Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/29

J 5 6o.j THE ENGLISH A 7' HA VRE. 9 pounds, thirteen shillings, and ninepence (14,079^ 33*. yd.) L Thus was this great matter ended, not as it has been represented by means of two hundred thousand crowns raised by Gresham in Flanders. The two hundred thousand crowns indisputably were raised there, but it was to buy saltpetre, and corselets, and. harquebusses ; and the reform of the coin cost nothing beyond the thought expended on it. But the country was sick of other disorders less easy to heal. The silent change in the relations of rich and poor, the eviction of small tenants, the erection of a new race of men on the ruins of the abbeys, whose eyes were more on earth than heaven, the universal restless- ness of mind, and the uprooting of old thought on all subjects divine or human, had confused the ancient social constitution of the English nation. Customs and opinions had vanished, and laws based upon them had become useless or mischievous. The under-roll of the peasant insurrection was still perceptible in the wealo ness of the Government and the anarchy of the country population. The petty copyholders dispossessed of their tenures had contracted vagrant habits ; the roads were patrolled by highwaymen who took purses in broad daylight in the streets of London itself; and against these symp- 1 ' Chances of refining the base money received into the Mint since 1V1 ichaolmas 1560 until Michaelmas 1561, and of the charges of the workmanship on coining to fine money thereof made ; with a note of the provisions and other charges in- cident to the same, the r aste of melting and blemishing being Dome,* Lanstfowhe 3I/SS. 4.