Medieval and Tudor Topics: The Tenants Meet the New Owner (London, c. 1600).

The movable type printing press became viable circa 1450. It is for this reason that Northern Europe and England soon experienced a belated renaissance — mostly literary. The capability to publish a lot of books soon enough implied the need for a lot of readers and all of the rapid progress of the modern West was off to the races.

A lot of readers to buy all of those books and bankroll all of that progress meant expanded education and expanded economies. Expanded economies meant more people with more personal wealth. As a result of all of this we know a lot more about the life people lived in Tudor times.

Most of the record by which we know the people is stored in the pamphlets and plays that those same people bought. They liked to see themselves portrayed. Especially they loved to laugh at themselves.

One such work was Thomas Middleton's Father Hubbard's Tales. The following tale is fiction by virtue of the fact that it was actually occurring in a great many lives. It is a portrait of the times around 1600 rather than of any specific individuals. The owner of a tenant farm has died and his son having grown used to life at Court has called the tenants together in London to inform them to expect certain changes.

Well, our landlord being dead, we had his heir, gentle enough and fair-conditioned, rather promising at first his father's virtues than the world's villanies; but he was so accustomed to wild and unfruitful company about the court and London (whither he was sent by his sober father to practise civility and manners), that in the country he would scarce keep till his father's body was laid in the cold earth; but as soon as the hasty funeral was solemnised, from us he posted, discharging all is old father's servants (whose beards were even frost-bitten with age), and was attended only by a monkey and a marmoset; the one being an ill-faced fellow, as variable as New-fangle for fashions; the other an imitator of any thing, however villanous, but utterly destitute of all goodness.

The narrator is a man of common-sense with a colorful way of expressing it.

His head was dressed up in white feathers like a shuttlecock, which agreed so well with his brain, being nothing but cork, that two of the biggest of the guard might very easily have tossed him with battledores, and made good sport with him in his majesty's great hall.... His breeches, a wonder to see, were full as deep as the middle of winter, or the roadway between London and Winchester, and so large and wide withal, that I think within a twelvemonth he might very well put all his lands in them; and then you may imagine they were big enough, when they would outreach a thousand acres: moreover, they differed so far from our fashioned hose in the country, and from his father's old gascoynes, that his back-part seemed to us like a monster; the roll of the breeches standing so low, that we conjectured his house of office, sir-reverence, stood in his hams. All this while his French monkey bore his cloak of three pounds a-yard, lined clean through with purple velvet, which did so dazzle our coarse eyes, that we thought we should have been purblind ever after, what with the prodigal aspect of that and his glorious rapier and hangers" all bost" with pillars of gold,...

The bulk of the young heir's billowing breeches is so great that the bottom droops until one suspects that his butt with its amenities must hover just above his knees. Below these the young heir wore hip-boots that sported spurs — both for fashion, neither for riding.

...casting mine eyes lower, I beheld a curious pair of boots of king Philip's leather, in such artificial wrinkles, sets, and plaits, as if they had been starched lately and came new from the laundress's, such was my ignorance and simple acquaintance with the fashion, and I dare swear my fellows and neighbours here are all as ignorant as myself. But that which struck us most into admiration, upon those fantastical boots stood such huge and wide tops, which so swallowed up his thighs, that had he sworn, as other gallants did, this common oath, Would I might sink as I stand! all his body might very well have sunk down and been damned in his boots. Lastly, he walked the chamber with such a pestilent gingle, that his spurs over-squeaked the lawyer, and made him reach his voice three notes above his fee; but after we had spied the rowels of his spurs, how we blest ourselves! they did so much and so far exceed the compass of our fashion, that they looked more like the forerunners of wheelbarrows.

As for his lodging, he must live in the finest neighborhood — the Strand — away from the odors of the city.

...his lodging must be about the Strand in any case, being remote from the handicraft scent of the city; his eating must be in some famous tavern, as the Horn, the Mitre, or the Mermaid; and then after dinner he must venture beyond sea, that is, in a choice pair of noblemen's oars, to the Bankside where he must sit out the breaking-up of a comedy, or the first cut of a tragedy; or rather, if his humour so serve him, to call in at the Blackfriars, where he should see a nest of boys able to ravish a man.

As for the tenants, they took porridge for their evening meal at an ordinary that charged the lowest rate like the young heir's father did in his youth.

...being almost upon dinner-time, we hied us and took our repast at thrifty mother Walker's, where we found a whole nest of pinching bachelors, crowded together upon forms and benches, in that most worshipful three-half penny ordinary, where presently they were boarded with hot monsieur Mutton-and-porridge (a French man by his blowing); and next to them we were served in order, every one taking their degree: and I tell you true, lady, I have known the time when our young landlord's father hath been a three-halfpenny eater there, — nay more, was the first that acquainted us with that sparing and thrifty ordinary

Source: The Works of Thomas Middleton (1840). Alexander Dyce, ed., II.566-8, 577.