[This is such a good question, as the harsh realities of life for the majority of the population in the period are rarely tackled in popular media. I will take a stab at answering this, although it is not a pleasant answer, unfortunately. I am happy to answer any follow up questions. I will also provide some further reading at the end.]

You could move away to "the big city" but everyone you know and everything you know personally would strongly warn you against it if you are living the comparatively secure life on a Tudor farm. Life is unremittingly hard in England during the 1500s, about a third of the population live continually in back-breaking, unremitting, starvation ridden poverty. With price rises and crop failures, the number of beggars and vagrants heading to London and to the larger towns is vast. So large are the numbers that the amount of petty and serious crime, in a country without a police force, is incredibly high. You life on the farm, while not perhaps personally satisfying, is by comparison safe, secure, and with the greatest chance of knowing where your next meal is coming from.

If you do decide to run off for the city, it will be a hard journey. Bear in mind you will need to travel all the way by foot, unless you are willing to spend what little coin you have on hitching a ride with one of the national carriers whose numbers are expanding as the economy of England's regions diversifies and so inter-region commerce is increasingly prevalent. However, in order to afford to travel this way, your personal savings would need to be far beyond what a farm worker could reasonably expect, risking the accusations of being a thief. Definitely one to avoid as local Tudor 'justice' is for suspected thieves is...unpleasant.

So you are walking, and that is problematic in itself - given the economic climate, the unremitting poverty, and the subsistence level existence of many in England, there is no tolerance for 'vagrants'. You see, your contemporaries see you as not the 'deserving poor', but the 'underserving poor'. Your had a job, and a life, and a role that contributed to society - and you chose to abandon that for a dream of better things. You will find the populations of the parishes between you and London have absolutely zero toleration for that, saving what little sympathy and charity their hard, crushing lives allow for the 'deserving poor' - those struggling through no choice of their own or from the actions of others: Widows, orphans, abandoned families, etc. The various vagrancy acts in the 1500s are harsh. If identified as a vagrant (as you would be), first offense: public whipping, second offence: boring through the ear with a hot iron or branding, third offence: execution. However, the men who make up local Parish constables are not usually monsters, just hard men in a hard world, and will try and simply chase you off from their locality, perhaps with thumps and a few bruises, rather than have to initiate the legal punishment they are supposed to.

The reality is that as a young woman, travelling alone, you will probably get multiple offers of employment from people while travelling to London, some kind if poorly paid such as tavern wench, maybe even *cough* housekeeper to a widower, etc others perhaps unpalatable such as prostitution, but none will match the life you had on the farm where you were secure in lodging, probably enjoyed some form of familial security, and food, and most importantly seen as a contributor rather than a charity case. There are also criminal dangers you face, lots of hungry and desperate people on the roads don't make for a safe environment, and as the Parish Constables are far less tolerant of male vagrants compared to female ones, the young men encountered along the route become increasingly desperate. That gets even worse if a press is called - you see during the 16th century, England is involved in a lot of wars in this century, often for many years, and also suffers not a few rebellions. These together means England's armies have a voracious, insatiable, appetite for manpower. The lot of a common soldier is a dismal one - disease, starvation, unlimited enlistment, desertion, poor treatment (both medical and discipline), not to mention risks in battle mean that English armies of the period are chronically undermanned, always needing fresh bodies. The press is how most of these men are found, where each parish is assigned a number of men they have to provide for military service. Obviously, parish constables would rather send vagrants travelling through than pick local men they know personally, seeing - not unreasonably so - that these vagrants are easier spared than the husbands and sons of their neighbours. For the government, the impressment of ‘idle persons and masterless men’ into the army for foreign service was an opportunity to improve ‘domestic peace’. While you might be willing to risk all the previous hazards to get to London, almost no man you might find on or near the farm, at least to know them well enough to trust them, will take you there because of it. Travelling with a stranger or a near-stranger to London would be seen as an absolute "no" by any woman of the period.

However, London does act as a magnet for all of these desperate people, and those who make it there, avoiding all the dangers along the way, then have to find a way to earn their keep. Most men who find work become labourers, or other menial work - the dangers of which mean there is an ever increasing demand for them - but its better than the life of a vagrant and whatever had forced them from their homes initially. Worth reemphasising this - poor people did not leave their home communities except under the direst of straits. For every success story of a life made in London for poor country folk fleeing their homes, there are hundreds, if not thousands of dead, crippled, diseased, branded, enslaved, impressed, or beggars that never made it. Oh yes, enslavement I am not making this up - if you are passing through coastal communities - particularly along the south coast - the risk of Barbary pirates raiding the village or town you are passing through and seizing captives for enslavement is not impossible. And there will be no naval expedition in retaliation to demand you back, you are just gone.

As a young woman, arriving unaccompanied to London - congratulations, through all your trials and the desperate journey you have made it - hopefully unscarred and healthy. Lets assume that as otherwise you are not in luck - begging and death will follow. Now comes the difficult part. How to find lodging and work. You are not unskilled or unknowledgeable. In fact your grasp of basic farm ecologies could put most modern educated people to shame. You work hard, from dawn to dusk and a bit either side, your back is strong, your muscles keen. But most of what makes you knowledge unique is unusable in the city - working the fields or the farm, milking cows, tending sheep, etc has little use in the city. Yes, you have the ability to kill and butcher animals, work hides, make cheese, make bread, keep house, tend the sick at a basic level, manage the pigs, but these are all things that almost every city person of your class can also do. I am afraid you are out of your element - as you have very little to offer in the city then you have to accept whatever pitifully paid work you can find to keep you alive. Let us not forget that a large proportion of those you are competing with for work will have originated in the countryside (90% of England's population lived there after all) so your everyday skills will not stand out. Your future is...bleak, and quite possibly could be heading toward the criminal element, or worse, out of sheer desperation.

Probably should have stayed on the farm.

​

Further Reading:

Just a selection of acts relating to economic 'vagrants' for the period to give a flavour: Vagabonds Act 1530, 1536 Act for Punishment of Sturdy Vagabonds and Beggars, 1547 Vagabonds Act, the Poor Act 1552, the 1555 Poor Act, 1572 Vagabonds Act, the 1575 Poor Act. And there were a few more until what are termed 'the Elizabethan Poor Laws' started to come in (which were actually among the most generous in Europe for the time and have, I feel, an underserving bad reputation).

Crofts, J., Packhorse, Waggon, and Post: Land Carriage and Communications under the Tudors and Stuarts (London: Routledge, 1967)

Cruickshank, C.G., Elizabeth’s Army (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966)

Gerhold, D., Carriers & Coachmasters: Trade and Travel Before the Turnpikes (Chichester: Phillimore, 2005)

Thirsk, J., Agricultural Regions and Agrarian History in England, 1500-1750 - Studies in Economic & Social History (Palgrave, 1987)

Thirsk, J., The Agrarian History of England and Wales Volume 5 Part 1, Regional Farming Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)