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But if there were really a decay of commerce, and industry, and populousness in England, the statutes of this reign, except by abolishing monasteries and retrenching holydays—circumstances of considerable moment—were not in other respects well calculated to remedy the evil. The fixing of the wages of artificers was attempted: [***] luxury in apparel was prohibited by repeated statutes;[****] and probably without effect.
* Henry VIII. c. 8. ** Hall, fol. 110. *** 6 Henry VIII. c. 3. **** 1 Henry VIII. c. 14. 6 Henry VIII. c. I 7 Henry VIII. c. 7
The chancellor and other ministers were empowered to fix the price of poultry, cheese, and butter.[*] A statute was even passed to fix the price of beef, pork, mutton, and veal.[**] Beef and pork were ordered to be sold at a halfpenny a pound; mutton and veal at a halfpenny half a farthing, money of that age. The preamble of the statute says, that these four species of butcher’s meat were the food of the poorer sort. This ace was afterwards repealed.[***]
The practice of depopulating the country by abandoning tillage, and throwing the lands into pasturage, still continued;[****] as appears by the new laws which were from time to time enacted against that practice. The king was entitled to half the rents of the land, where any farm houses were allowed to fall to decay.[v] The unskilful husbandry was probably the cause why the proprietors found no profit in tillage. The number of sheep allowed to be kept in one flock, was restrained to two thousand.[v*] Sometimes, says the statute, one proprietor or farmer would keep a flock of twenty-four thousand. It is remarkable, that the parliament ascribes the increasing price of mutton to this increase of sheep: because, say they, the commodity being gotten into few hands, the price of it is raised at pleasure.[v**] It is more probable, that the effect proceeded from the daily increase of money; for it seems almost impossible that such a commodity could be engrossed.
In the year 1544, it appears that an acre of good land in Cambridgeshire was let at a shilling, or about fifteen pence of our present money.[v***] This is ten times cheaper than the usual rent at present. But commodities were not above four times cheaper; a presumption of the bad husbandry in that age.
Some laws were made with regard to beggars and vagrants;[v****] one of the circumstances in government, which humanity would most powerfully recommend to a benevolent legislator; which seems, at first sight, the most easily adjusted; and which is yet the most difficult to settle in such a manner as to attain the end without destroying industry. The convents formerly were a support to the poor; but at the same time tended to encourage idleness and beggary.
* 25 Henry VIII. c. 2. ** 24 Henry VIII. c. 3. *** 33 Henry VIII. c. 11. **** Strype, vol. i. p. 392. v 6 Henry VIII. c. 5. 7 Henry VIII. c. 1. v* 25 Henry VIII. c. 13. v** 25 Henry VIII. c. 13. v*** Anderson, vol. i. p. 374. v**** 22 Henry VIII. c. 12. 22 Henry VIII. c. 5.
In 1546, a law was made for fixing the interest of money at ten per cent.; the first legal interest known in England. Formerly all loans of that nature were regarded as usurious. The preamble of this very law treats the interest of money as illegal and criminal; and the prejudices still remained so strong, that the law permitting interest was repealed in the following reign.
This reign, as well as many of the foregoing and even subsequent reigns, abounds with monopolizing laws, confining particular manufactures to particular towns, or excluding the open country in general.[*] There remain still too many traces of similar absurdities. In the subsequent reign, the corporations which had been opened by a former law, and obliged to admit tradesmen of different kinds, were again shut up by act of parliament; and every one was prohibited from exercising any trade who was not of the corporation.[**]
Henry, as he possessed himself some talent for letters, was an encourager of them in others. He founded Trinity College in Cambridge, and gave it ample endowments. Wolsey founded Christ Church in Oxford, and intended to call it Cardinal College: but upon his fall, which happened before he had entirely finished his scheme, the king seized all the revenues; and this violence, above all the other misfortunes of that minister, is said to have given him the greatest concern.[***] But Henry afterwards restored the revenues of the college, and only changed the name. The cardinal founded in Oxford the first chair for teaching Greek; and this novelty rent that university into violent factions, which frequently came to blows. The students divided themselves into parties, which bore the names of Greeks and Trojans, and sometimes fought with as great animosity as was formerly exercised by those hostile nations. A new and more correct method of pronouncing Greek being introduced, it also divided the Grecians themselves into parties; and it was remarked that the Catholics favored the former pronunciation, the Protestants gave countenance to the new. Gardiner employed the authority of the king and council to suppress innovations in this particular, and to preserve the corrupt sound of the Greek alphabet. So little liberty was then allowed of any kind!
* 21 Henry VIII. c. 12. 25 Henry VIII. c. 18. 3 and 4 Edward VI. c. 20. 5 and 6 Edward VI. c. 24. ** 3 and 4 Edward VI. c. 20. *** Strype, vol. i. p. 117.
The penalties inflicted upon the new pronunciation were no less than whipping, degradation, and expulsion; and the bishop declared, that rather than permit the liberty of innovating in the pronunciation of the Greek alphabet, it were better that the language itself were totally banished the universities. The introduction of the Greek language into Oxford excited the emulation of Cambridge.[*] Wolsey intended to have enriched the library of his college at Oxford with copies of all the manuscripts that were in the Vatican.[**] The countenance given to letters by this king and his ministers contributed to render learning fashionable in England: Erasmus speaks with great satisfaction of the general regard paid by the nobility and gentry to men of knowledge.[***] It is needless to be particular in mentioning the writers of this reign or of the preceding. There is no man of that age who has the least pretension to be ranked among our classics. Sir Thomas More, though he wrote in Latin, seems to come the nearest to the character of a classical author.
* Wood’s Hist. and Antiq. Oxon. lib. I p. 245. ** Wood’s Hist. and Antiq. Oxon. lib. I p. 246. *** Epist. ad Banisium. Also Epist. p. 668.
1547.
THE late king, by the regulations which he imposed on the government of his infant son, as well as by the limitations of the succession, had projected to reign even after his decease; and he imagined that his ministers, who had always been so obsequious to him during his lifetime, would never afterwards depart from the plan which he had traced out to them. He fixed the majority of the prince at the completion of his eighteenth year; and as Edward was then only a few months past nine, he appointed sixteen executors; to whom, during the minority, he intrusted the government of the king and kingdom. Their names were, Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury; Lord Wriothesely, chancellor; Lord St. John, great master; Lord Russel, privy seal; the earl of Hertford, chamberlain: Viscount Lisle, admiral; Tonstal, bishop of Durham; Sir Anthony Brown, master of horse; Sir William Paget, secretary of state; Sir Edward North, chancellor of the court of augmentations; Sir Edward Montague, chief justice of the common pleas; Judge Bromley, Sir Anthony Denny, and Sir William Herbert, chief gentlemen of the privy chamber; Sir Edward Wotton, treasurer of Calais; Dr. Wotton, dean of Canterbury. To these executors, with whom was intrusted the whole regal authority, were appointed twelve counsellors, who possessed no immediate power, and could only assist with their advice when any affair was laid before them. The council was composed of the earls of Arundel and Essex; Sir Thomas Cheney, treasurer of the household; Sir John Gage, comptroller; Sir Anthony Wingfield, vice-chamberlain; Sir William Petre, secretary of state; Sir Richard Rich, Sir John Baker, Sir Ralph Sadler Sir Thomas Seymour, Sir Richard Southwell, and Sir Edmund Peckham.[*] The usual caprice of Henry appears somewhat in this nomination; while he appointed several persons of inferior station among his executors, and gave only the place of counsellor to a person of such high rank as the earl of Arundel, and to Sir Thomas Seymour, the king’s uncle.
