yet it is not peculiar to you only, but common also almost to all nations. Yet France, besides this, is troubled and infected with a much sorer plague. The whole realm is filled and besieged with hired soldiers in peace-time, if that be peace, which be brought in under the same colour and pretence, that hath persuaded you to keep these idle servingmen. For these wise fools and very arch-dolts thought the wealth of the whole country herein to consist, if there were ever in a readiness a strong and a sure garrison, especially of old practised soldiers,-for they put no trust at all in men unexercised. And therefore they must be fain to seek for war, to the end that they may ever have practised soldiers and cunning manslayers; lest that (as it is prettily said of Sallust) their hands and their minds through idleness or lack of exercise should wax dull. But how pernicious and pestilent a thing it is to maintain such beasts, the Frenchmen, by their own harms have learned, and the examples of the Romans, Carthaginians, Syrians and of many other countries, do manifestly declare. For not only the Empire, but also the fields and cities of all these, by divers occasions have been overrun and destroyed of their own armies beforehand had in a readiness. Now how unnecessary a thing this is, hereby it may appear; that the French

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soldiers which from their youth have been practised and used in feats of arms, do not crack or advance themselves to have very often got the upper hand and mastery of your new-made and unpractised soldiers. But in this point I will not use many words, lest perchance I may seem to flatter you. No, nor those same handicraft men of yours in cities, nor yet the rude and uplandish ploughmen of the country, are not supposed to be greatly afraid of your gentlemen's idle serving-men, unless it be such as be not of body or stature correspondent to their strength and courage, or else whose bold stomachs be discouraged through poverty. Thus you may see, that it is not to be feared lest they should be effeminated if they were brought up in good crafts and laboursome works, whereby to get their living, whose stout and sturdy bodies (for gentlemen vouchsafe to corrupt and spoil none but picked and chosen men) now, either by reason of rest and idleness, be brought to weakness, or else by too easy and womanly exercises be made feeble and unable to endure hardness. Truly, howsoever the case standeth, this me thinketh is nothing available to the weal publique, for war sake which you never have but when you will yourselves, to keep and maintain an innumerable flock of that sort of men, that be so troublesome

and noxious in peace; whereof you ought to have a thousand times more regard than of war.

66 6

But yet this is not the only necessary cause of stealing. There is another which as I suppose is proper and peculiar to you Englishmen alone.' 'What is that?' quod the Cardinal. 'Forsooth' (quod I) 'your sheep, that were wont to be so meek and tame, and so small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers, and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy, and devour whole fields houses and cities. For look in what parts of the realm doth grow the finest, and therefore dearest wool, there noblemen and gentlemen, yea and certain abbots, holy men, God wot, not contenting themselves with the yearly revenues and profits that were wont to grow to their forefathers and predecessors of their lands, nor being content that they live in rest and pleasure, nothing profiting, yea, much annoying the weal publique, leave no ground for tillage; they enclose all in pastures; they throw down houses; they pluck down towns; and leave nothing standing but only the church, to make of it a sheep-house. And as though you lost no small quantity of ground by forests, chases, laundes, and parks, those good holy men turn

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59

all dwelling-places and all glebe land into desolation and wilderness.

"Therefore that one covetous and unsatiable cormorant and very plague of his native country may compass about and inclose many thousand acres of ground together within one pale or hedge, the husbandmen be thrust out of their own, or else either by covine and fraud, or by violent oppression, they be put besides it, or by wrongs and injuries they be so wearied that they be compelled to sell all. By one means therefore or by other, either by hook or crook, they must needs depart away, poor silly wretched souls-men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows, woful mothers with their young babes and their whole household small in substance, and much in number, as husbandry requireth many hands: away they trudge I say, out of their known and accustomed houses, finding no places to rest in. All their household-stuff, which is very little worth, though it might well abide the sale, yet being suddenly thrust out, they be constrained to sell it for a thing of naught. And when they have, wandering about, soon spent that, what can they else do but steal, and then justly, God wot, be hanged, or else go about a-begging. And yet then also they be cast in prison as vagabonds,

because they go about and work not; whom no man will set a-work, though they never so willingly offer themselves thereto. For one shepherd or herdman is enough to eat up that ground with cattle, to the occupying whereof about husbandry many hands were requisite.

666 'And this is also the cause that victuals be now

in many places dearer. Yea, besides this the price of wool is so risen that poor folk, which were wont to work it and make cloth of it, be now able to buy none at all. And by this means very many be fain to forsake work, and to give themselves to idleness. For after that so much ground was inclosed for pasture, an infinite multitude of sheep died of the rot, such vengeance God took of their inordinate and insatiable covetousness, sending among the sheep that pestiferous murrain, which much more justly should have fallen on the sheep-masters' own heads. And though the number of sheep increase never so fast, yet the price falleth not one mite, because there be so few sellers. For they be almost all come into a few rich men's hands, whom no need forceth to sell before they lust; and they lust not before they may sell as dear as they lust. Now the same cause bringeth in like dearth of the other kinds of cattle,―yea and that so much the