88 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



and wider use of glass gave impulse to this move- 

 ment. Into many of these new homes came the land- 

 lords from the towns, bringing with them new ideas of 

 luxury and comfort ; and round their houses beautiful 

 gardens were laid out, in which not only fruit and 

 vegetables, including potatoes and turnips, but many 

 flowers were grown. Doubtless many of the old lords 

 adopted these new ways. Improved farm-houses also 

 became common throughout England, brick and stone 

 replacing wood and wattle. Here lived the new lease- 

 holders, the small freeholders, and the more wealthy of 

 the copyholding peasants. These men formed the class 

 of yeomen, a title given at that time to the more sub- 

 stantial landholders below the rank .of gentlemen. In 

 some districts even the smaller farm-houses and cottages 

 appear to have improved, and both farmers and cot- 

 tagers, if they had the good fortune to be outside 

 the area of the great enclosures, attained a higher 

 standard of comfort. The men's food was certainly 

 better. We are told by Tusser, the well-known rhym- 

 ing writer of that time, that 



"Good ploughmen look weekly of custom and right 

 For roast beef on Sundays and Thursdays at night." 



There were indeed from the XVth century onward a 

 number of farmers and labourers and village artisans 

 living busy, active, successful lives in comparative com- 

 fort. There can be no doubt of this ; indeed, the wide- 

 spread amusements and general gaiety that prevailed 

 during all this period, and especially in Elizabethan 

 times, show clearly that many of the villagers had 

 time and money to spare, and were in no sense domin- 

 ated by the pressure of poverty. And yet the mass 

 of poverty-stricken people increased, whilst the drift 



