34 Interference with the Rights of Property CH. 1. By the 1st of the 7th of Henry VIII., the laws of feudal tenure were put in force against the landed traders. Wherever lands were converted from tillage to pasture, the lords of the fee had authority to seize half of all profits until the farmbuildings were reconstructed. If the immediate lord did not do his duty, the lord next above him was to do it; and the evil still increasing, the act, twenty years later, was extended further, and the king had power to seize.* Nor was this all. Sheep-farming had become an integral branch of business; and falling into the hands of men who understood each other, it had been made a monopoly, affecting seriously the prices of wool and mutton.† Stronger measures were therefore now taken, and the class to which the offenders belonged was especially pointed out by parliament. ** 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 22. There is a cause of difficulty peculiar to England, the increase of pasture, by which sheep may be now said to devour men and unpeople not only villages but towns. For wherever it is found that the sheep yield a softer and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men the abbots, not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good. They stop the course of agriculture . One shepherd can look after a flock risen . . since, though sheep cannot be called a monopoly, because they are not engrossed by one person; yet they are in so few hands, and these are so rich, that as they are not prest to sell them sooner than they have a mind to it, so they never do it till they have raised the price as high as possible.'-Sir THOMAS MORE's Utopia, Burnet's Translation, pp. 17-19. See, also, a petition to the crown, describing the extent and effects of the enclosing system, which I have printed in a note, p. 93, of the third volume of this work. land em pasture 'Whereas,' says the 13th of the 25th of Henry CH. 1. VIII., 'divers and sundry persons of the king's Evil of the subjects of this Realm, to whom God of his good- excess of ness hath disposed great plenty and abundance of ployed in moveable substance, now of late, within few years, have daily studied, practised, and invented ways and means how they might accumulate and gather together into few hands, as well great multitude of farms as great plenty of cattle, and in especial, sheep, putting such lands as they can get to pasture and not to tillage; whereby they have not only pulled down churches and towns and enhanced the old rates of the rents of the possessions of this Realm, or else brought it to such excessive fines that no poor man is able to meddle with it, but also have raised and enhanced the prices of all manner of corn, cattle, wool, pigs, Prices of geese, hens, chickens, eggs, and such other com- enhanced modities, almost double above the prices which by a monohath been accustomed, by reason whereof a marvel- consequent lous multitude of the poor people of this realm be of the peonot able to provide meat, drink, and clothes necessary for themselves, their wives, and children, but Labour not be so discouraged with misery and poverty, that dity.' they fall daily to theft, robbery, and other inconveniences, or pitifully die for hunger and cold; and it is thought by the king's humble and loving subjects, that one of the greatest occasions that moveth those greedy and covetous people so to accumulate and keep in their hands such great portions and parts of the lands of this Realm from the occupying of the poor husbandmen, and so to use it in pasture and not in tillage, is the great provision poly, and sufferings ple. a commo Сн. 1. interferes. profit that cometh of sheep which be now come into a few persons' hands, in respect of the whole The state number of the king's subjects; it is hereby enacted, that no person shall have or keep on lands not their own inheritance more than 2000 sheep; that no person shall occupy more than two farms; and that the 19th of the 4th of Henry VII., and those other acts obliging the lords of the fees to do their duty, shall be reenacted and enforced.' Labour left alone unable to struggle with capital. * By these measures the money-making spirit was for a time driven back, and the country resumed its natural course. I am not concerned to defend the economic wisdom of such proceedings; but they prove, I think, conclusively, that the labouring classes owed their advantages not to the condition of the labour market, but to the care of the state; and that when the state relaxed its supervision, or failed to enforce its regulations, the labourers being left to the market chances, sank instantly in the unequal struggle with capital. The government, however, remained strong enough to hold its ground (except during the discreditable interlude of the reign of Edward VI.) * I find scattered among the State Papers many loose memoranda, apparently of privy councillors, written on the backs of letters, or on such loose scraps as might be at hand. The following fragment on the present subject is curious. I do not recognise the hand: 'Mem. That an act may be made that merchants shall employ their goods continually in the traffic of merchandise, and not in the purchasing of lands; and that craftsmen, also, shall continually use their crafts in cities and towns, and not leave the same and take farms in the country; and that no merchant shall hereafter purchase above 40l. lands by the year.'-Cotton MS. Titus, b. i. 160. the general for the first three quarters of the century; and CH. 1. until that time the working classes of this country remained in a condition more than prosperous. They enjoyed an abundance far beyond what in general falls to the lot of that order in longsettled countries; incomparably beyond what the same class were enjoying at that very time in Germany or France. The laws secured them; and that the laws were put in force we have the direct evidence of successive acts of the legislature justifying the general policy by its success: and we have also the indirect evidence of the contented loyalty of the great body of the people Evidence of at a time when, if they had been discontented, content of they held in their own hands the means of assert- the people. ing what the law acknowledged to be their right. The government had no power to compel submission to injustice, as was proved by the fate of an attempt to levy a 'benevolence' by force, in 1525. The people resisted with a determination against which the crown commissioners were unable to contend, and the scheme ended with an acknowledgment of fault by Henry, who retired with a good grace from an impossible position. If the peasantry had been suffering under any real grievances we should not have failed to have heard of them when the religious rebellions furnished so fair an opportunity to press those grievances forward. Complaint was loud enough when complaint was just, under the Somerset protectorate.* * When the enclosing system | tivity and provoked insurrection. was carried on with greatest ac- In expressing a sympathy with CH. I. The incomes of the great nobles cannot be determined, for they varied probably as much as and duties they vary now. Under Henry IV. the average Incomes of the higher classes. income of an earl was estimated at 2000l. a year.* Under Henry VIII. the great Duke of Buckingham, the wealthiest English peer, had 6oool.t And the income of the Archbishop of Canterbury was rated at the same amount. But the establishments of such men were enormous; their ordinary retinues in time of peace consisting of many hundred persons; and in war, when the duties of a nobleman called him to the field, although in theory his followers were paid by the crown, yet the grants of parliament were on so small a scale that the theory was seldom converted into fact, and a large share of the expenses was paid often out of private purses. The Duke of Norfolk, in the Scotch war of 1523, declared (not complaining of it, but merely as a reason why he the social policy of the Tudor which habit had petrified into form, when manufactures could not provide work for one additional hand, when the first colony was yet unthought of, and where those who were thrown out of the occupation to which they had been bred could find no other. The tenants evicted, the labourers thrown out of employ, when the tillage lands were converted into pastures, had scarcely an alternative offered them except to beg, to rob, or to starve. *Lansdowne MS. No. I. fol. 26. + GIUSTINIANI's Letters from the Court of Henry VIII. Ibid. |