Daily Life in Elizabethan England (17 page)

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Daily Life in Elizabethan England

A night watchman, called a
bellman
from the bell he carries. [
Shakespeare’s
England
]

to deal with problems and arrest anyone found on the streets without a good cause.

The exact structure of the day depended on one’s position in society.

The orderly schedule described above presupposes a working person.

People in the upper classes had more diverse schedules. Some were highly disciplined, and would follow a course of daily activity as demanding as that of a laborer. Others might rise later, spend several hours at dinner, begin their evening meal at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., and perhaps carouse late into the night.

THE WEEK

Elizabethans generally worked from Monday to Saturday, although

many had Saturday afternoon off. Markets took place on regular days of the week—Wednesday and Saturday mornings were the commonest

times. Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday were fasting days when no meat was to be eaten, except for fish. This requirement had been established for religious reasons by the medieval church, and was revived by Queen
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DAILY ACTIVITIES FROM A PURITAN GENTLEWOMAN’S DIARY

Tuesday 28 [August 1599]

In the morning, after private prayer, I read of the Bible, and then wrought

[embroidered] till 8 o’clock, and then I ate my breakfast; after which done, I walked into the fields till 10 o’clock, then I prayed, and not long after I went to dinner; and about one o’clock I gathered my apples till 4; then I came home, and wrought till almost 6, and then I went to private prayer and examination, in which it pleased the Lord to bless me; and beseeched the Lord, for Christ his sake, to increase the power of this spirit in me daily, Amen, Amen; till supper time I heard Mr. Rhodes read of [a book by the Puritan scholar Thomas] Cartwright, and soon after supper, I went to prayers, after which I wrote to Master Hoby, and so to bed.

The Lord’s Day 18 [November 1599]

After private prayer I went to Church, and when I came home, I praised God for his mer[c]ies there offered me. After I dined, I went to church again and heard catechizing and sermon; then I talked and sang psalms with diverse that was with me, and after that I prayed privately and examined myself with what integrity I had spent the day, and then went to supper; after that, to public examination and prayers, and so to bed.

The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599–1605,
ed.

Joanna Moody (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), 11–12, 38.

Elizabeth in order to foster the fishing fleet and by extension the navy; it does not appear to have been meticulously obeyed, especially on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but there were efforts at enforcement (especially supported by fishmongers). It was also possible to purchase exemptions.

Thursday afternoon was often a half-holiday for schoolchildren. Thursday and Sunday were the big nights for food—they were often occasions for roasts. Those who were paid weekly received wages on Saturday; Saturday afternoon was often a half-holiday for workers, and Saturday night was a favored time for carousing among common people since they did not have to work the next day. Saturday, coming at the end of the work week, was the typical day for weekly pay, as well as washing and laundry; if possible, people would wear clean clothes on Sunday morning for church.

Sunday was the Sabbath. Everyone was required by law to attend

church services in the morning. On every second Sunday afternoon, the parish priest was required to offer religious instruction for the young people of the parish. After church, people were customarily allowed to indulge in games and pastimes; Sunday was the principal occasion for diversion and entertainment. However, Puritan-minded reformists felt
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Daily Life in Elizabethan England

that such activities violated the holiness of the Sabbath, so there was often vocal opposition to such entertainments. Church services were also supposed to be held on Wednesdays and Fridays, although attendance was not compulsory.

Men and women normally sat separately in church, although this was not a fast rule. The liturgy was laid down in the
Book of Common Prayer
issued shortly after Elizabeth’s accession 1559 and remains the basis of services in the Anglican church today. During the course of the service, the parishioners would sing psalms and the priest would offer two biblical readings, one each from the Old and New Testaments, followed by the ceremony of communion and a sermon, and any baptisms that needed to be celebrated. Over the course of the year, the parishioners would go through the Psalms 12 times, the New Testament 48 times, and the Old Testament once. Other prominent features of the liturgy included recitation of the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer.

The sermon was a major vehicle for public propaganda in both religious and political matters, and the priest was not allowed to preach a sermon of his own devising unless he had been specifically licensed to do so. Instead, the government published books of approved sermons that stressed religious conformity and political obedience, as well as the teachings of Christian doctrine.

Communion, the ceremony in which the parishioners received the

sacred bread and wine, had always been a particularly important ritual in the Christian church. The Protestant Church of England taught that communion was a ceremony of commemoration, rather than the mystical transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, as in the Catholic Church. In contrast with modern religious customs, people did not normally take communion every time they went to church, and the ceremony might even be omitted; it was only required on certain major holidays.

Most churches had been built in the Middle Ages, but the Protestant reformation brought about many important changes in the interior arrangement of the church. The Catholic crucifix above the altar was replaced by the royal coat of arms; religious paintings were covered over, statues were removed, and as stained-glass windows decayed they were replaced with plain ones. In Catholicism, the church was arranged so that the religious ceremonies, particularly that of communion, took place in a special holy space: the altar was located at the east end of the church, away from the parishioners, and was separated from them by a screen. The Protestants considered this arrangement superstitious; in an Elizabethan church the elaborate altar was exchanged for a simple communion table, which was placed in the center of the church right in front of the congregation, without any separation. Pews were arranged in the front of the seating area and could be rented by those who could afford them, while others sat on stools. Seating was sometimes a contentious issue, since a seat in front was
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considered a mark of high social rank. In some traditional communities, seats were assigned to particular landholdings, but in many places, this system had broken down, and there was a great deal of jockeying for the most prestigious positions.

THE ELIZABETHAN YEAR

The manner of reckoning dates in the year was similar to ours today, with a few important differences. To begin with, the number of the year did not change on New Year’s Day. The English calendar had come down from the Romans, for whom January 1 was the first day of the year. Accordingly, this was called New Year’s Day and was observed as an official holiday as the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ. However, the number of the year did not actually change until March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation. England differed from the Continent in this respect. The day that a 16th-century Frenchman (and a modern person) would consider January 1, 1589, would be called January 1, 1588, in 16th-century England. Educated Englishmen sometimes dealt with this problem by writing the date as 1 January 1588/9.

On March 25 the year would be written as 1589, and England would be in line with the rest of Europe until January 1 came around again.

To make things even more confusing, England was using a slightly different calendar from most of Western Europe (the exceptions being the other Protestant countries and certain Italian city-states). This was the Julian Calendar, so named because it had been introduced by Julius Caesar. The Julian calendar had leap years, but this actually made the Julian year slightly longer than the actual solar year. The difference was slight, but over the centuries there had accumulated a 10-day discrepancy—so that, for example, the Spring Equinox, which should have fallen on March 21, fell on March 11. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII established the Gregorian Calendar, which we still use today, by which three out of four years ending in -00 (e.g., 1900) are not leap years. This calendar was much more accurate, but English opposition to the papacy meant that England did not follow the pope’s lead until 1752. As a result, whenever you crossed the English Channel to France, you jumped 10 days forward on the calendar, and you jumped 10 days backward on your return!

The seasons as they were known to the Elizabethans were naturally more like those in England today rather than those familiar to North Americans.

Spring was reckoned to begin in February, when the ground thawed and planting began; this season was often equated with Lent, the six weeks before Easter, when Christians traditionally abstained from eating meat.

Summer began in May, when the Lenten fast and the heavy work of spring was over and the warm weather of summer began. Autumn came when

the harvest began in August (the season was also called Harvest, but not usually Fall). Winter arrived in November when the grass ceased growing and cattle had to be brought in from pasture.

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Daily Life in Elizabethan England

In addition to the cycle of the seasons, the year was shaped by the festive and religious calendar of holy days, also called feasts. Every official holiday was ostensibly religious, with the exception of Accession Day (November 17), commemorating Elizabeth’s accession to the throne.

Nonetheless, holidays had their secular side as well: like modern-day Christmas and Easter, religious holidays had accumulated secular elements that sometimes overshadowed the religious component.

By law, everyone was obliged to attend church on holy days as well as Sundays, and to take communion three times a year, generally at Easter, Whitsun, and Christmas. This requirement was seen as a means of ensuring outward conformity and for rooting out Catholics and Separatists who might pose a threat to the country’s religious unity. People did not necessarily observe this law rigidly, but most probably took communion at least at Easter.

The observance of any holy day began on the evening before, called the
eve
of the holy day—the principal surviving example is Christmas Eve.

The eve of a major holy day was supposed to be observed by the same fast as on Fridays and in Lent.

The Protestant reformation in England had done away with many of

the traditional saints’ days and other religious holidays observed by the Catholic Church, and there continued to be pressures from Protestant reformers in the Church of England to take the process even further.

Many of the traditional holiday celebrations were criticized as superstitious, rowdy, and inappropriate for occasions that were supposed to be religious observations. Over the course of Elizabeth’s reign, the reformers were able to withdraw the church and civic support than many of the festivities had once enjoyed, and some of them began to fall out of use.

However, in the more conservative parts of the country—the north and west, and in traditional-minded villages—customary rituals remained very much alive.

On the calendar following, the days listed in
boldface
were official holidays sanctioned by the Church of England. The remainder of the holy days listed were included in the church calendar but were not observed as holidays. In addition to the feasts listed below, many parishes observed the feast day of the patron saint of the parish church: the celebration was known as the Wake Day or Dedication Day and might be observed with the same sorts of activities as a village ale (see Whitsunday, under May).

Finally, many towns had annual fairs appointed for a certain day of the year. Most fairs took place between May and November, although there were a few from December to April.

January

In this month the ground was too frozen to be worked, so the husbandman would be busy with maintenance jobs around the holding, such as trimming woods and hedges, repairing fences, and clearing ditches.

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1 The Circumcision of Christ
(
New Year’s Day
). New Year’s Day came in the midst of the Christmas season, which ran from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Day, and was generally a time for merrymaking and sociability. People often observed the day with by exchanging gifts: favored choices included apples, eggs, nutmegs, gloves, pins, and oranges stud-ded with cloves. They would also drink the wassail, a spiced ale traditionally served in a wooden bowl; there were traditional wassail songs as part of the ritual.

6

Epiphany
(
Twelfth Day
). The Twelfth Day of Christmas was the last day of the Christmas season. The evening before, called Twelfth Night, was traditionally the most riotous holiday of the year, an occasion for folk plays and merriment. One ritual was the serving of a spiced fruitcake with a dried bean and a dried pea inside. A man whose piece contained the bean would become the Lord of Misrule or King, and a woman who got the pea became the Queen; the two would preside together over the festivities. The wassail bowl was drunk as at New Year’s.