Elizabethan England Topic Summaries

Reasons for increased poverty and vagabondage

GCSE > History > Edexcel > GCSE History: Elizabethan England (1558-1603) > Elizabethan life and culture > Reasons for increased poverty and vagabondage
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Key terms
  • Rapid population growth (2.8 million to 4 million) increased pressure on land, food, and employment opportunities.
  • Bad harvests from 1594–1598 led to food shortages.
  • Demand on housing led to rent racking (landlords charging an extortionate amount from tenants). 
  • Flu in 1556 killed over 200,000 people, many of them farmers, which affected food supply.
  • Many landowners enclosed their common land and started sheep farming, displacing peasants and forcing them into towns or vagrancy (i.e. homeless and begging).
  • There was a decline in monastic charity after Henry VIII had ordered the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–1540), closing hundreds of Catholic churches that previously provided support to the poor.

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