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No rich person in Elizabethan times felt properly dressed to impress unless he or she was wearing a ruff. This heavy collar came to England from France. Like so many Tudor clothes, it gave a strong signal about the wealth and importance of the person wearing it. The ruff started as a small ruffle or frill on shirt collars in early Tudor times. By the time Elizabeth I was queen, ruffs had grown in size, decoration and weight. Elizabeth I was a renowned fashion leader. Portraits of her show how she used her clothes to present a picture of herself as a great and important queen. A ruff was like a wheel made of decorated and pleated material, usually open at the front of the neck. Some ruffs used as much as 18 metres of cloth! Made of linen, silk or organza, ruffs had lots of of lace, beads and jewels, held together with a wire frame and sewn with horsehair thread. To make sure a rich person's ruff stood up at a fashionable angle he or she had to wear a semicircular rebatos or supportass at the back of their neck. Most ruffs were white but some were starched pale colours, and a few were even black. People who were less rich gradually copied the high fashions of the Elizabethan court, but using cheaper materials and less excessive sizes. Keeping your ruff looking clean was a major job, especially as Elizabethans were very fond of make up. Servants had to take them apart, wash, starch, pleat and put them together again to keep them looking attractive. A useful small piece of clothing called the partlet collar helped to keep the ruff clean. It lay between the ruff and the wearer's neck, and was a lot easier and quicker to wash than the hefty ruff.

Although printing was used in China in the eighth century, the power of print did not really get going until the 15th century in Europe, where Johann Gensfleish zum Gutenberg, a German goldsmith, became the first printer. He started printing in about 1456. The first important book he printed was the Gutenberg Bible. There are two copies in the British Library in London. William Caxton was the first printer in England. He was born in Kent in 1422 and was apprenticed to a silk mercer. As part of his apprenticeship he went to work in Bruges in Belgium, where he became a rich and important merchant. Caxton enjoyed translating from French and Dutch into English. This led him to find out about the new craft of printing. Caxton came back to England in 1476 and started the first English printing press near Westminster Abbey, where he printed and imported books. One of the earliest books he printed was Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Printed books soon became very popular in England as they were far cheaper than books copied out by hand and could be produced very quickly. After Caxton died in 1491, his assistant Wynkyn de Worde took over the business, moving it to Fleet Street in 1500 to be near other booksellers. He was very successful and published over 800 works, including romances, poetry, school, law, and music books plus a book about fishing. Fleet Street is still famous today as the home of English printing.

Sugar from the New World became easier to get hold of in Tudor times, although it was still very expensive. Tudor cooks often accompanied their meat with spicy, sweet and fruity sauces. Rich families ate mouthwatering puddings and sweetmeats. The last course of a meal was called the banquet. This was when people ate their delicious fashionable puddings. Here are some: Dish of snow - made with four pints of cream and eight egg whites Apple Moise - with apples, rosewater and cinnamon Fruit tarts - fruit cooked in wine and spices on a pastry base Jumballs - little spiced almond and lemon, iced and cakes covered in a thin layer of gold Trifle - gingerbread, crystal jelly, candied ginger, Marchpane (marzipan), syllabubs, junkets, tart of cream, blanc manger... Just one woman worked in Henry VIII's kitchens at Hampton Court. She made the royal puddings. Even though so much food was on offer, rich people were very particular about good table manners and washing their hands, as they would help themselves from lots of dishes that servants put on the table. The diet of less wealthy families was not as sweet or exciting, but they were not so likely to get bad teeth from their traditional mutton pottage!

In Tudor times, gloves were used for many things - fashion items, tokens of love and marriage, symbols of purity and simply to protect people's hands. Gloves for the rich were splendidly embroidered and made from delicate leather. Fashionable people had a pair of gloves to match each outfit. Real show-offs had the fingers of their gloves slashed to show the expensive rings they wore on their fingers. Some rich people wore gloves with very long fingers to make their hands look classy. From 1463 to 1826 it was forbidden to import gloves into England, but in Tudor times French gloves, especially, were so stylish and beautiful that there was a big smuggling trade, and it was quite easy to get hold of a pair, if you had enough money. Working gloves were mainly made of sheep or deerskin. Nothing was wasted, as the wool from sheepskins was used to make cloth. Some Irish leather gloves were so fine that they could be folded up and put inside a walnut shell! Perfumed gloves became very popular in Elizabeth I's reign. People thought that some perfumes were disinfectants. It took several weeks to perfume a pair of gloves. They were soaked several times in strongly scented water then dried. A gift of gloves was a sign of love and loyalty. Not surprisingly, kings and queens were given lots of pairs! If a lady gave a lord a glove he would wear it on his clothes or his hat to show his commitment, and white gloves were popular wedding presents.

Popular playwright, poet, musician and wit John Heywood was a favourite at the royal courts of Henry VIII and Queen Mary. He was famous for his comic plays and his short amusing plays called interludes. In his plays he poked fun at lots of topics including politics, people's behaviour, love, doctors, the law and the church. Haywood started his career as a choir boy and then a singer at the Chapel Royal, with a salary of 400 shillings a year. He was so musical and witty that he was promoted and given a good salary and many gifts over the years. As he was a Catholic he left England when protestant Elizabeth I became queen. He died a poor man. Jasper, his son, translated the work of famous Latin writers, and his grandson was the talented poet John Donne. Haywood collected and published books of proverbs and produced books of clever sayings called epigrams. We still know and use a lot of them today. Examples include: many hands make light work; two heads are better than one; love me, love my dog and the more, the merrier.

People tried to keep their teeth clean, but some of the mixtures they used damaged the teeth. Some people used a paste made from powdered pumice stone, cuttlefish shell and alabaster and others rubbed their teeth with white wine, vinegar and honey boiled up together. It was safer to clean your teeth with a wet piece of linen or a twig. People made medicines from herbs and spices to treat toothache, and put a clove between the aching tooth and the cheek. The last resort for toothache was to pull out the tooth. Tooth-pullers travelled the countryside and removed people's sore teeth in public at fairs. They often used a tool called the pelican, which looked a bit like a pelican's beak. This was entertaining for the audience, but horrible for the victim. The disease called scurvy could make people's teeth fall out. Sailors got scurvy on long sea-voyages, as did people who lived on dry land. This was because they could not eat enough fresh fruit and vegetables rich in vitamin C on a ship or in the winter. People who could afford to eat foods with sugar in them suffered from tooth decay. Some people actually blackened their front teeth to make them look decayed, so others would think they were rich. Elizabeth I liked sweet sugary foods and lost some of her teeth. Other teeth became black from decay. She sucked sugared violets to help keep her breath sweet. They helped to rot her teeth even more. She filled the gaps in her teeth with cloth to make herself look better in public.

In Tudor times there were great advances in shipbuilding, weapons and seamanship. Henry VIII was the first king to keep a navy. After he invaded France in 1514 Henry kept his ships ready to use, as he thought he would need them again. He developed shipbuilding so much that he was called the Father of the English Navy. He built high-tech warships like the Mary Rose, Peter Pomegranate and Great Harry, that showed what a powerful country England was. These ships could fire broadside. They had watertight gun ports that could be tightly shut in bad weather. The old royal dockyard was in Portsmouth. Henry VIII built dockyards at Woolwich and Deptford in 1513 to be convenient for the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London. Henry founded Trinity House in 1514 to control the training of sailors so there were always experienced English men available. Trinity House also looked after navigation round England. Matthew Baker became master shipwright of England in 1572. The son of one of Henry VIII's shipwrights, he travelled widely in Europe and learned from other shipbuilders. He wrote notes about shipbuilding. They show how shipbuilders were beginning to use paper plans and models to help make better and stronger ships, rather than the old-fashioned rule of thumb. Matthew Baker built The Revenge in 1577. It cost £4,000, had 46 guns, was narrow and was very fast. The Revenge was Sir Francis Drake's flagship in the successful battle against the Spanish Armada. Many royal ships afterwards were built to the same design.

Many English coins were made of silver. They were made in the Royal Mint in the Tower of London. In 1502 Henry VII was the first monarch to produce coins with a realistic royal profile on them. From 1542 Henry reduced the weight of some coins and added base metals to others to help pay for his expensive wars with France and Scotland. He got the nickname of Old Copper Nose when the silver coating of coins rubbed off to show the far less valuable copper underneath. Henry's actions made the English currency lose its value, as people hoarded the real silver coins, leaving the ones that were worth very little. People began not to trust their money. Elizabeth I improved English money. She called back coins that were not proper silver and replaced them with coins with a lot of silver in them. She was the first monarch to produce money with milled edges. This ended the dishonest habit of shaving silver off coins, which made them less valuable. In 1568 the Society of Mines Royal was established. Money was invested in mining for metals the country needed, especially gold and silver.

Though earlier Tudor rulers had some secret agents, spying came into its own during the reign of Elizabeth I. Her ruthless Secretary of State, Francis, Earl of Walsingham, organised a sophisticated spy network that uncovered many plots in England and abroad. Walsingham recruited spies at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and used many other people to pass on snippets of information. A spy's life was not glamorous. It could be full of danger. Spies had to be very careful. They used secret writing, invisible ink, complicated codes and even shoes with concealed compartments. Walsingham built up and often paid for a system of spies called correspondents in royal courts across Europe, as far as Turkey. English spies uncovered conspiracies like the Babington plot. In 1586 Walsingham suspected that supporters of Elizabeth I's Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, wanted to free her from prison and put her on the throne instead of Elizabeth. With the help of a double agent and of Thomas Phelippes, a brilliant forger and code-breaker Walsingham was able to get hold of and decode secret messages from the plotters. The plotters were hung, drawn and quartered and Mary was beheaded. Even information about the Armada got to Walsingham before the fleet arrived, thanks to his spy on the staff of the Spanish grand admiral.

Being beautiful in Tudor times was a risky business, especially in the time of Elizabeth I. Fashionable women had a pale face to show they were noble and rich, and did not work in the sun. Their cheeks were pink with rouge, their lips were red, their teeth white and their hair auburn or fair. They had elegant arched eyebrows and a high hairline. To achieve this look, they had to use make up and dyes that were bad for their skin. To get their fashionable white complexions women ground up white lead and mixed it with vinegar to make a paste called ceruse. They put white make up on to cover their chests as well if they wore low-cut dresses, and even painted pale blue veins on top of the make-up to show how fine their skin was. Lead is poisonous. Some people noticed at the time that it made the skin look grey and shrivelled. There were women who plastered on their make-up so thickly that it cracked if they moved their faces. Red lipstick and rouge were called fucus. This was made from a pigment like red sandalwood, mercury sulphide or cochineal mixed with egg whites, green fig milk and gum Arabic, which comes from trees. Women could wear a wig or dye their hair. One hair dye recipe uses concentrated sulphuric acid, which is extremely dangerous.