ne naperie, whereby the
wealth of our countrie ... dooth infinitelie appear;"

[5.] "the multitude of chimnies latelie erected;" [6.] "the great
(although not generall) amendment of lodging, for (said they) our
fathers (yea, and we our selues also) haue lien full oft vpon straw
pallets, on rough mats couered onelie with a sheet, vnder couerlets
made of dagswain or hopharlots (I vse their owne termes), and a good
round log vnder their heads in steed of a bolster or pillow....
Pillowes (said they) were thought meet onelie for women in childbed.
As for seruants, if they had anie sheet aboue them, it was well, for
seldome had they anie vnder their bodies, to keepe them from the
pricking straws that ran oft through the canuas of the pallet, and
rased their hardened hides."... [7.] "The exchange of vessell, as of
treene[46] platters into pewter, and woodden spoones into siluer or
tin. For so common were all sorts of treene stuffe in old time, that
a man should hardlie find four peeces of pewter (of which one was
peraduenture a salt) in a good farmers house, and yet for all this
frugalitie (if it may so be iustly called) they were scarse able to
liue and paie their rents at their daies without selling of a cow, or
an horsse, or more, although they paid but foure pounds at the
vttermost by the yeare."

The farmer was very poor too; and yet now, though his L4 rent is raised to
L40, he can not only buy plate, and featherbeds, etc., but can purchase a
renewal of his lease, 6 years before the expiration of the old one; and
the paying the money "shall neuer trouble him more than the haire of his
beard, when the barber hath washed and shaued it from his chin." Against
these signs of prosperity, these fat kine, are 3, nay 4, lean kine, which
eat up their plump brethren,

"three things ... are growen to be verie grieuous vnto them, to wit,
the inhansing of rents, latelie mentioned; the dailie oppression of
copiholders, whose lords seeke to bring their poore tenants almost
into plaine seruitude and miserie, dailie deuising new meanes, and
seeking vp all the old, how to cut them shorter and shorter,
doubling, trebling, and now & then seuen times increasing their
fines; driuing them also for euerie trifle to loose and forfeit their
tenures (by whome the greatest part of the realme dooth stand and is