Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England. But you still have producers holding back corn supplies,
even though hoarding is forbidden by law. In Stratford in 1597 seventy-five townsmen are found guilty of hoarding corn, including William Shakespeare, who is hanging on to ten quarters of malt. Worse than this, "engrossers” buy up all the local supply of an important commodity, such as eggs or butter, in order to drive up the price. In the 1590s certain unscrupulous businessmen buy up to twenty thousand pounds of butter—and this is disastrous because it is an important part of people’s diet. Combined with hoarding, this has dramatic consequences for the poor. In some places the famine of 1594–97 proves as deadly as the plague of 1563. The details from this excerpt support the inference that even the rich suffered during times of famine. the laws prevented the rich from hoarding food. the rich often still prospered while the poor starved. many of the rich prevented the poor from starving to death.
