seems to have been that the local authorities shrank from carrying out so atrocious a law. But the spirit of the lawmakers remained unchanged; in 1559 Elizabeth contemplated the revival of this slave law "with additions."
"To preach the Gospel to the poor, deliverance to the captives, to set at liberty them that are bruised." What greater contrast could there be between that first Gospel and this? That made the poor its first concern; this gave the poor the statute against vagabonds.
But it was not religion that prompted the 1 Edward VI. c. 3. It was greed. When Henry VIII. and the Government of Edward VI. seized the lands, to distribute them among the rich as their private property, they opened the floodgates of covetousness. It is pitiful to hear Latimer, Lever, and Gilpin uttering their futile denunciations of covetousness and oppression, as though they thought that vultures could be talked into relinquishing their prey. The prize was too great. Such a prize had never been dangled before the eyes of any body of men since the Norman Conquest ; and with a few sporadic exceptions (such as the New Forest), the effect of the Conquest itself was not to choke the highways with dispossessed and starving "out-o'-works." The preamble is a wholesale indictment of the English lower orders from time immemorial, but, the admission that "foolish pity and mercy" was felt for vagabonds shows that they were not regarded by the public as public enemies.
When Edward VI. succeeded his father it was ten years since the suppression of the smaller houses, and nearly seven since that of the larger. Many must have died in the interval, and many more must have become "sickly" and diseased from privation. It is certain that the misery was unparalleled. It appalled every man who was not himself an encloser. And, from whatever motive, the Protector Somerset signified his own death-warrant by attempting to relieve it.
