DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 8 1 



the fifteenth, Surrey from the fourteenth to the twenty-third, 

 Sussex from the sixteenth to the twenty-fourth, Northumber- 

 land from the twenty-ninth to the thirty-sixth. But on the 

 other hand, Warwick has risen from the eighteenth to the 

 ninth, Lincoln from the twentieth to the thirteenth, Somerset 

 from the twenty-second to the fifteenth (including Bristol). 

 There is no other very important change. 



I make no doubt that the alteration in the relative opulence 

 in these counties, certain* political events being taken into 

 consideration, general and particular perhaps the Kentish dis- 

 turbances, for example, under Cade, as an explanation of the 

 comparative decline of Kentish wealth was due to the gradual 

 extension of manufactures, especially those of woollen fabrics. 

 I shall not anticipate the details, which I purpose giving 

 when I am dealing with the price of clothing, discoverable in 

 a variety of documents. It is sufficient to say that the Rolls 

 of Parliament and the earlier pages of the statute book are 

 full of regulations as to the quality and measure of woollen 

 goods; that the king and his council readily respond to the 

 numerous invitations that English industry should be pro- 

 tected by penal statutes and penal duties against the blight- 

 ing effects of foreign enterprise, and the beggarly labour of 

 foreign countries ; that every effort is made to sell and get 

 the largest possible amount of the precious metals, and that 

 wherever manufacturing industry could be developed, subject 

 to the ever urgent regulations on behalf of cheap agricultural 

 labour, the state did much that was superfluous, though to 

 do the authorities justice, they always strove to keep up the 

 character of English manufactures, as well as to secure the 

 manufacturer's profits, and, as far as they had intelligence on 

 such matters, to promote English wealth. 



I now turn to another, and perhaps a more characteristic 

 estimate of the distribution of English wealth. The civil war 

 of succession was over, every pretender had been put out of 

 the way, or had been rendered powerless. The Scotch king 

 had married Henry's eldest daughter, his son Arthur was 



VOL. IV. G 



