. DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 109 



depopulated long before Henry's time, and were the scandal 

 of the eighteenth century. Mr. Froude has superfluously, not 

 to say absurdly, argued, that in the quieter times of Henry 

 the Eighth, country life was adopted, because England was 

 at peace under the strong hand of her patriot king, and 

 the defences of a town proving superfluous, the constrained 

 and uneasy life of the urban population was abandoned by all 

 who could betake themselves to rural pursuits. But to say 

 nothing of the preamble to the statutes 6 Hen. VIII, cap. 6, 

 and 7 Hen. VIII, cap. i, it is plain that the condition of the 

 country folk had greatly altered for the worse since the time 

 when agriculture was so thriving and the people so generally 

 opulent, and this though the rate of wages remains high, and 

 the price of food remains low, at least rises slowly, for it must 

 be allowed, that every decade, up to the middle of the six- 

 teenth century, marks an increase in the price of wheat, the 

 money values being 5^-. $\d., 6s. *]\d., Js. Ja., js. 8%d., us. J^d., 

 i$s. 1\d.) for the six decades between 1501 and 1560 inclusive. 

 The grievances of which the Acts of Parliament in the six- 

 teenth century complain are enclosures of arable or common 

 fields, for the purpose of laying them down in pasture, and 

 the great increase in sheep breeding. The complaint about 

 enclosures is as old as the fifteenth century, and probably refers 

 to encroachment on common pasture, and also to the forcible 

 extinction of rights over lammas land. But in the sixteenth 

 century, the evil was aggravated. If we can trust the preamble 

 of the act 25 Hen. VIII, cap. 13, the rise in the price of sheep 

 had been prodigious, viz. from 2s. ^d. and 3^. to 5^. ^d. and 

 6s., that similarly the stone of wool which used to stand at 

 is. 6d., or is. %d., had now become worth 3^-. ^d. to 4$-., and 

 in some districts where the quality was highest, from zs. ^d. 

 and 2s. %d. to 43. 8d. and $s.\ that consequently husbandry 



1 Such a rise would be in accordance with that law of prices, which, I believe, 

 I was the first economist to formulate ; that where a dearth or exaltation of prices 

 occurs in any article of which there are various qualities, the greatest rise is found in 

 the lowest quality. The law holds in labour as well as in produce, but is more obscure 

 in the former. 



