be very weak and feeble, ready to fall down, and CH. 1. therefore dangerous to pass by, to the great decay and hinderance of the said boroughs and towns.'* however, At present, the decay of a town implies the Not caused, decay of the trade of the town; and the decay of by decay of all towns simultaneously would imply a general trade. collapse of the trade of the whole country. Walled towns, however, before the Reformation, existed for other purposes than as the centre points of industry: they existed for the protection of property and life and although it is not unlikely that the agitation of the Reformation itself did to some degree interrupt the occupation of the people, yet I believe that the true account of the phenomenon which then so much disturbed the parliament, is, that one of their purposes was no longer required; the towns flagged for a time Security of because the country had become secure. The districts woollen manufacture in Worcestershire was spreading into the open country,† and, doubtless, of the in other counties as well; and the 'beautiful houses' which had fallen into decay, were those which, in the old times of insecurity, had been occupied by wealthy merchants and tradesmen, who were now enabled, by a strong and settled government, to dispense with the shelter of locked gates and fortified walls, and remove their residences to more convenient situations. It was, in fact, the first symptom of the impending social revolution. Two years before the passing of this the country under the government Tudors. * 32 Hen. VIII. cap. 18. † 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 18. London 6 CH. I. Act, the magnificent Hengrave Hall, in Suffolk, had been completed by Sir Thomas Kitson, merchants mercer of London,'* and Sir Thomas Kitson buy lands, was but one of many of the rising merchants who were now able to root themselves on the land by the side of the Norman nobility, first to rival, and then slowly to displace them. But con form to the the nobles This mighty change, however, was long in silent progress before it began to tell on the institutions of the country. When city burghers bought estates, the law insisted jealously on their accepting with them all the feudal obligations. Attempts to use the land as 'a commodity' were, habits of as we shall presently see, angrily repressed; and country while, again, in the majority of instances, such persons endeavoured, as they do at present, to cover the recent origin of their families by adopting the manners of the nobles, instead of transferring the habits of the towns to the parks and chases of the English counties. The old English organization maintained its full activity; and the duties of property continued to be for another century more considered than its rights. gentlemen. Turning, then, to the tenure of land-for if we would understand the condition of the people, it is to this point that our first attention must be directed-we find that through the many complicated varieties of it there was one broad principle which bore equally upon every class, that the land of England must provide for the defence of England. The feudal system, though practi * Antiquities of Hengrave, by Sir T. GAGE. * Laws of tenure as restric selfishness. cally modified, was still the organizing principle CH. I. of the nation, and the owner of land was bound to military service for his country whenever feudal occasion required. Further, the land was to be so administered, that the accustomed number of families supported by it should not be diminished, and that the State should suffer no injury from the carelessness or selfishness of the owners. Land never was private property in that personal sense of property in which we speak of a thing as our own, with which we may do as we please; Operating and in the administration of estates, as indeed in tions upon the administration of all property whatsoever, duty to the State was at all times supposed to override private interest or inclination. Even tradesmen, who took advantage of the fluctuations of the market, were rebuked by parliament for their greedy and covetous minds,' 'as more regarding their own singular lucre and profit than the commonweal of the Realm;'t and although in an altered world, neither industry nor enterprise will thrive except under the stimulus of self-interest, we may admire the confidence which in another age expected every man to prefer the advantage of the community to his own. All land was held upon a strictly military principle. The miliIt was the representative of authority, and the zation of holder or the owner took rank in the army of the State according to the nature of his connexion. with it. It was first broadly divided among the * See especially 2 Hen. VII. capp. 16 and 19. tary organi society. scale of prietors. CH. 1. great nobility holding immediately under the crown, who, above and beyond the ownership of their private estates, were the Lords of the Fee throughout their presidency, and possessed in right of it the services of knights and gentlemen who held their manors under them, and who followed their standard in war. Under the lords of manors, again, small freeholds and copyholds were held of various extent, often forty shilling and twenty shilling value, tenanted by peasant occupiers, who thus, on their own land, lived as free Englishmen, maintaining by their own free Descending labour themselves and their families. There was landed pro- thus a descending scale of owners, each of whom possessed his separate right, which the law guarded and none might violate; yet no one of whom, again, was independent of an authority higher than himself; and the entire body of the English free possessors of the soil was interpenetrated by a coherent organization which converted them into a perpetually subsisting army of soldiers. The extent of land which was held by the petty freeholders was very large, and the possession of it was jealously treasured; the private estates of the nobles and gentlemen were either cultivated by their own servants, or let out, as at present, to free tenants; or (in earlier times) were occupied by villains, a class who, without being bondmen, were expected to furnish further services than those of the field, services which were limited by the law, and recognised by an outward ceremony, a solemn oath and promise from the villain to his lord. Villanage, in the reign of Henry VIII., had practically ceased. The name of it last CH. I. appears upon the statute book in the early years of the reign of Richard II., when the disputes between villains and their liege lords on their relative rights had furnished matter for cumbrous lawsuits, and by general consent the relation had merged of itself into a more liberal form. Thus serfdom had merged or was rapidly merging into free servitude; but it did not so merge that labouring men, if they pleased, were allowed to live in idleness. Every man was regimented somewhere; Mutual inand although the peasantry, when at full age, dence of were allowed, under restrictions, their own choice orders. of masters, yet the restrictions both on masters and servants were so severe as to prevent either from taking advantage of the necessities of the other, or from terminating through caprice or levity, or for any insufficient reason, a connexion presumed to be permanent.* terdepen tion of la Through all these arrangements a single aim Organizais visible, that every man in England should bour. have his definite place and definite duty assigned to him, and that no human being should be at liberty to lead at his own pleasure an unaccountable existence. The discipline of an army was transferred to the details of social life, and it issued in a chivalrous perception of the meaning of the word duty, and in the old characteristic spirit of English loyalty. From the regulations with respect to land, a coarser advantage was also derived, of a kind. *See especially the 4th of the 5th of Elizabeth. |