Was life hard in the 15th – 17th centuries?
In 1500- 1700 century England most of the population lived in small villages and made their living from farming. However towns grew larger and more important. During the 16th century trade and industry grew rapidly and England became a more and more commercial country. During this period England became richer and richer. As England grew more and more prosperous life for the well-off became more and more comfortable. Upper class and middle class people benefited from the growing wealth of the country. However for the poor in Tudor England life did not improve. For them life was hard and rough.
Society was separated into four groups. At the top were the nobility who possessed vast amounts of land. …show more content…
They learned skills for life from their mothers. Girls from the homes of the rich received some form of education but it was in things like managing a household, needlework and meal preparation. It was generally believed that teaching girls to read and write was a waste of time. Young ladies from a rich family would have no choice over who their husbands would be. Marriages were frequently arranged so that the families involved would benefit – whether the young lady loved her future husband was effectively irrelevant. In fact, it would not have been unusual for a couple to meet for the first time at their wedding as happened to Henry VIII and Anne of …show more content…
Only the very rich could get at divorce. Anne Hathaway, for example, was the wife of William Shakespeare. She married at the age of 26, which is really unusual for the time for most people married young; usually around the ages of 14-18. Sometime it was even earlier. A perfect example of such a union was the 1499 marriage between Catherine of Aragon (Spain) and Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII of England. They were married by a proxy in their native lands when Arthur was 14 and Catherine was 15. Catherine did not arrive in England until 1501, when the young royals were wed again, this time in
In 1500- 1700 century England most of the population lived in small villages and made their living from farming. However towns grew larger and more important. During the 16th century trade and industry grew rapidly and England became a more and more commercial country. During this period England became richer and richer. As England grew more and more prosperous life for the well-off became more and more comfortable. Upper class and middle class people benefited from the growing wealth of the country. However for the poor in Tudor England life did not improve. For them life was hard and rough.
Society was separated into four groups. At the top were the nobility who possessed vast amounts of land. …show more content…
They learned skills for life from their mothers. Girls from the homes of the rich received some form of education but it was in things like managing a household, needlework and meal preparation. It was generally believed that teaching girls to read and write was a waste of time. Young ladies from a rich family would have no choice over who their husbands would be. Marriages were frequently arranged so that the families involved would benefit – whether the young lady loved her future husband was effectively irrelevant. In fact, it would not have been unusual for a couple to meet for the first time at their wedding as happened to Henry VIII and Anne of …show more content…
Only the very rich could get at divorce. Anne Hathaway, for example, was the wife of William Shakespeare. She married at the age of 26, which is really unusual for the time for most people married young; usually around the ages of 14-18. Sometime it was even earlier. A perfect example of such a union was the 1499 marriage between Catherine of Aragon (Spain) and Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII of England. They were married by a proxy in their native lands when Arthur was 14 and Catherine was 15. Catherine did not arrive in England until 1501, when the young royals were wed again, this time in