THE ENGLISH LAND SYSTEM loi 



done by the modern boards of guardians. They were 

 the doctors, nurses, and advisers of the cultivating 

 classes among whom they lived and (many of them 

 being cultivators) alongside of whom they worked, 

 and generally they mingled freely with the people and 

 took an intelligent personal interest in the social life 

 of the districts in which their houses were placed. 



The religious orders, in spite of all that has been 

 said to the contrary, were easy landlords.^ Those 

 holding under them were rarely liable to be ousted 

 from their holdings by excessive fines and other 

 forms of eviction so often practised by the lay land- 

 lords. All this was chang-ed when the lands fell 

 into private hands. The "new families" which were 

 founded on monastic spoils recognized none of the 

 public and charitable duties referred to. They re- 

 pudiated the charges for national works to which 

 the land had been subject. They adopted a course 

 dictated by personal gain, and put the lands which 

 they had grasped to the most profitable use, regard- 

 less of the dwellers on the soil whose rights were 

 far superior to their own. They found that sheep 

 farming was the most easy and profitable system they 

 could adopt, but in order to turn tillage land into sheep 

 farms it was necessary to evict the yeomanry, peasantry, 

 and cottagers, and accordingly they evicted them with 

 a merciless hand. 



Froude describes the situation by saying: "As to 

 the mass of the people, hospitals were gone, alms- 



^ This has frequently been denied, but it is certain that when the 

 monastic lands came into private hands rents were raised and fines 

 increased in order to get rid of the sub-holders. As to the lands that 

 remained in the hands of the king, a main object of the " Augmentation 

 Courts," established by the Act 27 Henry VIII, chap. 27, and other Acts 

 was to increase the revenues of the Crown. 

 E 



