great and excessive numbers by the occasion of idleness, the mother and root of all vices,* whereby hath insurged and sprung, and daily insurgeth and springeth, continual thefts, murders, and other heinous offences and great enormities, to the high displeasure of God, the inquietation and damage of the king and people, and to the marvellous disturbance of the commonweal of the realm." It enacts that justices may give licence to impotent persons to beg within certain limits, and, if found begging out of their limits, they shall be set in the stocks. Beggars without licence to be whipped or set in the stocks. All persons able Parishes to be fined for to labour, who shall beg or be vagrant, shall be whipped and sent to the place of their birth. neglect of the constables. 37 Henry VIII., cap. 23, continued this Act to the end of the ensuing Parliament. 1 Edward VI., cap. 3, recites the increase of idle vagabonds, and enacts that all persons loitering or wandering shall be marked with a V, and adjudged a slave for two years, and afterwards running away shall become a felon. Impotent persons were to be removed to the place where they had resided for three years, and allowed to beg. A weekly collection was to be made in the churches every Sunday and holiday after reading the gospel of the day, the amount to be applied to the relief of bedridden poor. 5 and 6 Edward VI., cap. 2, directs the parson, vicar, curate, and churchwardens, to appoint two collectors to distribute weekly to the poor. The people were exhorted by the clergy to contribute; and, if they refuse, then, upon the certificate of the parson, vicar, or curate, to the bishop of the diocese, he shall send for them and induce him or them to charitable ways. 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, cap. 5, re-enacts the former, and requires the collectors to account quarterly; and where the poor are too numerous for relief, they were licensed by a justice of the peace to beg. * See 4 Henry VII., cap. 19, ante, p. 146, where the same expression occurs, showing that it was throwing the land out of tilth that occasioned pauperism. 5 Elizabeth, cap. 3, confirms and renews the former Acts, and compels collectors to serve under a penalty of £10. Persons refusing to contribute their alms shall be exhorted, and, if they obstinately refuse, shall be bound by the bishop to appear at the next general quarter session, and they may be imprisoned if they refuse to be bound. The 14th Elizabeth, cap. 5, requires the justices of the peace to register all aged and impotent poor born or for three years resident in the parish, and to settle them in convenient habitations, and ascertain the weekly charge, and assess the amount on the inhabitants, and yearly appoint collectors to receive and distribute the assessment, and also an overseer of the poor. This Act was to continue for seven years. The 18th Elizabeth, cap. 3, provides for the employment of the poor. Stores of wool, hemp, flax, iron, etc., to be provided in cities and towns, and the poor set to work. It empowered persons possessed of land in free socage to give or devise same for the maintenance of the poor. The 39th Elizabeth, cap. 3, and the 43d Elizabeth, cap. 2, extended these Acts, and made the assessment compulsory. I shall ask you to compare the date of these several laws for the relief of the destitute poor with the dates of the enactments against evictions. You will find they run side by side.* * The following tables of the Acts passed against eviction, and enacting the support of the poor, show that they were contemporaneous: I have perhaps gone at too great length into detail; but I think I could not give a proper picture of the alteration in the system of landholding or its effects without tracing from the statute-book the black records of these important changes. The suppression of monasteries tended greatly to increase the sufferings of the poor, but I doubt if even these institutions could have met the enormous pressure which arose from the wholesale evictions of the people. The laws of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., enforcing the tillage of the land, preceded the suppression of religious houses, and the Act of the latter monarch allowing the poor to beg was passed before any steps were taken to close the convents. That measure was no doubt injurious to the poor, but the main evil arose from other causes. The lands of these houses, when no longer applicable to the purpose for which they were given, should have reverted to the heirs of the donors, or have been applied to other religious or educational purposes. The bestowal of them upon favourites, to the detriment alike of the State, the Church, the Poor, and the Ignorant, was an abuse of great magnitude, the effect of which is still felt. The reigns of the Tudors are marked with three events affecting the land-viz.: Ist. Relieving it of the support of the army; The abolition of retainers, while it relieved the land of the nobles from the principal charge thereon, did not entirely abolish knight's service. The monarch was entitled to the care of all minors, to aids on the marriage or knighthood of the eldest son, to primer-seizin or a year's rent upon the death of each tenant of the Crown. These fees were considerable, and were under the care of the Court of Ward and Liveries. The artisan class had, however, grown in wealth, and they were greatly strengthened by the removal from France of large numbers of workmen in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. These prosperous tradespeople became landowners by purchase, and thus tended to replace the Liberi Homines, or freemen, who had been destroyed under the wars of the nobles, which effaced the landmarks of English society. The liberated serfs attained the position of paid farm-labourers; had the policy of Elizabeth, who enacted that each of their cottages should have an allotment of four acres of land, been carried out, it would have been most beneficial to the State. The reign of this family embraced one hundred and eighteen years, during which the increase of the population was about twenty-five per cent. When Henry VII. ascended the throne in 1485 it was 4,000,000, and on the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603 it had reached 5,000,000, the average increase being about 8000 per annum. The changes effected in the condition of the farmers' class left the mass of the people in a far worse state at the close than at the opening of their rule. VII. THE STUARTS. The accession of the Stuarts to the throne of England took place under peculiar circumstances. The nation had just passed through two very serious struggles-one political, the other religious. The land which had been in the possession of religious communities, instead of being retained by the State for educational or religious purposes, had been given to favourites. A new class of ownerships had been created-the lay impropriators of tithes. The suppression of retainers. converted land into a quasi property. The extension to land of the powers of bequest gave the possessors greater facilities for disposing thereof. It was relieved from the principal feudal burthen, military service, but remained essentially feudal as far as tenure was concerned. Men were no longer furnished to the State as payment of the knight's fee; they were cleared off the land, to make room for sheep and oxen, England being in that respect about two hundred years in advance of Ireland, though without the outlet of emigration. Vagrancy and its attendant evils led to the poor law. James I. and his ministers tried to grapple with the altered circumstances, and strove to substitute an equitable Crown rent or money payment for the existing and variable claims which were collected by the Court of Ward and Livery. The knight's fee then consisted of twelve ploughlands, a more modern name for "a hide of land." The class burthened with knight's service, or payments in lieu thereof, comprised 160 temporal and 26 spiritual lords, 800 barons, 600 knights, and 3000 esquires. The knight's fee was subject to aids, which were paid to the Crown upon the marriage of the king's son or daughter. Upon the death of the possessor, the Crown received as primer-seizin a year's rent. If the successor was an infant, the Crown, under the name of Wardship, took the rents of the estates. If the ward was a female, a fine was levied if she did not accept the husband chosen by the Crown. Fines on alienation were also levied, and the estates, though sold, became escheated, and reverted to the Crown upon the failure of issue. These various fines kept alive the principle that the lands belonged to the Crown as representative of the nation; but, as they varied in amount, James I. proposed to compound with the tenants-in-fee, and to convert them into fixed annual payments. The nobles refused, and the scheme was abandoned. In the succeeding reign, the attempt to stretch royal power beyond its due limits led to resistance by force, but it was no longer a mere war of nobles; their power had been destroyed by Henry VII. The Stuarts had to fight the people with a paid army, and the Commons, having the purse of the nation, opposed force to force. The contest eventuated in a military protectorship. Many of the principal tenants-in-fee fled the country to save their lives. Their lands were confiscated and given away; thus the Crown rights were weakened, and Charles II. was forced to recognise many of the titles given by Cromwell; he did not dare to face the convulsion which must follow an expulsion of the novo homo in possession of the estates of more ancient families; but legislation went further-it abolished all the remaining feudal charges. The Commons appear to have assented to this change, from |