24 FAEMING FOR PROFIT 



when the whole population of the country did not exceed 

 five millions. Still more vain was the quaint pedantry of 

 the law which gave arable land the precedence over all 

 other lands, conferred privileges on beasts of the plough 

 above other beasts, voided bonds to restrain tillage. ' De- 

 populatores agrorum ' were denied the benefit of clergy, 

 sanctuary, or Christian burial. In spite of every effort, 

 England remained till the eighteenth century the sheep- 

 feeding country she had become under the Tudors. 



Advanced free traders might agree with Raleigh that 

 England, like Holland, could be wholly supplied with 

 grain from abroad without troubling the people with til- 

 lage. Many, however, looked no further than the imme- 

 diate distress which these changes produced. Wage- 

 earning labourers were thrown out of employment, tenant 

 farmers were evicted from their holdings ; crowds of small 

 yeomen, copyholders, and cottars, who had eked out their 

 livelihood by the produce of the stock which they main- 

 tained on the commons, were ruined. John Rous, the 

 monk and antiquary of Warwick, was the first to protest 

 against the conversion of the country into a wilderness, 

 traversed only by shepherds and their dogs. Pole, Brink- 

 low, More, Bacon, Strype, declaimed against a system 

 which Latimer and Gilpin denounced from their pulpits. 

 The cry of the people disturbed the learued quiet of Ascham, 

 reached the ears even of Somerset and Edward VI. Their 

 distresses broke to the surface in the numerous agrarian 

 insurrections of the century. The sweating-sickness 

 claimed its thousands ; famine, rot, and murrain prevailed 

 continuously. The high prices of necessaries, combined 

 with the loss of commons and bad seasons, drove the small 

 proprietors over the narrow border which separated them 

 from starvation. Rents rose exorbitantly, till, for farmers 



