Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/499

I579-] THE ALENCON MARRIAGE. 479 thriving, manufactures were spreading, country gentle- men, in the contemplation of their improved rent rolls, were indulging in ' bravery of building/ raising ' fair houses ' on the sites of grange and monastery. The complaints of the past generation were no longer heard. The looms of Flanders no longer devoured the English wool or turned the farmsteads of Hampshire into sheep- walks. The exiled Flemings had brought their arts with them across the Channel, England in moderation wove its own fleece, and the plough passed again over the old fallows. The uncertainty of the succession kept up a chronic fever, which inflamed, and was in turn inflamed by, the divisions of religion. 1 But such large questions affected principally the great families, and the yeomen and peasants were living in a golden age. The war of classes, the struggle between rich and poor, had ended. The quiet and good order however was limited to the land. The pirates and smugglers, who had been checked for a time, had sprung into renewed vitality. The iniquities of the Inquisition formed a plea on one side for retaliation upon the Spaniards ; the Catholics on the other had their privateer fleet in the service of Don John. But the marauders of both sorts who took possession of the Channel, made little difference between 1 Walsingham believed that at this time the establishment of the succession in a Protestant would ex- tinguish the extreme Catholic party altogether ; ' the most part of the Papists of this realm being rather of State than conscience, in respect ot the hope they have of the succes- sion.' Notes on the State of Eng- land, 1579 : MSS. Domestic, Wal- singham' s hand.