" The only remedy the
then wise men of England could devise was to make the laws against them
still more severe. Consequently it was ordered that the first time such
people were apprehended they should be branded with the letter R, and if
subsequently again found begging or wandering they were "to suffer death
without benefit of Clergy." Yet such was their obstinacy that they still
increased in numbers; and that for the simple reason that the economic
or social causes of which they were but the inevitable outcome were not
removed.
During all this period, however, the country was developing, its
industry and commerce expanding, and its wealth increasing by leaps and
bounds; but in all this the "meaner sort," the Younger Brothers, the
disinherited masses, had neither lot nor share. Though Clarendon may
speak of the growing economical prosperity of the country during the
time of which we are writing, yet there be no doubt of the truth of
Thorold Rogers' contention, that[109:1]--"I am convinced from the
comparison I have been able to make between wages, rents and prices,
that it was a period of excessive misery among the mass of the people
and the tenants, a time in which a few might have become rich, while the
many were crushed down into hopeless and almost permanent indigence."
And yet the facts are such as to compel him, when speaking of the
Restoration, to point out that[110:1]--"the labourers, as far as the
will went, were better off under the rule of the Saints than under that
of the sinners.
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