This was also with the help of their sons and hired laborers. Women were helped by their daughters or servants in everything from knitting; to cleaning; to tending to the animals; to teaching the children. In shopkeeping families, the men and women both worked in the shop.
In artisanal families, the wife was still responsible for housecleaning but she sometimes oversaw the workers. As with the more personal family life, life in the public spectrum was often defined by social class.
The more wealthy groups were able to send their children to private school, something that most people still could not afford to do at this time. This made the education gap significant during the period, and made it difficult for the poorer people of Britain to move up the social ladder. Some things permeated the entire society without regard to class, however; both the theater and, later, the increasing role of organized sports were both things that were available and enjoyed by everybody.
This hierarchy determined everything about society and etched their fate eternally in stone. Among the differences in these classes were the attitudes that each one exhibited. No matter the pigeonholes that were set on those of poorer status, there was still a pecking order and sense of loyalty to social superiors. The one way to move up in this time period was to own land.
Landowners held power and influence. This made it difficult to move up the social ranks, seeing as how buying land was considered a luxury even in those days. Social Class Structure Wealthy Landowners This was the most powerful group, which made up the smallest amount of the population. It included the most important of the aristocracy and squires. Gentry This included those who received a high standard of upbringing but were not as important as the upper echelon of wealth.
This included: gentlemen, merchants, wealthy tradesmen, and well-off manufacturers. Yeoman Yeoman were those who owned and worked their own land. The upper middle class included certain professionals and merchants. The lower middle class included artisans, shopkeepers, and tradesmen. Black Britons Though they made up a small portion of the population, black slaves existed and were a hot issue during the early half of the century.
Their labor made commodities available and cheap, but the idea of slavery as wrong was extremely prevalent. No matter the protest, though, the labor and trade continued until its abolition in Though this class structure was almost always set from birth and heavily protected by those were already inducted into high social standing, it was not impossible for those of lower status to break through.
Everyone was mainly subject to the same body of law as everyone else and certain privileges for ruling classes only went so far. Property was the key to wealth and power, and property could be purchased.
So, any man could amass a fortune and land, and begin to climb the social ladder; and any family could lose all of its estate and see their social standing vanish. London and the Job Market. London was the biggest and most commercialized and industrialized city in England at the time.
It was home to roughly half a million citizens at the beginning of the century and would only grow from there. One could come across any business from merchant shops to ale houses and the people were as eclectic as the commerce with numerous faces, such as: the wealthy and their servants, inn keepers, beggars, doctors, prostitutes and pickpockets.
The noble and the lowly all walked the same streets painting a great picture of social life in the 18th century. Unfortunately for the better half of the century, the streets they walked on were atrociously covered in filth and dirty water that had been dumped from upper windows. Horse manure and human waste were also common to come across on the street. New foods were eaten like bananas, pineapples, and chocolate for the upper class. Tea and coffee were also introduced as exciting new drinks and coffee shops were up and coming, helping with the economy and job market.
Education Rich children, both boys and girls, were sent to petty school, like a preschool. However, only boys went to elementary school or grammar school, while upper class girls were tutored. Some mothers taught their daughters in the middle class until boarding schools began to take place. These girls were often taught writing, music, and needlework. While boys studied more academic subjects, girls were believed to only need to be taught subjects that were more on the line of abilities.
At the grammar schools, boys attended school from about 6 or 7 in the morning until around 5 at night. They were allowed some breaks for meals, but if they acted out of hand they would be punished with a smack on their bare butt with birch twigs. For the better part of the century, these suffocating devices were thought a necessity for good posture. There were both arguments for and against these dress contraptions. Nay-sayers complained that they made women struggle to get around and ruined comfort, but those in support insisted it ke.
Caps were immensely popular for the majority of women and embraced a lace around the brim. And not as uncommon as today, fashionable women were many accessories that interchanged between different gloves, watches, masks, and jewelry.
The wage-earners therefore had more disposable income. The seventeenth century also saw an expansion in the numbers and wealth of great merchants, a result of the struggles for control of international markets which had begun in the previous century.
Merchants were attracted by new products from expansion into more distant territories such as sugar and tobacco from the Americas or silks and spices from Asia. In the late seventeenth century, some contemporaries began to comment that goods normally restricted to the upper landed classes were being bought, worn and eaten by a much greater range of people. More people were eating meat and wheat and although the new goods from abroad were initially often re-exported to Europe, they were later retained and consumed at home and their prices began to fall.
The growth of the consumer society is demonstrated by the further development of shops and the retail trade which had begun in the sixteenth century. The two best known shopkeepers of the late seventeenth century are Roger Lowe of Leigh and William Stout of Lancaster both of whom stocked a wide range of goods of English, colonial and foreign origins.
Stage coaches first appeared in the s and at first only covered the shorter distances linking nearby towns. By the later s there were a few longer routes between London and York and London and Exeter that were served by coaches in the summer months only.
The trip from to Exeter in took four days and such travel had the advantage of accommodation in coaching inns along the way and advertised departure times. The chief problem, from the point of view of the poor, was the cost, with fares for inside passengers being, typically, 4d. A woman could eschew marriage if she were wealthy or if she chose to live a life of servitude women tended to find employment not only as servants but also as wet nurses, while particularly skilled women pursued midwifery.
Some women found greater freedom in widowhood. We should not, however, conclude that because life was difficult for women it was easy for men. Marriage was a very important social institution.
During the reign of Charles II —85 , a case came to trial involving a tooth-drawer, Thomas Middleton, in which he was indicted on bigamy — a serious offence in Stuart Britain.
At court, Middleton had to produce documentary evidence proving he was only legally married to one woman. In the latter part of the Stuart period, William Petty scientist, economist, and one of the founders of Royal Society published Political Arithmetick , in which he covered people, husbandry, manufacture, commerce and public revenues, among other important topics.
This might seem overly harsh, but Petty was concerned that the kingdom had over-stretched itself and needed to get its population and economy under control.
Scotland had been joined in union to England, Wales, and Ireland during the early 17th century, and went on to be officially joined by the Acts of Union in , under Queen Anne. This unification was considered controversial. Life expectancy during this period was generally a good deal shorter than in the present day. Studies by historians in the s estimated that between 10 and 25 women out of 1, perished as a result of childbirth in the Stuart period.
Personal hygiene was not high on the Stuart agenda, and parasites such as fleas and lice affected every social class. Even intestinal worms plagued many people in Stuart Britain.
This was the start of the royal mail. From the middle of the 17th-century stagecoaches ran regularly between the major English towns. However, they were very expensive and they must have been very uncomfortable without springs on rough roads. There was also the danger of highwaymen.
In the first Turnpike roads opened. You had to pay to use them. The money was used to maintain the roads. In towns, wealthy people were carried in sedan chairs. During the 17th-century operations were performed by barber-surgeons. Their knowledge of anatomy improved. Medicine also improved. In William Harvey published his discovery of how blood circulates around the body. Doctors also discovered how to treat malaria with bark from the cinchona tree.
However, medicine was still handicapped by wrong ideas about the human body. Illness resulted when you had too much of one humor. Nevertheless, during the 17th century, a more scientific approach to medicine emerged and some doctors began to question traditional ideas.
The Chinese invented the toothbrush. It was first mentioned in However, toothbrushes arrived in Europe in the 17th century. In the late 17th century they became popular with the wealthy in England. The average lifespan in the 17th century was shorter than today. The average life expectancy at birth was only That does not mean that people dropped dead when they reached that age!
Instead many of the people born died while they were still children. Out of all people born between one third and one half died before the age of about However, if you could survive to your mid-teens you would probably live to your 50s or early 60s. Even in Stuart times, some people did live to their 70s or 80s. In the early 17th century firearms were either matchlocks or wheel locks.
A matchlock held a slow-burning match, which was touched to the powder when the trigger was pulled. With a wheel lock, a metal wheel spun against iron pyrites making sparks. During the 17th century, both of these were gradually replaced by the flintlock which worked by hitting a piece of flint and steel making sparks. Furthermore, in the early 17th century, the cartridge was invented. The musket ball was placed in a container, which held the right amount of gunpowder to fire it.
The soldier no longer had to measure powder from a powder horn into his gun. Apart from artillery, there were two branches of an army. The cavalry was usually armed with wheel-lock pistols and sabres.
They were protected by backplates, breastplates, and helmets. The infantry consisted of men armed with muskets and those armed with pikes. A musket took a long time to reload and the soldiers were very vulnerable while they did so.
Therefore they were protected by men with pikes a weapon like a long spear. In theory, there were two musketeers to each pikeman. The pikemen usually had a steel helmet but musketeers did not usually wear armor. About the bayonet was invented. With a bayonet fixed a musket could be used as a weapon even if it had been fired and was not reloaded.
The bayonet did away with the need for pikemen. A revolution in thought occurred during the 17th century. The ancient Greeks could be said to be scientists. They thought by using their reason they could work out why the natural world behaves as it does. However, the Greeks never tested their theories by carrying out practical experiments.
As a result, many of their ideas about the natural world were wrong. Unfortunately, the ancient Greek philosophers were held in very high esteem and for centuries hardly anyone questioned their theories. This began to change in the late 16th century and the early 17th century. People began to conduct experiments to see if theories about the world were true.
In England a man named Francis Bacon declared that people should not accept that a theory was true just because a Greek philosopher said it was. He argued that careful observation and experiment were the keys to finding out how the natural world works.
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