The dark side of Elizabethan England
The Elizabethan era is often painted as a golden age. Yet, says James Sharpe, for thousands of people life was anything but golden, blighted by violence, vagrancy and crushing hunger
This article was first published in the March 2016 issue of BBC History Magazine
Interest in Elizabeth I and her reign (1558–1603) seems limitless, and invariably suffused with admiration – an attitude epitomised in The Times of 24 March 2003, on the quatercentenary of the queen’s death:
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