Richard Brathwaite's "The English Gentleman" portrays the somber Puritan who accepts the gospel of work. He is a staid and serious businessman. "Matrimonial Honour" by Daniel Rogers opined that for success, a marriage must be godly, with the parties equally religious, worshipping together in private and in public. A hasty or worldly marriage would bring repentance. The spouses should agree, but keep to their spheres. Children should not be spoiled.
Large households were more or less self-supporting and were managed by their ladies. Work included ordering wool, hemp, and flax; making cloth and dying it; dairy work; brewing; malting; baking; preserving wines; extracting oils; distilling perfume; and putting on banquets. Couches were coming into use in parlors.
The king and his court entourage settled for most of the year in Whitehall instead of traveling around the country. The king let the public into Hyde Park, the kings private hunting park, for recreation. The City of London and Westminster were still separate, but a mass of hovels was springing up in between them. In certain areas there were houses crowded with those wanted for minor offenses, small thefts, and debt. Bailiffs did not dare venture into these areas because the inhabitants hid and defended each other unless the offense was a major one. The penalty for stealing even small sums was still death. The water carrier was still active and the night transport of sewage necessary.
Inigo Jones was the first architect of consequence. He had studied in Italy and designed and built the Banqueting House at Whitehall, near Westminster, in London in 1622. It had classical proportions and nice shaping and dressing in stone. He was now an arbiter of taste for the King Charles and his Queen and built many structures for them, including the Queen's Chapel at St. James Palace and her bedroom in the Queen's Hose in Greenwich. All over London and the country he and his pupils built many classical buildings, including houses, churches, stables, lodgings, out-buildings, staircases, galleries, watergates, and archways. They stood in stark contrast to the Tudor buildings around them. In the 1632, Jones started town planning in London with Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market and terraced houses around a central piazza surrounded by open arcades with a Tuscan church at one end. In 1634, a man from the suburb of Hackney introduced a line of coaches rented at 1s. per hour. They soon became very popular.
The Flemish Johann Baptista van Helmont demonstrated that metals dissolved in acid can be recovered through chemical means and enunciated the doctrine that each thing in nature has its own specific organization.
A large part of England was rebuilt as yeomen expanded their houses and others lower in rank replaced mud and wood hovels with brick and stone cottages. A separate kitchen appeared. The ground floors are boarded over to create bedrooms. Permanent stairs replace ladders. Glass appears in windows. Glass and crockery replace wood and pewter, Chairs replace benches. Knives and forks become common.
About 1640 began travel between towns by covered wagons called stage coaches. They carried passengers and goods and stopped at inns for stabling and repairs.
Work was begun in 1630 to make canals that would make marsh waters run to the sea. Barges on canals were the most efficient mode of transportation. A barge could carry 50 tons on a canal and only 30 tons on a river. A single horse could haul an 8-ton wagon on iron rails or on a soft road, but only 1/8 of a ton on his back.
A new trend of spring-sown crops led to better crop balance and reduced the risks of scarcity in a bad year. But the economy was still volatile.
There were riots in London in 1640-1 from a complete breakdown in political consensus, the factions being the Royalist City elite versus the middling and lesser merchants and craftsmen.