II THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 37 



reduction in the number of the noble families, and that their 

 losses, as well as of those of inferior estate, were serious during 

 the Wars of the Roses, and if in some cases this led to the 

 consolidation of estates by intermarriage, in others the land 

 would come into the market. 



It should also be remembered that it was in the reign of 

 Edward IV that the system of strict entails was broken 

 down, while the family settlements of later times had not 

 yet been invented. Hence owners of land were freer to sell 

 than they had been before or were to be again. Nor was 

 there any law, as in parts of Germany, which forbade the 

 burgher or the peasant from buying the lands of nobles. 

 In every way the close of the fifteenth century gave oppor- 

 tunity to the small capitalist to acquire land, and that they 

 did so seems probable from the number of the sturdy yeomen 

 of whom we hear during the Tudor times. Here, however, 

 I must warn my hearers that the term yeomen included 

 those who were tenant farmers and not owners. Thus 

 T. Smith, who wrote in the reign of Elizabeth, tells us 

 ' that yeomen are for the most part farmers for the gentry '. 1 

 Bacon says many yeomen held tenancies for life or years. 

 Latimer's yeoman father had no lands of his own but rented 

 a farm, 2 and we even hear of yeomen who were bondsmen. 



In short, I suspect that it was not so much the small 

 husbandman who bought land as the nouveaux riches of the 

 merchant class. The man of ^palL. capital would .find a 

 greater prospect of investing that capital profitably in manu- 

 facture or in trade. It would be rather the successful 

 merchant or the woolstapler men of the type of Judge Fasten 



1 Sir T. Smith, Commonwealth of England, ed. 1589, Bk. iii, c. 10. 

 He, however, adds 'that by this means they come to such wealth 

 that they are able and do daily buy lands of unthrifty gentlemen and 

 . . . make their sons gentlemen'. 



3 Latimer, Sermons, vii ; cf. Diet. Pol. EC., article Yeomanry ; 

 Bacon, Henry VII, ed. 1819, vol. v. 61. 



