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, which is "Elizabeth I's later years.

" This is part of our wider unit on why has Elizabeth been represented so differently?

So, let's get going.

By the end of today's lesson, we're going to be able to explain why the last years of Elizabeth's reign were more difficult.

And in order to do that, we're going to need to be using some key terms.

Our first key term is Golden Age.

And a Golden Age is a time of peace, prosperity and plenty.

By prosperity, we mean that people were very successful, generally speaking prosperity means successful with money and by plenty it just means that there's lots to go around, lots of food and resources to go around.

Our second key term is gentry.

And gentry are people of good social position, specifically the group below the nobility in position and birth.

Our third key term is factionalism.

And factionalism is the splitting of a group into factions or smaller groups, which are slightly different ideas.

And our final key term for the day is monopolies.

A monopolies is the term given to the exclusive control of the supply of products or services.

So that means that one man or one group of people are able to control a specific product.

So this lesson will be split into three learning cycles.

And our first learning cycle is the Elizabethan Golden Age.

So at the start of her reign, the 25 year old Elizabeth faced many challenges which she overcame with a great deal of energy and intelligence.

By the end of her reign however, Elizabeth was approaching 70 years old and was in poor health.

She reigned successfully for 45 years with the help of her friends and advisors, but all of these died before her.

Was Elizabeth able to maintain the same energy and enthusiasm towards the end of her reign?

And can Elizabeth's reign be seen as a success by all of us subjects anyway?

Before we go any further, I just want to be able to make sure we understand this key term because this is effectively is the benchmark for the rest of this lesson.

What is meant by the term golden age?

This is what we're going to be judging this lesson on.

So is a golden age a time of lots of gold and silver being discovered?

Is a golden age a time of more old people than young people?

Or is a golden age a time of peace, prosperity and happiness.

Make your choice now.

All right, if you chose C then congratulations, you are correct.

A golden age is a time of peace, prosperity and happiness.

And that's what I want to be thinking about constantly today.

Was Elizabeth's reign considered a golden age?

Is that a fair assessment or is it not?

So Elizabeth's reign has been described by historians, by some historians certainly, as a golden age, and there would also certainly have been people alive at the time who would have wholeheartedly agreed with the description.

And the man on the screen in front of you, William Cecil, also known as Lord Burghley, is a fantastic example of someone who embodied the spirit of the Elizabethan golden age.

And by that, what I mean is that Burghley was a member of the gentry, he was part of the social class below the nobility, and the gentry in general rose in importance during Elizabeth's reign.

This group had money but what they wanted was power.

During Elizabeth's reign literacy rates improved dramatically, in part due to the desire of the gentry to give their children a good education, and large numbers of grammar schools were built and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were expanded with the building of more colleges.

These were the only universities around at this point in time and the way to make them bigger was just to add on additional buildings and additional colleges to them.

By the end of the Elizabethan period it is estimated that roughly 30% of men and 10% of women were able to read and write, although the figure for men may have been as high as 80% in London.

As a leading member of the gentry, Burghley became Elizabeth's chief advisor throughout her reign.

This brought him enormous amounts of power and wealth, and Burghley used some of this to build Burghley House, which is on the screen in front of us.

And this is a huge, as you can see, it's a huge country mansion.

The building or remodeling of large houses became fashionable during this time period and a lot of emphasis was placed on luxurious design and lots of glass.

There had been huge, there had been large advances in glass making during this time period and the Elizabethan nobility and gentry were really trying to take advantage of that.

These prodigy houses as they are known were built by the gentry to show off their wealth and to attract a visit from the Queen who regularly toured parts of the country and stayed in the best houses.

Other members of the gentry used their wealth to sponsor groups of actors to write and perform plays.

Elizabeth enjoyed watching these performances, so the theater became a fashionable place to see and be seen in London.

Playwrights such as William Shakespeare, who's on the screen in front of you now, were very popular, and with performances costing as little as one penny, going to the theater was something that people of all social classes could enjoy.

It should probably be pointed out that Elizabeth herself never attended the theater, she was above that.

Instead, the actors and playwrights would come to her, but people knew that Elizabeth enjoyed these and they wanted to experience what she experienced.

So these plays would also be put on in the theaters and people would go and see them there.

Right, a quick check for knowledge then.

So which two of the following were changes that resulted from the gentry becoming more important?

Was it A, better food for poorer people.

B, the building of prodigy houses.

C, more money for monasteries.

Or D, more plays and theaters.

Choose two now.

All right, if you chose B and D, then very well done, those are correct.

So let's think about our first task for today then.

So which of the following do you think is the strongest evidence to support the claim that the Elizabethan period was a golden age?

Was it the works of Shakespeare?

Was it the increase in literacy levels?

Was it the building of prodigy houses?

Or was it the creation of grammar schools?

So in your opinion, which of those four is the strongest evidence to support the claim that the Elizabethan period was a golden age.

So choose one of them and it's explain why you've chosen that one and why it also means that the Elizabethan period can be considered a golden age.

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

Okay welcome back, hopefully you got on fine with that task.

So your answer could look something like what I've got on the screen in front of you now, which is this.

I think the best piece of evidence to support the claim that the Elizabethan period was a golden age is the works of Shakespeare because everyone knows who Shakespeare is and he wrote lots of poems and plays that are still used today.

Also the theaters where he performed his plays were used by rich people and poor people so everyone could enjoy his plays at the time.

If you've chosen something else it's absolutely fine, there's no right or wrong answer, I'm just interested in your ability to explain your points of view.

So our next learning cycle is, was it really a golden age?

So for the gentry and those living in London, Elizabethan England was most certainly a golden age.

However, for many of the lower social classes outside of the capital, the Elizabethan period could only be described as disastrous.

The population of England rose by roughly 50% in 50 years during Elizabeth's reign.

From roughly 3 million people in 1550, so roughly 4.

5 million people in 1600.

And this by itself is not a bad thing.

Population increases is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination.

However, this population increase was coupled with year after year of bad harvest.

So there was more people and less food.

And that's a massive problem.

The 1590s in particular saw terrible crop yields.

So there was just less food being produced in the 1590s in particular.

Unfortunately, this situation was made even worse by a change in how the land was being used to this point in time, from crop growing to sheep farming.

So traditionally in England, there was lots of crop growing and during the Elizabethan period, more and more landowners switched to sheep farming instead.

Generally speaking, it's because they can make more money from selling the wool and then later on from selling the meat as well.

Less people are needed to tend sheep compared to growing crops.

So many people living in the countryside became unemployed and shortly afterwards, they also became homeless as well.

So a growing population, coupled with less food, rising unemployment, all of this creates a poverty crisis.

And what we mean by that is that there were significant numbers of people who could not afford basic necessities like enough food, enough water, enough housing to keep them safe.

Many people resorted to begging, which was a practice that was brutally and unfairly punished.

Elizabeth tried to help her favorite members of court who were struggling financially by giving them monopolies, and that allowed certain people to make massive sums of money.

But it negatively affected the rest of society by making the cost of certain items much more expensive than they needed to be.

In the past, the monasteries had helped to feed people who were struggling.

So there was always that safety net in the monasteries if there was poverty in previous reigns.

But since they'd been destroyed by Henry VIII during his reformation, this was no longer an option for Elizabeth.

Elizabeth's government was also unable to deal with the scale of the poverty crisis because years of warfare against Spain and in Ireland had almost bankrupted the country.

Money which could have been used to import food was instead spent on exporting war.

And although some efforts were made in the later part of Elizabeth's reign to deal with the crisis affecting the poorest subjects, the harsh reality is that millions of people suffered.

Okay, let's do a quick check for understanding now then.

So I'd like you to give me two reasons why there was a poverty crisis in England during the Elizabethan period.

So your choices are A, people spent too much money on going to the theater.

B, bad harvest meant there wasn't enough food.

C, monopolies made everything too expensive.

And D, the government spent lots of money on wars.

Make two choices now.

Okay, if you chose B and D, then congratulations!

That is correct.

Right, our second big task now then.

So I wanna think, did everyone experience the Elizabethan period in the same way?

If we're gonna think about, was the Elizabethan period a golden age, was it, or can it be considered a golden age by everybody in society?

So we're gonna divide society now quite simply into rich people and poor people.

We could divide it in other ways, but for simplicity's sake, we're gonna keep it as this for now.

What I would like you to do is think about some different features of the Elizabethan period, and I've chosen four there for you.

I want you to think about how those features affected rich people and how they affected poor people.

Did they affect them in the same way or did they affect them in different ways?

And I've given you some examples just to kind of get you started on here.

So one of the features of the Elizabethan period was theaters, and for poor people, they enjoyed going to the theaters in London.

So theaters were positive for poor people.

Another one of the features is unemployment, And for rich people, they gain money from other means.

So unemployment wasn't necessarily a significant problem for rich people at this point in time.

I remember for some rich people as well, for some of Elizabeth's favorites, they could always rely on a monopoly as well, but that most certainly wasn't something that all rich people could rely upon.

In any case, what I'd like you to do now is to fill in the rest of this table, pause the video whilst you're doing so, and I'll see you once you're finished.

Good luck.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's go through this table now and let's see some of the things which you could have written.

So, theaters, how do they affect rich people?

Well, rich people enjoy going to the theaters in London as well.

So, they have the same experience as theaters, as poor people who also lived in London.

High food prices, well, rich people, they can still afford to eat.

So, it might have been frustrating for them, they're spending more money on food, but they didn't go hungry.

For poor people predominantly they struggled and they starved.

It was a tough time for them.

In terms of housing for rich people during this time period, they showed their wealth by building the best houses.

For poor people many of them became unhoused or homeless.

In regards to unemployment, we've already looked at rich people.

For poor people many of them were reduced to begging.

So here hopefully you can see that there is a real difference between the experiences of certain groups in society during this particular time period.

Let's move on now then to our next learning cycle, which is rebellions and factionalism.

So William Cecil, the man we saw on our screen at the start of the lesson, he died in 1598, which is about five years before Elizabeth herself died.

He went the same way as many of Elizabeth's favorite gentry who had been with her throughout her reign.

Such as Robert Dudley, who died in 1588, and Sir Francis Walsingham, who died in 1590.

Elizabeth outlived all of her original group of advisors.

Although others took their place, they were generally not as good.

They brought with them new problems.

An example we've got is Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex who we've got on the screen in front of you right now.

Devereux was incredibly ambitious.

He flattered the Queen by flirting with her constantly, but he had a hostile relationship with another of Elizabeth's chief advisors, and that happened to be William Cecil's son, Robert.

So, Robert Cecil.

Both of these men had their supporters, which caused factionalism in Elizabeth's court.

This reduced the quality of the advice that Elizabeth was given, because rather than suggesting something for the good of the country, a voice was now being given to Elizabeth which was designed to make the other group in court look bad.

The factionalism caused a major problem in the 1590s during the outbreak of Tyrone's Rebellion.

So Tyrone's Rebellion, which is also known as the Nine Years War, was a major rebellion in Ireland.

Elizabeth was supposedly the Queen of Ireland, but the reality is the English controlled the area around Dublin, which is called the Pale, and that's indicated on the map on the screen in front of you there, and not a huge amount else.

The rest of Ireland was controlled by regional lords and they sometimes agreed to follow English commands and sometimes they didn't.

One of these lords was Hugh O'Neill who's the Lord of Tyrone and Tyrone is also indicated there on the map for you and Hugh O'Neill convinced many Irish lords to band together to drive the English out of Ireland and he was incredibly successful.

He defeated a number of English forces, arguably that's because the English just didn't respect his force enough so the forces that they sent to confront him weren't strong enough, but there's a very strong argument made that actually Tyrone's forces were just a strong force in their own right and worthy of the victories that they succeeded in gaining.

In 1599, Devereux was ordered to lead a strong English force against the Irish.

And even though from an English perspective, it was absolutely necessary to end the rebellion, Devereux didn't actually want to go, he didn't want to do this, because in doing so it would mean he would have to leave Elizabeth's side, and that would make Cecil's faction stronger because Cecil's faction then would be the only ones who would be able to speak to the Queen, they'd be able to say things which potentially would make Devereux's faction look bad.

Devereux's expedition in Ireland also did not go well, partly because he was denied supplies that he'd been promised.

So potentially, if he'd been given the food, the ammunition, the weapons, the men that he'd been promised, things might have gone differently, but he never got those things or he didn't get as much of it as was promised.

So his expedition did not go particularly well.

He also made decisions which greatly angered Elizabeth.

He agreed to a truce, to effectively a brief pause in the fighting with Tyrone, which was explicitly against Elizabeth's orders.

So it made her really, really angry.

The fact that he's taken on these ideas, that he is the power to make these decisions and overrule Elizabeth's ideas.

It didn't go well for him.

Elizabeth was furious with Devereux and she ordered him to stay in Ireland and effectively kind of fix his mess.

But rather than do that, Devereux defied her orders.

He left Ireland, so he left his command to return to England and try to speak to Elizabeth himself.

And he was in such a hurry to do so that the day that he arrived in London was fairly early morning and he went to the palace where Elizabeth was staying, he burst into her chambers before she was fully dressed, which was absolutely scandalous behavior.

And this was a crime which saw Devereux placed under house arrest and he was also deprived of his monopoly.

And Devereux's monopoly was sweet wines, so wines that you would drink as part of your desserts.

This made Devereux a huge amount of money and now suddenly, it's all gone.

Facing the loss of his political power due to his arrest, and the loss of his wealth due to losing the sweet wine monopoly, Devereux launched a half-hearted rebellion in 1601.

It failed and he was beheaded.

The last of Elizabeth's favorites had gone, and with him many claims, Elizabeth's interest in ruling.

Tyrone's rebellion was successfully put down on 30 March 1603, but Elizabeth did not live to see it.

She had died six days earlier.

Now let's go through a quick check for understanding here.

So true or false?

Essex was rewarded for helping to end the Nine Years War.

Is that true or false?

All right, if you chose false then congratulations, you are correct.

But let's justify this answer now.

Why was it false?

Is it false because Essex was actually punished for acting against Elizabeth's orders?

Or was it false because Essex was executed after being captured by Irish rebels?

So choose your justification now.

Okay, if you chose A, then congratulations, that is correct.

Okay, let's move on then to our final task for today, which is this question that has been in the back of our minds for the whole of this lesson.

I want us to think, is it accurate to describe the Elizabethan period as a golden age.

So I want to write a balanced answer.

I want to give evidence to suggest that this statement is correct, followed by evidence to suggest that, nope, this statement is incorrect.

And then I want to explain what your overall opinion is.

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

Okay, welcome back.

Let's have a little look at some model answers.

And I've done two model answers for you.

One to agree with the statement and one to disagree with the statement.

Hopefully yours looks something similar to one of these.

Let's go through it now and see what I've done.

So in many ways, the Elizabethan period could be described as a golden age.

For instance, it was during the Elizabethan period that theater became common, with playwrights like Shakespeare writing lots of plays.

However, in other ways, this was not a golden age.

as thousands of poor people starved and Ireland rose up in a large scale rebellion called Tyrone's Rebellion.

Overall, I think the Elizabethan period was mostly a golden age, as the growth in theater and the building of prodigy houses showed how artistic we had become.

So that's one possible answer that could be given, let's look at a different model answer now.

In many ways, the Elizabethan period could be described as a golden age.

For instance, it was during the Elizabethan period that prodigy houses were built, which people still visit today.

However, in other ways, this was not a golden age, as factionalism and growing unemployment meant that the government was divided and not helping poor people.

Overall, I think that the Elizabethan period was not a golden age, as it is not fair to say that it was a time of peace, prosperity and plenty, if large numbers of people were struggling to survive.

So what I want you to notice here is that my examples I've given, I've explained how that example supports the point that I'm making.

I've also given examples to support my own opinion in that final sentence for both of those model answers as well.

Hopefully, you've got something similar in your answer.

Right, let's summarize this lesson now then.

So the growth in importance of the gentry caused a great deal of change in English society.

There was a growth in literacy rates and expansion in the arts during the Elizabethan Golden Age.

Elizabeth faced a lot of factionalism in her courts at a time of bad harvests and growing unemployment.

Tyrone rebelled against Elizabeth in Ireland in 1593, and Elizabeth faced a rebellion from the Earl of Essex in 1601.

Thank you very much for joining me today.

I hope you've learnt a lot, I hope you enjoyed yourself too, and I'll see you for the next time.

Bye bye.