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Halsall’s Of The Food And Diet Of The English describes in the sixteenth century, the banquets that were eaten by the nobles were so big. Generally they
employed so many servants, even for the oddest job tasks, for example the servants were asked to get fresh bread and replace it with the old bread that had gotten stale
during the meal. Only the royal and the wealthy family in those days could afford to have such a feast. Their food also consisted principally of beef, and such meat
as the butcher sold like mutton, veal, lamb, pork etc. In daily they also brought the bread made of wheat to the table, whereof the first and most excellent is the
manchet, which commonly called white bread. The beer that was used at noblemens tables in their fixed and standing
houses commonly a year old, or peradventure of two years tuning or more; but this was not general. It was also brewed in March, and therefore called March
beer. Their drink, whose force and continuance was partly touched already, was made of barley, water, and hops, sodden and mingled together, by the industry of
our brewers in a certain exact proportion. In some places of England there was a kind of drink made of apples which they called cider or pomage, and there was a
kind of drink that made of pears which they called perry. Both were grounded and pressed mechanically Of The Food And Diet Of The English.
d. The Life
The Monarch and the Lords, in this study called as the nobles, lived in luxury. They used to devote their live for their own pleasure.
They needed as much money as they could lay their hands on, for they were addicted to conspicuous consumption. They built huge houses for
themselves, spent vast sums of money on entertaining, extravagant clothes, jewellery, plate and numerous law suits Lockyer 142.
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They were used to fine foods and magnificent clothing. They were used to being served on by hundreds of servants. They were used to being guarded and to
giving commands that others obeyed quickly. They were used to sleeping in soft, comfortable beds. In the 16
th
century, there were some people who owned large lands who rent them to other people, called landlords. Mostly the landlords were
the nobles. They had traditionally let the poor took care of their lands, by breeding some animals or growing some crops.
The nobles were a small group, drawn, in the eighty years between Elizabeth accession and the civil war, from just over one hundred and fifty
families. They were great landowners but, like the Crown, they had an example to set, and only those who were desperate for money resorted to
rack-renting and eviction Lockyer 142.
In the Tudor times, landlords realized that the land could be more beneficial when they managed it well, while they could get the poor handled it.
They had the authority employed or fired the people who they wanted. Sometimes they drove away the poor to leave their land. With nothing to do in the
countryside, many poor drifted to towns and cities to look for work. Also landlords were moving away from growing crops like corn and turning to sheep
farming as a growing population required more clothes and good money could be made from breeding sheep. As there were more people than jobs available in the
countryside, this caused more problems for the towns and cities as people went
from the country to the towns looking for work Poor in Elizabethan England.
3. The Common People
