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When Henry VII defeated Richard III and came to the throne in 1485 there was very little money in the Treasury. To keep the country stable and avoid more wars Henry knew he needed money. He worked hard all through his reign as king to build up reserves. Henry was well-known for being very careful and penny-wise. He developed a number of taxes that raised a lot of money. In 1495 he set up a council 'learned in the law' to help him get more taxes, especially from the nobility. There were fines for people who broke the law, taxes on marriage, death and wardship. Taxes included benevolences. These were loans demanded by the king from rich people. They were never paid back. A tax people couldn't escape from was called Morton's Fork. It was invented by Henry's Lord Chancellor John Morton in 1487. Rich people were taxed because they could afford to pay, and poor people were taxed because if they lived economically they were probably hiding their wealth so they could afford to pay as well. By the time Henry died he left a Treasury with a healthy amount of money in it. His son Henry VIII was not such a careful king and spent it very quickly.

Nicholas Hilliard was the first miniaturist born in England, and probably the best. A portrait miniature is a beautifully coloured portrait painted in watercolours, often tiny and put into a jewelled case or a locket so it can be carried around. Many famous Elizabethans had their portrait painted by Hilliard, including Sir Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, Philip Sidney, Mary Queen of Scots and, of course, Queen Elizabeth the first herself. She made him her goldsmith, carver and portrait painter. Nicholas Hilliard's father was a goldsmith. Nicholas trained first as a jeweller, becoming an artist later after seeing portraits by court artist Hans Holbein. He made each miniature an accurate portrait of the person and used the skills he had learned as a jeweller to decorate the portraits very delicately in great detail. He painted jewels in a beautiful and realistic way, and wrote a book about this special way of painting. Hilliard engraved the Great Seal of England for Elizabeth I in 1586. The Great Seal of England was made by putting melted wax into a silver mould. A copy was fixed to all important documents of state to show they were genuine. The Seal was kept by the Lord Chancellor. Even though he was so successful Hilliard still had money worries. He was put in prison for debt in 1617. Isaac Oliver, his pupil, carried on the tradition of miniature painting after Hilliard's death in 1619.

Potatoes originated in South America. Full of fibre, minerals, carbohydrates and vitamins including vitamin C, potatoes were an important food for the Incas and other local peoples. Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century were the first people to discover potatoes and bring them to Europe. The English word potato comes from the Spanish word patata. Spanish sailors ate a lot of potatoes on their long voyages across the Atlantic from the New World. It meant they did not suffer from scurvy, a disease caused if people do not have enough vitamin C in their diet. Who first introduced potatoes to England? There are lots of stories! It may have been a famous English explorer like Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh or Sir John Hawkins, though it is more likely that it was Raleigh's friend Thomas Heriot. Sir Walter Raleigh has the credit for introducing potatoes to Ireland, in 1589. Potatoes were not an instant hit when they arrived in England in Tudor times. They were not thought of as a suitable food for humans when they were first introduced. Because they grow underground, some people thought potatoes were dirty or unhealthy. For some time potatoes were grown as animal food in England. In time, though, people thought potatoes could cure many diseases, from diarrhoea to tuberculosis.

Astrologers try to predict the future from observing the stars and planets. Many years ago people noticed that particular stars appeared in the sky at set times. They watched the stars, planets and moon and began to think that what they saw in the sky had an influence on what happened on earth. Tudor people thought that the earth was at the centre of the universe and stars and planets revolved around it. Astrology was very important in Tudor times. People would consult astrologers to find out about whether their business would go well, if they were going to be lucky in love, to find lost property and missing animals and to have their horoscope cast. Tudor people thought that different signs of the zodiac controlled different parts of the body, so many astrologers knew about medicine as well as the stars. Tudor kings and queens consulted and listened to astrologers as well. Dr. John Dee, a famous Elizabethan astrologer, said that the best date for Elizabeth to be crowned queen was January 15th 1559. Elizabeth took Dr. Dee's advice and was crowned then. Dr. Dee was also skilled in astronomy, maths and alchemy.

Human beings need salt to keep healthy. Our blood contains 0.9% salt. Salt is a preservative, antiseptic and seasoning for food. It can also be used in metalworking, pigment preparation and tanning the hides of animals to make leather. In Tudor times salt was vital to preserve meat. People ate fresh meat during the summer. It cost too much to keep and feed a lot of animals over the winter, so in the autumn most cattle were killed and their meat put in barrels of salt. Salt takes out the moisture and produces an environment that bacteria do not flourish in. Cooks soaked the meat several times when it was needed for eating, but it still did not completely lose its saltiness. By the end of winter some meat could start to rot. Cooks would use spicy sauces to disguise the horrible taste. Lots of English salt came from towns in Cheshire where salty water comes out of the earth in springs. People would collect the water and boil it up in big lead pans to get salt crystals for salting and cooking. People who lived by the sea would collect and boil sea water. Tudor kings and queens encouraged English salt making. They did not want England to import a lot of salt from other countries and become dependent on them.

Before Henry VIII closed the monasteries and founded the Church of England in 1534 many schools were run by the Catholic Church. A lot of the schools were intended to educate boys and young men who would become priests themselves, but the sons of noblemen and rich people could go to them as well and pay fees. After the monasteries, abbeys and nunneries were closed by Henry, there was a growing need for schools. The new printing presses were producing many books about lots of new subjects and the population of England was getting bigger. Schools once run by monastic cathedrals were re-opened. They were called King's Schools. Grammar schools were also started at the new cathedrals Henry VIII created. Edward VI, Henry's son, also started a number of schools. Some new schools were also set up by rich people like merchants who wanted to help their local community, and perhaps to get well-educated apprentices. This gave local boys the chance to get a good education and maybe win a place at university, which could also be sponsored by a rich merchant or gentleman. Some rich people also founded charity schools for the children of poor parents. There was no opportunity for girls to go to school. If they were educated, it was at home.

Going to bed became more comfortable in Tudor times. Beds had a wooden frame with a lattice of ropes or leather underneath the mattress. The ropes could be pulled tight to support the sleeper. The saying sleep tight comes from this time. Most mattresses were like bags made of a rough material called ticking. They were stuffed with straw, cotton or wool, though expensive mattresses were filled with feathers and covered with beautiful patterned materials. Henry VIII's household had lots of quilts used to cover the bed like a duvet. They were made of cotton, linen or silk. One quilt was decorated with a pattern of roses and pomegranates and quilted with gold thread. To keep out draughts and dust beds for the wealthy had side curtains. Beds and bed linen were so valued that people left them to relatives in their wills. When playwright William Shakespeare died he left his wife Anne Hathaway his second best bed. The first bed was generally reserved for guests and was probably not so comfortable. A Tudor book about health and lifestyles advises people to sleep under a good thick quilt and wear a red night cap!

Before spinning wheels were invented women would spend a good part of their day making thread for weaving into fabric to make clothes, blankets, sails and other goods. Women carried their spindle and distaff with them when they went out so they always had the chance to do a bit of spinning. A spindle is a thin stick with a weight at the bottom that is used to twist thread from a bundle of fibres like wool. A distaff is a stick with a fork or comb on the end that holds the fibres to be spun. It is about three times as long as the spindle. Making thread by hand took a long time. So many women spent so much time spinning with a distaff that female line in a family was called the distaff side. The male line of the family was called the spear side. Unmarried women were called spinsters, as they spent a lot of their time spinning, rather than bringing up children. The spinning wheel caught on in England in Tudor times in the 1550s. It is much faster than hand spinning. It gave women more time to do other jobs.

Tudor people believed the body was made up of four main components or humours, of blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. The humours were closely related to the four elements of air, water, earth, and fire that the Tudors believed everything was made from. They determined what you were like as a person and how you reacted to different diseases. Illness and disease could unbalance the humours in a person's body. Physicians thought blood was the most important humour, so it had to be kept in control. You could have blood taken if you were suffering from almost anything. The best way to do this was through blood letting. Sometimes patients fainted because they had lost so much blood! Some physicians bled their patients even if they were healthy. It mattered when and where a physician took blood from a patient. A physician could take blood by cutting veins and even sometimes arteries in the forehead. He could also cut the surface of the skin, then put a cupping glass on to the wound and draw up blood that way. Leeches, creatures related to earthworms, were also used. Leeches fix themselves on their victim with their teeth, and then suck out blood. Some leeches can suck up five times their own body weight in blood in about half an hour. Leeches are still used in medicine today. They help doctors to get blood back into some kinds of wounds after operations.

Tudor women knew a lot about how to treat diseases and injuries. But when a baby was due to be born they called for the midwife. It could be dangerous to have a child - as many as one woman in every five died because of childbirth. Midwives were licensed by the Church and had to make a special promise called an oath. This included agreeing to look after rich and poor people, not to use medical tools to help her deliver babies, not to swap babies after they had been born and not to practise witchcraft. A midwife could baptise a child if it looked very ill when it was born and likely to die soon. Women were often so grateful to their midwives that they gave them expensive presents. When a woman gave birth to a baby she invited trusted female friends, relatives and neighbours around to give her support and to encourage her. They were called gossips which means 'God's siblings', or relatives. Men were only allowed in if there was an emergency.