124 ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN ENGLAND, 



negligence on the part of government. The insurrection of 

 Flammock and Joseph in Cornwall may have been little more 

 than a survival of those troublesome times which a previous 

 generation had experienced. Henry found his Parliament in 

 15^3 exceedingly reluctant to burden the country with a 

 subsidy, and had to encounter the very serious outbreak of 

 1536, which is known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, when Henry 

 succeeded in dispersing the insurgents by making promises 

 which he never intended to fulfil. But the most alarming 

 outbreak was Ket's rising in Norfolk, a rising which was only 

 a part of what was very general, though the ruin which Ket and 

 his followers brought on the flourishing town of Norwich made 

 his doings more memorable than that of the other insurgents. 



Ket's chief complaint was the practice of enclosures, and the 

 injury which had been done to the poor by the encroachments 

 of the rich. But the discontent which his outbreak indicated, 

 the desperate manner in which the struggle was carried on, 

 the mischief and loss which 'followed it, and the leniency with 

 which the insurgents were treated, show that the movement 

 was due to deep-seated and serious causes. It is remarkable 

 as being the last attempt which the English labourers have made 

 to secure what they believed to be justice by force of arms ; 

 and it is very probable that the singular phenomenon of the 

 English poor law, though it was enacted more than half a 

 century after the last outbreak of the English labourer, was 

 due as much to the conviction that there must be some com- 

 pensation given to destitution, in order to obviate the danger 

 of discontent, as to any feeling of humanity in the minds of 

 Elizabeth and of her counsellors. 



I have referred to the practice common among the members 

 of the various guilds in the chartered towns, of devising part 

 of their substance to the guild for charity or the common feast, 

 after the charge for saying mass had been satisfied. The 

 byelaws of these guilds had excited some suspicion, for by 

 15 Hen. VI it was enacted that their ordinances were to be 

 certified and apparently registered by the justices of the peace 



