A.D. 1547. STATE OF THE NATION. 215 century did not materially differ from that of the fifteenth. The nobles were still called upon, each to bring his quota of armed men into the field, when the king demanded their services. The Venetian ambassador, Micheli, conjectured that, in the time of Mary, twenty-five thousand troops could be raised, all provided with cuirasses and polished arms. But in all cases of apprehended danger, or for foreign service, the muster-roll was taken in every county, and in every city. England then possessed an armed population. Archery was the national sport; and all other games were forbidden by statute. The harquebuss came very slowly into use. То discharge the original hand-gun the match was held in the hand. The harquebuss had a trigger conveying the match to the priming. The musket was an improved harquebuss. Somerset had his musqueteers; but they were foreigners. The household expenditure of the second Tudor sovereign was upon a larger scale than that of any of his predecessors. Micheli says, 'The expense of the court in the mere article of living, that is, of eating and drinking, and of what solely relates to the table, amounts to from fiftyfour to fifty-six thousand pounds sterling a-year." He is speaking of the time of Queen Mary, and says that not the fourth part was then expended as in the time of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. Henry had absorbed the revenues of the idle and luxurious monks, which he had promised to apply to great public uses. He was richer than any king of England before his time. His ordinary income-derived from resources which Henry constantly asserted were his private possessions, but which the parliament as constantly took care should be applied as far as possible to public uses,amounted to about 150,000l. per annum. The seizure of church property was held to have doubled this permanent income. Wriothesley, the chancellor, writes to the council in 1545, "You see the king's majesty hath, this year and the last year, spent 1,300,000l. or thereabouts; and his subsidy and benevolence ministering scant 300,0007. thereof, I muse sometime, where the rest, being so great a sum, hath been gotten." "Having regard to the altered value of money, caused partly by the influx of silver into Europe, and partly by the debasement of the coin, we can scarcely reckon this three hundred thousand pounds at more than three millions. Yet that is a large revenue from taxation during two years. And, compared with other countries, England was always a lightly-taxed nation. The amount produced by a subsidy will scarcely enable us to form any estimate of the available capital of the country, for Latimer tells us that a fraudulent return of property was a customary sin. The rate of subsidy in the time of Henry VIII. shows at how low an estimate the government fixed the power of the saving classes to contribute. We meet with constant complaints of the decrease of population in the middle of the sixteenth century. These are founded upon the most extravagant estimates of the number of the more ancient inhabitants; and an equally blind confidence in an alleged decrease. In the Injunctions of Cromwell to the Clergy, a Register was directed to be kept by every clergyman, of the weddings, christenings, and burials in his parish during every week. This injunction * State Papers, vol. i., p. 831. was evidently neglected; for, in the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth, the injunction was repeated. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the population was estimated, upon very uncertain data, at four millions. Harrison records that, in the muster of able men for service in 1574 and 1575, the number amounted to 1,172,674.* Taking the able men as a fourth of the entire population, we have a total of upwards of four millions and a half. With the unquestionable evidence that the industry of England had been rapidly advancing in productiveness from the beginning of the sixteenth century, there is nothing more startling than the systematic averment of the decay of towns. This is, in a measure, accounted for by the fact that the corporate privileges had become as oppressive as the old feudal services. Those who had saved money as artificers or dealers, came to share the advantages which they saw were derived from the judicious occupation of land. There were some of the richest soils in the kingdom ready for occupation. They fixed themselves in the country with their flocks. A home-manufacture grew up around the grazier's domain; and Acts of parliament were passed, but passed in vain, to confine the clothing industries to their old seats, or to make the smaller places dependent upon those seats. Amongst the ancient decayed places, the towns of the Cinque Ports are enumerated in the statute of 1541-2. Of the coast towns, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Poole, Lyme, Southampton, Yarmouth, are also mentioned. It seems clear that the decay of these ports had been produced by the neglect of the fisheries; and, in some degree, by the monopoly of foreign commerce by a great company of merchants in London. The wealth of individual traders in London was the amazement of foreigners. Commerce was putting out its long arms in large wholesale dealings. Those energies of Englishmen, which have made them the great discoverers and colonisers of distant regions, were now struggling into activity. Sebastian Cabot was pensioned by the government of Edward VI. In 1553, sir Hugh Willoughby perished on the coast of Nova Zembla, in the attempt to discover a north-east passage to China. Richard Chancellor, who commanded one of the vessels in Willoughby's expedition, made the harbour where Archangel was afterwards built, and negotiated with the Russian czar, the ferocious Ivan, at Moscow. Anthony Jenkinson, at the same period, obtained a licence from Sultan Selim to trade with the Ottomans. But the great expansion of English commerce belongs to the reign of Elizabeth. The trade of London at this period appears to have been principally with ports of Flanders, Denmark, the south of France, Portugal, and Spain. Much of the interchange of the country was transacted, as in earlier times, at fairs and markets. At the corn-markets, the great complaint was of the inequality of the measures. Laws there were for one standard; but the laws were disregarded. The laws which limited the infamous system of purveyance were also held in contempt by the hosts of oppressors, who came into every market with the plea that they required provisions for the king's use. The great fairs were Sturbridge, Bristol, Description of England," book ii., c. 16. A.D. 1547. INSECURITY OF LIFE AND PROPERTY. 217 Bartholomew (in London), and Lynton. But there were fairs throughout the land. The constant resort to markets and fairs made the inns flourish, especially on the great high roads. In these inns, it was believed that, although the host was honest, the tapsters and chamberlains had a private understanding with thieves. The robber on the highway was the terror of the solitary traveller; and he was glad to ride in company, however doubtful of the stranger who rode by his side. During the latter years of Henry VIII., the army of robbers and cheats seems to have acquired something of a professional organisation. Edward VI. writes, "For idle persons, there were never, I think, more than be now." A revolution was taking place in the distribution of property, which, though ultimately productive of incalculable benefit, was the cause of enormous misery, for a season, to the humblest classes of society. The capital of the country sought employment in an extension of cultivation; and the extension came through the system of Inclosures. The process of inclosure of waste lands, and division of large feudal property, had been going on throughout the kingdom, from the time of Henry VII.; but the system proceeded much more rapidly and universally after the dissolution of the monasteries. When the tenure of these great properties was wholly changed; when the monastic domains fell into the hands of those who only sought to obtain the best rents; there was a disturbance of the labouring population, of which we have ample evidence in the undoubted increase of pauperism and vagabondage. The effects became still more alarming when the growing system of inclosures dispossessed the irregular labourer of his hovel and his patch of waste, and converted him into a vagabond and a thief. During the hundred and forty-seven years which had elapsed from the seventh year of Richard II. (1384), to the twenty-second year of Henry VIII. (1531), vagabonds were put in the stocks. Then the whip was added to the stocks. In 1536, mutilation and death were added to the whip. In 1547, "An Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds" was passed. By the provisions of this statute, unwilling labourers were condemned to a condition of slavery. The Act was repealed in little more than two years after its enactment. In 1549 the people of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Dorset, Norfolk, and other counties, were in rebellion. The legislature then went back to the comparatively mild provisions of the Act of 1532; passing over the heavier inflictions contemplated by that of 1536. As wealth extends, and the commercial relations of society are more complicated, fraudulent offences gradually become more common than the violent assaults upon property which belong to an earlier period. We can trace this principle in the statute-book of Henry VIII. The deceits of manufacturers are again and again attempted to be prevented by special enactments. But the government which made these enactments was itself guilty of a fraud which disturbed to a fearful extent all the ordinary relations of supply and demand. The abominable process of debasing the coin for the relief of the king's necessities had been going on for a long period. Henry VIII. carried it to a disgraceful excess; and the first years of the reign of Edward VI. saw the alloy increased to a still greater proportion. Edward's council at last found that they were going too fast, and tried to retrace their steps, by what was termed "calling down the money." But this was useless. The government could not remedy the artificial high price of home produce till they became honest. The excessive rise of prices, and the consequent sufferings of the people were attributed to inclosures, to the increase of pasture, to higher rents;-few saw the inevitable effects of the debasements of the coin. The complaint, so often repeated, that pasture was driving out tillage, does not seem to be sustained by the fact that the emperor Charles V., in August, 1542, writes to Henry VIII. to request that he would permit corn from England to be exported to Spain, where the crop had failed through the dryness of the season." The produce generally, whether of corn or cattle, was, we may believe, in spite of many complaints, comparatively abundant. The word Dearth which we so often meet with, must be accepted in its sense of dearness, rather than of scarcity. * The religious teaching of the people was now in the hands of the secular clergy—bishops, vicars, and curates. The bishops had all outwardly conformed to the great change in the condition of the Church. The parsons, or holders of benefices, and their curates, were, in many respects, in a happier condition than before this change. One circumstance which more truly developed the most beautiful points in the character of the "poor parson," was that he became a husband and a father. But in the state of transition from the Latin mass-book to the English Common Prayer, there must necessarily have often been the most violent dissensions amongst the clergy and their congregations. In June, 1544, there was a king's letter to the archbishop of Canterbury, respecting the service used in "processions." This letter was accompanied by some prayers, which "may perhaps be regarded as the original of the Book of Common Prayer."+ The priests held their benefices under the ancient tenure of Frankalmoigne, or of Free Alms; by which they were bound to pray for the soul of their grantor. The clergy who went along with the principles of the Reformation would naturally hold such prayers contrary to their doctrines. After the Reformation was established, it was maintained that the tenure by which the parochial clergy and ecclesiastical foundations held in Frankal moigne remained undisturbed. The education of the young was the business of the Church under the ancient ecclesiastical system of England. Many grammar-schools were founded in the reign of Henry VIII. Pious men and women made bequests for the aid of schools and exhibitions. The foundation schools of Edward VI. were a small contribution to public uses out of a large spoil. But still, after the monastic institutions were broken up, the preacher evermore cried out, "Truly it is a pitiful thing to see schools so neglected, scholars not maintained. . . . . Schools are not maintained, scholars have not exhibition." In the middle of the sixteenth century the art of Printing had given an impulse to all education. Oxford and Cambridge had made great advances in philological studies. The higher schools, and the universities, were mostly filled by the sons of yeomen State Papers, vol. ix., p. 125. "Ecclesiastical Documents," Camden Society, p. 91. Latimer. A.D. 1547. GRADUAL AMELIORATION OF SOCIETY. 219 and traders-themselves very often of "gentle lineage." The means of most scholars were very scanty. Some did not scruple to solicit alms, after the fashion of the mendicant friars. In the statute for the advancement of true religion, we have a glimpse of what was the popular reading which the government tolerated. "Chronicles, Canterbury tales, Chaucer's books, Gower's books, and Stories of men's lives, shall not be comprehended in the prohibition of this Act." This statute recognises another, and perhaps the most important branch of popular intellectual amusement-songs, plays, and interludes. The "Coventry Mysteries," and the "Chester Plays," were lawful exhibitions. Before the suppression of the monasteries these miracle plays were performed in churches, and the priests were in many cases the performers. They were now represented upon moveable stages in inn-yards-upon the village-green, and in the city market-place. The secular drama was still in the weakest condition of its rickety infancy. Bear-baiting was the passion of the multitude of this period. The people clung inveterately to the old holidays, which was a serious grief to the earnest reformers, till they began to see the wisdom of not being severe upon the popular amusements, and ceased to associate them with the corruptions of the Romish Church. During the reign of Henry VIII., the most beneficial application of Science to the welfare of man, the knowledge of Medicine and Surgery, made extraordinary advances. The College of Physicians was founded in 1518, and their corporation was confirmed by a statute of 1523. The Surgeons at this time separated themselves from the Barber-Surgeons, who were a company incorporated by Edward IV. The Surgeons of London went on in their exclusively scientific pursuits without being incorporated. The BarberSurgeons shaved, and drew teeth, and bled, and attempted cures, under their corporate privileges. In 1540 the two bodies were united by statute, as the Company of Barbers and Surgeons. But their vocations were to be separate. The tastes of the general population of England were not carried forward, as in Italy, by a familiarity with the highest works in sculpture and painting. Henry VIII. had his favourite painter in a foreigner of eminent merit, Holbein. But this master, in many essentials so admirable, produced few works which could have raised our national taste. There were skilled artificers in London and the principal towns. These were chiefly connected with the arts of building and of clothing. Elaborately carved fronts still attest the ingenuity of the joiner. The Paving Acts for the metropolis in the time of Henry VIII. indicate something of the vigilant superintendence of the general government; but they also show the chief cause of local neglect. The lighting of London and its suburbs was indifferently provided for. The steeple of Bow Church, erected in 1512, had lanterns. The Mayor commanded, a century earlier, that lanterns and lights should be suspended in front of the houses on winter evenings. The principle of equal assessment for public objects was not then understood. There was no system of co-operation. The first large attempt to organise labour for public improvements is to be found in the Statute of Sewers of 1427, under which commissioners were appointed, by whose authority all damages caused by breaches of the sea were |