viii PREFACE. 



owners were the most zealous students of agriculture, 

 and the boldest experimentalists in new methods of 

 culture. 



A third important fact in the economical history of 

 this period is the rapid growth of population, despite 

 the singular severity with which plagues of various 

 kinds the old plague of 1348, small-pox, and typhus 

 or spotted fever ravaged the towns. This increase 

 was partly due to immigration from the Netherlands 

 and France, partly to the growth of domestic industries, 

 especially cloth- weaving, but most of all to the settle- 

 ment and occupation of the counties north of the Trent. 

 At the time of the Revolution, as we can see from the 

 returns of the Hearth Tax, the northern counties were 

 nearly as fully peopled as the southern, certain differ- 

 ences of soil and climate being taken into account. These 

 counties were especially, though not wholly, the seats 

 of the new manufactures. In the seventeenth century, 

 too, other manufactures than those of textile fabrics 

 made considerable progress. Paper, glass and iron 

 were increasingly produced in England, apparently of 

 excellent quality, and chiefly in the South of England ; 

 paper in Kent, glass and iron in Sussex. It is to this 

 century also that the art of smelting iron by pit-coal 

 is assigned. There is evidence that this process was 

 known a century before, but it may well have been 

 improved by Dud Dudley, its reputed inventor. 



A fourth fact is the enormous development of English 

 maritime enterprise. Great discoveries had been made 

 by the Captains of Elizabeth's age, by Drake, Hawkins, 



