ADDRESSES 241 



lent a change in the character of labor was required. The 

 dog and the shepherd took the place of the ploughmen and 

 their teams, and thus diminished the demand for labor at 

 the very moment when the supply was increased. Very 

 serious results followed. The poorer tenants were ruined and 

 an immense number of persons were thrown out of employ- 

 ment, to become beggars and thieves. It was, says Gibbins, 

 in the "Industrial History of England," the beginning of 

 English pauperism. That this was no trifling change in the 

 social condition of the people the following quotations will 

 prove: "The Statute-book for 1489 tells us that the Isle of 

 Wight is lately become decayed of people, by reason of 

 many towns and villages having been beaten down and is 

 desolate and not inhabited, but occupied with beasts and 

 cattle; throughout England, too, we are assured that idle- 

 ness daily doth increase; for where in some towns two hun- 

 dred were occupied and lived of their lawful labor, now there 

 are occupied only two or three herdsmen." Starkey, the 

 royal chaplain in the next reign, only puts this more epi- 

 grammatically when he says: "Where hath been many 

 houses and churches to the honor of God, now you shall find 

 nothing but sheepcotes and stables to the ruin of men, and 

 that not in one place or two, but generally throughout this 

 realm." Finally, if any further evidence is wanted to show 

 that great hardships were being entailed upon the peasantry 

 there are the indignant words of Sir Thomas More, in which 

 he bids us sympathize with "the husbandmen thrust out 

 of their own, or else by covin and fraud, or by violent 

 oppression put beside it, or by wrongs and injuries so 

 wearied that they sell all"; and goes on to denounce the 

 noblemen and gentlemen, yea, and certain abbots that lease 



