French wine was consumed less because of heavy taxation and spirits and beer were consumed more. The streets were alive with taverns, coffee houses, eating houses, and hackney coaches past 9 p.m. at night. Coffee houses were suppressed by royal proclamation in 1675 because "malicious and scandalous reports" defaming his majesty's government were spread there, which disturbed the peace and quiet of the realm. But this provoked such an uproar that it was reduced to a responsibility of the owner to prevent scandalous papers and libels from being read and hindering any declarations any false and scandalous reports against the government or its ministers.
London air was filthy with smoke from coal burning. In 1684 the streets were lit with improved lights which combined oil lamps with lenses and reflectors. Groups of householders combined to hire lighting contractors to fulfill their statutory responsibility to hang candles or lights in some part of their houses near the street to light it for passengers until 9:00 p.m., and later to midnight. In 1694 a monopoly was sold to one lighting company. In 1663 a body of paid watchmen was established in London. An office of magistrate was created and filled with tradesmen and craftsmen, who could make a living from the fines and fees. This was to supplement the unpaid Justices of the Peace. The public was encouraged to assist in crime prevention, such as being witnesses, but most policing was left to the parishes. Crowds punished those who transgressed community moral standards, threatened their economic or social interests, or offended their religious or patriotic beliefs. Often a crowd would react before the call of "stop thief" or the hue and cry from the local constable. Pickpockets would be drenched under a pump. Cheats would be beaten up. Dishonest shops and brothels would be ransacked or destroyed. The most common targets were promiscuous women and pregnant servants.
There were many highway robberies and mob actions in London. Mobs in the thousands would turn out against the Catholics, especially at times of unemployment and trade depression. Working people still saw demonstrations and violence as the best way to achieve their economic goals, since strikes didn't work. For example, the silk workers used street violence to get protective legislation against imports and mechanization in 1675. The manufacture of silk material had been brought to England by French workers driven from France. In 1697, three thousand London silk weavers demonstrated outside the Commons and East India House against the importation of raw silks by the East India Co., and a couple months later, they attacked a house in the city owned by a gentleman of the company. In 1701, heavy duties were imposed on the import of Indian silks and wearing of Indian silks was prohibited by statute. Sometimes mobs would break open the prisons to release fellow rioters or take action against strike breakers or informers. Parish constables elected by their neighbors could not control the mobs and stayed within their parishes. Dueling was still prevalent, even though against the law.
In London and Westminster, it was hard to enforce the requirement that inhabitants keep the street in front of their house clean and store the filth until the daily raker or scavenger came with cart and dung pot. So a commission was made responsible for paving and keeping clean the streets, making and repairing vaults, sewers, drains, and gutters, and removing encroachments. It compensated those with encroachments of over 30 years. It assessed inhabitants of such streets 16d. per square yard from the front of their building to the center of the street. Women continued to empty their pails and pans outside their doors and did their washing on stools in the streets. There was a penalty of 5d. for throwing filth in front of one's house, and 20d. for throwing it elsewhere in the streets. Scavengers and rakers could lodge their coal ashes, dust, dirt, and other filth in such vacant public places as the commission deemed convenient for accommodating country carts returning otherwise empty after their loads were sold.
However, this system did not work because people would not pay their assessments. So there was a return to the former system of requiring citizens to sweep and clean the streets in front of their buildings twice a week and keep the filth until a scavenger or raker came. The penalty for not doing so was 3s.4d., later raised to 10s. Any one throwing coal ashes, dust, dirt, rubbish, or dung onto the streets or lanes incurred a fine of 5s. There was a fine of 20s. for hooping or washing any pipes or barrels in any lane or open passage or repairing coaches, sawing wood, or chiseling stones in the streets. Pigs kept in or about one's house had to be forfeited.
One way that people traveled was to be carried in sedan chairs held up by two horizontal poles with one man at the front ends and another man in back. There were so many sedan chairs and coaches for hire in London that the watermen lost business. All hackney coaches in London or Westminster were required to be licensed and marked with their owner's distinctive mark so that complaints could be made. Their maximum rate was 10s. for a 12 hour day, and 18d. for the first hour and 12d. for every hour thereafter. Licensed coachmen were not allowed to practice any other trade. The coaches paid the commission 5 pounds yearly. Hay sold along the road brought 6d. per load, and straw 2d. per load, to the commission. There had to by paid 3d. for every cart load of hay sold at the hay market and 1d. for every cart of straw, to go towards paving and repairing the hay market street. Overall, agriculture improved. Fields that would have been left fallow were planted with new crops which restored indispensable chemical elements to the soil. At the same time, they supplied winter food for stock. The size and weight of animals for slaughter grew. There was so much stock breeding that it was more economical for a family to buy meat, milk, and eggs, than to maintain its own animals. There was an explosion in the growing of beans, peas, lettuce, asparagus, artichokes, and clover. The demand for food in London and other urban areas made enclosure for crop cultivation even more profitable than for sheep grazing. The government made no more attempts to curtail the enclosure of farm lands. The number of enclosures grew because copyholders were not successful in obtaining the legal security of tenure. But most land was not enclosed.
In 1661 in Essex, the wages for mowing one acre of grass were 1s.10d.; for reaping, shearing, binding one acre of wheat 4s.; and for threshing a quarter of wheat or rye 1s.
Wives participated with their husbands in general agricultural chores and did the dairy work including making cheese. Every householder kept chickens because egg production was cheap, their market price being only 1s. for a hundred. Wives also took care of the gardening work and traditionally kept for their own the cash that came in from garden, dairy, and poultry products. A wife made jellies and preserves when the fruit trees, bushes, and vines were bearing. Imported sugar enabled fruit to be preserved as jam in jars sealed with a layer of mutton fat to make them airtight. She was likely to concoct medications from her herbs. Meat had to be smoked or salted when there was not enough fodder to keep animals alive through the winter. She saw to it that the soap was boiled and the candles molded. She cooked the daily meals, did the washing, produced cloth for the family's use, and sewed the family's clothing.
Women had less work and lower pay than men. Since most cottages had a spinning wheel, spinning work was readily available to wives. In the 1670s, a female weaver or spinner was paid 2-4d. per day. A domestic servant, who was usually female, was paid 40-80s. a year. Men in the trades objected to competition from lower-paid women. Aristocratic ladies actively managed their family's household and estates. The only work available to a high middle- class woman who was waiting to get married was to be a governess in another household or a lady-in-waiting to a gentlewoman. Children often worked; this was recommended so that they were under the direct supervision of their parents rather than getting into mischief in the village. The mother typically mingled severity with gentleness, but the father did not dare to err on the side of leniency. Discipline was by whipping. Children were treated as little adults. The lack of a conception of childhood innocence even extended to the practice of adults to tell bawdy jokes in their presence or play with their children's genitals.
About 1660, the Royal Society of London for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge was founded by Charles II, who became its patron. It was formed from discussion groups of the new experimental philosophy. It included the Baconians formerly at Oxford and Cambridge, who were ejected at the Restoration, and a group of Gresham professors of geometry and astronomy. The Royal Society met at Gresham College. Its goal was to compare ideas in mathematics and science and identify specific aims of science. It published scientific reports to make its findings generally known. This was a great improvement over the private correspondence among scientists, which was limited by the use of various languages. Charles himself had his own laboratory and dabbled in chemistry and anatomy. Similar societies were formed in many places in the world. Theologicians warned that scientific research was dangerous. But it's advances improved agriculture, manufactures, medicine, surgery, navigation, naval architecture, gunnery, and engineering.