Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to today's history lesson.

My name is Mr. Merrett, and I'll be guiding you through today's lesson.

So, let's get started.

Today's lesson is looking at "Social Life for the Poor in Tudor England".

And by the end of today's lesson, we'll be able to explain how social life for the poor changed in Elizabethan England.

In order to do that, we need to use some key terms, and our key terms for today are blood sports and theater.

Blood sports are forms of entertainment involving hunting, wounding, or killing, and it's usually of animals, and the theater is a venue where plays are performed.

Today's lesson will consist of three separate learning cycles, and our first one is opportunities to socialize.

So, let's get started.

So the Tudor period saw a great deal of change occur in England, not the least of which, was how the majority of people spent their leisure time.

Throughout the Tudor period, people in rural areas would spend six days a week working and the seventh at church, and to break up this cycle, the church included a great number of feasts and festivities throughout the year.

These holy days, or holidays as they became known, took up roughly one-third of the year, and these allowed people to socialize with family, with friends and with people from other villages as well.

The number of holy days decreased when England became a Protestant nation, but they were still a significant part of the calendar for many people.

Social opportunities for the rural poor were affected by the seasons.

In the summer, when days were longer and warmer, people had the opportunity to socialize once their work was finished, but the day hadn't yet ended.

And in the winter, when days were shorter and colder, people went to bed once it turned dark, so anything from half past three, four o'clock onwards really.

Obviously, that's a long time, that they'll be sleeping.

And evidence does suggest that at least some rural people broke up their sleep into two blocks, with a time in between, which was during the middle of the night used for socializing and housework and just kind of the usual stuff that people would normally do if the days were longer and it had been brighter in the evening instead.

However, it's pretty important to note that historians, we don't actually know how common this practice was.

We don't have that many sources written by rural people at this point in time.

So we know it did.

This practice did exist in some places.

We just don't know how frequent or how common that was around the rest of the country as well.

Now there were opportunity to socialize, as I said before, with holy days.

And there were loads, loads, and loads of these holy days.

And here are some examples that I've got on the screen in front of you here.

So a good example would be the Octave of the Epiphany.

So, and that took place every year from the 6th to the 13th of January.

There was an eight day Celebration of the Magi, who were the three wise men who visited Jesus.

So that's one of our holy days.

We also had Candlemas as well on the 2nd of February.

And this was a festival to honor the Virgin Mary, where everyone went to church, bringing a candle as a gift, and these candles would then be used in the church over the course of the next year.

We also have Michaelmas Day, which was the 29th of September.

And it was a feast as people prepared for winter, and it took place at the start of autumn.

So effectively it's an understanding that summer has ended.

That longer nights, colder days are coming into play.

We've also got All Saint's Day on the 1st November, and this was when the night before this holy day, people prayed for the dead whose souls were in purgatory.

So people would often stay up all night.

Church bells would ring all night in order to effectively just try and make sure that the dead work their way into Heaven out of purgatory.

Let's go for our first check for understanding for today.

"So how much of the year was given over to holy days "in Tudor England before it became Protestant?

" Was it roughly half of the year, roughly a third of the year, or roughly a quarter of the year?

Make your choice now.

Okay, if you chose, B roughly one-third, then congratulations.

That is indeed correct.

So another check for understanding.

So a true or false statement here.

"Rural people were able to socialize more "during the summer than in the winter.

" Is that true or is that false?

Okay, if you chose "true", then congratulations.

That isn't indeed true, but let's justify the answer now.

Is it true because most people migrated to warmer places in the winter, or is it true because most people simply went to bed in the winter once it was dark?

So choose your justification now.

Okay, if you chose B, then congratulations.

And the reason why this is true is that, obviously, we don't know how frequent it was that people would get up during the middle of the night to do their socializing.

So what we do know though is that people frequently just went to bed once it was dark.

So obviously that allows for more social time in the summer for certain than it does in the winter.

Right, let's do our first task of the day then.

So what I'd like to do is match the holy day that Tudor celebrated to the description of how and why they celebrated it.

So it's a mix and match activity.

So pause the video now whilst you're doing that, and I'll see you once you've finished.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully, you got on fine with that task.

Let's see what the correct answers are, and hopefully you've got them correct too.

So Michaelmas Day was a feast as people prepared for winter at the start of autumn.

The Octave of Epiphany was an eight day celebration of the Magi visiting Jesus.

All Saints Day was when the night before people prayed for the dead whose souls were in purgatory, and Candlemas was a festival to honor the Virgin Mary where everybody went to church, bringing a candle as a gift.

So hopefully you got all of those correct.

Let's look at our second learning cycle for today.

Just looking at sports.

So poor people in Tudor England would've spent their social time in many ways that are very familiar to us today.

For instance, they'd have been gossiping.

They'd have been playing indoor games.

They'd have been playing outdoor sports.

Indoor games would've included things like card and board games and some of which we may actually recognize today.

So, for instance, the Tudors played backgammon.

That might be a game that you are familiar with.

They also played a version of poker as well.

It's not the same as poker today, because the rules have evolved over the last few hundred years, but it was recognizable as a form of poker.

And there were other games as well that would've been played.

Popular outdoor sports mainly consisted of archery, and we got an image of that on the screen there.

And you can see that's a model of somebody pulling a longbow as well.

And the reason why it was called a longbow, is because it was a very long bow, and other bows at this time were much shorter by comparison.

Now by law in England, men had to practice archery.

They had to practice using the longbow every Sunday after church.

It was seen as preparation for war.

And the reason being is that to make an effective long-bowman took years and years of training.

The longbows were incredibly hard to use, because of the incredible strength you would need to draw it back.

They were really, really effective weapons, but it took a long time to get an effective longbow archer.

If you ever see skeletons of long-bowman, you'll actually find that one side, generally speaking their right side, the shoulders are significantly larger.

The bones were almost deformed in comparison to their left side because of the immense strength that it took to draw on a longbow.

So they would need years and years of training, and building up those muscles in the right side of their body.

And as a result of that, their whole skeleton was changed as a result of that.

So you can see why it becomes law, it's because it's not something you can just pick up and go with.

Off you go to war and you're an effective long-bowman.

It took years and years to train somebody who had the strength necessary to effectively use a longbow.

So that's one of the outdoor sports, very popular.

Football was also another very popular sport that people used to play.

However, Henry VIII actually banned it for being too violent, and not only that, it also prevented people from practicing archery as well.

So you might recognize on the screen in front of you, this is not a version of football that we would play today.

The sport that was called football was significantly more violent than what is played today.

It was frequently played not on a pitch, but between two villages.

And the whole idea is that you would try and get a ball from one village to another, and games could last anywhere from hours to days sometimes.

And it was violent.

People frequently did end up with bruises, with blood, with broken bones.

So Henry VIII has kind of got a point.

That again, just like in many things, the rules of football have evolved over the years.

It's a far more gentle sport now in comparison to what it was.

Right, quick check for understanding now then.

So, "Which sport was banned "by Henry VIII for being too violent?

" Was it archery, football, or rugby?

Okay, if you chose "football," then very well done.

That is indeed correct.

Now one group of recreational activities which grew in popularity as the Tudor period progressed were blood sports, and blood sportsmanship, also known as cruel sports for good reason, were spectacles where animals fought each other.

It was generally to the death, not every time, but generally to the death.

Blood sports were not new.

They had existed in Medieval England, but they became significantly more popular during the Tudor period because both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I really, really enjoyed watching them, and that therefore encouraged others to do the same.

Frequently fashion kind of has a trickle down effect.

So whatever it is that the King or Queen is doing at the time, that's what the nobles then want to do.

What the nobles are doing is what the gentry then want to do.

What the gentry's doing is what the regular common folk will want to do as well.

So because Henry VIII and Elizabeth I really enjoyed blood sports, eventually that trickled down to the rest of the population, and they enjoyed watching it as well.

Now cockfighting, wherein two or more cockerels would fight each other, was a popular form of entertainment in almost every town and village through England.

And the reason being is that chickens were bred all over the country.

It's was very easy to find chickens.

Cockerels do naturally have spurs, kind of sharpened claws on their feet, and that's what they'll probably use to fight with.

So it was the spurs that they would use to attack, and cockerel are naturally violent, or some cockerel are naturally violent.

So it's a case of just breeding the more and more violent cockerels until you get some very, very aggressive chickens.

So that's one form of blood sport.

Bear-baiting is another form of blood sport, which was very popular, and that involved letting several dogs, usually dogs, attack a chained up bear, and that was a very popular attraction in London.

Henry VIII had a bear pit installed in his palace at Whitehall, and Elizabeth overruled Parliament when they wished to ban the sport.

So just to give you an idea just of how popular these sports were.

There were plenty of other blood sports as well, bull-baiting, another very popular one.

Badger-baiting, another very popular one as well.

Dogs were frequently used as ratters as well.

So you could just throw a bag of rats into a pit.

You let a dog in, and you'd bet on how many rats that dog could kill in a certain amount of time.

So there were a variety of different blood sports.

We're just using cockfighting and bear-baiting as examples of such.

Now blood sports were enjoyed by both rich and poor alike, and although many people found the spectacles themselves entertaining, they enjoyed watching the fighting.

For many people actually the main draw was the ability to gamble on the outcome.

So that's why a lot of people went to view these blood sports, not to actually watch animals kill and be killed.

It was to gamble on the outcome that was the real draw.

So in bear-baiting for instance, people would gamble on how many dogs the bear could kill.

The bear obviously is significantly stronger than dogs, and dogs died trying to attack these bears, or on how long the bear could last before the fight ended.

Now bear-baiting is a really good example of a time when animals didn't always fight to the death.

And the reason being is that bears were no longer native to Britain.

They'd have been wiped out.

They had to be imported, and that's expensive, so they were usually kept alive to fight another day.

And some of these bears became effectively celebrities in of their own right as well.

Shakespeare actually references one of the more popular bears at the time in one of his plays as well.

So gives you an example there of just how common and how popular this sport was.

Now some people did object to blood sports, not everybody enjoyed them, but not because of concerns over animal rights.

That wasn't the objection to these sort of forms of entertainment.

So Puritans who were extreme Protestants, they were concerned that blood sports attracted criminals and drunken behavior, and which they associated with poor people.

So effectively, the Puritan problem with blood sports is that poor people like them, and poor people are drunk and they are criminals and that's kind of the attitude they had towards people at this point in time.

So that's the main objection with the blood sports, not the animal rights, the fact that poor people like it, and poor people are all drunken criminals according to Protestants.

Now let's do a quick check for understanding.

"So choose two concerns "that Puritans had with blood sports.

" Was it the fact that it was animal rights abuses?

Was it the fact that it attracted criminals?

Was it drunken behavior, or was it forbidden by the Bible?

So choose two now.

All right, if you chose B and C, then congratulations.

That is indeed correct.

Let's go for our second task for today then.

So what I'd like to do is I've got a series of sentences on the screen in front of you.

Obviously, they're incomplete.

All I would like you to do is to complete those sentences.

So you're looking at filling in the gap, and then providing an explanation for each sentence as well.

So pause the video now once you do that task, and I'll see you once you've finished.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got on okay with that task.

Let's see what you could have written for this task then.

So you could have said that one sport that was promoted was archery, because it was considered preparation for war.

One sport that was banned was football, because it was too violent.

One blood sport found all over England was cockfighting, because chickens were bred all over the country, and one blood sport found mainly in London was bear-baiting, because bears had to be imported into the country and that was expensive.

Bear-baiting did take place elsewhere in the country as well.

We do have evidence for instance, that it took place in the northwest, but it was most frequently found in London.

Right, let's go for our third and final learning cycle today, which is the theater.

So another popular form of entertainment for Londoners in the Tudor period was going to the theater, and this is specific to London at this point in time.

Plays telling stories from the Bible were fairly common during the early Tudor period, and this would happen all over the country.

So there were a group of traveling actors who had traveled from one village to another or one town to another, and set up a stage wherever they could find the space.

However, actors were seen as vagrants or vagabonds, and they were subject to anti-vagrancy laws, which forced them to stop traveling from place to place.

And, therefore to overcome this, the first permanent location for a group of actors was built in 1576, and it was called The Theater.

That was the name of the first building designed to house groups of actors, and it became the model for many more just like it.

Now Elizabeth I was extremely fond of watching plays.

She didn't go to theaters to watch plays, groups of actors came to her.

But because she enjoyed watching them, it therefore encouraged the Elizabethan elites to take an interest in them as well, and high-ranking Elizabethans would sponsor groups of actors known as players and playwrights, which allowed them to set up their own theater companies.

Now what I mean by sponsoring them is that they would give them money in order to effectively do this job full-time.

So they wouldn't have to go out and do another job.

They could just be an actor, or they could just be a playwright.

They could afford to build their own theater or to buy or to rent their own theater, and the sponsor would provide the money for that.

Now these theaters became extremely popular during the Elizabethan period for several reasons.

Part of the reason was that ticket prices started at just one penny, which meant that the poor could afford to regularly attend.

So we've now got a very cheap, a very diverse form of entertainment which every single person in London could enjoy, regardless of how much money you have.

New plays were continually being written as well, which meant there's a great deal of variety in what people could see.

So it was also an opportunity to interact with people from different social classes, as both rich and poor alike would attend the same theaters, and they would watch the same plays.

They wouldn't necessarily do it in the same way though.

So poor people if they're paying a penny to watch the theater, they would have to stand in the pits in order to do so.

And the pits was open to the elements.

So if it's raining, you're getting rained on, and obviously if a play can last several hours, then you are standing for several hours whilst it's happening as well.

Richer people would spend more money, and they would get seats and it would be covered as well.

And generally speaking, the more money you spend, the higher up in the theater you get to sit.

You also get to spend extra money if you want more comforts.

So if you wanted a cushion that would cost some money, and if you really wanted to see and be seen, then you might choose one of the more expensive seats where you are behind the stage.

So effectively everybody can watch the players and you at the same time.

So rich and poor are interacting in the sense that poor people can now observe the rich far more frequently than they ever did before.

Rich people are coming into contact with poor people with greater frequency than they ever did before.

And although they're not necessarily interacting on a one-to-one basis inside the theater, they all need to get to the theaters, and the theaters were all in the same sort of location.

So outside of the theaters there's a lot more personal interaction between rich and poor people.

And for a lot of rich people it was quite exciting to kind of be seen as slumming it, generally on the south bank of the Thames where it's quite dangerous, there's a high crime rate, but there was a lot going on and very exciting to be there.

So this interaction between rich and poor was effectively enabled because of the theater or the rise in theater at this point in time.

Now, fairly unsurprisingly, Puritans objected to this form of entertainment as well.

They objected to it for the same reasons that they objected to blood sports as well.

Namely, that it attracts poor people and poor people are drunken criminals, so they're not at all fond of this form of entertainment either.

However, for many people in Elizabethan England, these popular forms of entertainment were a core part of their social lives.

Right, let's have a quick check for understanding now.

"So what was the name of the first theater "to be built in 1576?

" Was it The Globe?

Was it the Swan, or was it The Theater?

Okay, if you chose, C The Theater, then very well done, and let's have another check for understanding now.

So it's a discussion question.

So why do you think the theater was so popular amongst the poor in Tudor England?

And I've got a hint on the screen there for you as well to help you out.

So you want to think about why people might enjoy the theater today?

Because for many people a lot of the reasons are very, very similar.

They haven't really changed over the last few hundred years.

So pause the video whilst you discuss this, and I'll speak to you again once you've finished.

Okay, welcome back.

So some of the things you might have said is that it's affordable.

Tickets started at just one penny.

There were a variety.

So there were lots and lots of new plays continually being written and performed.

It was an opportunity to interact with other social classes as well.

You would get to see people you wouldn't ordinarily see in your day-to-day life.

And Queen Elizabeth I liked it as well, so if you want to be like the Queen, then you go and watch the theater, and of course it's entertaining as well.

Okay, let's go for another task now then.

"So in what ways did entertainment "for the poor change during the Tudor period "and in what ways did it remain the same?

" So I've got a table on the screen in front of you here, which I've partially filled in, and what I'd like you to do is to complete that table.

So I've added one point for each column for you.

So one change in entertainment was that actors no longer traveled around.

One way that entertainment stayed the same was that men practiced archery, but you can see there's at least two spaces for each of those columns.

If you can get at least two, that'd be great.

If you can get more than that, that'd be even better.

But pause the video now whilst you're doing that, and I'll see you once you're finished.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you've got on okay with that task.

Let's see what you could've written then.

So in regards to changes in entertainment, you could have said that permanent theaters were built, and there were less holy days due to Protestantism.

In regards to entertainment staying the same, you could've said that indoor games were still popular, and holy days were still important and they were still regular as well.

There's other things you could have written as well, but hopefully you've got at least two for each column.

So let's go for our final task of the day then.

"So to what extent did entertainment "for the poor change during the Tudor period?

" So use the table you've just completed to help answer that question.

So pause the video whilst you do this, and I'll speak to you again once you've finished.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully, you got on fine with that task.

So here's something that you could have said then.

"So entertainment for the poor changed slightly "during the Tudor period.

"In London there were significant changes, "such as the building of permanent theaters, "like' 'The Theater' and bear-baiting arenas.

"Around the rest of the country, "there were some changes, "such as fewer holy days "because of the introduction of Protestantism, "but these changes were not as great as "what people experienced in London.

"Although blood sports and plays increased "in popularity during the Tudor period, "they'd always been fairly popular.

"So this is not a significant change overall.

" If you've got a different answer to myself, if you think it was perhaps more or less of a change, that's absolutely fine as long as you've justified, as long as you've explained why you think that.

That's the key thing for this question here.

Right, let's summarize the lesson now then.

So the social life of the poor was affected by a number of factors, such as the seasons and the church calendar.

Some forms of entertainment did not change, such as playing indoor games and outdoor sports with friends.

In London in particular, the Tudor monarchs increased the popularity of certain forms of entertainment, such as blood sports and the theater.

And although plays were not new, theaters were new permanent venues for actors to perform in during the Elizabethan period.

Thank you very much for joining me today.

Hopefully you've enjoyed yourself.

Hopefully you've learned something, and hopefully I'll see you again next time, bye-bye.