time: the refreshing river 



think of these men in connection with their importance in the history 

 of theology or philosophy, or with regard to the literary beauty they 

 created, we forget that there was a significant economic aspect to 

 their existence. This may be summarised by saying that they were the 

 representatives of the old conceptions of social justice in economic 

 affairs, and were opposed to the new aims of capitalist freedom 

 in commerce. 



William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, usually appears in 

 history as the instrument of monarchical oppression, and not as the 

 champion of popular agrarian rights. Yet there is no doubt that among 

 the economic causes of the civil war and of Laud's own fall was the 

 opposition which he aroused among landowners by his agrarian 

 policy.^ The problem of enclosures was by no means new in English 

 economic life in the days of the Stuarts; it runs, indeed, like a con- 

 necting thread through all the economic life of the country from the 

 early Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.^ Pasture was more of a 

 business proposition than tillage; it was capitalist in its methods, 

 and offered a better chance of big profits. It was the basis of the great 

 late mediaeval wool trade. But the social obligations of the feudal 

 landowner were forgotten; the peasant became a landless and insecure 

 wage-worker, and the land came to be looked upon solely as a source 

 of profit. 



To whom were the peasants to turn for redress.^ Not to the justices 

 of the peace, for these were of the landowning class; not to Parliament, 

 where the same interests reigned. They most commonly appealed to 

 the King's Ministers, the Privy Council, and the Church. Laud strove 

 by every means in his power to prevent such enclosures as depopulated 

 the countryside, and, by heading the Commission on Depopulation, 

 infuriated the capitalist landowners whose interests were aligning 

 them with the industrial capitalists of the towns. Laud had no respect 

 for persons, and would allow no man, however powerful, to transgress 

 what he called the common law of Christ, binding upon man as 

 man. Peter Heylyn, his chaplain and biographer,^ seems to have 

 thought that Laud could have kept his place and saved his life if he 



^ See Cole, G. D. H., Church Socialist, 1915; Hancock, T., The Pulpit and the PresSy 

 and other Sermons preached at St. Nicholas Cole Abbey (Brown & Langham, London, 

 1904); Sykes, N., The Way, 1941,3, 18; Schlatter, R. B., The Social Ideas of Religious 

 Leaders, 1660-1688 (Oxford, 1940). 



^ Cf. the passage on it in Thomas More's Utopia. 



^ Heylyn, P., Cyprianus Anglicus; or the History of the Life and Death of William, 

 Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1668). 



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