INTRODUCTORY. 7 



practice of subinfeudation was indirectly matter of that policy 

 which relieved England from feudal wars, though dictated 

 perhaps in the first instance by a protective impulse. The 

 discussion, however, of these legal novelties lies within the 

 province of the jurist, rather than in that of the economist- 

 and the more so, since the operation of either law must have 

 been slow, and the social changes gradual. 



Towards the close of the thirteenth century, sheep were, 

 for the first time, affected by a new disease, which has been 

 handed down to our own times, under the name of scab. 

 The specific for this complaint, so serious to the landowner, 

 was in the first place verdigris, copperas, and quicksilver, but 

 in the last few years of the same century tar-dressing was 

 adopted, and has been, I believe, uninterruptedly employed 

 from that to the present time. 



The political convulsions and intrigues which occurred y 

 during the reign of Edward's son were accompanied by severe 

 privations, consequent on a series of unproductive harvests. 

 Never perhaps in the whole period before us were the suffer- 

 ings of the English peasantry greater. Besides the misery of 

 the famines, they had to suffer the insolence and rapacity of 

 Edward's favourites, and especially of the younger Spenser; 

 the extravagance of the court, whose expenditure was, for 

 the times, enormous, and the scandalous condition in which 

 the country was placed by the feebleness and indecision of 

 the king. During the last years, however, of Edward's reign 

 some of these evils were alleviated. 



The earlier years of Edward the Third's reign were, on the 

 whole, economically speaking, prosperous. The harvests were, - 

 on an average, abundant, and though the country was em- 

 barked in a foolish and wasting war with France, the neces- 

 sities of the situation brought about intimate commercial 

 intercourse with the great Flemish manufactories, and ulti- 

 mately led to the developement of much industrial prosperity 

 in Norfolk, and some other eastern counties. It is possible 

 that the war in which Edward embarked might have ter- 



