men, if they are not disabled by some misfortune in their body,
or dispirited by extreme want, so that you need not fear that
those well-shaped and strong men (for it is only such that
noblemen love to keep about them, till they spoil them) who
now grow feeble with ease, and are softened with their effemi-
nate manner of life, would be less fit for action if they were well
bred and well employed.  And it seems very unreasonable that
for the prospect of a war, which you need never have but when
you please, you should maintain so many idle men, as will
always disturb you in time of peace, which is ever to be more
considered than war.  But I do not think that this necessity of
stealing arises only from hence; there is another cause of it
more peculiar to England.'

   "'What is that?' said the cardinal.

   "'The increase of pasture,' said I, 'by which your sheep,
which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be said
now to devour men, and unpeople, not only villages, but towns;
for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer
and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry,
and even those holy men the abbots, not contented with the old
rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that
they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to
do it hurt instead of good.  They stop the course of agricul-
ture, destroying houses and towns, reserving only the churches,
and enclose grounds that they may lodge their sheep in them.
As if forests and parks had swallowed up too little of the land,
those worthy countrymen turn the best inhabited places in soli-
tudes, for when an insatiable wretch, who is a plague to his
country, resolves to enclose many thousand acres of ground,
the owners as well as tenants are turned out of their posses-
sions, by tricks, or by main force, or being wearied out with
ill-usage, they are forced to sell them.  By which means those
miserable people, both men and women, married and unmar-
ried, old and young, with their poor but numerous families
(since country business requires many hands), are all forced to
change their seats, not knowing whither to go; and they must
sell almost for nothing their household stuff, which could not
bring them much money, even though they might stay for a
buyer.  When that little money is at an end, for it will be soon
spent, what is left for them to do, but either to steal and so to
be hanged (God knows how justly), or to go about and beg?
And if they do this, they are put in prison as idle vagabonds;
while they would willingly work, but can find none that will
hire them; for there is no more occasion for country labor, to
which they have been bred, when there is no arable ground
left.  One shepherd can look after a flock which will stock an
extent of ground that would require many hands if it were to
be ploughed and reaped.  This likewise in many places raises
the price of corn.

   "'The price of wool is also so risen that the poor people who
were wont to make cloth are no more able to buy it; and this
likewise makes many of them idle.  For since the increase of
pasture, God has punished the avarice of the owners by a rot
among the sheep, which has destroyed vast numbers of them;
to us it might have seemed more just had it fell on the owners
themselves.  But suppose the sheep should increase ever so
much, their price is not like to fall; since though they cannot
be called a monopoly, because they are not engrossed by one
person, yet they are in so few hands, and these are so rich, that
as they are not pressed to sell them sooner than they have a
mind to it, so they never do it till they have raised the price as
high as possible.  And on the same account it is, that the other
kinds of cattle are so dear, because many villages being pulled
down, and all country labor being much neglected, there are
none who make it their business to breed them.  The rich do
not breed cattle as they do sheep, but buy them lean, and at
low prices; and after they have fattened them on their grounds
sell them again at high rates.  And I do not think that all the
inconveniences this will produce are yet observed, for as they
sell the cattle dear, so if they are consumed faster than the
breeding countries from which they are brought can afford
them, then the stock must decrease, and this must needs end
in great scarcity; and by these means this your island, which
seemed as to this particular the happiest in the world, will
suffer much by the cursed avarice of a few persons; besides
this, the rising of corn makes all people lessen their families as
much as they can; and what can those who are dismissed by
them do, but either beg or rob?  And to this last, a man of a
great mind is much sooner drawn than to the former.

   "'Luxury likewise breaks in apace upon you, to set forward
your poverty and misery; there is an excessive vanity in ap-
parel, and great cost in diet; and that not only in noblemen's
families, but even among tradesmen, among the farmers them-
selves, and among all ranks of persons.  You have also many
infamous houses, and, besides those that are known, the
taverns and alehouses are no better; add to these, dice, cards,
tables, foot-ball, tennis, and quoits, in which money runs fast
away; and those that are initiated into them, must in the con-
clusion betake themselves to robbing for a supply.  Banish
these plagues, and give orders that those who have dispeopled
so much soil, may either rebuild the villages they have pulled
down, or let out their grounds to such as will do it: restrain
those engrossings of the rich, that are as bad almost as monopo-
lies; leave fewer occasions to idleness; let agriculture be set
up again, and the manufacture of the wool be regulated, that
so there may be work found for those companies of idle people