number of English boats engaged on the cod-banks of Newfoundland
steadily increased, and at the close of Elizabeth's reign the seamen of
Biscay found English rivals in the whale-fishery of the Polar seas.

[Sidenote: General comfort.]

Elizabeth lent a ready patronage to the new commerce, she shared in its
speculations, she considered its extension and protection as a part of
public policy, and she sanctioned the formation of the great Merchant
Companies which could alone secure the trader against wrong or injustice
in distant countries. The Merchant-Adventurers of London, a body which
had existed long before, and had received a charter of incorporation
under Henry the Seventh, furnished a model for the Russia Company and
the Company which absorbed the new commerce to the Indies. But it was
not wholly with satisfaction that either the Queen or her ministers
watched the social change which wealth was producing around them. They
feared the increased expenditure and comfort which necessarily followed
it, as likely to impoverish the land and to eat out the hardihood of the
people. "England spendeth more on wines in one year," complained Cecil,
"than it did in ancient times in four years." In the upper classes the
lavishness of a new wealth combined with a lavishness of life, a love of
beauty, of colour, of display, to revolutionize English dress. Men "wore
a manor on their backs." The Queen's three thousand robes were rivalled
in their bravery by the slashed velvets, the ruffs, the jewelled
purpoints of the courtiers around her. But signs of the growing wealth
were as evident in the lower class as in the higher. The disuse of
salt-fish and the greater consumption of meat marked the improvement
which had taken place among the country folk. Their rough and wattled
farm-houses were being superseded by dwellings of brick and stone.
Pewter was replacing the wooden trenchers of the early yeomanry, and
there were yeomen who could boast of a fair show of silver plate. It is
from this period indeed that we can first date the rise of a conception
which seems to us now a peculiarly English one, the conception of
domestic comfort. The chimney-corner, so closely associated with family
life, came into existence with the general introduction of chimneys, a
feature rare in ordinary houses at the beginning of this reign. Pillows,
which had before been despised by the farmer and the trader as fit only
"for women in childbed," were now in g