Beginning of Modern Farming 49 



trades more precarious because they depended entirely on markets 

 for their prosperity. 



There is nothing more tragic in history than this situation where 

 the legislators and administrators of ' justice ' were the people 

 whose fortunes were founded largely or wholly on the withdrawal 

 of the sources of employment and livelihood from the men whose 

 punishment they ordered and whose 4 crimes ' were directly due 

 to this withdrawal. It is small wonder that there was discontent 

 and rebellion. Latimer pointed to the cause of the trouble. 

 Preaching about the peasants after Ket's rebellion in a sermon 

 before the king in 1550 he declared : t They must have swine 

 for their food. . . . They must have other cattle. . . . These 

 cattle must have pasture, which pasture if they lack, the rest 

 must needs fail them ; and pasture they cannot have, if the land be 

 taken in, and enclosed from them. So, as I said, there was in both 

 parts rebellion. Therefore, for God's love, restore their sufficient 

 unto them, and search no more what is the cause of rebellion.' 



Some people may think that the old organization of the manor 

 might have been made to serve the demands of a developing 

 agriculture ; others believe that the course which events took 

 was the proper one, that if fair play and equality of treatment 

 were sacrificed, nothing else was possible or desirable. There is 

 no reason to think that any of the statesmen of the time seriously 

 endeavoured to devise an alternative scheme for using land in 

 a more progressive way. At least they did not harmonize the 

 desire of men to increase their wealth with the least possible 

 effort with their desire for fair play between man and man. 

 The Duke of Somerset probably sympathized with the peasants 

 in their complaints. That was not enough. The negative and 

 unconstructive character of the risings under Ket and others 

 offered no suggestion of a solution of the difficulty ; nor did the 

 prohibitory Acts of Parliament, nor the definite protests of 

 Bacon and Cecil, nor the fiercer ones of Latimer, More, and many 



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