poverty and vagrancy were persistent problems throughout the reign

  • A series of Poor Laws between 1563 and 1601 gradually built a national system of poor relief

• The Oxfordshire Rising (1596) was a product of harvest failures, enclosure and wartime hardship

  • It attracted only around four men at its meeting pooint but alarmed the Privy Council

• Historians debate how serious social discontent really was

  • The Northern Rebellion failed quickly; popular unrest in the 1590s was real but limited in scale

Social Continuity & Change: The Social Hierarchy under Elizabeth I

• Elizabethan society was built on the idea of the Great Chain of Being

  • This was a belief that God had ordered all of creation in a fixed hierarchy

  • Human society reflected this: the monarch sat at the top, beneath God

    • Below the monarch came the nobility, then the gentry, then yeomen, then merchants, then labourers and the poor

  • Challenging this order was seen as going against the will of God

Social groups

• The basic structure of society changed little under Elizabeth

  • The hierarchy remained broadly as it had been under Henry VII and Henry VIII

  • What changed was the composition: the gentry grew, the middling sort emerged and the poor became more numerous

• Population growth was the biggest driver of social change throughout the reign

  • England’s population grew significantly during the 16th century, reaching around 4 million by 1600

The Changing Role of the Gentry & the Rise of the "Middling Sort"

The gentry

• The gentry grew in numbers, wealth and influence throughout Elizabeth's reign

  • The dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII had placed large amounts of land on the market

    • The gentry were the main buyers and leaseholders of this land

  • Rising trade and commerce created new wealth for merchant families who bought land and joined the gentry

• Education transformed the gentry into a more confident and capable class

  • More gentry sons attended university and the Inns of Court than in any previous generation

  • By the end of the reign, a large proportion of MPs had a university education or legal training

  • A more educated gentry was better able to participate in government and assert its interests

• The gentry formed the backbone of local government under Elizabeth

  • They served as Justices of the Peace (JPs), implementing royal policy at the local level

  • They served as MPs, sheriffs and deputy lieutenants

  • The Crown depended on their co-operation to govern the country beyond London

  • Without the gentry, royal policy could not be enforced in the counties

The rise of the "middling sort"

• Below the gentry, a new social group was emerging by the later 16th century

  • The "middling sort" included prosperous tradespeople, craftsmen, merchants and yeomen

  • They had benefitted from growing trade and commerce without reaching the level of the gentry

  • They began to identify more with the social elite and less with the labouring poor

  • This group had a direct stake in social stability and the established order

• The growth of this 'middling sort' helps explain the relative stability of Elizabethan society

  • A larger proportion of the population had something to lose from disorder

    • This likely reduced the risk of large-scale popular rebellion compared to the mid-Tudor period

  • Compare with Kett's Rebellion (1549) and Wyatt's Rebellion (1554): Elizabethan unrest was far more limited in scale

The Northern Rebellion, 1569: Causes, Events & Significance

Causes of the Northern Rebellion

• The Northern Rebellion was driven by overlapping religious, political and economic causes

Events of the Northern Rebellion

• The rebellion broke out in November 1569

  • The Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland raised their banners in Durham

  • They entered Durham Cathedral, tore up the Protestant prayer books and celebrated a Catholic mass

  • The rebel army marched south, but got no further than the area around Clifton in Yorkshire

  • Support failed to materialise beyond the earls' own tenants

  • Response:

    • A royal army marched north

    • The earls fled to Scotland

    • The rebellion collapsed without a major battle

Aftermath and consequences

• Elizabeth's response was severe

  • Around 800 people were hanged, mostly tenants of the rebel earls

  • The Earl of Northumberland was eventually captured, returned to England and executed in 1572

  • The Earl of Westmorland fled to the Netherlands and died in exile

• The rebellion strengthened royal control in the north

  • The Council of the North was reconstituted in 1572 under the Earl of Huntingdon, a committed Protestant

  • Royal authority in the north was strengthened rather than weakened by the rebellion's failure

• The rebellion failed for several reasons

  • Norfolk's capture before it began removed the political focus

  • The rebels failed to raise significant support beyond the earls' own tenants

  • The nobility and gentry of the north were divided; many chose not to join

  • No foreign military support arrived

Poverty, Vagrancy & the Elizabethan Poor Laws

The causes of poverty

• There were several long-term pressures driving poverty and vagrancy throughout Elizabeth's reign

  • Population growth:

    • This put growing pressure on food, land, wages and employment

  • Inflation:

    • Prices rose by around 400% across the Tudor period

    • Real wages fell; the poorest were hit the hardest

  • Enclosure:

    • Landowners converted arable land to sheep pasture

    • This displaced agricultural labourers and pushed some into vagrancy

  • Harvest failures:

    • Periodic bad harvests, especially in the 1590s, pushed the most vulnerable into destitution

  • Dissolution of the monasteries:

    • The dissolution under Henry VIII had removed the main source of organised charitable relief for the poor

Categories of poor

• The government drew distinctions between different types of poor person

  • The impotent/deserving poor:

    • Too old, too young or too ill to work

    • Seen as deserving of charity and relief

  • The able-bodied poor:

    • Able to work but unable to find employment

    • Increasingly recognised as needing support from the 1570s onwards

  • The idle/undeserving poor (vagabond):

    • Able to do work but unwilling to do so

    • Seen as undeserving and treated harshly throughout the period

The development of the Poor Laws

• The table below summarises the key Elizabethan laws regarding the poor

• The Poor Laws had a real but limited impact

  • In practice, charitable giving provided more relief than the compulsory poor rate

  • The laws were unevenly enforced across counties

  • “Nevertheless, no rebellions as serious as those of the mid-Tudor period occurred during the reign

  • The 1601 Poor Law Act established a permanent national framework that lasted until the 19th century

Social Unrest in the 1590s: The Oxfordshire Rising, 1596

• The 1590s were the most difficult decade of Elizabeth's reign for ordinary people

  • Four successive harvest failures between 1594 and 1597 pushed food prices sharply upward

  • Real wages collapsed to their lowest levels since the Black Death

  • See the Economy: Prosperity and Depression Revision Note for the full economic analysis of this period

• Food riots broke out in several areas

  • There were riots over food in London, the south-east and East Anglia in 1595–1597

    • These were protests against high prices and hoarding, not revolutionary movements

    • Local authorities used JPs and Privy Council instructions to regulate food prices and prevent hoarding

The Oxfordshire Rising, 1596

• The Oxfordshire Rising was a product of harvest failures, enclosure and wartime hardship

  • A small group of men planned a march on London to demand the overthrow of enclosing landlords

  • They intended to seize weapons from Woodstock and link up with a large crowd

    • The crowd never materialised; only four men gathered at the appointed meeting point

  • The plot was uncovered by the authorities before it could develop further

  • The ringleaders were arrested, tortured and executed

• The Privy Council's response was disproportionate to the actual threat

  • The Council treated the plot with great alarm and interrogated the ringleaders under torture

    • This suggests the government may have feared popular rebellion in the 1590s

  • But the rising itself attracted almost no support, it remained a plot rather than a rebellion

How Serious Was Social Discontent Under Elizabeth?

• Use the specific evidence below to build and support your argument

The case that social discontent was limited and managed

• The Northern Rebellion failed quickly and attracted limited support

  • The rebels got no further south than Yorkshire before the army approached

  • The nobility and gentry of the north were divided; many refused to join

  • The rebellion collapsed without a major battle

• Popular unrest in the 1590s was real but not revolutionary

  • The Oxfordshire Rising attracted only around four men; it never became a rebellion

  • Food riots were local and limited; there was no nationwide uprising comparable to Kett's Rebellion (1549)

  • The government managed the worst distress through poor law legislation and local regulation of food prices

• The growth of the gentry and middling sort created a larger group with a stake in social stability

  • Compared with the mid-Tudor period, Elizabethan social unrest was far less serious in scale and frequency

  • Tudor society was essentially stable; the Stuarts inherited a functioning social order

The case that social discontent was serious

• The Northern Rebellion (1569) was the only large-scale domestic noble-led rebellion of the reign

  • Around 6,000 men gathered under the earls at its height

  • The rebels entered Durham Cathedral and celebrated a Catholic Mass in direct defiance of the Settlement

  • The rebellion revealed how far the north had failed to accept the religious and political changes of the reign

• The 1590s saw genuine and widespread distress

  • Four successive harvest failures between 1594 and 1597 caused real suffering

  • Food riots broke out in London, the south-east and East Anglia

  • The Oxfordshire Rising revealed the government’s fear that even small-scale unrest could escalate into wider disorder

• The gap between rich and poor widened structurally over the reign

  • Population growth and inflation pressed down on the poorest while the gentry and middling sort grew wealthier

  • This long-term polarisation was a genuine social change, even if it rarely produced open rebellion