Social and economic lives of the ordinary poor in Ipswich, 1570-1620

Using a tailored combination of methodologies and an array of sources, this thesis offers a case study of the ordinary social and economic lives of ‘the poor’ in the town of Ipswich between 1570 and 1620. Inspired by the well-known work of Amartya Sen, it defines poverty in a broad sense, aligning with many contemporary perceptions of ‘the poor’, but breaking with current historiographical norms for the boundaries of poverty, which are typically more restrictive in scope. Moreover, it argues against the use of terms including ‘marginal’ or ‘labouring’ poor to denote those who lived in more mild hardship. Instead, it offers a new descriptive term for this diverse group: the ‘ordinary poor’. Overall, it analyses and juxtaposes the life experiences of the ‘ordinary poor’ and their relief-dependent counterparts in relation to the composition of these groups, their families, and how they approached their financial lives and their children’s futures. Its findings show more similarities than differences. For example, both groups were susceptible to hardship migration and the effects of epidemic disease, but only the relief-dependent poor were particularly susceptible to broken family units. They also engaged in similar varieties of occupations (lawful and unlawful), worked hard to provide secure financial futures for their children, and held comparable levels of wealth, the latter being determined more by the size of their nuclear family than their socio-economic status. In addition, this study considers how the tax structures of the period and the influential poor law statutes of 1598 and 1601 impacted the lives of the poor, arguing these factors created forms of entrenched socio-economic disadvantage, which resulted in ‘poverty traps’ that impeded the efforts of many among the poor to improve their situations.