What were the people like in Elizabethan times?

Answer 1

British Nobility and Landed Gentry

The British upper classes consist of two entities, the peerage and landed

gentry; any male member of either may regard himself as a gentleman, in a

special sense mutually understood between hereditary members of the class, which

will often exclude life peers. In the British peerage, only the senior family

member (typically the oldest son) inherits a substantive title (duke, marquess,

earl, viscount, baron); these are referred to as peers or lords. The rest of the

nobility is referred as landed gentry (abbreviation, gentry), and with the

exceptions of the baronet, which is a title akin to a hereditary knighthood;

those that are knighted (for life), being called Sir X Y; Scottish barons, who

bear the designation Baron of X after their name;[10] and Scottish lairds, whose

names include a description of their lands in the form of a territorial

designation,[11] they bear no titles apart from the qualifications of esquire or

gentleman (which are ranks recognized in law, although now without any legal

consequence).

The term landed gentry, although originally used to mean nobility, came to be

used of the lesser nobility in England around 1540. Once identical, eventually

these terms became complementary, in the sense that their definitions began to

fill in parts of what the other lacked. The term gentry by itself as commonly

used by historians, so Peter Coss argues, is a construct that historians have

applied loosely to rather different societies. Any particular model may not fit

a specific society, yet a single definition nevertheless remains

desirable.[12][13]

Titles, while often considered central to the upper class, are not strictly so.

Both Captain Mark Phillips and Vice Admiral Timothy Laurence, the respective

first and second husbands of HRH The Princess Anne, lacked any rank of peerage,

yet could scarcely be considered anything other than upper class. The same is

true of Francis Fulford, who was memorably featured in a Channel 4 documentary

and whose family has owned estates in Devon for over 800 years. In fact, the

Fulfords represent the group that makes up the largest component of the upper

class: the landed gentry.

Landed gentry is a traditional British social class consisting of gentlemen in

the original sense; that is, those who owned land in the form of country estates

to such an extent that they were not required to actively work, except in an

administrative capacity on their own lands. The estates were often (but not

always) made up of tenanted farms, in which case the gentleman could live

entirely off rent income.

Burke's Landed Gentry

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the names and families of those with titles

(specifically peers and baronets, less often including those with the

non-hereditary title of knight) were often listed in books or manuals known as

"Peerages", "Baronetages", or combinations of these categories, such as the

"Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage". As well as listing

genealogical information, these books often also included details of a given

family right to a coat of arms. Jane Austen, who was herself a member of the

gentry, shrewdly summarized the appeal of these works, which was particularly

strong for those included in them, in the opening words of her novel Persuasion

(1818):

"Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for

his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found

occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his

faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited

remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from

domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the

almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf

were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never

failed."

Esquire (abbreviated Esq.) is a term of British origin (ultimately from Latin

scutarius, in the sense of shield bearer, via Old French esquier), referring

only to males, and used to denote a high but indeterminate social status.

The most common occurrence of term Esquire today is the conferral as the suffix

Esq. in order to pay an informal compliment to a male recipient by way of

implying gentle birth. Today, there remain respected protocols, especially in

the US, for identifying those to whom it is thought most proper that the suffix

should be given in very formal or in official circumstances. The social rank of

Esquire is that above gentlemen. Nineteenth-century tables of precedences

further distinguished between esquires by birth and esquires by office (and

likewise for gentlemen).[citation needed].

According to one typical definition,[14] esquires in English law included:

The eldest sons of knights, and their eldest sons in perpetual succession

The eldest sons of younger sons of peers, and their eldest sons in perpetual

succession (children of peers already had higher precedence)

Esquires created by letters patent or other investiture, and their eldest

sons

Esquires by virtue of their offices, as Justices of the Peace and others who

bear any office of trust under the Crown

Esquires of knights constituted at their investiture

Foreign noblemen

Persons who are so styled under the Royal sign manual (officers of the Armed

Forces of or above the rank of Captain in the Army or its equivalent)

Barristers (but not Solicitors)

A slightly later source[15] defines the term as

Esquire - A rank next below that of Knight. Besides those Esquires who are

personal attendants of Knights of Orders of Knighthood, this title is held by

all attendants on the person of the Sovereign, and all persons holding the

Sovereign's commission being of military rank not below Captain; also, by

general concession, by Barristers at Law, Masters of Arts and Bachelors of Law

and Physic.

In the post-medieval world, the title of esquire came to belong to all men of

the higher landed gentry; an esquire ranked socially above a gentleman but below

a knight. In the modern world, where all men are assumed to be gentlemen, the

term has correspondingly often been extended (albeit only in very formal

writing) to all men without any higher title. It is used post-nominally, usually

in abbreviated form: "Thomas Smith, Esq.", for example.

The linguistic and social development of squire is paralleled by that of the

German junker, which originally meant "young lord" and denoted the poorer and

unimportant part of the aristocracy, but "went up in the world" in much the same

time as squire did in England.

Knight, from Old English cniht ("boy" or "servant"),[16] is a cognate of the

German word Knecht ("laborer" or "servant").[17] A knight can be either a

medieval tenant giving military service as a mounted man-at-arms to a feudal

landholder, or a medieval gentleman-soldier, usually high-born, raised by a

sovereign to privileged military status after training as a page and squire

(contemporary reference, see British honours system).

In the century or so following Charlemagne's death, his newly empowered warrior

class grew stronger still, and Charles the Bald declared their fiefs to be

hereditary. The period of chaos in the 9th and 10th centuries, between the fall

of the Carolingian central authority and the rise of separate Western and

Eastern Frankish kingdoms (later to become France and Germany respectively),

only entrenched this newly landed warrior class. This was because governing

power, and defense against Viking, Magyar and Saracen attack, became an

essentially local affair that revolved around these new hereditary local lords

and their demesnes. The resulting hereditary, landed class of mounted elite

warriors, the knights, were increasingly seen as the only true soldiers of

Europe, hence the exclusive use of miles (Latin, "soldier") for them.

All nobles of military age were generally considered as knights; knighthood

still had to be earned through some exploit involving the use of arms. The

general route for a son of a nobleman would be to first serve as page, then as

squire, before being knighted.

In formal protocol, Sir is the correct styling for a knight or a baronet (the UK

nobiliaty rank just below all peers of the realm), used with (one of) the

knight's given name(s) or full name, but not with the surname alone. The

equivalent for a woman is Dame, that is, for one who holds the title in her own

right; for such women, the title Dame is used as Sir for a man, that is, never

before the surname on its own. This usage was devised in 1917, derived from the

practice, up to the 17th century (and still also in legal proceedings), for the

wife of a knight. The wife of a knight or baronet now, however, is styled "Lady

[Surname]".

Until the 17th century, it was also a title of priests (the related word

monsignor, from French monseigneur, is still used for Catholic prelates). In

Icelandic, the cognate word séra is used exclusively to address a priest,

together with his first name: a priest named Jón Jónsson would be addressed as

séra Jón and referred to as presturinn séra Jón Jónsson ("the priest, séra Jón

Jónsson").

Answer 2

some were really nice to elizabeth but some were mean

Answer 3

nmmj,