THE XVTH AND XVlTH CENTURIES 81 



In addition to these customary tenants, other classes 

 were at that time rapidly increasing. On the lords' 

 land were the large farmers, freeholders or leaseholders, 

 men of substance, with great flocks of sheep, good 

 houses, and plenty of money in their pockets. And 

 again, in many villages there were to be found not only 

 spinning and weaving, but craftsmen and artisans carry- 

 ing on industries, such as worsted in Norfolk and iron 

 foundries in Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire. As in- 

 dustries grew, traders came to the market towns 

 and villages to buy wool, cloth, and iron and other 

 materials, and cattle, pigs and fowls, corn and fruit for 

 the London market. Such men created a new element 

 in country life. The whole life was, indeed, at the 

 beginning of a great change: there was more enterprise, 

 more competition, more opportunity, and more variety. 

 But the changes did not come everywhere ; in the 

 North of England especially, where men were wanted 

 to fight against the Scots, the old system continued. 

 But on the whole the growth was rapid, and would have 

 been even more marked had there not been such sudden 

 misfortunes as plagues, famines and destruction of 

 crops by armies engaged in the wars or by bodies of 

 men retained for some private quarrel. When, towards 

 the end of the century, the wars and private quarrels 

 had died out and internal peace was being secured 

 under Tudor rule, it seemed as if the English peasantry 

 were on a broad high-road towards prosperity ; and that 

 England would become a country of enterprising small 

 holders, peasant proprietors of the type that are to be 

 found, even at the present day, in such places as the 

 Isle of Axholme, where the old system has developed 

 undisturbed. But, as a fact, a different fate was in store 

 for rural England. 



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