The main thoroughfare in London was still the Thames River. Nobles living on the river had their own boats and landings. Also at the banks, merchants of all nations had landing places where ships unloaded, warehouses, and cellars for goods and merchandise. Swans swam in the clear bright water. Watermen rowed people across the river for a fee. On the south bank of the river were theaters, outlaws, cutpurses, prostitutes, and prisons. In the summer, people ate supper outside in public. Refuse is still thrown into the streets. At night, the gates of the city were closed and citizens were expected to hang out lanterns. The constable and his watchmen carried lanterns and patrolled the streets asking anyone they saw why they were out so late at night. There were a few horse-drawn coaches with unglazed windows with curtains to keep out the weather.
As of old times, brokers approved by the Mayor and aldermen made contracts with merchants concerning their wares. Some contracts included holding wares as security. Some craftsmen and manual workers extended this idea to used garments and household articles, which they took as pawns, or security for money loaned. This began pawn brokerage, which was lucrative. The problem was that many of the items pawned had been stolen.
The Queen's Privy Council fixed wages and prices in London, advised Justices of the Peace on wages elsewhere, and controlled exports of grain to keep prices down and supplies ample. There were labor strikes in some towns for higher wages after periods of inflation. In 1591, London authorities rounded up the sturdy vagabonds and set them to work cleaning out the city ditches for 4d. per day.
Most of the men in Elizabeth's court had attended a university, such as the lawyer and writer Francis Bacon and the sea-fighter and writer Walter Raleigh, who had a humble origin. Many wives and daughters of Privy Councilors attended the Queen in her privy chamber. Most of the knights or gentlemen of the royal household were also members of Parliament or Justices of the Peace for certain districts in the counties. The court did not travel as much as in the past, but became associated with London. Elizabeth took her entire court on summer visits to the country houses of leading nobility and gentry.
Secular education and especially the profession of law was the route for an able but poor person to rise to power, rather than as formerly through military service or through the church.
The first stage of education was primary education, which was devoted to learning to read and write in English. This was carried out at endowed schools or at home by one's mother or a tutor. The children of the gentry were usually taught in their homes by private teachers of small classes. Many of the poor became literate enough to read the Bible and to write letters. However, most agricultural workers and laborers remained illiterate.
The next stage of education was grammar [secondary] school. There a student was taught rhetoric (e.g. poetry, history, precepts of rhetoric, and classical oratory), some logic, and Latin and Greek grammar. English grammar was learned through Latin grammar and English style through translation from Latin. Literary criticism was learned through rhetoric. There were disputations on philosophical questions such as how many angels could sit on a pin's point. The students sat in groups around the hall for their lessons. The boys and girls were also taught hawking, hunting and archery. The secondary student and the undergraduate were tested for proficiency by written themes and oral disputations, both in Latin. Grammar schools were headed by schoolmasters. There were so many secondary schools financed by merchants and guilds such as the Mercers and Fishmongers that every incorporated town had at least one. The middle classes from the squire to the petty tradesman were brought into contact with the best Greek and Roman writers. A typical schoolday lasted from 7:00 am to 5:00 PM. Flogging with a birch rod was used for discipline. Some students learned this material from a tutor rather than school.
The government of Oxford University, which had been Catholic, was taken from the resident teachers and put into the hands of the Vice-Chancellor, Doctors, Heads of Colleges, and Proctors. Then Oxford became a hotbed of Puritanism. Cambridge already had a strong reformed element from Erasmus' influence. Oxford University and Cambridge University were incorporated to have a perpetual existence for the virtuous education of youth and maintenance of good literature. The Chancellors, masters, and scholars had a common seal. Undergraduate students entered at age 16 and resided in rooms in colleges rather than in scattered lodgings. Each undergraduate student had a tutor and those not seeking a degree could devise his own course of study with his tutor's permission. Many students who were working on the seven year program for a Master's Degree went out of residence at college after the four year's "bachelor" course. Students had text books to read rather than simply listening to a teacher read books to them. Oxford was authorized to and did acquire its own printing press. Examination was still by disputation. Students acted in Latin plays. If a student went to a tavern, he could be flogged. For too elaborate clothing, he could be fined. Fines for absence from class were imposed.
All students had to reside in a college or hall, subscribe to the 39 articles of the university, the Queen's supremacy, and the prayer book. Meals were taken together in the college halls. The universities were divided into three tables: a fellows' table of earls, barons, gentlemen, and doctors; a second table of masters of arts, bachelors, and eminent citizens, and a third table of people of low condition. Professors, doctors, masters of arts and students were all distinguishable by their gowns.
Undergraduate education was considered to be for the purpose of good living as well as good learning. It was to affect the body, mind, manners, sentiment, and business. The university curriculum included Latin and Greek languages and was for four years. The student spent at least one year on logic (syllogizing, induction, deduction, the thirteen classical fallacies, and the application of logic to other studies), at least one year on rhetoric, and at least one year on philosophy. The latter included physics, metaphysics, and ethics (domestic principles of government, military history, diplomatic history, and public principles of government), and mathematics (arithmetic, geometry, algebra, astronomy, music, optics). There were lectures on Greek and Latin literature, including Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero.