A Brief History of the Tudor Age Read online

  These mansions were built in a new style. The palaces which Wolsey and his contemporaries erected had Gothic gateways and façades; inside the house, there was a big banqueting hall with large windows, but the other rooms were small, with small windows, though all the windows were of glass, unlike the apertures with shutters of the houses of earlier generations. On the first floor there was a long gallery on all four sides of the building, with bay windows at regular intervals in which there were fixed window seats. When public receptions took place at court, the King would often withdraw with one of his counsellors, or with a foreign ambassador, ‘into a window’ and sit and talk to him there in privacy, as no one else would venture to approach.

  After 1550, the great houses built by the nobility were usually in stone, not brick, and the Gothic façade was replaced by simpler perpendicular frontages. They were built on four sides of a central courtyard, which was far larger than the courtyards of the first half of the century, so the sides of the building were much longer. Many of the rooms were large, with very large glass windows; the people who saw them were amazed, and had the impression that the house was made of glass. The lay-out and appearance of the houses resembled the palaces that had been built thirty years earlier on the Loire in France, but the size and features were exaggerated in the great houses of later Tudor England.

  Many of these houses were wholly or partly demolished, and converted into even larger houses, in the late seventeenth and in the eighteenth centuries; but Longleat House, which the courtier and soldier, Sir John Thynne, built near Warminster in Wiltshire, still stands today, unaltered externally, just as it looked when it was completed in 1585. Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire, which was built for Sir Humphrey Stafford in 1575, and Wollaton near Nottingham, built for Sir Francis Willoughby in 1588, are other examples of the very large mansions in the modern style which knights, not noblemen, were erecting for themselves in the reign of Elizabeth I. Willoughby was a local landowner, but he built Wollaton with the money that he made in his ironworks, his glass manufacturing works, from selling woad to dyers, and above all from the profits of his coal mines.

  In the year in which Wollaton was finished – the year of the Armada – Edward Phelips began building Montacute House near Yeovil in Somerset. At Montacute, money came first, then the house, and rank came last. When the Cluniac priory of Montacute was dissolved, Henry VIII granted the site and manor to his secretary, William Petre, who sold it to his fellow courtier, Sir Thomas Wyatt. It was forfeited to the crown when Wyatt’s son was executed as a traitor after his revolt against Mary in 1554. She granted it to Petre again, whose son sold it to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who immediately resold it at a profit to Robert Freke, a gentleman from Dorset. But it was a young man from an unimportant local family, Edward Phelips, who, after he had become a successful barrister of the Middle Temple, built Montacute House; and it was after the house was completed in 1601 that he became Speaker of the House of Commons, was knighted, and last of all bought the manor of Montacute and the former monastic lands from the impoverished Freke. Montacute House is smaller than Longleat and Wollaton, but considerably larger than the gentlemen’s manor houses which were built, in much the same style, in the second half of the sixteenth century.

  William Cecil was brought up in his mother’s house at Burghley in Northamptonshire, on the south-eastern outskirts of Stamford. As it was ninety miles from London, it could hardly be reached in two days’ travel from the court, and when Cecil became Secretary of State under Edward VI he bought a house at Wimbledon; but he continued to spend much time at Burghley, even after he was again appointed Secretary of State by Elizabeth I on her accession, and in 1555 he began building a much larger house there.

  In the summer of 1559, Cecil decided to use his house at Burghley for an important diplomatic meeting. In May John Knox returned to Scotland from his exile in Geneva, and his sermon in Perth sparked off a popular revolution all over the Scottish Lowlands, led by the Protestant lords of the Congregation. Within seven weeks the Congregation had entered Edinburgh in triumph, and the French government was preparing to send troops to suppress the revolt against Mary Queen of Scots and her husband, King Francis II of France. Cecil was convinced that England must intervene to support the Congregation in Scotland; but Elizabeth was very reluctant to help rebels, and was particularly hostile to Knox, who only a year before had written his book against ‘the Monstrous Regiment of Women’ in which he argued that for a woman to rule was against God’s law.

  Cecil, who had known Knox when they were both at Edward VI’s court, was eager to meet him to discuss the best way in which English aid could be given to the Scottish Protestants; but he realized that it was important that it should not be generally known that Elizabeth’s Secretary of State was meeting this notorious revolutionary leader, and he may not even have told Elizabeth about it. He therefore planned to meet Knox at Burghley, and wrote to Sir Henry Percy, the Deputy Warden of the East and Middle Marches, to give Knox instructions as to what he should do. Knox was to come incognito to Holy Island near Berwick, and then travel south along the Great North Road towards Stamford; but he was to leave the highway a few miles north of Stamford and ride across the fields to Burghley, entering the house by the back gate. He was to remain there, taking care not to leave the house, until Cecil arrived a few days later. Cecil assured Percy that he had given orders to his household to make sure that Knox would be well supplied with food and drink at Burghley. He probably remembered that Knox always appreciated good ale and wines.

  Cecil’s plans went wrong. Knox had been a preacher at Berwick for some years in the reign of Edward VI, and when he arrived by sea from Scotland at Holy Island he was recognized by some of his old parishioners. In view of this, Percy thought that it would be wiser if Knox did not go on to Burghley, and when Cecil heard what had happened he agreed that it would be too risky for the meeting to take place. Knox returned to Scotland, and Cecil conducted his negotiations with the Congregation through the Scottish Protestant lords who were less hateful to Elizabeth than Knox.

  When Elizabeth created Cecil a peer in 1571, he took the title of Lord Burghley after the name of his house, and soon afterwards again began enlarging Burghley. The work was eventually finished in 1587. The exterior remains almost unaltered today, though the interior was much changed in later times. Cecil took the greatest interest in the building work, and himself suggested many of the details to his English and Dutch master-masons. The house contained many features of the architecture which was beginning to appear in Italy by the end of the sixteenth century and which resembled the elaborate Baroque mansions of a hundred years later.

  Cecil also built himself another large house at Theobalds near Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, only just off the Great North Road. The building work began in 1563, when he had almost finished the first stage of the work at Burghley, and was largely completed by 1575. Unlike his urban residence of Cecil House in Drury Lane, Theobalds had the advantage of country air, but was much nearer to London than Burghley House. Elizabeth I stayed with him at Theobalds on ten occasions, the last time in 1597, less than a year before his death. The German traveller, Paul Hentzner, visited Theobalds a few days after Burghley died; and though he could not go into the house, as all the family were in London for the funeral, the gardener showed him around the grounds. He was very impressed by their size, by the large lake with the rowing boats provided for the use of the guests, by the complicated labyrinths, the white marble fountain, and the summer-house containing marble statues of twelve Roman Emperors. In 1607 Burghley’s son Robert gave Theobalds to James I in exchange for Hatfield House; but Theobalds was another of the royal residences pulled down by Charles II.

  Thomas Howard, who loyally served Elizabeth I after his father, the Duke of Norfolk, was beheaded as a traitor, became an influential courtier and was created Earl of Suffolk by James I. In 1603 he began building his great mansion at Audley End, near Saffron Walden in Essex. Lord Cobham began rebuild
ing Cobham Hall in Kent in 1584.

  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 th
e 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.

  7

  COSTUME AND FASHION

  IN THE TUDOR AGE, 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.