96 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



from the towns. ] One writer complains that land was 

 bought up by cooks, vintners, innkeepers, dancing 

 masters "and such trifling fellows," whilst Fynes 

 Morison, who wrote on this subject early in the XVIIth 

 century, speaks of the intrusion into the country of 

 " lawyers, citizens, and vulgar men." These new men 

 might have been ( vulgar,' but they could not fail, from 

 their training, to be men of business ability and when 

 they brought their capacity to bear on country problems, 

 important new developments are seen to be beginning. 

 In the first place the new men succeeded in reintro- 

 ducing a method of keeping estates in the same family 

 from generation to generation. The system employed 

 was similar in effect to that existing in mediaeval times, 

 but the method was new : great estates were not 

 subjected to the old law of entail, but were * settled,' as 

 it was called. Such settlements defined how the estates 

 were to be handed down from generation to generation 

 amongst the descendants of the original maker of the 

 settlement, and trustees were appointed to see that 

 these arrangements were carried out. Settlements 

 effectively preserved the ownership of the estates in 

 the large landholding families, and helped both to keep 

 the gentry at the top of the social ladder and to pre- 

 vent other classes of country people from rising. They 

 went far to preserve for the English country-side the 

 semi-feudal character that has continued up to quite 

 recent times. The second result of the intrusion of 

 the new men was also of great importance. Agri- 

 cultural progress began. There is not at first much 

 to record, but experiments began to be made ; these 

 experiments and information on and suggestions for 

 the conduct of agriculture began to be recorded 

 by writers of the time, of whom the most famous 



