The Domestic Acquirements of the Landed Interest. 361 



he puts at a value of £12,000,000, the national livestock at 

 £18,287,633, and minor products at £3,000,000. Averaging the 

 annual income of a temporal lord at £3,200, that of a bishop 

 at £1,300, a baronet at £880, a knight at £650, an esquire at 

 £450, a gentleman at £280, a well to do freeholder at £90, 

 the less prosperous of the same class at £55, and the farmer at 

 £42 10s., he considers the three national saving classes to be the 

 bishop, the merchant and the farmer, proportioning their 

 ability to lay by in the order named. If we except an error 

 of 1,700,000 acres in the total area of England and Wales, and 

 a too low computation of the price of wheat, King's statistics 

 have stood the severe criticism of Frofessor Rogers,^ and, what 

 is even more conclusive of his accuracy, his census calculations, 

 arrived at by means of the offtcial returns in 1690 for the pur- 

 poses of levying the hearth tax, tally with the results of the 

 religious census instituted by William III., and with Mr. 

 Finlaison's later calculations obtained by means of a careful 

 examination of the baptismal, marriage and burial registers of 

 those days.- Comparing the population of one hundred years 

 previous, which Guicardini reckoned at two millions, and Sir 

 Edward Coke and Chief Justice Popham at only 900,000^ it 

 is noticeable that the nation, even at the higher computation, 

 had more than doubled itself. Comparing, too, the average 

 incomes of the landed aristocracy with those of the later Tudor 

 period, we shall find a large diminution. Though the magnifi- 

 cent display of the old livery days had been abolished there 

 had still lingered an expenditure on dress and luxurious 

 living out of all proportion to a man's income. The splendid 

 Tudor and Jacobean country seats required a keeping up which 

 ate away a large item annually of the estate rental. Decade 

 after decade a larger proportion of income was required to be 

 sunk in agricultural improvements. Then came civil war again, 

 in which, so long as it lasted, the expenses on one side at least 



^ King estimates the price of wheat per bushel at 3.s. 6(?. and Rogers's 

 estimate of the price of wheat per bushel is 4s. lOkZ. to 5s. \\d. Prices 

 and Agric, vol. v., ch. 3, p. 92. 



^ Macaulay, Hist, of Eng., ch. iii. 



^ Hume, Hist, of Eng., Appendix iii. 



