A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

The Rise of England 187

gentlemen volunteers and cavalrymen still recruited by summons. During
the last eighteen years of Elizabeth’s reign, more than 100,000 soldiers
were impressed into service for wars on the continent and to maintain En­
glish hegemony in Ireland. Lord-lieutenants assumed responsibility for
troop levies in the counties. The vast majority who were conscripted as sol­
diers were the poorest of the poor—unfortunate men who happened to be
at the wrong place at the wrong time when the press-gangs turned up to
roll them out of taverns or even out of church and into the queen’s service.
The monarchy imposed English law on northern England, Wales (which
Henry VIII had absorbed into England), and Ireland. The emergence of a
national market economy increasingly linked to London also played an
important part in the nationalization of English political institutions. Within
England, the sense of belonging to a nationality was certainly more
advanced than anywhere on the continent. With the exception of part of
Cornwall in southwestern England (where the Cornish language was spo­
ken), the people of England spoke English, however great the variation in
dialect and accents. A somewhat Anglicized Welsh elite began to send their
sons to Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
The fact that Britain is an island may have made the English more xeno­
phobic and precociously nationalistic than their continental counterparts.
Strong traditions of local government and loyalties persisted in England,
however, fueled by social differences and the overwhelming influence of
wealthy local landed families. The county and parish remained the eco­
nomic, social, and political universe of most people in England. The state
still remained an abstraction until the tax collector or the press-gang arrived.

Demographic and Economic Expansion

In the last half of the sixteenth century, England emerged as a commercial

and manufacturing power. The population of England and Wales grew

rapidly, from about 2.5 million in the 1520s to more than 3.5 million in

1580, reaching about 4.5 million in 1610. Reduced mortality rates and

increased fertility, the latter probably generated by expanding work opportu­

nities in manufacturing and farming (leading to earlier marriage and more

children), help explain this rapid rise in population. While epidemics and

plague occasionally took their toll, the people in England still suffered them

less often than did those on the continent. Furthermore, despite the wrench­

ing effects of the English Reformation, the country had been spared the pro­

tracted wars of religion that occurred in France and Central Europe.

English towns grew as migrants arrived in sufficient numbers to overcome

high mortality rates caused by catastrophic health conditions stemming

from poor sanitation. London became the second largest city in the world,

its population rising from about 50,000 in the 1520s to 200,000 in 1600,

and jumping its walls to 375,000 in 1650 (only Edo [Tokyo] was larger). The

next biggest towns in England lagged far behind: Norwich, Newcastle, and