100 LAND REFORM 



These men seem to hdve had the fear of " restitu- 

 tion " before their eyes. For this reason they effected 

 exchanges and sales of land, and took other means to 

 make themselves secure. Larore estates were bouoht 

 at low prices by merchants and others of the commercial 

 class, "new men," who wished to found and did found 

 "county families," and by acquiring titles became mem- 

 bers of the aristocracy. 



Tho. Lever, a divine who, next to Latimer, was 

 one of the most urgent in denouncing the wrongs in- 

 flicted on the cultivators of the soil, refers in one of 

 his sermons to the wealthy merchants of London as 

 being not content with their position, but, he said, 

 "their riches must needs abroad in the country to 

 buy farms out of the hands of worshipful gentlemen, 

 honest yeomen and labouring husbandes."^ 



It is necessary to refer to these proceedings because 

 the effect of them on the yeomen, the small landed 

 gentry who tilled their own farms, the peasantry and 

 the cultivating classes generally, was so disastrous. 

 The Church of that day being the Church of the people 

 — that is, of the State — Church lands were of the 

 nature of public property. The revenues of these 

 lands were used to an enormous extent in the public 

 service. They were used for schools and other educa- 

 tional institutions, for making and mending roads, 

 building and repairing bridges, making sea walls, 

 dykes, etc. They were further used for providing 

 maintenance and refuge for the poor and for caring for 

 the sick. In the rural districts especially the religious 

 orders might be said to have carried on the work now 



1 See " Sermons" preached by Tho. Lever (Arber's Reprints). These 

 sermons are delightful reading, picturing as they do the age in which the 

 preacher lived. 



