ejected than otherwise dutifully
kept in any place in England.

Some say that our great number of laws do breed a general negligence and
contempt of all good order, because we have so many that no subject can
live without the transgression of some of them, and that the often
alteration of our ordinances doth much harm in this respect, which (after
Aristotle) doth seem to carry some reason withal, for (as Cornelius Gallus
hath)--

"_Eventus varios res nova semper habet._"

But very many let not to affirm that the greedy corruption of the
promoters on the one side, facility in dispensing with good laws and first
breach of the same in the lawmakers and superiors and private respects of
their establishment on the other, are the greatest causes why the
inferiors regard no good order, being always so ready to offend without
any faculty one way as they are otherwise to presume upon the examples of
their betters when any hold is to be taken.[175] But as in these things I
have no skill, so I wish that fewer licences for the private commodity but
of a few were granted (not that thereby I deny the maintenance of the
prerogative royal, but rather would with all my heart that it might be yet
more honourably increased), and that every one which by fee'd friendship
(or otherwise) doth attempt to procure ought from the prince that may
profit but few and prove hurtful to many might be at open assizes and
sessions denounced enemy to his country and commonwealth of the land.

Glass also hath been made here in great plenty before, and in the time of
the Romans; and the said stuff also, beside fine scissors, shears, collars
of gold and silver for women's necks, cruises and cups of amber, were a
parcel of the tribute which Augustus in his days laid upon this island. In
like sort he charged the Britons with certain implements and vessels of
ivory (as Strabo saith); whereby it appeareth that in old time our
countrymen were far more industrious and painful in the use and
application of the benefits of their country than either after the coming
of the Saxons or Normans, in which they gave themselves more to idleness
and following of the wars.

If it were requisite that I should speak of the sundry kinds of mould, as
the cledgy, or clay, whereof are divers sorts (red, blue, black, and
white), also the red or white sandy, the loamy, roselly, gravelly, chalky,
or black, I could say that there are so many divers veins in Britain as
elsew