96 ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN ENGLAND, 



of these only is occupied with corn in winter, the other five 

 can be used till the time of Lent corn comes, and then he 

 has his fallow field, his hay field, and his pasture all summer. 

 If an acre of land be worth sixpence before it is enclosed, it 

 is worth eightpence after the enclosure is made, because then 

 it can be enriched by oxen lying on it. It will not be difficult 

 to see from this sketch what was the character of the tenancies 

 in Fitzherbert's time, and, although he merely illustrates the 

 facts in his treatise on surveying, how land was distributed 

 and occupied. 



We can now deal with the other element in the social 

 system, manufacture and trade, for in the fifteenth and six- 

 teenth centuries these agencies are not particularly dis- 

 tinguishable. Here too, the parliamentary representation of 

 the manufacturing and trading towns, and the charge which 

 parliamentary institutions laid on the locality which sent the 

 member, in the great relative cost of his wages, must have 

 made the burgesses especially keen in making every use, by 

 petition in parliament, and by lobby compromises out of the 

 chamber itself, of the opportunity which their position might 

 give them for inducing the force of law on the purposes for 

 which they were sent l . For the English parliament was not, 

 like that of Paris, a mere assembly of lawyers. On the con- 

 trary, the knights and burgesses had a lively dislike of the 

 presence of lawyers in parliament, and once went the length 

 of excluding them by statute. Equally earnest and equally 

 vain was the attempt made to limit the number of attorneys 

 in Norfolk and Suffolk to six for each county, and in Norwich 

 to two. Nor is it likely that boroughs would continue to 

 send members at so great a charge except there were corporate 

 resources from which the wages could be paid, unless, as seems 

 to be the case at the very beginning of the war of succession, 



1 For instance, the pay of a burgess was 35. /(d. a day. In 1423, the two burgesses 

 of Norwich, Gerard and Monesle, were in Parliament 1 1 7 days. The cost is 39 (the 

 account given in the notes appears to be a part payment), i. e. nearly a third of the 

 Noiwich contribution in 1453. 



