SOCIAL CHANGES IN ENGLAND

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

AS REFLECTED IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

PART I.- RURAL CHANGES.

CHAPTER I.-THE OLD RÉGIME.

THE period which extended from the close of the fifteenth century through the whole of the sixteenth was a time of rapid change in many aspects of society. In the political and the intellectual world, in the domain of men's material and of their spiritual interests, there were new influences, new ideas, and new institutions. It was the transitional century from the Middle Ages to modern times. One of the most prominent characteristics of this period, and one which strikes us with a certain surprise, is the widespread and continued suffering of the great mass of the people. The contemporary literature, prose and poetry, sermons, pamphlets, private letters, court records, and statutes, reflect "the manifold complayntes of men, touchinge the decaie of this Commonwealthe and Realme of England, that we be now in, moved more at this present then of long time hathe bene had, some imputinge it to one thinge, and some to an other." 1

We hear that "the state of England was never so miserable as it is at this present"; and again, "England hath been

1 A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realme of England, p. 10. Lamond's ed., 1893. First printed 1581 and attributed to W. S., but recently shown to have been written in 1549, probably by John Hales.

Thomas Becon, Jewel of joy, Becon's Works, Parker Society ed., p. 435

famous throughout all Christendome by the name of Merrie England; but covetous Inclosers have taken this joy and mirth away; so that it may be now called sighing or sorrowful England."1

The most frequent complaints are from the country, but town life also was troubled. The town craftsman in the Dialogue says: "Therefore the citie which was heartofore well inhabited and wealthie (as ye knowe everie one of youe), is fallen for lacke of occupiers to great desolation and povertie." In still another dialogue, the querist asks, "For who can be so blynd or obstynate to deny the grete dekey, fautys, and mysordurys here of our commynwele; other when he lokyth upon our cytes, castellys, and townys, of late days ruynate and fallen downe, wyth such pore inhabytans dwellyng therein; or when he lokyth apon the ground, so rude and so wast, wych, by dylygence of pepul, hath byn before tyme occupyd and tyllyd, and might be yet agayn brought to some bettur profyt and use; or yet, above al, when he lokyth unto the manerys of our pepul, and ordur of lyvyng, wych ys as ferre dystant from gud and perfayt cyvylyte, as gud from yl, and vyce from vertue and al honesty.'

Some of these complaints are no doubt merely instances of the inveterate tendency of mankind to depreciate their own times. When we are told

"The worlde is changed from what it hathe beene,

Not to the bettre but to the warsse farre : 4"

1 Francis Trigge, Humble Petition of Two Sisters; the church and the commonwealth; for the restoring of their ancient commons and liberties which late Inclosure with depopulation, uncharitably hath taken away. London, 1604.

W. S., Discourse of the Common Weal, p. 16, 1549.

Thomas Starkey, A Dialogue between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset, Lecturer in Rhetoric at Oxford, 1536 (?). Early English Text Society, ed. 1878, p. 70.

Sir William Forrest, Pleasaunt Poesye of Princelie Practise, 1548 (?) Chap. XIX, Stanza 27, Early English Text Society, ed. 1878.

we recognize a familiar enough statement in any time and in any country, and one which represents rather the temperament of the writer than the characteristics of his times. But much of the contemporary testimony is not to be thus accounted for. Men who were closely connected with real life spoke of the sufferings of real men. Sir Thomas More, before whom as judge just such matters were likely to come; Hugh Latimer, who could compare the rent of his father's farm in his boyhood with that in his later life; John Hales, who was the principal royal commissioner in an investigation of the inclosures in 1549; Robert Crowley, who printed and preached in the heart of London; the nameless composers of popular ballads and scurrilous pamphlets, these and others rather as eyewitnesses spoke of what they had seen than as mere moralists bewailed the follies and the sufferings of mankind. Again, the changes that were in progress attracted the attention of the government, and a long series of statutes, ineffective, it is true, notwithstanding the authority of the Tudor monarchy, testify to the actual existence of those things of which the writers speak. Finally, the people gave the last proof that their injuries were real and their position intolerable, by rebellion. The very concreteness of the complaints, and the definiteness of the period in which they are heard distinguish them as real characteristics of the sixteenth century, not instances of the misfortunes which belong to all times.

A certain disintegration of mediaeval society had been in progress certainly since the time of the Black Death, but the particular group of changes which were now bearing so hardly on the people seems to have begun in the latter part of the fifteenth century, to have increased almost steadily during the first half of the sixteenth, and to have subsided only late in the reign of Elizabeth. There are a few isolated earlier records, such as that mentioned in the Parliament Rolls in a petition of 1414.

"And also they seiden that there was made great waste in the same maner of Chesterton, of Housing, that is to say of Halles and of Chambers, and of other houses of office, that were necessary in the same Manor, and none housinge left standing therein, but gif it were a shepcote or a Berne or a Swynsty and a few houses beside to putte in bestes." But this probably represents the shadow of the previous century of famine, pestilence and rebellion. The earliest undoubted mention of a rising tide of change in the position of the lower classes of the country people is to be found in the speech of the chancellor at the opening of the first parliament of Richard III, in 1484, where he speaks of it as a matter of common report that "thys body fallethe yn decaye, as we see dayly hyt doothe by closures and enparkynge, by dryvynge a wey of tenauntes and lattyng down of tenauntries." 8

Somewhere between the years 1486 and 1504 a letter was written to the president of Magdalen College, Oxford, "desyryng and praying yowe in god tenderly to remember the welfare of owre cherch of Quynton, and the supportacion of oure poer towne qwch fallys fast in decay and nere to the poynt of destruccion except ye stand goud lord and turne more favorable to youre tenants, for youre howsynge gose downe, twenty marke wyl nott sett up ayeyn that ys fallyn within thys four yere. e."4 Two statutes on the subject were passed in the reign

1 Rotuli Parliamentorum, IV, 60 b., referring to Chesterton, near Cambridge. John Ross, a Warwickshire antiquary who died in 1491, in his History of the Kings of England, gives a long list of villages already gone to decay in his time, and speaks of his protest against the prevailing inclosures at the Parliament of Coventry in 1459. But his work in the form we have it is only as edited by Thomas Hearne, in 1745, and it is possible that the editor, who is not always trustworthy, introduced some of these statements into Ross's manuscript. It is almost incredible that the movement had gone so far so early in the fifteenth century as Ross's testimony indicates.

Grants of Edward V, p. lii. Camden Society ed., 1854.

•Letter of Vicar of Quinton, printed in Denton, England, in the fifteenth century, p. 318.