17.50 in Campus Task
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The most potent forces within Tudor England were often social, economic, and demographic ones. Thus if the period became a golden age, it was primarily because of the considerable growth in population that occurred between 1500 and the death of Elizabeth I did not so dangerously exceed the capacity of the available resources, particularly food supplies, as to precipitate a Malthusian crisis. Famine and disease unquestionably disrupted and disturbed the Tudor economy, but they did not raze it to its foundations, as in the fourteenth century. More positively, the increased manpower and demand that sprang from rising population stimulated economic growth and the commercialization of agriculture, encouraged trade and urban renewal, inspired a housing revolution, enhanced the sophistication of English manner, especially in London, and (more arguably) bolstered new and exciting attitudes among Tudor Englishmen, notably individualistic ones derived from reformation ideals and Calvinist theology.
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