Agriculture and Labor

But the agricultural and landowning classes did not prosper as much as did the merchants and manufacturers. The reign of Elizabeth marks the completion of that great movement which we have seen taking place since the reign of Richard II the breaking up of the mediaeval system of agriculture. Merchants and manufacturers were becoming more important than landholders and agricultural laborers, and were controlling the policy of the government.

This advance of the moneyed class was important, in that the government was extending its powers and taking into its own hands a great many matters that had formerly been controlled by the towns and the gilds; such as the prices of commodities and wages, the hours and methods of labor. Only once before in such matters had the state made an important attempt to interfere. The Statute of Laborers had been passed by parliament in 1351, only because there had existed no agricultural gild to do for the laborers what the towns and the craft gilds were doing for the artisans. But the decay of the towns and the gilds had thrown trade regulation into confusion, while enclosures, decay of villeinage, and other causes already noted had increased poverty and vagabondage among the agricultural classes. Attempts had been made to check. these evils by preventing further enclosures, by encouraging corn raising instead of sheep raising, and by regulating wages. But with the rise of prices in Elizabeth's reign poverty increased, and the old means of relieving the poor no longer existed; for the monasteries, chantries, and other semi-religious foundations that had looked after the poor in preceding centuries had been swept away by Henry VIII and Edward VI.

Among the earliest measures to be considered by Elizabeth's parliament, therefore, were those regulating labor and prices and relieving the poor. In 1563 two acts were passed, one concerning relief of the poor, and another, commonly called the Statute of Apprentices, concerning "artificers, laborers, servants of husbandry, and apprentices."' The first required that every parish should contribute to the support of its own poor; the second regulated labor, wages, and apprenticeship, and placed the responsibility of controlling wages upon the justices of the peace, those country gentlemen who had been for some time becoming more and more important in the counties on account of their judicial authority, and who were now given new prominence as administrators of the poor law and the statute of apprentices.

SPEKE HALL.

A fine old manor-house seven miles southeast of Liverpool.

Thus in the period from 1558 to 1568 England had grown strong in wealth, industry, shipping, and commerce. The government, prudent and patriotic, was holding the balance of power abroad, because by aiding the Dutch or the Huguenots, it could embarrass Spain or France; while at home it was becoming more national, assuming new duties and exercising new powers, regulating and controlling labor and wages, providing for the poor, punishing rogues and vagabonds, and either itself or through its officials, doing the work that had been performed in the Middle Ages by the local factors, towns, gilds, and manorial lords. A transformed and modern England was gradually appearing.