Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/530

510 the crew escaped with their lives, and begged for help to save the cargo, but the famished peasants, without other care, plunged upon the corn-sacks. The people, it was said, 'did increase and grow too much disobedient, robbing, killing, hunting, without any fear, for lack of execution of the laws.' The ancient yeomanry were perishing under the new land system; the labourers, chafing on the edge of insurrection, starved, or lived by lawlessness.

The disorganization had penetrated among the traders and manufacturers. English cloth, like English coin, had, until these baneful years, borne the palm in the markets of the world. The Genoese and the Venetian shipowners took in cargoes of English woollens, in the Thames, for the East. English woollens were the staple with which the Portuguese sailed to Barbary and the Canaries, to the Indies, to Brazil and Peru. The German on the Rhine, the Magyar on the Danube, were clothed in English fustian. So it had been once—so it seemed it was to cease to be. The haste for riches, well-gotten or ill-gotten, was become stronger than honour, patriotism, or probity. The guilds were powerless when the officers of the guilds were corrupt. And now came from Antwerp the news that huge bales of English goods were lying unsold upon the wharves, 'through