A Brief History of the Tudor Age (17 page)

As far as building was concerned, no one eclipsed Elizabeth Hardwick towards the end of the Tudor Age. Having inherited money, and acquired more by marriage, she married as her fourth husband
George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned for a time in the custody of Lord and Lady Shrewsbury at Chatsworth and at their other residences in Derbyshire. In 1585
Elizabeth Hardwick began rebuilding one of her houses, Hardwick Hall, and at the same time she started building another house less than 100 yards to the north-east of Hardwick Hall. The new house
was finished in 1597. It had more windows and glass than any of the other great Elizabethan mansions, though it was nearly equalled in this respect by Wollaton. It still stands unchanged today,
though Hardwick Old Hall nearby is a ruin.

Many smaller manor houses for country gentlemen were also built during the Tudor Age. Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire, Hengrave Hall in Suffolk, Birtsmorton Court in Worcestershire, Brenchley
Manor in Kent, and Little Moreton Hall in Cheshire, had been completed by 1560. Speke Hall in Lancashire and Barlborough Hall in Derbyshire were built during Elizabeth’s reign.

But the great majority of Englishmen and women lived in much smaller and humbler houses. When Hentzner visited England in 1598 most of them were still made of wood. In London they usually had
three storeys, and occasionally four; nearly all the houses outside London had only two storeys. These houses were not built by the famous builders but by local men who in many cases did very
shoddy work. Occasionally some very good houses were built for the labouring classes. John Vesey was born in Sutton Coldfield in Warwickshire, and after he was appointed
Bishop
of Exeter in 1519 he spent a substantial part of his revenues on charitable work in his native town. He built fifty-one cottages for working people in Sutton Coldfield between 1530 and 1540, all of
them in solid stone. Like nearly all the clergy under Henry VIII, he accepted the break with Rome and the royal supremacy over the Church; but his views were considered to be too conservative in
Edward VI’s reign, and he was deprived of his bishopric, which was given to Miles Coverdale, the veteran Protestant who had helped Tyndale translate the Bible into English. Coverdale was not
burned as a heretic, like the other Protestant bishops, when Mary became Queen, because his brother-in-law John McAlpine, who was an eminent theologian in Copenhagen, persuaded the Protestant King
of Denmark to intervene with Mary on his behalf; he was allowed to go to Denmark, but he was deprived of his bishopric, and Vesey was reinstated as Bishop of Exeter. Vesey died a few months
later.

Very few artisans and labourers lived in houses which were as well constructed as those which Vesey built, and the authorities were worried by the failure to keep cottages in good repair. The
attention of Parliament was first drawn in 1489 to the harm that was being caused to agriculture through the failure of landowners to repair the cottages of their agricultural labourers – the
husbandmen – on whom the cultivation of the land depended. The Act of 1489 also deplored the decay of houses in towns and villages where formerly two hundred persons had lived and worked, and
now there were only two or three inhabitants, so that there were ‘churches destroyed, the service of God withdrawn, the bodies there buried not prayed for, the patron and curates wronged, the
defence of this land against our enemies outward feebled and impaired, to the great displeasure of God, to the subversion of the policy and good rule of this land, and remedy be not thereby hastily
purveyed’; but Parliament only took action about houses which were let with ‘twenty acres of land or more lying in tillage or husbandry’, or any such land in the possession of
owner-occupiers. If the landowner failed to
maintain these houses in a good state of repair, he was to forfeit half his annual rent, or profits from the land, to the King.

It was not until 1536 that Parliament legislated to remedy the failure to repair houses in towns. The fact that the good master-builders were all so busy building palaces and great houses for
the King and the nobility may perhaps have been responsible for the poor construction of the houses of the common people; for to judge from the statements in the Acts of Parliament, the standard of
housebuilding had fallen in recent years. Many houses in Nottingham, Shrewsbury, Ludlow, Bridgnorth, Queenborough in the Isle of Sheppey, Northampton and Gloucester ‘now and of long time hath
been in great ruin and decay, and specially in the principal and chief streets there being, in the which chief streets in times past have been beautiful dwelling houses there well inhabited, which
at this day most part thereof is desolate and void grounds, with pits, cellars and vaults lying open and uncovered, very perilous for people to go by in the night without jeopardy of life’.
Parliament was also worried that these ruined houses were causing evil smells which would damage health. Four years later, two more statutes were passed which were to apply to fifty-seven other
towns; another six towns, and the Cinque Ports, were affected by an Act of 1542; and the last statute on the subject, in 1544, added another twenty-one towns, so that eventually the Acts applied to
ninety-one towns in England and Wales, as well as the whole area of the Cinque Ports from Seaford to Margate.
⁵

No attempt was made to save the older houses; but the Act required every occupier to maintain in repair any house which had been built during the twenty-five years before the Acts came into
force, and which had not already completely fallen down. Every occupier must carry out the repairs within three years; if
not, his landlord could reoccupy the property, and the
tenant’s interest in the house would be forfeited. If the landlord did not carry out the repairs within another two years, anyone who held a rentcharge on the land could move in and eject the
landlord; but if the rentchargee did not do the repairs within one year, the mayor and corporation could enter into the property and become the owners of it. If the mayor and corporation did not
repair the house within three years, it reverted to the original occupier who was apparently under no further obligation to repair the house which neither his landlord, the owner of the rentcharge,
nor the local council had been willing to acquire at the cost of having to repair it. Any tenant who did carry out the repairs could deduct the cost from his landlord’s rent.

This legislation seems to have dealt with the evil, at least to some extent, for no further statutes on the matter were passed during the Tudor Age; but fifty years later the government was
concerned with another problem. Many husbandmen were leaving their work on the land, and their native villages, and were flocking to the towns, especially to London, where they lived in rooms in
tenements in overcrowded conditions, or in hastily and shoddily built houses which would soon become dilapidated structures. The authorities also feared that crime would increase if the towns were
filled with unemployed persons, and the overcrowding led to the spread of disease, and to a shortage of fuel in London and Westminster.

Elizabeth I issued a proclamation on the subject in 1580, but as this had little effect, Parliament passed two Acts in 1589 and 1593. They forbade anyone to build a new cottage in the
countryside unless he gave the inhabitant of the cottage 4 acres of his own freehold land. The provisions were not to apply to houses for necessary workmen in coal or tin mining or slate quarrying,
if the house was within one mile of their place of work; to any cottage within one mile of the sea or of any navigable river for habitation by sailors or by persons engaged in shipbuilding or in
victualling or supplying ships; or to a gamekeeper’s cottage in a park or forest. Contraventions of the Act
were to be punished by a fine of ten shillings for every day
that these cottages were inhabited.

No one of any rank was to build any house in London or Westminster or within three miles of the gates of London, unless it was in his own garden for the use of himself or his household, or was a
house which, in the opinion of the local justices of the peace, was suitable for habitation by a person worth £3 in freehold land or £5 in goods. The Act did not apply to houses along
the banks of the Thames which were inhabited by sailors or shipwrights, provided that the house was 30 feet from the wharf or bank, so that passers-by could walk between the house and the river,
and was 20 feet from any other house, so as to reduce the risk of fire. No one was to divide his house into separate living accommodation unless each separate part of the house was considered by
the JPs to be a suitable habitation for a person owning land worth £3 or goods worth £5.

The Tudor Parliaments made at least some attempt to deal with the problem of slum property and overcrowded tenements. They may not have done very much to relieve the conditions in which the
great majority of the common people lived; but four hundred years later the descendants of these people, who for the most part are blissfully unaware of their ancestors’ housing problems, can
enjoy and appreciate the beauties of the magnificent palaces and houses which were built for the privileged few in the Tudor Age.

I
N THE
T
UDOR
A
GE
, as in all other periods of history, it was possible to tell a man’s class and
occupation by his clothes, although basically men of all classes wore the same type of dress. All men wore a shirt, the only garment which has remained almost unchanged, apart from the collar, for
the last thousand years or more. The shirts of the common people were made of wool or linen; the nobility and wealthy classes sometimes wore shirts made of silk.

Above the shirt, men wore a doublet on the upper part of the body. The doublet was sometimes sleeveless, like a modern waistcoat, and sometimes had tight-fitting, or detachable, sleeves,
according to variations in fashion and taste. The doublets of the common people were made either of wool or of the rough canvas material, mixed with wool, which was called ‘kersey’. The
wealthy classes often wore doublets of expensive materials, with elaborate patterns.

Until 1540, all men wore hose on the lower part of their bodies, as they had done for more than three hundred years. These were tights, stretching from the waist to the feet; they showed the
outline of the thighs and legs, but the genitals were
obscured by a triangular piece of material called the codpiece. Unlike modern tights, hose were not held up by elastic,
which was not invented until the nineteenth century, but were laced to the doublet through holes in the doublet and hose, and tied.

The shoes worn by wealthy men changed with the fashion, becoming wider and less pointed at the beginning of the Tudor Age. In the first half of the sixteenth century they never had heels.
Sometimes they were fastened by a strap across the instep; sometimes they were tight-fitting like a slipper. Labourers often wore boots for working in the fields, particularly in the winter, and
noblemen and gentlemen wore boots for riding and walking out-of-doors.

It was in men’s outer garments that the distinctions of class and occupation were most clearly shown. The labourer wore a woollen jerkin, or jacket, which was a coat with sleeves reaching
from the shoulder to the knee, and fastened at the waist with a belt. It was a very good protection against the wind and rain for the husbandman when he worked in the fields in winter; on warm
summer days, he removed it and worked in his doublet, in his shirt, or naked above the waist.

Middle-class men wore that emblem of respectability, the robe, or gown, reaching from the shoulder to well below the knee, often nearly to the ankles, open at the front, with short sleeves
reaching to the elbow. The gown, like the white collar and tie in the middle of the twentieth century, was the badge which distinguished the middle-class man who had a sedentary occupation and a
superior position from the husbandman or artisan who wore a shorter jerkin which did not impede him in performing physical labour. The gown was worn by priests, lawyers, schoolmasters and
university lecturers, and merchants; it survives today in the vestments of the clergy, the barrister’s and solicitor’s robe, the academic gown, and the robes worn on official occasions
by mayors of cities and boroughs and by the masters and wardens of the city livery companies. The gown was also worn by physicians and by the barber-surgeons, who, though they were regarded as
socially inferior to the physicians,
were very eager to show that they were superior to the lower classes.

The master-masons and master-carpenters, whose skill in building the great houses of the King, the nobility and the gentry was so highly valued, also insisted on wearing a gown, though
master-carpenters usually distinguished themselves from members of other professions and crafts by wearing a carpenter’s apron above their gowns. Master-butchers wore gowns, which they
covered with an apron when they engaged in messy work in their slaughterhouses and shops; but their butchers’ livery company issued ordinances in 1607, officially enforcing the practice which
had become well-established by custom before the end of the Tudor Age, forbidding any butcher from wearing his apron, but only his gown, if he walked or stood on Sunday or on a holy day in any
street in the city of London or within a mile from the city limits. Master-cooks wore gowns, covered with an apron, when they supervised the work in the kitchen or served a picnic for Elizabeth I
on a hunting expedition; and by the end of the century the head gardener of a great lord was wearing fashionable dress as he walked through the garden, pausing to prune the occasional shrub, amid
the under-gardeners digging and working in their jerkins or doublets.

Noblemen and gentlemen did not usually spend much time sitting in churches, schools, and counting-houses, but, like the husbandmen, were often out-of-doors, and took a good deal of physical
exercise hunting or riding. They did not wish to be encumbered with long robes, and tended to wear rather shorter gowns than those worn by the sedentary middle classes, though their upper garment
was different from the rough jerkin of the labourer. At the beginning of the Tudor Age, noblemen and gentlemen wore gowns reaching to the knee when they were not in their riding coats. Gowns were
longer, reaching to the ankles, in 1500, but became shorter after 1520. It now became fashionable for noblemen and gentlemen to wear a short dagger hanging from the belt at the front of the
body.