76 OTHER TENDENCIES OF SIXTEENTH 







encroach daily many farms more than they can occupy with 

 tilth for corn. In 1535, Cromwell contemplated an Act 

 against merchants purchasing land to a greater value than 

 40 by the year, 1 and the contemporary literature is loud 

 in the denunciation of this class of buyers. ' Look/ says 

 Lever (1550), ' at the merchants of London, and ye shall 

 see, when by their honest vocation God hath endowed them 

 with great riches, then can they not be content but their 

 riches must be abrode in the country, to bie fermes out 

 the hands of worshipful gentlemen, honeste yeomen, and 

 poor laborynge husbands/ 2 And this sermon denounces 

 those called of God to be merchants, lawyers, and courtiers, 

 who are ready at the beck of their father, the devil, to 

 prowl for, seek, and purchase farms. 3 In the presence of 

 such harpies, the poor landowner, if he were not ousted from 

 or cheated out of his property, was always tempted to sell, 

 and many no doubt did so. 



But it was not only the poor that sold. Dr. Stubbs has 

 given it as his opinion that ' when personal extravagance 

 is the rule at court, the noble class and the gentry in its 

 wake gradually lose their hold on the land, great estates 

 are broken up, the rich merchant takes the place of the 



1 State Papers Dom., Henry VIII, ix. 725. 11. 



3 Sermons, Arber's Reprints, p. 29. 



3 Cf. also Crowley, Last Trumpet, 1550 : 



' So soon as they (merchants) have aught to spare 

 To purchase land is all their care 

 And all the study of their brain. 

 There can be none unthrifty here 

 Whom they will not smell out anon 

 And handle him with words full fayre 

 Till all his lands be from him gone.' 



Early English Text Soc. 



W. S., The Commonweal, ed. Lamond, p. 39 ; Brynkelow, Complaint, 

 Early English Text Soc., p. 9 ; Supplication, Early English Text Soc., 

 pp. 26, 30, 40, 48; Cheyne, Social Changes, pp. 54, 102. For specula- 

 tion in land, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xix. 114 ; Victoria County 

 Hist. : Lincolnshire, p. 326. 



