heaps of
miserable paupers, 'sturdy and valiant' beggars, and thieves who,
though hanged twenty at a time on a single gallows, still infested all
the countryside, their numbers being swollen by the dissolution of the
monasteries and the breaking up of the bands of retainers kept by the
great nobles.

Rents also were rising rapidly. Latimer's account of his father's farm
is too well known to be again quoted; his opinions were shared by all
the writers of the day. Sir William Forrest, about 1540, says that
landlords now demand fourfold rents, so that the farmer has to raise
his prices in proportion, and beef and mutton were so dear that a poor
man could not 'bye a morsell'. 'Howe joyne they lordshyp to
lordshyppe, manner to manner, ferme to ferme. How do the rych men, and
especially such as be shepemongers, oppresse the king's people by
devourynge their common pastures with the shepe so that the poore are
not able to keepe a cowe, but are like to starve. And yet when was
beef ever so dere or mutton, wool now 8s. a stone.

'Now', says another, later in the century, 'I can never get a horse
shoed under 10d. or 12d., when I have also seen the common pryce was
6d. And cannot your neighbour remember that within these thirty years
I could bye the best pigge or goose that I could lay my hand on for
four pence which now costeth 12d., a good capon for 3d. or 4d., a hen
for 2d., which now costeth me double and triple.'[226]

Parliament, of course, tried to regulate the price of food; an Act of
1532, 24 Hen. VIII, c. 3, ordained that beef and pork should be 1/2d.
a lb. and mutton and veal 5/8d. a lb. The decrease in the number of
cows also received its attention; 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. 3,
states that forasmuch of late years a great number of persons have fed
in their pastures sheep and cattle with no regard to breeding, so that
there was great scarcity of stock, therefore for every 60 sheep kept
one milk cow shall be kept, and for every 120 sheep one calf shall be
bred, and for every 10 head of horned cattle shall be kept one milk
cow, and for every two cows so kept one calf shall be bred. The Act
was to last seven years, but 13 Eliz. c. 25 made it perpetual.

In 1549 came the rising of Robert Kett in Norfolk, the last attempt of
the English labourer to obtain redress of his wrongs by force of arms,
though Kett himself belonged to the landlord class and took the side
of the people probably by accident. The petition of grie