labourers, artisans, or domestics. Agricultural labourers were not to eat or drink "excessively," or wear any cloth except "blanket and russet wool of twelvepence." The domestic servants were to have only one meal a day of meat or fish, the other meals being made out with "milk, butter, cheese, and other such victuals." These statutes thus indirectly give, like the later sumptuary laws, the best possible evidence of the well-being of the labourers of all kinds, at the same time that they prove the natural disposition of employers. The laws failed of effect. It is true that Brentano argues that the Statute of Labourers was passed in the interest of the whole country, and to prevent a small number of wage-earners from holding their neighbours by the throat and forcing them to pay more than was reasonable for absolutely necessary assistance after such a terrible Scourge as the Black Death. But this contention falls to the ground in view of the later enactments, and the attempt to lower the scale of customary diet.

Again in 1388 another statute was passed (12 Rich. II. cap. 4) to regulate wages on a low scale, and sixty years later the scale was raised. But all these laws, as the recorded payments of the period show, remained a dead letter. The emancipated bondmen, however, who flocked to the towns after slavery had become opposed to public feeling and contrary to the teachings of the Churchand there can be no doubt that Wat Tyler's rising contributed largely to bring about its complete abolition-formed economically the ancestors of our present working classes; but the conditions were such that they could still hold their own against their employers, these laws notwithstanding; for here, as at later times, we find that laws by themselves cannot make head against the stream of social development.

The wealth of the people at large prevented the immediate establishment of a capitalist class, though the germs of such a class were already prepared. Up to the beginning of the sixteenth century it may therefore be taken as established, that in spite of the hostile action of Parliament, economical causes beyond the control of the legislature kept the labourers in an independent position, although the contrary intention of the statutes is manifest.

silk, only the super

The East of England was at this time by far the most flourishing part of the country, and Norwich was, next to London, the most important town. Trade was rapidly growing, but the principal country business was done at fairs held at intervals. The chief exports were wool, hides, and grain, for which wine, oil, spices, and manufactured goods of certain kinds were received in exchange. The wealthy cities of Flanders were the regular customers of England, whilst the ships of the great Mediterranean mercantile republics often found their way to our ports. Each country, however, worked up its own raw material principally, England its own wool, France its own fluity being exchanged or exported. facture also was carried on in a very small way, the simple machines being adapted only to individual work. Much was done by the farmers' wives themselves. In short, the special feature of the whole period was that freedom having been established, the means of production and exchange were alike at the disposal of the individual. They were small, imperfect, and, in a certain sense, contemptible, and the difficulty of communication kept exchange even of superfluities within limits: but as a result a wage-earner for a day was not necessarily a wage-earner for life; production was carried on for use and not primarily for exchange or for

Most of the manu

profit; land was regarded as the means for raising food and stock, not as a capital to return so much rent or profit for money invested; and no one looked to international or even national markets as the great field for the disposal of his produce. Freedom of contract between employer and employed was then really possible to a great extent. But it was a period of small things in all respects, a period when in matters of business the individual counted for much when relations between landowner and tenant, between mastercraftsman and journeyman, between farmer and hind, were personal and not purely commercial, when rent was paid not as a result of bitter competition but in return for personal service on both sides, when tithes to the Church meant also payment for clerical aid and provision for the poor.

It was from this period that the sturdy character of Englishmen as a nation was developed, and the nature of the society was such as to encourage the growth of the finest qualities of self-reliance and independence among men. All the ideas of the mass of the people were different from those of our time, and many restrictions which seem to us harmful and injurious, as the stringent usury laws and the attempts to prevent free barter and sale, were meant to check the efforts of one portion of the community to get the better of the other. Granting that much existed that to us seems horribly rude, cruel, and disgusting, admitting that our ancestors suffered from plagues of a more deadly character than any known in modern times, the fact still remains that the common working Englishman of the fifteenth century fared better and was in every respect a more independent vigorous man than his descendant of any later age.

CHAPTER II.

THE IRON AGE.

THERE are few modern historians who do not speak of the sixteenth century as perhaps the most splendid period in the annals of our country. The Glorious Reformation, as Henry VIII's strange ecclesiastical revolution is still called, the discovery of America, the grim rule of Philip and Mary, when Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were burnt at the stake, the long reign of good Queen Bess, with its defeat of the famous Spanish Armada, the wide extension of English piracy and commerce, and the formation of the noble literature which reached its highest embodiment in Shakspeare such are the chief events of an epoch which has so often been spoken of as one of true greatness, dignity, and glory. It was indeed a stirring time. A new world was being discovered in art and in science in Europe, as well as in actual existence on the other side of the Atlantic. Statesmen and thinkers, churchmen and courtiers, soldiers and navigators, poets and dramatists sweep past us in magnificent array. All is full of life and colour. Few groups stand out in bolder relief on the records of the past than

the

great men who gathered around the throne of the Tudors. Never before had so great an impulse been given to human enterprise and human imagination; never in England have nobler minds been ready to embrace great opportunities. From the point of view of the dominant class of our day

nothing can be finer than the survey; the rise of the middle class is surrounded with a splendour which conceals from most observers the growth of misery among the people. Yet from the early years of the sixteenth century until the accession of James I., the lot of the great mass of working Englishmen, which was so flourishing and SO wholesome, became miserable in the extreme, and the labourers of England, in the widest sense of the word, were reduced to destitution-plunged from the age of gold into the age of iron. The increase of wealth consequent upon the opening of foreign markets and the improvement in home agriculture, did but create a needy and desperate class in town and country alike.

The rate of wages for various kinds of labour was stationary during the whole of the fifteenth and the earlier portion of the sixteenth century, nor does it appear that the purchasing power of such wages was greatly reduced. Nevertheless, with the close of the Wars of the Roses a change took place which led to much of the general distress and vagabondage that followed after. I have already spoken of the great increase in the numbers of the personal retainers of the barons during the troubled times which ended with the accession of Henry VII. The number of personal retainers ready to fight under his banner or to follow him to court became, indeed, the measure of a noble's importance and power, and the bailiff or steward, who then managed the estates in the same way as the agent of an absentee's Irish property, had to strain all his lord's re

* The French word bourgeoisie has now been adopted in almost all languages as most clearly conveying the meaning I wish to express. The reign of the bourgeoisie includes the domination of town over country, the supremacy of the trading class, and the capitalist form of production as the main social forces.