DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 137 



I suspect that even when rents were theoretically competitive 

 they were virtually customary. There was no means by which 

 a landowner of those days, who was dissatisfied with the rents 

 paid by the farmers in the parish containing his estates, could 

 invite the competition of outsiders, and the occupiers could 

 and would take advantage of this absence of competition by 

 practically fixing the rents themselves. Corn and meat were 

 certainly dearer, but many of the commons were lost, and 

 therefore those articles were produced at greater expense. 

 Besides it was patent, and even Parliament and the Crown 

 had to acknowledge, that the labourer could not subsist on his 

 old wages. It was furthermore clear that materials needed in 

 agriculture were far dearer, and therefore that the charges of 

 cultivation had increased proportionately to the price of the 

 food products which the farmer brought to market. 



I have adverted before to the difficulties of government in 

 Elizabeth's reign. Everything which the Crown had to pur- 

 chase for the service of the State was dearer. But the proceeds 

 of taxation were less. The opulence of the clergy was past. 

 Not only was the Church impoverished by the alienation of all 

 that which had formerly been possessed by the regular clergy, 

 but the income of the secular divines was greatly reduced. 

 The lucrative functions which the priest of the older system 

 fulfilled were repudiated by the reformers as superstition and 

 foppery. The contributions of the clergy therefore were far 

 less than in the pre-reformation age. The subsidies had long 

 since been fixed at an amount which could not be increased, but 

 might be diminished, were granted grudgingly, and paid slowly. 

 Nor could the Crown afford to incur the unpopularity of pressing 

 for grants to be levied on landowners with inelastic incomes. 

 Foreign trade there was hardly any, for the general poverty of 

 the country checked the demand for imports, and other countries 

 were now more opulent and energetic than England. 



There is visible also a great decline in the style of living. 

 Before the Reformation, wine was abundant, cheap, and freely 

 used. Afterwards it becomes an occasional luxury. The en- 



