THE ENGLISH LAND SYSTEM 55 



it comes to pass that these poor wretches, men, 

 women, husbands, orphans, widows, parents with little 

 children, households greater in number than in wealth 

 (for arable farming requires many hands, while one 

 shepherd and herdsman will suffice for a pasture farm) 

 — all these emigrate from their native fields without 

 knowing where to go.' The sale of their scanty 

 household stuff drove them to wander homeless 

 abroad, to be thrown into prison as vagabonds, to 

 beg and to steal. , . The social disorder, in fact, 

 baffled the sagacity of English statesmen, and they 

 could find no better remedy for it than laws against 

 the further extension of sheep-farms, and a formidable 

 increase of public executions. Both were alike fruit- 

 less. Inclosures and evictions went on as before and 

 swelled the numbers and the turbulence of the floating 

 labour class. The riots against " inclosures," of which 

 we first hear in the time of Henry the Sixth, and 

 which became a constant feature of the Tudor period, 

 are indicative not only of a perpetual strife going on 

 in every quarter between the landowners and the 

 peasant class, but of a mass of social discontent which 

 was to seek constant outlets in violence and revolution. 

 . . . England, for the first time, saw a distinct criminal 

 class in the organized bands of robbers which began 

 to infest the roads, and were always ready to gather 

 round the standard of revolt. The gallows did their 

 work in vain. * If you do not remedy the evils which 

 produce thieves,' More urged, with bitter truth, 'the 

 rigorous execution of justice in punishing thieves will 

 be vain.'" ^ 



^ Green's "History of the English People," Vol. II, chap. i. The 

 quotations here given are paraphrases from More's " Utopia." In 

 the "Utopia" itself (see Arber's Reprints) the description is more de- 

 tailed, and is more pathetic and angering than even Green's. By a 

 statute of Henry VIII, chap. 25, a sturdy beggar is to be whipped for the 

 first offence, his right ear is to be chopped off for the second, and if he 

 again offend he is to be indicted for wandering and, idleness, and if 

 convicted to suffer death as a felon. 



