Page:Landholding in England.djvu/108

 hotbed of misery and crime, a curse from generation to generation.

But it was not the only robbery. Since then another system has been pursued—a system of stealthy and gradual enclosure—stealthy and gradual at first, soon growing bolder, as statutes ceased even to affect any care for the rights of small landowners, and went on to authorise land-robbery, under the name of "improvement." Now that armies were mercenary, the Government had no interest in preserving the rights of the Poor Commons—those who long ago had implored King Edward III. "for God's sake to have regard to what his poor people had done for him since the beginning of his wars."

In 1593 the magistrates of the East Riding of York fixed the wages of artisans and labourers in husbandry: for mowing, 10d. a day; for reaping, 8d.; and the same by the acre, so it is evident that a man could reap or mow an acre a day. Winter wages of ordinary labourers: 5d. in summer and 4d. in winter. The price of wheat that year was 18s. 4d.; of meal, 29s. 4d.; malt, 12s. 3d.—so now the work of a whole year would not give a labourer what he could earn in fifteen weeks in 1495. In the famine year of 1597 the extra allowance for the dearness of food was only 10s. more for wages by the year without food than it was this year of 1593.

Amidst all these oppressive enactments—which made an Englishman a slave for being poor—the country at large perhaps came nearer to the danger of absolute monarchy than even in the days of Henry VIII. Burleigh suggested to the Queen the creation of a new Court, with inquisitorial powers over the whole kingdom; this, he told her, would prove a greater acquisition to the royal treasure than her father derived from the monasteries. He was right—every man could have been fleeced at the Sovereign's will. Fortunately, the proposal came to nothing.