CHAPTER VIII 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION OF THE XVIIlTH 

 CENTURY 



AFTER the fall of the Stuarts comes a period of 

 about a century and a half during which England 

 took the form in which we see it to-day the indus- 

 trial England of great towns and great enterprises 

 and rural England, with, for its main features, privately 

 owned land, large enclosed farms, capitalist farmers, 

 a large class of labourers and a highly developed 

 agricultural system. 



This phase of the reconstruction could hardly have 



occurred so rapidly as it did, had not the government 



of the country, in Parliament, in the 



The control of counties, and, to a large extent, in the 

 powerandthe .,, , r 



squirearchy, villages themselves, been, from the Revo- 

 lution onwards, in the main in the hands of 

 the * landed gentry ' ; this class retained their control over 

 central government until the passing of the Reform Bill 

 in 1832, and over local government for another half- 

 century. The * landed gentry/ it will be remembered, 

 were sprung partly from the aristocratic families, partly 

 from such peasant families as had become enriched, but 

 largely also from the lawyers, merchants and other 

 business men who, from Tudor times onwards, had been 



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