Poverty in Elizabethan England

While the wealthy enjoyed a "Golden Age", poverty was rising sharply across Elizabethan England. By the end of the century, a large part of the population lived close to hunger, and the number of poor people wandering the country worried the government.

This lesson explains three things the exam expects:

• Why poverty increased.
• How Elizabethans thought about and reacted to the poor.
• What the government eventually did, ending with the 1601 Poor Law.

Poverty matters because it is the counterweight to the "Golden Age". The two topics are often assessed together — the glittering wealth of the few sat alongside growing hardship for the many.

Roughly a third of the population may have lived in or near poverty by the late 1500s. The exact figure is uncertain, but contemporaries clearly saw poverty as a growing crisis.

Several long-term causes combined to drive up poverty in the sixteenth century.

Cause	How it increased poverty
Population growth	England's population rose from roughly 2.8 million in the 1540s to around 4 million by 1600, so more people competed for food and work
Inflation	Rising demand pushed up prices; wages did not keep pace, so real incomes fell
Enclosure	Landowners fenced off open fields for sheep farming, which needed fewer workers and drove labourers off the land
Rack-renting	Landlords raised rents sharply, forcing struggling tenants out
Dissolution of the monasteries	The earlier closure of the monasteries (under Henry VIII) removed a major source of charity and care for the poor
Bad harvests	Poor harvests, such as those of the 1590s, caused sudden food shortages and higher prices

These causes fed on each other: more people plus higher prices plus fewer farm jobs meant more people had no work and no support.

Elizabethans did not see all poor people the same way. They drew a sharp line between two groups.

Type of poor	Who they were	How they were viewed
Deserving (impotent) poor	The old, sick, disabled, orphans — unable to work	Worthy of help and charity
Undeserving (idle) poor	Fit, able-bodied people who did not work — "sturdy beggars"	Feared and blamed; seen as choosing idleness

This distinction shaped everything the government did. Help went to the deserving poor; punishment went to the "undeserving" and to vagabonds.

Attitudes were often harsh. Many believed poverty was the fault of the individual, and Puritans in particular linked hard work to virtue and idleness to sin. Writers fed public fear of tricksters and fake beggars — for example, Thomas Harman's A Caveat for Common Cursitors (1567) described the supposed tricks of professional vagabonds.

The "deserving vs undeserving" divide is central to this topic. Nearly every Elizabethan law on poverty treated these two groups completely differently.

The government's greatest worry was the vagabond or vagrant — a person with no home or work who wandered the country. Vagabonds were feared as a threat to law and order: they were blamed for crime, begging and the risk of rebellion if their numbers grew.

Because of this fear, the "undeserving" poor and vagabonds were treated as criminals rather than victims:

• Early laws ordered whipping for able-bodied beggars, who were then sent back to their home parish.
• Repeat offenders faced increasingly severe punishments.
• The aim was to deter wandering and force the able-bodied to find work.

The government was concerned not only out of pity for the genuinely poor, but because it feared that large numbers of desperate, wandering people could threaten stability and order in the countryside and towns.

Reform came gradually, and local towns often led the way before the national government acted.

Some towns organised their own systems of relief:

• Norwich carried out a survey of its poor in the 1570s, gave help to the deserving poor and set the able-bodied to work.
• Ipswich and London developed their own schemes, including hospitals and controls on begging.

Parliament then built on these local experiments with a series of laws:

Year	Act	What it did
1572	Vagabonds Act	Introduced a compulsory poor rate (local tax); harsh punishment for vagabonds
1576	Act for the Relief of the Poor	Set up houses of correction where the able-bodied poor were given work

These laws show a shift in thinking: from charity alone to a system of compulsory taxation and organised relief run by local officials.

The individual measures were pulled together in the 1601 Poor Law (the "Elizabethan Poor Law"), the most important single reform of the reign on poverty.

Its key features:

• Poor relief became a national, compulsory system, run by each parish.
• A poor rate (local tax) paid for it, collected from wealthier residents.
• Justices of the Peace (JPs) oversaw the system in each area.
• The deserving poor received relief — money, food or shelter.
• The able-bodied poor were given work; those who refused could be punished.

The 1601 Poor Law was significant because it:

• Made helping the poor a legal duty of the community, not just voluntary charity.
• Created a framework that lasted, in its basic form, for over 200 years (until the Poor Law reforms of the 1830s).

The 1601 Poor Law is the key date for this topic. It marks the point at which poor relief became a national, taxed and legally required system organised through the parishes.

1. Listing causes without explaining them

Do not simply write "population, enclosure, inflation". Explain how each one increased poverty — for example, enclosure removed farm jobs, so labourers lost their livelihoods.

2. Ignoring the deserving/undeserving divide

This distinction is central. Answers that treat "the poor" as one group miss the point that the deserving poor were helped while the "undeserving" were punished.

3. Crediting the 1601 Poor Law with everything

The 1601 Poor Law built on earlier local action (Norwich, Ipswich) and the Acts of 1572 and 1576. Show that reform developed gradually rather than appearing suddenly in 1601.

4. Getting the date of the Poor Law wrong

The Elizabethan Poor Law was passed in 1601. It is the single most important date in this topic — do not confuse it with the earlier Acts of the 1570s.

5. Forgetting the link to the 'Golden Age'

Poverty is the counterweight to the "Golden Age". A strong answer notes that rising hardship for the many sat alongside growing wealth for the few.