Noble Poverty

Abstract

Most Elizabethans had little sympathy with the medieval idealisation of poverty. They lived in a materialistic age which saw in prosperity evidence of God’s favour, in poverty a mark of his disapprobation. Consequently when the religious Earl of Huntingdon died and left his lands in ruin his apologists faced a moral dilemma: if God had accepted his zealous life surely he would not have visited his estates in this way? Sir Francis Hastings meditated upon the problem, grieving that it kept the fickle multitude from remembering his brother’s heroical qualities, his devotion to religion, love to his family and loyalty to his queen.