Summary of Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 Different societies see landscapes differently. For example, an Elizabethan traveler would describe his homeland in terms of cities, towns, ports, great houses, bridges and roads. A contemporary description will mention overcrowding and the problems of population expansion.

#2 The Elizabethan landscape is different from the landscape that you see today. It is vast and open, with small houses and fields, and it was not until the late 1590s that people started to use the term landscape to describe a view.

#3 Stratford-upon-Avon is located in the heart of England, about ninety-four miles north-west of London. The town was planned in the twelfth century, and most of the buildings are medieval. The most prestigious house in the town is New Place, built by Sir Hugh Clopton.

#4 The town of Stratford was planned in the Middle Ages, and has wide streets that allow plenty of light to enter the front parlours and workshops of the market traders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669379133

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Insights on Ian Mortimer's The Time Travelers Guide to Elizabethan England

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Different societies see landscapes differently. For example, an Elizabethan traveler would describe his homeland in terms of cities, towns, ports, great houses, bridges and roads. A contemporary description will mention overcrowding and the problems of population expansion.

#2

The Elizabethan landscape is different from the landscape that you see today. It is vast and open, with small houses and fields, and it was not until the late 1590s that people started to use the term landscape to describe a view.

#3

Stratford-upon-Avon is located in the heart of England, about ninety-four miles north-west of London. The town was planned in the twelfth century, and most of the buildings are medieval. The most prestigious house in the town is New Place, built by Sir Hugh Clopton.

#4

The town of Stratford was planned in the Middle Ages, and has wide streets that allow plenty of light to enter the front parlours and workshops of the market traders.

#5

The town of Stratford, which was incorporated in 1553, has not changed much since then. The most significant changes are not physically apparent, but rather what is changing. The town is growing upwards rather than outwards.

#6

The town of Stratford was rebuilt in 1598, after two catastrophic fires in 1594 and 1595. The church, guild buildings, and school remained the same, but more than half the town was rebuilt.

#7

The changes being wrought in Stratford are not only aesthetic, but also economic. The well-off are living ostentatiously in handsome, glazed houses, while the poor have nowhere else to go.

#8

The table of populous towns shows that Stratford-upon-Avon is representative of the majority of towns in England and Wales. It also reveals a process of urbanisation, as more people live in the many small market towns than they did in previous centuries.

#9

The town of Stratford is just one example of how towns are not just for the benefit of the people who live in them. They are also crossroads where country life and urban professions, services, and administrations mix.

#10

The streets of a Shakespearean town are not paved, so in the springtime, they are covered in mud. In the summer, the mud dries and turns into cakes of earth. In the fall, the streets become less crowded as people head out into the countryside to gather in the harvest.

#11

England is not all tilled farmland. In fact, less than one-third is tilled at all. About 11,500,000 acres of England and Wales are under the plough, while almost as much – about ten million acres – consists of untilled heaths, moors, mountains, and marshland.

#12

The area of woodland is shrinking. The price of timber effectively doubles over the course of the reign. The government tries to take action, passing Acts of Parliament in 1558, 1581 and 1585 to prevent wood being used for unnecessary purposes, but demand still massively outstrips supply.

#13

The second-greatest cause of unrest during the Tudor period was the gradual loss of land to the working man and his family. This was a profound worry to the families who were evicted, as well as to the authorities in those towns where the homeless husbandmen went begging.

#14

The perimeter of the countryside is also changing. People are now building closer to the sea, and fishing villages have sprung up all around the coast.

#15

The village is much more than just a series of houses. There are the communal structures of the church and church house, as well as barns, byres, corn lofts, henhouses, stables, cart houses, and mills.

#16

London is a city of contrasts. You will be