es and depopulating pasturage,
and yet not by that name, or by any imperious express prohibition, but
by consequence. The ordinance was, that all houses of husbandry, that
were used with twenty acres of ground and upward, should be maintained
and kept up for ever, together with a competent proportion of land to be
used and occupied with them; and in nowise to be severed from them,
as by another statute made afterward in his successor's time, was more
fully declared: this, upon forfeiture to be taken, not by way of popular
action, but by seizure of the land itself, by the king and lords of the
fee, as to half the profits, till the houses and land were restored. By
this means the houses being kept up, did of necessity enforce a dweller;
and the proportion of the land for occupation being kept up, did of
necessity enforce that dweller not to be a beggar or cottager, but a
man of some substance, that might keep hinds and servants, and set the
plough a-going. This did wonderfully concern the might and mannerhood
of the kingdom, to have farms, as it were, of a standard sufficient
to maintain an able body out of penury, and did, in effect, amortise a
great part of the lands of the kingdom unto the hold and occupation
of the yeomanry or middle people, of a condition between gentlemen and
cottagers or peasants. Now, how much this did advance the military
power of the kingdom, is apparent by the true principles of war, and the
examples of other kingdoms. For it hath been held by the general opinion
of men of best judgment in the wars (howsoever some few have varied,
and that it may receive some distinction of case), that the principal
strength of an army consisteth in the infantry or foot. And to make good
infantry, it requireth men bred, not in a servile or indigent fashion,
but in some free and plentiful manner. Therefore, if a state run most to
noblemen and gentlemen, and that the husbandman and ploughman be but
as their workfolks and laborers, or else mere cottagers (which are but
housed beggars), you may have a good cavalry, but never good stable
bands of foot; like to coppice woods, that if you leave in them standing
too thick, they will run to bushes and briars, and have little clean
underwood. And this is to be seen in France and Italy, and some other
parts abroad, where in effect all is nobles or peasantry. I speak of
people out of towns, and no middle people; and therefore no good forces
of foot: insomuch as they are enfo