Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/377

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1548.]

THE PROTECTORATE.

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King's honour. It is to the King's honour that his subjects be led in true religion. It is to the King's honour that the commonwealth be advanced, that the dearth be provided for, and the commodities of this realm so employed, as it may be to the setting of his subjects at work and keeping them from idleness. If the King's honour, as some men say, standeth in the multitude of people, then these graziers, enclosers, rent-raisers, are hinderers of the King's honour; for whereas have been a great many householders and inhabitants, there is now but a shepherd and his dog. My lords and masters, such proceedings do intend plainly to make of the yeomanry slavery.^[1] The enhancing and rearing

↑ According to Scory, Bishop of Rochester, the extent of land thrown out of cultivation was two acres in three. 'To trust,' he says, 'to have as much upon one acre as was wont to grow upon three—for I think that the tillage is not now above that rate, if it be so much—is but a vain expectation. A great number of the people are so pined and famished by reason of the great scarcity and dearth that the great sheep masters have brought into this noble realm, that they are become more like the slavery and peasantry of France than the ancient and godly yeomanry of England.'—Scory to the King: Strype, vol. iv. p. 483.
The difficulty was not merely that the prices of food rose, and that wages remained stationary, for wages as little obeyed Acts of Parliament as food obeyed it. 'Merchants have enhanced their ware,' says King Edward, in a remarkable State Paper as written by so young a boy; 'farmers have enhanced their corn and cattle, labourers their wages, artificers the price of their workmanship, &c.' The genuine English nobleman and gentleman, he said, were the only persons in the commonwealth who 'had not exercised the gain of living,' but were contented with their old rents. The mischief had been done by 'the farming gentlemen and clerking knights,' the middle classes, the capitalists who had bought land and were making a trade of it.—King Edward's Remains: Discourse on the Reformation of Abuses.

[1] According to Scory, Bishop of Rochester, the extent of land thrown out of cultivation was two acres in three. 'To trust,' he says, 'to have as much upon one acre as was wont to grow upon three—for I think that the tillage is not now above that rate, if it be so much—is but a vain expectation. A great number of the people are so pined and famished by reason of the great scarcity and dearth that the great sheep masters have brought into this noble realm, that they are become more like the slavery and peasantry of France than the ancient and godly yeomanry of England.'—Scory to the King: Strype, vol. iv. p. 483.
The difficulty was not merely that the prices of food rose, and that wages remained stationary, for wages as little obeyed Acts of Parliament as food obeyed it. 'Merchants have enhanced their ware,' says King Edward, in a remarkable State Paper as written by so young a boy; 'farmers have enhanced their corn and cattle, labourers their wages, artificers the price of their workmanship, &c.' The genuine English nobleman and gentleman, he said, were the only persons in the commonwealth who 'had not exercised the gain of living,' but were contented with their old rents. The mischief had been done by 'the farming gentlemen and clerking knights,' the middle classes, the capitalists who had bought land and were making a trade of it.—King Edward's Remains: Discourse on the Reformation of Abuses.

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