Funerals ceremonies started with socializing at the house with refreshments, then going in a procession to the church for burial, and finally returning to the house for more socializing.
It was possible for a woman-covert to be seized of land in fee simple or in tail general or special to her separate use, free from control or intermeddling of her husband.
Houses were warmed in winter by burning coal. Moderate homes had tent-beds in use, with which cloth was hung on all four sides of the bed from a light iron framework above the bed. The beds were warmed with a warming pan heated in a fire before use. There were often bed bugs and fleas. Everyone wore nightcaps to bed. Pewter tableware was used, but the poor used tinware instead. Copper, brass, and iron pots and pans were increasingly common.
Most towns had a regular market once or twice a week. In them, street cleaning was still a responsibility of individual householders. Water was still obtained from wells and pumps. There was no municipal government as such. Public works were done by special commissions set up for particular purposes, such as lighting, cleaning and paving the streets, night watchmen, traffic regulation, removing nuisances, and improving local amenities. Large towns had hospitals for the poor. In the larger manufacturing towns, there were literary and philosophical societies for debates and discussions. These put together libraries for use of their members. Also in these large towns, there were booksellers' shops, printing houses, weekly newspapers, playhouses, concerts, and horseracing courses, the latter of which was mostly patronized by gentlemen. Some private citizens of various towns followed the example of London and obtained from Parliament the right to levy a house rate for paving and lighting.
Towns tended to be known for certain specialties, such as seaside holiday resorts, spas like Bath, cathedral towns, fashionable shopping for gentry, and towns with certain industries like glass and china manufacture, pinmaking, pottery, tanning, manufacture of linen, silk, cotton, and the knitting trade. Certain towns were famous for certain varieties of wool cloth. Before 1750, a town with more than 5,000 inhabitants was considered a large town. Shopkeeping was supplanting fairs and markets. Certain industries were done on a large scale and required workers to be at the same site, e.g. brewing and distilling; building ships; printing fustians; making paper, soap from animal fat or candles; coal mining, iron production, mining and smelting of tin and copper, refining of salt, and digging of clay. Certain other industries also required some kind of power or team work for their production, e.g. refining sugar; finishing cloth; making bricks; glassmaking; manufacture of ropes and sails, and processing of copper and brass into rods and sheets. Often the manufacturer's house was surrounded by the many cottages of his workers. There the wife and children usually were busy carding and spinning. Putting out work and subcontracting were widespread and created many small-scale capitalists. Workers' hours were typically 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Though grammar schools were endowed for the education of local poor boys, they sought fee-paying sons of gentlemen. They taught arithmetic as well as reading and writing. Translation and reading of Latin was still important, e.g. Aesop's Fables, Virgil, Cicero's Letters, Caesar's Commentaries, Horace, Pliny, Juvenal, Ovid, Livy, and Plautus. The "Eton Grammar" book replaced the "Royal Grammar" as the standard for Latin and English grammar. The boys lived in boarding houses superintended by "dames" or older boys. There were usually two boys to a bed. There was bullying and initiation ceremonies such as tossing small boys up from a held blanket or having younger boys run naked in the snow. There were occasional rebellions by the boys and fights with the townspeople. Flogging with a birch or caning with a rod until blood was drawn from the bare buttocks was the usual punishment. There were some national boys' boarding schools such as Eton, Winchester, and Westminster. In these schools, boys could mix with sons of rich and powerful people, thus establishing important connections for their adult life. But there was more bullying of small boys by large boys at these schools and the smaller boys became menial servants of their seniors. Occasionally there were student riots. However, most grammar schools were not residential. Because the grammar schools were limited to boys, many boarding schools for girls were established. Tradesmen's daughters were often sent to these to learn to act like ladies. Most upper class girls were taught, at home or at school, English, writing, arithmetic, drawing, courtly dancing, needlework, music, and French. Dissenting academies were established for those who did not pass the religious tests of the grammar schools. Pencils were now in use.
Sons of gentlemen usually took "The Grand Tour" of the continent before going to university. These tours lasted for months or years, and always included Paris and a Protestant French university. The students went in groups with tutors. The chief purpose was now cultural, instead of practical. On these tours there was often misbehavior such as drinking and fighting. In 1720, Travelers Checks were developed for those on the Grand Tour.
The universities began to teach science. The new professorships at Cambridge University were: chemistry, astronomy, experimental philosophy, anatomy, botany, geology, geometry, and Arabic. Ideas in geology challenged the Bible's description of the creation of the world and there was a controversy over the origin and nature of fossils. In 1715, a large pointed weapon of black flint was found in contact with the bones of an elephant in a gravel bed in London. Oral and written examinations began to replace disputations. Few professors lectured.
Dissenters were excluded from universities as well as from offices and grammar schools. Oxford and Cambridge Universities were open only to members of the Church of England, so other universities were established for dissenters. They taught geography, mathematics, science, physics, astronomy, mechanics, hydrostatics, and anatomy. At Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard Universities, students in science were relegated to different instructors, buildings, and degree ceremonies than students in literature, who often looked down on them as socially and intellectually inferior.
The Inns of Court had ceased to provide residence. The period of education at law school at the Inns of Court was now reduced in 1760 from seven to five years for ordinary students and to three years for graduates of Oxford or Cambridge Universities. The textbooks were: "Doctor and Student" by Christopher Saint-German in 1518 and "Institutes of the Laws of England" by Thomas Wood in 1720. Most landed families tried to ensure that at least one member of the family in each generation was educated at the Inns of Court after going to Oxford or Cambridge. In 1739, attorneys formed a "Society of Gentlemen Practitioners in the Courts of Law and Equity". In order to earn a living, most attorneys had to attach themselves to some great patron and serve his interests. So it was hard for an ordinary person to find an impartial attorney or to find any attorney willing to contest a powerful family.