intrigues, Elizabeth was above all an English sovereign. She devoted herself ably and energetically to the task of civil administration. She had hardly mounted the throne, indeed, when she faced the problem of social discontent. Time, and the natural development of new branches of industry, were working quietly for the relief of the glutted labor-market; but, as we have seen under the Protectorate, a vast mass of disorder still existed in England, which found a constant ground of resentment in the enclosures and evictions which accompanied the progress of agricultural change. It was on this host of "broken men" that every rebellion could count for support; their mere existence indeed was an encouragement to civil war, while in peace their presence was felt in the insecurity of life and property, in gangs of marauders which held whole counties in terror, and in "sturdy beggars" who stripped travellers on the road. Under Elizabeth, as under her predecessors, the terrible measures of repression, whose uselessness More had in vain pointed out, went pitilessly on: we find the magistrates of Somersetshire capturing a gang of a hundred at a stroke, hanging fifty at once on the gallows, and complaining bitterly to the Council of the necessity for waiting till the assizes before they could enjoy the spectacle of the fifty others hanging beside them. But the issue of a royal commission to inquire into the whole matter enabled the Government to deal with the difficulty in a wiser and more effectual way. The old powers to enforce labor on the idle, and settlement on the vagrant class, were continued; but a distinction was for the first time drawn between these and the impotent and destitute persons who had been confounded with them; and each town and parish was held responsible for the relief of its indigent and disabled poor, as it had long been responsible for the employment of able-bodied mendicants. When voluntary contributions proved insufficient for this purpose, the justices in sessions were enabled by statute to assess all persons in town or parish who refused to contribute in proportion to their ability. The principles embodied in these measures, the principle of local responsibility for local distress, and that of a distinction between the pauper and the vagabond, were more clearly defined in a statute which marked the middle period of Elizabeth's reign. By this act houses of correction were ordered to be established for the punishment and amendment of the vagabond class by means of compulsory labor; while the power to levy and assess a general rate in each parish for the relief of the poor was trans

ferred from the justices to its church-wardens. The well-known act which matured and finally established this system, the 43d of Elizabeth, remained the base of our system of pauper-administration until a time within the recollection of living men. Whatever flaws a later experience has found in these measures, their wise and humane character formed a striking contrast to the legislation which had degraded our statute-book from the date of the Statute of Laborers; and their efficacy at the time was proved by the entire cessation of the great social danger against which they were intended to provide.

Its cessation, however, was owing not merely to law but to the natural growth of wealth and industry throughout the country. The change in the mode of cultivation, whatever social embarrassment it might bring about, undoubtedly favored production. Not only was a larger capital brought to bear upon the land, but the mere change in the system brought about a taste for new and better modes of agriculture; the breed of horses and of cattle was improved, and a far greater use made of manure and dressings. One acre under the new system produced, it was said, as much as two under the old. As a more careful and constant cultivation was introduced, a greater number of hands were required on every farm; and much of the surplus labor which had been flung off the land in the commencement of the new system was thus recalled to it. But a far more efficient agency in absorbing the unemployed was found in the development of manufactures. The linen trade was as yet of small value, and that of silk-weaving was only just introduced. But the woollen manufacture had become an important element in the national wealth. England no longer sent her fleeces to be woven in Flanders and to be dyed at Florence. The spinning of yarn, the weaving, fulling, and dyeing of cloth, were spreading rapidly from the towns over the country-side. The worsted trade, of which Norwich was the centre, extended over the whole of the Eastern counties. The farmers' wives began everywhere to spin their wool from their own sheeps' backs into a coarse "homespun." The South and the West still remained the great seats of industry and of wealth, the great homes of mining and manufacturing activity. The iron manufacturers were limited to Kent and Sussex, though their prosperity in this quarter was already threatened by the growing scarcity of the wood which fed their furnaces, and by the exhaustion of the forests of the weald. Cornwall was then, as now, the sole ex

porter of tin; and the exportation of its copper was just beginning. The broadcloths of the West claimed the palm among the woollen stuffs of England. The Cinque Ports held almost a monopoly of the commerce of the Channel. Every little harbor, from the Foreland to the Land's End, sent out its fleet of fishingboats, manned with the bold seamen who furnished crews for Drake and the buccaneers. But in the reign of Elizabeth the poverty and inaction to which the North had been doomed since the fall of the Roman rule begin at last to be broken. We see the first signs of the coming revolution which has transferred English manufactures and English wealth to the north of the Mersey and the Humber, in the mention which now meets us of the friezes of Manchester, the coverlets of York, and the dependence of Halifax on its cloth trade.

The growth, however, of English commerce far outstripped that of its manufactures. We must not judge of it, indeed, by any modern standard; for the whole population of the country can hardly have exceeded five or six millions, and the burden of all the vessels engaged in ordinary commerce was estimated at little more than fifty thousand tons. The size of the vessels employed in it would nowadays seem insignificant; a modern collier brig is probably as large as the biggest merchant vessel which then sailed from the port of London. But it was under Elizabeth that English commerce began the rapid career of development which has made us the carriers of the world. By far the most important branch of it was with Flanders; Antwerp and Bruges were in fact the general marts of the world in the early part of the sixteenth century, and the annual export of English wool and drapery to their markets was estimated at a sum of more than two millions in value. It was with the ruin of Antwerp, at the time of its siege and capture by the Duke of Parma, that the commercial supremacy of our own capital may be said to have been first established. A third of the merchants and manufacturers of the ruined city are said to have found a refuge on the banks of the Thames. The export trade to Flanders died away as London developed into the general mart of Europe, where the gold and sugar of the New World were found side by side with the cotton of India, the silks of the East, and the woollen stuffs of England itself. The foundation of the Royal Exchange by Sir Thomas Gresham was a mark of the commercial progress of the time. Not only was the old trade of the world transferred in great part to the

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