144 LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION 



" it is manifest that the land in its present Condition is able to 

 bear more Provision and Commodities, than it was forty years 

 ago." 



Throughout the period from the Restoration to the Revolution, 

 except for one disastrous year of plague, fire, and war, the country 

 prospered. The receipts from customs steadily advanced. Trade 

 was expanding. As Amsterdam decayed, and Portuguese and 

 Spanish Jews fled to England to escape the Inquisition, money 

 flowed into the country. Other religious refugees brought with 

 them useful arts and manufactures. The development of banking 

 stimulated commercial undertakings. Between 1661 and 1687 the 

 receipts from the customs duties more than doubled. Fortunes, 

 made in the city were often invested in land, which now was begin- 

 ning to confer on its possessors a new political and social influence. 

 The landed gentry shared in the growing prosperity, either through 

 its general effects on the country, or by wealthy marriages, or by 

 sending their sons as Rashleigh Osbaldistone was sent by Sir 

 Hildebrand into business. Between 1675 and 1700, said Sir 

 William Temple " the first noble families married into the City." x 

 Latimer had preached against landlords becoming " graziers," and 

 aldermen turning " colliers," and disquietude at this commercial 

 tendency had influenced the legislation of Edward VI. But times 

 had changed. Though Heralds still distinguished between " foreign 

 Merchants " and retail shopkeepers, on the ground apparently that 

 " Navigation was the only laudable part of all buying and selling," 

 yet they 2 had solemnly decided that " if a Gentleman be bound 

 an Apprentice to a Merchant, or other Trade, he hath not thereby 

 lost his Degree of Gentility." 



Closely united with the nobility, the Church, and the merchant 

 princes, sharing in the general prosperity, and, in virtue of their 

 property, exercising new political and social powers, the landed 

 gentry were beginning to acquire that predominant influence which 

 was so marked a feature in the eighteenth century. The change 

 necessarily added an artificial value to the ownership of land : it 

 not only arrested the tendency towards its wider distribution, but 

 encouraged its accumulation in fewer hands. Once acquired, 

 estates were held together by the introduction of family settle- 



1 Quoted by Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, ed. 1887, p. 63. 



2 Logan's Treatise of Honor at the end of Gwillim's Display of Heraldry 

 (ed. 1679), p. 155. 



