Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/524

504 will, their younger children would be left portionless.

Small grievances are readily magnified in seasons of general disruption. A wicked spirit in the person of Cromwell was said to rule the King, and everything which he did was evil, and every evil of the commonwealth was due to his malignant influence.

The discontent of the noblemen and gentlemen would in itself have been formidable. Their armed retinues were considerable. The constitutional power of the counties was in their hands. But the commons, again, had their own grounds of complaint, for the most part just, though arising from causes over which the Government had no control, from social changes deeper than the Reformation itself. In early times each petty district in England had been self-supporting, raising its own corn, feeding its own cattle, producing by women's hands in the cottages and farmhouses its own manufactures. There were few or no large roads, no canals, small means of transport of any kind, and from this condition of things had arisen the laws which we call