Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/68

54 to lie in pasturage, where a few people could oversee their cattle and flocks. This was probably the origin of that general enclosure of lands into fields which prevails more in England than in any other country. There were not wanting people at the time who cried out mightily against these enclosures as an evidence that the aristocracy were determined to drive out the people and live in a stately solitude. John Rous, the Warwick chronicler, was one of the most vehement of these declaimers. The greater part of his history abounds with the fiercest denunciations of them, as depopulators, destroyers, pillagers, robbers, tyrants, basilisks, enemies to God and man; and he assures them that they will all go to the devil when they die. But the original cause was, no doubt, the want of a population, not a desire to drive one away; yet, when the fashion set in, it was carried to such a pitch that Henry VII. was obliged, in the fourth year of his reign, to interfere by statute to put some restraint upon it. The price of wheat was, in consequence of this decrease of tillage, often enormous, seldom under 4s. or 4s. 6d. a quarter, equal to 40s. or 45s. of our money; and in 1437 and 1438 it rose to £1 6s. 8d., equal to £13 6s. 8d. at present. This, again, produced such an importation from the Continent, that corn laws were adopted in 1463, and all importation was prohibited when wheat was below 6s. 8d. a quarter, rye 4s., and barley 3s., bearing a curious relation to the scale of the modern corn laws: the original corn law of our time prohibiting importation when wheat was under 80s., and Sir Robert Peel's sliding scale commencing at 62s., and running up to 73s.—the 6s. Sd. of Edward IV.'s time being equal to nearly 70s. of ours. In Scotland, agriculture, from the same causes, was equally low in condition, and all landowners were by law compelled to sow a certain quantity of grain of different kinds, under a penalty of 10s., equal to £5 now; and every labourer was expected to dig a square of seven feet every day, or contribute half an ox to drawing the plough.



As pastures were enclosed, greater attention was paid to the breeding of cattle and sheep, but the sowing of grasses and the manuring of the land were yet unknown. Henry VI. brought over John de Scheidame and sixty men from Holland, to instruct his subjects in the manufacture of salt, and having failed to procure supplies of the precious metal by alchemy, the same monarch brought over from Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary, upwards of thirty skilful miners to work the royal mines, and to instruct his subjects in this art.

The castles erected during this period are few. The wars of the Roses brought the force of cannon and gun-powder against the massive old erections of the barons of past ages, and many a terrible stronghold was demolished. But there was, from the commencement of these wars, little leisure for rebuilding, or for building new ones. The proprietors, for the most part, were killed or reduced to ruin, and the workmen shared the same fate, so that labour became too scarce and dear for such great undertakings. Scotland was affected by similar circumstances.



The castles of this period bear unmistakable traces of the perpendicular style, which was prevalent in the ecclesiastical architecture of the age. Windsor, that portion of it built by William of Wykeham, though much altered, retains some marked and good features of this age. The exterior of Tattershall Castle, in Lincolnshire, remains nearly unaltered. All the castles of this time blend more or less of the domestic character, and tending towards that style which prevailed in the next century under the name of Tudor. Another great change in the castellated architecture of this period was the use of brick in their construction. Bricks, though introduced into Britain by the Romans, had gone almost out of use till the reign of Richard II.; now they were in such favour that the castles of Tattershall, Hurstmonceaux, and Caistor were built chiefly of them, as Thornbury Castle was in the next century. Hurstmonceaux, in Sussex, was erected