the country went about their business, is somewhat exaggerated. No
doubt, the mass of Englishmen, as in the civil war of the seventeenth
century, preferred to 'sit still', as Clarendon said, but the business
of many must have been very much upset. The various armies were
compelled to obtain their supplies from the country, and with the
lawless habits of the times plundered friend and foe alike, as
Cavalier and Roundhead did afterwards; and many a farmer must have
seen all his stock driven off and his grain seized to feed the
combatants. For instance, it was said before the battle called Easter
Day Field that all the tenants of Abbot's Ripton in Huntingdonshire
were copyholders of the Abbot of Ramsey, and the northern army lay
there so long that they impoverished the country and the tenants had
to give up their copyholds through poverty.[183] The loss of life,
too, must have told heavily on a country already suffering from
frequent pestilence. It is calculated that about one-tenth of the
whole population of the country were killed in battle or died of
wounds and disease during the war; and as these must have been nearly
all men in the prime of life, it is difficult to understand how the
effect on the labour market was not more marked. The enclosing of land
for pasture farms, which we shall next have to consider, was probably
in many cases an absolute necessity, for the number of men left to
till the soil must have been seriously diminished.

FOOTNOTES:

[171] See table at end of volume. The shrinkage of prices which
occurred in the fifteenth century was due to the scarcity of precious
metals.

[172] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, iv. 128.
The rent of arable land on Lord Derby's estate in Wirral in 1522 was a
little under 6d. a statute acre; of meadow, about 1s. 6d.--_Cheshire
Sheaf_ (Ser. 3), iv. 23.

[173] Thorold Rogers, _op. cit._ iv. 3.

[174] Thorold Rogers, _op. cit._ iv. 39.

[175] Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 187. The amount of seed for the various
crops was, wheat 2 bushels per acre, barley 4, oats 2-1/2.

[176] By 4 Hen. IV, c. 14, labourers were to receive no hire for holy
days, or on the eves of feasts for more than half a day; but the
statute was largely disregarded.

[177] See _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 105: 'The undrained
neglected soil, the shallow stagnant waters which lay on the surface
of the ground, the unhealthy homes of all classes, insufficient and
unwholesom