The merry guild-feast was no longer a feature of village life. There were fewer holydays and festivals. The most prosperous period of the laborer was closing. An agricultural laborer's yearly wage was about 154s., but his cost of living, which now included house rent, was about 160s. a year. In 1533, daily wages in the summer for an agricultural laborer were about 4d. and for an artisan 6d. In 1563 in the county of Rutland, daily wages for laborers were 7d. in summer and 6d. in winter; and for artisans were 9d. in summer and 8d. in winter.
There were endowed hospitals in London for the sick and infirm. There were others for orphans, for derelict children, and for the destitute. They worked at jobs in the hospital according to their abilities. There was also a house of correction for discipline of the idle and vicious by productive work.
In the towns, shop shutters were let down to form a counter. Behide this the goods were made and/or stored. The towns held a market once a week. Fairs occurred once or twice a year. At given times in the towns, everyone was to throw buckets of water onto the street to cleanse it. During epidemics in towns, there was quarantine of those affected to stay in their houses unless going out on business. Their houses were marked and they had to carry a white rod when outside. The quarantine of a person lasted for forty days. The straw in his house was burned and his clothes treated. People who died had to be buried under six feet of ground.
Communities were taxed for the upkeep and relief of the prisoners in the jails in their communities.
Church services included a sermon and were in accordance with a reformed prayer book and in English, as was the Bible. Communion of participants replaced mass by priests. Elizabeth was not doctrinaire in religious matters, but pragmatic. She always looked for ways to accommodate all views on what religious aspects to adopt or decline. Attendance at state church services on Sunday mornings and evenings and Holydays was enforced by a fine of 12d. imposed by the church wardens. People could hold what religious beliefs they would, even atheism, as long as they maintained an outward conformity. For instance, babies were to be baptized before they were one month old or the parents would be punished.
There was difficulty persuading educated and moral men to be ministers. The Bible was read at home and familiar to everyone. This led to the growth of the Puritan movement. The Puritans complained that the church exerted insufficient control over the morals of the congregation. They thought that ministers and lay elders of each parish should regulate religious affairs and that the bishops should be reduced to an equality with the rest of the clergy. The office of archbishop should be eliminated and the head of state should not necessarily be governor of the church. Their ideas of morality were very strict and even plays were though to be immoral. The puritan movement included William Brewster, an assistant to a court official who was disciplined for delivering, upon pressure from the council, the Queen's signed execution order for Mary of Scotland after the Queen had told him to hold it until she directed otherwise.
The debased coinage was replaced by a recoinage of newly minted coins with a true silver weight.
Goldsmiths, who also worked silver, often acted as guardians of clients' wealth. They began to borrow at interest at one rate in order to lend out to traders at a higher rate. This began banking.
Patents were begun to encourage the new merchant lords to develop local manufactures or to expand import and export trade. Patents were for a new manufacture or an improved older one and determined the wages of its trades. There was chartering of merchant companies and granting of exclusive rights to new industries as monopolies. Some monopolies or licenses were patents or copyrights. Others established trading companies for trade to certain foreign lands and supporting consular services. But there were two detrimental effects: monopoly was a severe burden to the middle and poorer classes, and the power of patent holder to arrest and imprison persons charged with infringing upon their rights was extended to any disliked person.
There was sharing of stock of companies, usually by merchants of the same type of goods. There were many stockholders of the East India Company, chartered in 1600 to trade there. New incorporated companies were associations of employers and often included a number of trades, instead of the old guilds which were associations of actual workers. Town government was often controlled by a few merchant wholesalers. The entire trade of a town might be controlled by its drapers or by a company of the Merchant Adventurers. The charter of the latter as of 1564 allowed a common seal, perpetual existence, liberty to purchase lands, and liberty to exercise their government in any part of the nation. There were policies of insurance given by groups of people for losses of ships and their goods.