DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 115 



noblesse was followed by the prosperity of the peasantry, among 

 whom the lands of their old masters were divided. It is said 

 that the abolition of serfdom in Russia has only slightly im- 

 proved the material condition of the peasant, and has seriously 

 impoverished the noble. But in England the transfer was from 

 persons who were constantly recruited from the people to a 

 rapacious aristocracy and a wasteful king. As we see from the 

 statute book, the towns between 1515 and 1544 had been 

 declining, and a declining urban population is the infallible 

 sign of declining agriculture, or at least of distress among the 

 working classes. And then, to sum up the misery, came the 

 deluge of base money, and the common ruin of all except the in- 

 famous crew who surrounded the throne of the young Edward, 

 quarrelled, and finally made the Reformation odious even in the 

 eyes of its firmest advocates. Some have alleged, inferring 

 hastily from events, that the dissolution created pauperism, and 

 the need for a poor-law. The generalisation is too narrow, for 

 many other causes contributed to the result, most of all the 

 English land system, and not a little the gradual appropriation 

 and enclosure of the common and lammas lands, as the 

 government of Elizabeth saw, though it had not the strength 

 to resist th'e encroachments. But had nothing else accom- 

 panied the dissolution besides the sudden and forcible change 

 in the distribution of wealth, much distress must have followed, 

 and a considerable time have intervened, before society could 

 have righted itself from the effects of an economical revo- 

 lution. 



It is perhaps proper at this period to advert to such in- 

 formation as is at hand, serving to illustrate the condition of 

 the labourer, so far as his money wages are concerned, up to the 

 period in which, according to the statute book of Henry's reign, 

 the depopulation of the counties began. 



The reader will remember that after the great plague of 

 1348-9, the rate of wages instantly increased, and that the 

 effect was a great social revolution. (See Vol. I. pp. 266 sqq., 

 570, 667 sqq.) The authorities strove to modify the result by 



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