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'To what extent did poverty increase in Britain in the years ?'
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A Level Pearson/Edexcel History Paper 1 Section B essay, achieved a high level 5 (18/20) and written by a student predicted an A*
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Natalie'To what extent did poverty increase in Britain in the years 1625-88?'
Multiple factors impacted the structure and wealth of society between the beginning of
Charles I's reign I 1625 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, including civil wars, inflation
and several Acts of Parliament. During this period, reports began to arise suggesting an
increase in poverty, which is defined by continuously receiving insufficient wages in order to
provide for a person and their family throughout their lives. In order to measure the extent
to which poverty increased, it is important to consider different aspects of poverty: wages,
inflation, unemployment and vagrancy.
On one hand, poverty did increase in Britain between 1625-1688 because many significant
events had a substantial and frequently negative impact on the structure and wealth of
society. For example, while in 1600 it appeared easy for farmers and agricultural labourers
to make a profit, due to the reasonably increasing population, these idyllic circumstances
did not last. From 1520 to 1700, London's population increased from 50,000 to 575,000,
resulting in job shortages and decreasing living standards, which had a particularly
devastating effect on Britain's poorest. By 1625, the Thirty Years' War had contributed to
the prevention of trading wool internationally, causing trade to stagnate and occasionally
decline. As well as this, Britain was suffering from 4% inflation, as a result of the increasing
population pressuring scarce resources. These factors inevitably had a destabilising effect on
society, and consequently increased poverty due to the lack of correlation between wage
increases and inflation. During the 1640s, the impact of the Civil War caused the cost of
livestock and grain to significantly increase, exacerbating the effects of inflation. Many farms
became enclosed, meaning the abolition of land previously considered common, which
resulted in many small landowners becoming forced to sell their land to the wealthy
aristocracy. This problem was intensified by the impact of climate change, which resulted in
frequent harvest failures throughout the century. This negatively impacted the country's
poorest, because they could not afford the basic necessities in order to provide for
themselves and their families. In 1662, the Settlement Act attempted to restrict the
movement of individuals seeking poor relief. This demobilised the country's labour force
and provided the poor with less economic and personal freedom. The Act also authorised
the arrest of vagrants, and 0.5% of the population were arrested for this crime during the
second half of the seventeenth century, while many more escaped unnoticed by the
authorities. This had a negative impact on the poorest in society and provided preconditions
for future increases in poverty, because the vagrant poor were no longer lawfully allowed to
move around to beg for money and sustain themselves.
While Parliament aimed to ensure a stable, prosperous society following the Civil
War, freeing the people from the burden of a financially incompetent monarch, the Civil
War exacerbated the existing effects of inflation, which had a negative effect on the
country's poorest. Similarly, the Settlement Act of 1662 intended to provide a definition of
what constituted 'poor' in order for relief to be distributed fairly, yet negatively impacted
those it intended to help by restricting their economic and personal freedom. These
contributed to many aspects of poverty: wages did not increase in direct proportion to
inflation; the drastic population increase resulted in job shortages in both urban and rural
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