Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.There is some respite at the end of the reign: the law against eating meat on Wednesdays is repealed in 1585. At the same time, there is a general slackening of fish-eating and an increase in the consumption of meat. By the 1590s most wealthy households have dropped the strict Lenten fast and replaced it with a reduced-meat diet. In 1593 the government bows to the inevitable and reduces the punitive £3 fine to £1. Now many households begin to eat meat in Lent and on Fridays and Saturdays, if the head of the household wishes to do so, even though it is still technically against the law.
Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.In such circumstances, storage of food is most important. The principal rule is to have separate places for different types of commodity: dry things can be kept in a pantry with bread and dry linen; wet things are normally stored in the buttery. Wine and meat must be kept apart, and cellars should be avoided on account of their dampness. Meat should be seethed in summer to keep it fresh, then kept in a cool cellar, soaked in vinegar with juniper seeds and salt. Most yeomen will have vats and presses for making cheeses—a valuable source of protein in the long winter season. Similarly, most livestock owners have troughs for salting meat or allowing it to steep in brine.
Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.Elizabethan people also consider their health when choosing what to eat. "I eat rye bread not for niggardliness but for a point of physic,” declares William Horman. This is unsurprising: we do much the same in the modern world. But our ideas about healthy food are very different from Elizabethan ones. For example, while we make use of sage in our cooking on account of its taste, Elizabethans use it because it is thought to sharpen the brain.
Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.The underlying reasons for such differences are not hard to find. In a society in which people still starve to death, an orchard is not a beautiful thing in itself: its beauty lies in the fact that it produces apples and cider. A wide flat field is "finer” than rugged terrain for it can be tilled easily to produce wheat and so represents good white bread. A small thatched cottage, which a modern viewer might consider pretty, will be considered unattractive by an Elizabethan traveler, for cottagers are generally poor and able to offer little in the way of hospitality. Ranges of hills and mountains are obstacles to Elizabethan travelers and very far from picturesque features you go out of your way to see. Hills might feature in an Elizabethan writer’s description of a county because of their potential for sheep grazing, but on the whole he will be more concerned with listing all the houses of the gentry, their seats and parks.
Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.But you still have producers holding back corn supplies, even though hoarding is forbidden by law. In Stratford in 1597 seventy-five townsmen are found guilty of hoarding corn, including William Shakespeare, who is hanging on to ten quarters of malt. Worse than this, "engrossers” buy up all the local supply of an important commodity, such as eggs or butter, in order to drive up the price. In the 1590s certain unscrupulous businessmen buy up to twenty thousand pounds of butter—and this is disastrous because it is an important part of people’s diet. Combined with hoarding, this has dramatic consequences for the poor. In some places the famine of 1594–97 proves as deadly as the plague of 1563.
Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.If you are hungry, you might feel inclined to turn to poaching. But be careful: this is risky. Taking livestock is theft, and theft is a felony which carries the death sentence. Killing wild animals that live on another man’s land is also against the law; even taking a single fish from a river can result in a fine of a shilling or more. It is unlikely that you will be hanged for taking a wild animal such as a rabbit; but, even so, you will get a fine amounting to three times the value of the animal as well as three months in prison, and you will have to enter into a bond to guarantee your good behavior in the future; a second offense will be treated more harshly. If a gamekeeper attacks you and you defend yourself, you can be charged with assault. You may find yourself on the gallows if you injure him.
Which ideas are stated explicitly in the excerpt? Select two options.
Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.Describing a landscape is thus a matter of perspective: your priorities affect what you see. Asked to describe their county, most Devonians will mention the great city of Exeter, the ports of Dartmouth, Plymouth, and Barnstaple, and the dozens of market towns. They will generally neglect to mention that the region is dominated by a great moor, Dartmoor, two thousand feet high in places and over two hundred square miles in expanse. There are no roads across this wasteland, only track ways. Elizabethans see it as good for nothing but pasture, tin mining, and the steady water supply it provides by way of the rivers that rise there.
Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.The purpose of fasting on Wednesdays is specifically to encourage the eating of fish, to support the fishing industry. People therefore respond differently. Some households uphold the old religious fasts during Advent and Lent, as if they are still observing the religious law; others ignore Advent but observe the Lenten fast. Still others ignore Wednesdays and just fast on Fridays and Saturdays.
Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.So much grain is produced in 1592 that Francis Bacon proudly declares that England can now afford to feed other nations as well as her own people. It is an unfortunate remark, for it is very soon followed by a great dearth. The harvest of 1594 is poor, that of 1595 is worse, and the following year worse still: wheat hits 170 percent of its normal price, oats reach a level of 191 percent, and rye has to be imported from Denmark. Other bad years—when the price of grain is 20 percent or more above the rolling average—are 1573, 1586, and 1600. The year 1590 is almost as bad, made worse by the high cost of livestock. Prices for animal products hit new heights and never really diminish.
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