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Elizabethan England, c1568–1603

Poverty and the treatment of the poor

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 2 section B

Overview

Population growth, enclosure and rack-renting, the harvests of the 1590s and the lost monasteries, the deserving and idle poor, the Vagabonds Act, the Act of 1576, the Poor Law of 1601, and the towns' schemes.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

How did Elizabethan law distinguish between kinds of poor people and provide for them?

Key term

How did population change affect poverty in Elizabethan England?

Key term

How did enclosure add to poverty?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    How did population change affect poverty in Elizabethan England?

    Model answer

    The population grew quickly, so more people competed for the same work, food and housing, driving prices and rents up faster than wages.

  2. 2

    How did enclosure add to poverty?

    Model answer

    Landlords fenced common land for sheep, which needed far fewer workers and left villagers with nowhere to graze animals or gather fuel.

  3. 3

    What was rack-renting?

    Model answer

    Landlords raising rents steeply, which forced tenants who could not pay off the land they farmed.

  4. 4

    Why did the harvests of the 1590s make poverty far worse?

    Model answer

    Repeated failures between 1594 and 1597 sent grain prices soaring, so wages bought much less food and many families were reduced to begging.

  5. 5

    How had the closure of the monasteries earlier in the century affected the poor?

    Model answer

    It swept away the food, shelter and alms the monasteries had given, leaving many places with no organised relief at all.

  6. 6

    Who were the deserving poor?

    Model answer

    The old, the sick, the disabled and orphaned children, who could not work and were thought to deserve help.

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