This struggle was fought over the Protector's attitude towards the momentous social revolution of the sixteenth century, a movement which lay at the root of most of the internal difficulties of Tudor governments, and vitally affected the history of the reign of Edward VI. It was in effect the breaking up of the foundations upon which society had been based for five hundred years, the substitution of competition for custom as the regulating principle of the relations between the various classes of the community.
Social organisation in medieval times was essentially conservative; custom was the characteristic sanction to which appeal was universally made. Land, in the eyes of its military feudal lord, was valuable less as a source of money than as a source of men; it was not rent but service that he required, and he was seldom tempted to reduce his service-roll in order to swell his revenues. But the Black Death and the Peasants' Revolt, co-operating with more silent and gradual causes, weakened the mutual bonds of interest between landlord and tenant, while the extension of commerce produced a wealthy class which slowly gained admission into governing circles and established itself on the land. To these new landlords land was mainly an investment; they applied to it the principles they practised in trade; and sought to extract from it not men but money. They soon found that the petite culture of feudal times was not the most profitable use to which land could be turned; and they began the practice known as " engrossing," of which complaint was made as early as 1484 in the Lord Chancellor's speech to Parliament. Their method was to buy up several holdings, which they did not lease to so many yeomen, but consolidated, leaving the old homesteads to decay; the former tenants became either vagabonds or landless labourers, who boarded with their masters and were precluded by their position from marrying and raising families. Similarly the new landed gentry sought to turn their vague and disputed rights over common lands into palpable means of revenue. Sometimes with and often without the consent of the commoners, they proceeded to enclose vast stretches of land with a view to converting it either to tillage or to pasture. The latter proved to be the more remunerative, owing to the great development of the wool-market in the Netherlands; and it was calculated that the lord, who converted open arable land into enclosed pasture land, thereby doubled his income.
Yet another method of extracting the utmost monetary value from the land was the raising of rents; it had rarely occurred to the uncommercial feudal lord to interfere with the ancient service or rent which his tenants paid for their lands, but respect for immemorial custom counted for little against the retired trader's habit of demanding the highest price for his goods. The direct result of these tendencies was to pauperise a large section of the community, though the aggregate wealth of the whole was increased. The English yeomen, who had
