Tudor Beer Standard

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Image by Annabel_P from Pixabay

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This is a simple, quick and dirty way of working out what the spending power of Elizabethan money was. It’s worth doing because it helps us realise something very important about money*.

But before I get stuck into the money, I have to explain that most Tudor people never paid tax, most servants got paid in a mixture of clothing and lodging and that they were normally given their food by their master as well ie bed and board. Ordinary people who weren’t servants would spend half their income on (very basic) food — mainly bread, cheese, peas, occasional bacon at Christmas, so the free food was a valuable perk even if it was terrible.

Beer was a voluntary purchase: you didn’t have to buy it. Small ale (beer with no hops) would have been included in the ‘board’ part of the arrangement but that was weak and not very tasty. So beer was the kind of purchase that people would make if they possibly could, but could also do without.

Hence the Tudor Beer Standard.

First I need to break it to you that the Tudors used pounds (£s), shillings (s.) and pence (d.), with the occasional crown (5s), half-crown (2s 6d or 2/6) and angel (10s. 6d.)

Then you need to know that when Shakespeare was staggering around the Blackfriars and the Mermaid Inn, ordinary beer was a…