CHAPTER III. 



ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN ENGLAND, DURING 

 THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 



WHEN the opulence of any country is increasing, and all 

 classes share in the improvement which is being effected, 

 differences which have hitherto marked town and country, 

 different parts of the same country district, and different towns 

 are modified in a greater or less degree. Thus, for example, in 

 the account which I was able to give in my first volume, p. 1 10, 

 from the Rolls of Parliament, of the distribution of a wool 

 tax, levied exceptionally for the furtherance of Edward's claim 

 to the throne of France, I was able to point out that in the 

 thirty-seven 1 counties which were made liable to the tax 

 Norfolk was the richest, and Lancashire the poorest. Speaking 

 generally, I infer that the assessment was intended to be 

 equitable, and that it probably was. But as the wealth of the 

 more backward counties progressed, the improvement which 

 they made in any general assessment of the same character 

 operates on such an assessment in two ways. It increases the 

 proportion which they contribute, and diminishes that which 

 districts more markedly opulent before were called upon to 

 furnish. Thus, if the proportion which in another and later 

 assessment Norfolk pays is lessened, it does not follow that 

 this county has fallen behind, it merely proves that some other 

 district or town has progressed more rapidly. Now that the 

 county of Norfolk was, relatively speaking, very wealthy in the 



1 In both tables twenty-nine is an obvious erratum for thirty-seven. 



