Benefit from my learning about Tudor England
Other fun facts I have learned:
In sixteenth-century England, the lower classes had a great deal more choice in who they married than the upper. They also married later (late twenties for men, early twenties for women), had fewer children, and had less sickly infants, since they breastfed them. The lecturer also pointed out that just as much partner swapping went on then as now. It's just that then, the average life expectancy was 35. So if you got married at 25, there was a pretty good chance than one spouse would be dead in ten years--and it's a lot easier to make it till death do us part for ten years than fifty. Also, widows were a hot commodity, since they were viewed as experienced and sexually rapacious.
At the time, all that was necessary to be married was for there to be a mutual promise of marriage, even if it was in private. So there was no such thing as an engagement. If you promise to marry someone, you're married. The church would like you to have a ceremony--it was considered irregular not to--but it wasn't necessary. And sexual relations could start as soon as the promise was given. You would think that would lead to lots of men promising to marry women to sleep with them and then running off, and that did happen, but not as much as you'd think. (My guess is it had to do with living your whole life in a small community.) Thank you parish rolls for all the census data!
Oh! And I found out why English public schools are what Americans call private schools--because they aren't run by a guild. There were no government schools at the time--you had to pay for any school--and most schools were run by guilds and only open to their members. So a public school was one open to anyone who could pay. A GREAT MYSTERY REVEALED.
Also also, the only area in Ireland that the English consistently controlled was right around Dublin. It was known as the Pale. (I think of it as like the Green Zone in Baghdad.) But that's why "beyond the pale" means what it does.
In sixteenth-century England, the lower classes had a great deal more choice in who they married than the upper. They also married later (late twenties for men, early twenties for women), had fewer children, and had less sickly infants, since they breastfed them. The lecturer also pointed out that just as much partner swapping went on then as now. It's just that then, the average life expectancy was 35. So if you got married at 25, there was a pretty good chance than one spouse would be dead in ten years--and it's a lot easier to make it till death do us part for ten years than fifty. Also, widows were a hot commodity, since they were viewed as experienced and sexually rapacious.
At the time, all that was necessary to be married was for there to be a mutual promise of marriage, even if it was in private. So there was no such thing as an engagement. If you promise to marry someone, you're married. The church would like you to have a ceremony--it was considered irregular not to--but it wasn't necessary. And sexual relations could start as soon as the promise was given. You would think that would lead to lots of men promising to marry women to sleep with them and then running off, and that did happen, but not as much as you'd think. (My guess is it had to do with living your whole life in a small community.) Thank you parish rolls for all the census data!
Oh! And I found out why English public schools are what Americans call private schools--because they aren't run by a guild. There were no government schools at the time--you had to pay for any school--and most schools were run by guilds and only open to their members. So a public school was one open to anyone who could pay. A GREAT MYSTERY REVEALED.
Also also, the only area in Ireland that the English consistently controlled was right around Dublin. It was known as the Pale. (I think of it as like the Green Zone in Baghdad.) But that's why "beyond the pale" means what it does.