30 IXIRODUCTORY. 



lution was about a tenth of that which it attained to a 

 generation ago, and that this calculation may be made to 

 apply to incomes derivable from land with complete accuracy, 

 and as far as the purchasing power of incomes has to be inter- 

 preted from whatever source to such incomes with tolerable 

 correctness 1 . In our day, then, Master's income would be 

 from .3000 to 4000 a year. Of course, in making this esti- 

 mate, I am dealing with agricultural land only. The rise in the 

 neighbourhood of Chislehurst, where Master lived, is probably 

 far greater than my formula suggests. 



The history of the seventeenth century has always been 

 peculiarly fascinating to the student of English history. At 

 no time during the long annals of our nation has individuality 

 been so marked, and so conspicuous. The great men and 

 the bad men of the century, and some were at once great and 

 bad, are far more familiar to our minds and memories than 

 those of the eighteenth are. They are concerned with far 

 more stirring action than those of Anne's and the Georges' 

 epochs were. They struggled for far greater ends than the 

 statesmen of the eighteenth century did, whom the hateful im- 

 pulses of the later Stewart ministries had permanently infected 

 and perverted. They may have been violent, but they were 

 never sordid. There is no taint of self-seeking in the political 

 and military heroes of the pre-Restoration epoch, but there is 

 hardly one of those who took part in public affairs in the 

 post-Restoration time who was not more or less corrupt. The 

 men of the earlier age fought for principles, those of the later 

 had no higher aim than personal advantage under the guise 

 of party struggles. Even the invective of the two periods is 

 different. In the earlier time it was indignant, in the later 

 malignant. You cannot find in the first sixty years of the 

 seventeenth century such bad men as Shaftesbury and Leeds, 

 Lauderdale and Buckingham. The judges were timid and 



1 In 1699, Davenant, quoting Gregory King, makes the average rent of arable 

 land 5*. &/., of pasture Ss. &/. The Rutland rents are far below this, and are from 

 land of good quality; vol. ii. p. 216. 



