is the exchange of vessel, as of treen
platters into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin. For so common
were all sorts of treen stuff in old time that a man should hardly find
four pieces of pewter (of which one was peradventure a salt) in a good
farmer's house, and yet for all this frugality (if it may so be justly
called) they were scarce able to live and pay their rents at their days
without selling of a cow, or a horse or more,[164] although they paid but
four pounds at the uttermost by the year. Such also was their poverty
that, if some one odd farmer or husbandman had been at the alehouse, a
thing greatly used in those days, amongst six or seven of his neighbours,
and there in a bravery, to shew what store he had, did cast down his
purse, and therein a noble or six shillings in silver, unto them (for few
such men then cared for gold, because it was not so ready payment, and
they were oft enforced to give a penny for the exchange of an angel), it
was very likely that all the rest could not lay down so much against it;
whereas in my time, although peradventure four pounds of old rent be
improved to forty, fifty, or a hundred pounds, yet will the farmer, as
another palm or date tree, think his gains very small toward the end of
his term if he have not six or seven years' rent lying by him, therewith
to purchase a new lease, beside a fair garnish of pewter on his cupboard,
with so much more in odd vessel going about the house, three or four
feather beds, so many coverlids and carpets of tapestry, a silver salt, a
bowl for wine (if not a whole neast), and a dozen of spoons to furnish up
the suit. This also he takes to be his own clear, for what stock of money
soever he gathereth and layeth up in all his years it is often seen that
the landlord will take such order with him for the same when he reneweth
his lease, which is commonly eight or six years before the old be expired
(sith it is now grown almost to a custom that if he come not to his lord
so long before another shall step in for a reversion, and so defeat him
outright), that it shall never trouble him more than the hair of his beard
when the barber hath washed and shaved it from his chin.

And as they commend these, so (beside the decay of housekeeping whereby
the poor have been relieved) they speak also of three things that are
grown to be very grievous unto them--to wit, the enhancing of rents,
lately mentioned; the daily oppression of copyholders, who