Elizabeth came to dress elaborately and fancifully. Her dresses were fitted at the waist with a long and pointed bodice stiffened with wood, steel, or whalebone. Her skirt was held out with a petticoat with progressively larger hoops. There were two layers of skirt with the top one parted to show the bottom one. The materials used were silks, satins, velvets, and brocades. On her dress were quiltings, slashings, and embroidery. They were covered with gold ornaments, pearls, and gems from America. She wore decorated gloves. So ladies copied her and discarded their simple over-tunics for elaborate dresses. The under-tunic was now becoming a petticoat and the over-tunic a dress. Their under-tunics became petticoats. Often they also wore a fan with a mirror, a ball of scent, a miniature portrait of someone dear to them, and sometimes a watch. Single ladies did not wear hats, but had long, flowing hair and low cut dresses showing their bosoms. Married ladies curled their hair and wore it in high masses on their heads with jewels interwoven into it. Both gentlemen and ladies wore hats both indoors and outside and large, pleated collars around their necks (with the newly discovered starch), perfume, and high-heeled shoes. Gentlemen's' tight sleeves, stiffened and fitted doublet with short skirt, and short cloak were ornamented and their silk or velvet hats flamboyant, with feathers. At their leather belts they hung pouches and perhaps a watch. They wore both rapiers [swords with cutting edges] and daggers daily as there were many quarrels. There were various artistic beard cuts and various lengths of hair, which was often curled and worn in ringlets. They now wore breeches and stockings instead of long hosen. Both gentlemen and ladies wore silk stockings and socks over them and then boots. Coats dipped in boiled linseed oil with resin served as raincoats. They wore nightgowns to bed. Fashions changed every year. When Elizabeth became old, she had a wig made to match her youthful long red hair. Other ladies began wearing wigs.
Poor men wore skirted fustian tunics, loose breeches, and coarse stockings or canvas leggings. Agricultural laborers kept sword and bow in a corner of their fields in the first part of Elizabeth's reign.
Women spent much of their time doing needlework and embroidery. Since so many of the women who spent their days spinning were single, unmarried women became known as "spinsters".
Children wore the same apparel as their elders. They were given milk at meals for good growth. It was recognized that sickness could be influenced by diet and herbs. Sickness was still viewed as an imperfect balance of the four elements of blood (hot and moist like air), phlegm (cold and moist like water), choler or yellow bile (hot and dry like fire), and melancholy or black bile (cold and dry like earth) in a person.
There were many lifestyle possibilities in the nation: independently wealthy with 40s. yearly or goods worth 200s.; gentleman, that is one who owned land or was in a profession such as an attorney, physician, priest or who was a university graduate, government official, or a military officer; employment in agriculture, arts, sciences; employment in households and offices of noblemen and gentlemen; independent farmers with their own farm; fisherman or mariner on the sea or apprentice of such; employment by carriers of grain into cities, by market towns, for digging, seeking, finding, getting, melting, fining, working, trying, making of any silver, tin, lead, iron, copper, stone, coal; glassmaker.
Typical wages in the country were: fieldworkers 2-3d. a day, ploughmen 1s. a week with board, shepherd 6d. a week and board, his boy 2 1/2 d., hedgers 6d. a day, threshers 3-7d. depending on the grain, thatching for five days 2d., master mason or carpenter or joiner 4d. a day and food or 8d. without food, a smith 2d. a day with food, a bricklayer 2 1/2 d. a day with food, a shoemaker 2d. a day with food. These people lived primarily on food from his own ground.
There was typical work for each month of the year in the country: January - ditching and hedging after the frost broke, February - catch moles in the meadows, March - protect the sheep from prowling dogs, April - put up hop poles, sell bark to the tanner before the timber is felled, fell elm and ash for carts and ploughs, fell hazel for forks, fell sallow for rakes, fell horn for flails, May - weed and hire children to pick up stones from the fallow land, June - wash and shear the sheep, July - hay harvest, August - wheat harvest, September and October - gather the fruit, sell the wool from the summer shearing, stack logs for winter, buy salt fish for Lent in the town and lay it up to dry, November - have the chimneys swept before winter, thresh grain in the barn, December - grind tools, repair yokes, forks, and farm implements, cover strawberry and flower beds with straw to protect them from the cold, split kindling wood with beetle and wedge, tan their leather, make leather jugs, make baskets for catching fish, and carve wood spoons, plates, and bowls.
There was a wave of building and renovation activity in town and country. Housing is now, for the first time, purely for dwelling and not for defense. They were designed symmetrically with decorative features instead of a haphazard addition of rooms. Windows were large and put on the outer walls instead of just inside the courtyard. A scarcity of timber caused proportionally more stone to be used for dwelling houses and proportionately more brick to be used for royal palaces and mansions. The rest of the house was plaster painted white interspersed with vertical, horizontal, and sloping timber, usually oak, painted black. They had locks and bolts for protection from intruders. The floors were stone or wood, and sometimes tile. They were often covered with rushes or plaited rush mats. Some private rooms may have carpets on the floor. Walls were smoothly plastered or had carved wood paneling to control drafts. Painted cloths replaced tapestries on walls. Candles were hung from the ceiling and used on tables. Plastered ceilings and a lavish use of glass made rooms lighter and cozy. Broad and gracious stairways with carved wood banisters replaced the narrow winding stone steps of a stairwell. Most houses had several brick chimneys and clear, but uneven, glass in the windows. There were fireplaces in living rooms, dining rooms, kitchen, and bedrooms. Sometimes there was a library, study room, or breakfast room as well. Rooms were more spacious than before and contained furniture such as chests of drawers, enclosed cupboards, cabinets, buffets, tables, chairs and benches with backs and cushions, sometimes with arms, and occasionally wardrobes, either hanging or with shelves, for clothes. Carpeting covered tables, chests, and beds. Family portraits decorated some walls, usually in the dining room. Bedrooms all led out of each other. But curtains on the four poster beds with tops provided privacy. Beds had elaborately carved bedsteads, sheets, and a feather coverlid as well as a feather mattress. Often family members, servants, and friends shared the same bed for warmth or convenience. Each bedroom typically had a cabinet with a mirror, e.g. of burnished metal or crystal, and comb on top. One brushed his teeth with tooth soap and a linen cloth, as physicians advised. Each bedroom had a pitcher and water bowl, usually silver or pewter, for washing in the morning, and a bed-pan for nighttime use, and also fragrant flowers. Elizabeth had a room just for her bath. Smoking tobacco and snuff-taking became popular.
On the table was a fancy salt cellar and pepper. Some gentry used two-pronged forks for eating. Glass drinking vessels replaced even gold and silver goblets. Breakfast was substantial, with meat, and usually eaten in one's bedroom. There was great plenty and variety of meats to all but the poorer classes: beef, mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, rabbit, capon, red deer, fish and wild fowl as well as the traditional venison and brawn [boar]. From English orchards and gardens came apricots, almonds, gooseberries, raspberries, melons, currants, oranges, and lemons as well as the traditional apples, pears, plums, mulberries, quinces, pomegranates, figs, cherries, walnuts, chestnuts, hazel nuts, filberts, strawberries, blackberries, dewberries, blueberries, and peaches. Also grown were sweet potatoes, artichokes, cabbages, turnips, broad beans, peas, pumpkins, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, celery, parsnips, onions, garlic, leeks, endive, spinach, sorrel, lettuce, parsley, mustard, cress, sage, tarragon, fennel, thyme, mint, savory, rhubarb, and medicinal herbs. Sugar was used to make sweet dishes. Grace was said before meals. Toothpicks were used.
Most dwellings were of brick and stone. Only a few were of wood or mud and straw. The average house was now four rooms instead of three. Yeomen might have six rooms. A weaver's house had a hall, two bedrooms, and a kitchen besides the shop. Farmers might have two instead of one room. A joiner had a one-room house with a feather bed and bolster. Even craftsmen, artificers and farmers had feather beds on bed frames with pillows and hung loom tapestry and painted cloth to keep out the cold in their single story homes. They also had pewter spoons and plates, instead of just wood or earthenware ones. Even the poorer class had glass drinking vessels, though of a coarse grade. The poor still used wooden plates and spoons. Laborers had canvas sheets. Richer farmers would build a chamber above the hall, replacing the open hearth with a fireplace and chimney. Poorer people favored ground floor extensions, adding a kitchen or second bedchamber to their cottages. Kitchens were often separate buildings to reduce the risk of fire. Roasting was done on a spit and baking in irons boxes placed in the fire or in a brick oven at the side of the fireplace.