Britain from 1560 to 1760 was largely agrarian and pastoral.  Towns and villages were usually nothing more than the ancient sites of feudal castles.

The townspeople were the descendants of the ancient peasants who survived by marginal agricultural operations, and who were beholden to the landed gentry whose lands they occupied.

The remnants of nobility, knighthood, and feudalism were struggling against a slowly-growing class of merchants, free land holders, and businessmen.

The two centuries before 1760 were marked by religious and political struggle, periodic starvation, disease, and ravaging by armies and thundering calvary following their king or some other revolutionary leader into battle.

There were some centers of trade, and some very few centers of industry - mostly flour milling and the smelting of metal from ore.

Flour milling using water power had been in England since the Roman legions had introduced the first hand mills, but the principles involved with the more mechanized method were not applied everywhere.

Nearly all production of useful tools and substances occurred by hand.  Hand spinning wheels and hand looms were the rule, and independent seamstresses made the clothing, all by hand.

Every housewife had to keep her numerous children clad in homespun.  There were some shops turning out metal by crude factory means, but the handling of raw metal after its original refining was generally left to individual smithies and to wantering tinkers and ironmongers.

Pestilence and disease were major problems.  Soap was known, but not usually available to most of the population.  Water ran through ditches and trougths, and sewers were on the surface - the idea of pipes had not yet developed.