Calvinism and the Reformation: when and what?
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What did life on an estate in 1650 England consist of?
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The Reformation was a religious movement of the 1500s marked by the rejection or modification of some Roman Catholic doctrine and the
practice and establishment of Protestantism. An outgrowth of the Reformation was Calvinism.
Source: World Book Encyclopedia
Read more about it: Catholic Encyclopedia
Calvinism is the theological system of John Calvin and his followers. It was largely formulated in Calvin's Institutes (1536) and is marked by
a strong emphasis on the sovereignty of God, the depravity of
mankind, and the doctrine of predestination. An outgrowth of the Reformation, Calvinism was dominant in Scotland and played a lesser role in England. Puritanism, a radical
form of Protestanism, took hold in England.
Source: Encyclopaedia
Britannica
Read more about it: Five Points of Calvinism
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Some insight into life on an estate is revealed in the text of a
husbandry manual. It advises landed gentry to
rise at 3 a.m., spend an hour "serving God", six hours about household
affairs, ten hours studying justice, husbandry, and history, and after a
final hour "serving God", retire to bed at 9 p.m.
Source: God Speed the Plough: The
Representation of Agrarian England, 1500-1660, p. 139
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What is a tenant farmer?
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Is the estate self sufficient? How many people live there?
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A tenant farmer is one who works land owned by another and pays rent either in
cash or in shares of produce.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
Is there any sort of ownership involved with the estate by tenant farmers?
In general, people "held" land as opposed to "owned" land. Theoretically, all land belonged to the monarch.
Landholders inherited the right to occupy and use a certain portion of land under certain terms.
Members of the upper ranks of society were expected to pay for their land with military service.
Freeholders held their land in perpetuity; their holdings were passed from generation to generation.
Leaseholders had land tenancy for fixed periods, from one year to an entire lifetime.
Copyholders, also called customary tenants at will, could have their tenancy terminated at any time.
Source: Daily Life in Elizabethan England, pp. 10-13.
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It's difficult to generalize because there were many variations among the estates. Large estates tended to be more self-sufficient (i.e. profitable) than smaller ones.
They generated income from a variety of sources including farming,
selling timber, exploiting mineral resources on their estates, and collecting rent from
the tenants.
Source: Social Change & Continuity: England 1550-1750,
p. 46.
Estates varied in size from 50 to 20,000 acres and so did the number of people living there.
Additional laborers were often hired on a seasonal or temporary basis.
Source: English Society 1500-1680, pp. 25, 34
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What was the relationship between mortals and the devil?
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What is the history of Beelzebub?
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Belief in the presence of the Devil was perhaps as widespread as a belief in God.
Ralph Josselin recorded in his diary the encounters of his parishioners with the Devil
in either human or animal form. This belief in the power of the Devil was most
pronounced in the case of witchcraft. A witch was not an isolated individual, but
part of a wider group which drew their power from, and were allied with, the Devil. Together they
could inflict damage on families and livestock of their neighbors.
Source: Oxford Illustrated
History of Tudor & Stuart Britain, pp. 193-194.
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In the Old Testament of the Bible, Beelzebub is the name given to the
god of the Philistine city of Ekron (II Kings 1:1-18). The name is commonly translated "the lord of the flies."
In the New Testament, the god who drove away the flies, became the prince of
demons in whose name devils were exorcised from the bodies of the possessed.
Source:
Britannica Online
Read more about it: Catholic Encyclopedia
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Did everyone brew beer in 1650?
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What are the theories on hysteria?
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Women brewed most of the beer consumed in medieval England. After 1350, men gradually took over the brewing. By 1600, most brewers were male.
Source: Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England by Judith M. Bennett
In the seventeenth century, brewing beer was becoming a commercially organized industry.
Source: Oxford Illustrated
History of Tudor & Stuart England, p. 104.
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Hysteria was originally thought to be due to a disturbance of the
uterus and its functions (the term hysteria being derived from the Greek term for "womb").
Jean Martin Charcot, a French neurologist, disabused the notion that it was confined to women and showed that acute
attacks could be traced to traumatic experiences.
Sigmund Freud built on Charcot's theory and explained hysteria as a neurosis caused by repression, conflicted sexuality and fantasy.
Jacques Lacan theorized that hysteria is a linguistic and cultural phenomenon and a metaphor for woman and femininity.
Today the diagnostic label of hysteria is much less often applied to individuals. This reflects the changing orientation of practicioners with greater understanding of the complexities of character
and diminished interest in diagnostic labels based on symptomatic manifestations.
Sources:
Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 7, p. 586; International Encyclopedia of Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychoanalysis & Neurology, vol. 5, pp. 465-468.
Read more about it: For more information, do a subject search in SIMON on
hysteria
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What was the childbearing age?
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What was life expectancy in the mid 17th century?
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Since the female age of marriage was commonly between twenty-three and twenty-seven, and menopause
began at about forty, the period during which the average wife could give birth was fairly limited. Moreover, many
marriages did not last through the full female reproductive span, owing to the premature death of one spouse or the other.
Source: The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, p. 63.
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Life expectancy at birth was only about 48 years, although anyone who made it through
the first 30 years was likely to live for another 30. Life expectancy varied from place
to place--it was particularly low in cities where crowded conditions and poor sanitation
increased the dangers of disease.
Source: Daily Life in Elizabethan England, p. 51.
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What were marriages like?
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How big were families?
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Marriages were made for practical considerations
and were usually arranged by parents, rather than by individuals for love.
Source: Social Change and Continuity: England 1550-1750, p. 23
The marriage contract was not an equal one. Husbands had
virtually complete control over their wives and their property.
Source: Oxford Companion to British History, p. 622.
Read more about it! A few recommended books are - Marriage &
Love in England 1300-1840 [HQ615 .M33]
- For better, for worse : British marriages, 1600 to the present [HQ613 .G55]
- Road to divorce : England 1530-1987 [HQ876 .S73]
- The family, sex and marriage in England, 1500-1800 [HQ615 .S76]
How were marriages changing?
With the advent of Puritanism, marriages began to change. Puritans stressed the importance
of individualism, and as a by product of that, a growing respect for
individuality, which eventually led to the decline of arranged marriages and the growth of love and affection as a major bond between
husbands and wives.
Source: Social Change and Continuity: England 1550-1750, p. 23.
After 1640, or perhaps 1660, there arose a new family form, the "closed
domesticated nuclear family". This heralded an easier relationship between husbands and wives. People
felt themselves more able to demand the right to privacy, the right of self-expression, and the right
to free exercise of their will. There was a greater interest in introspection and in the recognition
of the individual personality.
Source: Early Modern England: A Social History 1550-1760, p. 58
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The average number of children born into a family was between three and four, of whom two or three survived to adulthood. But this
statistic covers a wide variation in family size. Upper-class families had more children, sometimes as many as sixteen.
Source: Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor & Stuart Britain, p. 91. |
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What are noxious gasses?
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Origins of the humours?
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Noxious gasses are harmful humours that cause an imbalance in the body. One of the symptoms of this condition is hysteria.
Sources: Oxford English Dictionary;
International Encyclopedia of
Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychoanalysis & Neurology
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The doctrine of the humours originated in Greece at the end of the
sixth century B.C. and became a definitive medical system in
the second century A.D. The key principle was that all body fluids were composed
of varying portions of blood (warm & moist), phlegm (cold & moist),
yellow bile (warm & dry), and black bile (cold & dry). When these humours
were in balance, the body was in health; excess or deficiency of one or more
caused illness.
Source: Medicine: An Illustrated History |
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Are there pictures of Succubus?
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How did the process of bleeding (to improve health) work?
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Below is one artist's rendition of Succubus, a female demon who has
sexual intercourse with sleeping men. Succubus is often depicted with horns and wings.
Source: Vampire Gallery: Succubus
Another picture of Succubus may be found in volume 5 of Man, Myth & Magic, p. 1433. |
Since blood contained all the humours, the practice of
bloodletting was thought to provide a method for directly
manipulating or correcting the conditions which could be traced to
any humour. It was believed to be effective against plethora, overeating,
too little exercise, dissipation, and just plain living.
Source: Encyclopedia of Medical History |
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What makes a baby "turn blue and it's limbs twist and die"?
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What were the beliefs on abortion at this time?
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A baby becomes blue
when the blood passes directly
from the right chamber of the heart to the left without being oxygenated in the
lungs. This congenital heart condition is known as blue baby syndrome.
Source: Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine |
Christian doctrine firmly opposed abortion, and the religious prohibitions
became legal rules which were enforced throughout the Christian world. The emphasis
fell on the rights of the unborn child, whose gift of life was believed to come
from God.
Source: Encyclopedia of Medical History |
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Was there a different value placed on life? Did they believe criminals could be rehabilitated?
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Was it common for men and women to get the same pay?
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Despite the harshness of the penal code, many fewer people were indicted than
were accused. Charges were often downgraded, and the legal device known as "benefit of
the clergy" allowed felons who could read a verse from the Bible to escape with a branding.
Execution was generally reserved for those persons who were identified as malicious or unreformable
repeat offenders.
Source: Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor & Stuart Britain, p. 149. |
Pay was not equal between men and women. Men earned an average of one shilling for
a day's labor, women less.
Source: Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor & Stuart
Britain, p. 102.
For sowing flax, a Gloucestershire agriculturalist calculated a
wage bill of 8d. (16 halfpence) a day for men and 6d. (12 halfpence) for women.
Source: Seventeenth Century England: Society in an Age of Revolution, p. 100.
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Did people have what they considered to be a personal relationship with God?
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What were some of the "social upheavals, class changes, rising professionalism, great hardship among the poor" Churchill refers to?
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Men and women interpreted events in the lives of themselves, their
society, and the world as personal messages from God. For example, the plagues
or poor harvests that were frequent throughout this period were to be seen as
an intervention of a jealous God, quick to punish the sins of his people.
Source: Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor & Stuart
Britain, pp. 192-93.
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Poverty was prevalent during this period. A greater proportion of the population than in the
previous 150 years lived on or very near the basic subsistence level.
Underemployment was common, labor was cheap and real
wages fell. [pp. 69-70]
Harvests failed frequently, and the years 1647-50 were particularly bad. [pp. 10-11]
Between 1550 and 1750, there was a remarkable growth in the number of people in English society whose wealth did not
come directly from land--manufacturers, merchants, financiers, and those whom we
now call "professional" people. [p. 62]
There were important developments in people's ideas, attitudes and beliefs. Three of these changes stand out:
an expansion in educational opportunities and growth of literacy; the triumph of Protestantism as the official
ideology of the English Church and people; and the spread of modern scientific
principles and rational empirical methodology. [p. 84]
Source: Social Change & Continuity: England 1550-1750
Read more about it! The Century of Revolution 1603-1714 by Christopher Hill
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