UNEMPLOYED LABOUR 75 



were to any large extent swollen by agriculturists, driven to want 

 and desperation by the loss of their holdings. The sturdy beggars, 

 against whom Richard II. had legislated, had not the excuse of 

 want of employment. They consisted, partly of disbanded soldiers 

 who had so long followed the trade of war that they knew no 

 other ; partly of men who had suffered that general moral deteriora- 

 tion which often resulted from great catastrophes like the successive 

 visitations of the " Black Death." In the fifteenth century, the 

 close of the French war and of the Wars of the Roses again recruited 

 the ranks of idle poverty and crime. To them were added, at a 

 later date, the disbanded retinues of great nobles, " the great 

 flock or train," to quote More's Utopia, " of idle and loitering 

 serving-men, which never learned any craft whereby to get their 

 living." Finally, the suppression of the monasteries displaced and 

 threw upon the world a large number of dependents, many of whom, 

 from inclination or necessity, joined the army of sturdy beggars. 

 Disbanded soldiers, discharged serving-men, and dismissed depend- 

 ents of monastic institutions account for a formidable total of 

 unemployed labour, without the addition of clothiers out of work 

 or displaced agriculturists. But the evidence of More's Utopia 

 cannot be ignored. The passage is familiar * in which he speaks 

 of the husbandmen " thrust owte of their owne " by enclosures ; 

 compelled to " trudge out of their knouen and accustomed howses " ; 

 driven to a forced sale of their " housholde stuff e " and " con- 

 strayned to sell it for a thyng of nought." " And when they have, 

 wanderynge about, sone spent that, what can they els do but 

 steale, and then justelye, God wote, be hanged, or els go about a 

 beggyng ? And yet then also they be cast in prison as vagaboundes, 

 because they go about and worke not ; whom no man will set a 

 worke, though they never so willingly offer them selfes therto." 

 More's eloquent appeal may have produced effect. In the year 

 after the publication of Utopia, the first and most important Com- 

 mission was issued (1517-19) to enquire into the progress and results 

 of enclosures in the twenty-four counties principally affected. The 

 Returns of the Commissioners in Chancery are admittedly imperfect. 

 But they justify the conclusion 2 that More's picture, though true 



1 Utopia, bk. i., ed. Lupton, pp. 53-4. 



2 Hypothetical tables based on these returns have been constructed by 

 Mr. Gay, showing that the total number of persons displaced by enclosures 

 during the period 1485-1517 did not much exceed 6931. See Johnson's 

 Disappearance of the Small Landowner, p. 58. 



