There was a renaissance of sorts in England at this time, although it's not been given top billing like the Italian Renaissance. Oxford and Cambridge were flourishing ... [more] people were learning to read and write, glasses could be bought to prolong eyesight, roads and bridges were being built, better modes of transport were being engineered, medicine was becoming less a matter of guesswork, more scientific. People realized the world was round (actually, only doltish idiots believed it was flat).