Feather beds replaced the straw and chaff mattresses; there was more abundant linen, bed-covers, and better clothing. Coal was beginning to make the scarcity of wood less felt.
The vast increase of foreign trade and of manufactures which we have noticed, must have proved the most effectual means, far more than enactments, for encouraging tillage, from the augmented demand of provisions and luxuries; and the same causes would provide employment and good wages for increased numbers. The land as well as every other thing in the kingdom was in a transition state, and as the vast estates of nobles and the Church, now divided amongst a multitude, came to be settled and cultivated, the diffusion of life and prosperity through the rural districts was no doubt proportional. At this time there must have been a great flow of population from the agricultural to the manufacturing districts, as the latter were making increased demands on the strength of the nation; yet it appears that the produce both of the tilled ground and of pasturage was steadily increasing. The small cottagers, who had probably been but poor farmers, being now gradually absorbed into the growing artisan population, gave place to greater and wealthier men, who laid out the ground in large grazing farms. This gave rise to the false impression that the population was decreasing, and the statistics of the period give frequent evidence of the alarm thus occasioned. Harrison, in his "Description of England," says:—"It is an easy matter to prove that England was never less furnished with people than at this present; for if the old records of every manor be sought, and search made to find what tenements are fallen, either down or into the lords' hands, or bought and united together by other men, it will soon appear that in some one manor seventeen, eighteen, or twenty houses are shrunk. I know what I say by mine own experience, notwithstanding that some one cottage be here and there erected of late which is to little purpose. Of cities and towns either utterly decayed, or more than a quarter or half diminished, though some one be a little increased here and there—of towns pulled down for sheep-walks and no more but the lordships now standing in them, beside those that William Rufus pulled down—I could say somewhat." Our evidence, however, for the increase of the population
Sections showing the Increase of London since the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII.
Outline Plan, showing the extent of London in the reigns of King Henry VIII. and Queen Victoria.
