re, not sparing the very commons
whereupon many townships now and then do live, affirming that we have
already too great store of people in England, and that youth by marrying
too soon do nothing profit the country, but fill it full of beggars to the
hurt and utter undoing (they say) of the commonwealth.

Certes if it be not a curse of the Lord to have our country converted in
such sort, from the furniture of mankind into the walks and shrouds of
wild beasts, I know not what is any.[200] How many families also these
great and small game (for so most keepers call them) have eaten up and are
likely hereafter to devour, some men may conjecture, but many more lament,
sith there is no hope of restraint to be looked for in this behalf because
the corruption is so general. But, if a man may presently give a guess at
the universality of this evil by contemplation of the circumstance, he
shall say at the last that the twentieth part of the realm is employed
upon deer and conies already, which seemeth very much if it be duly
considered of.

King Henry the Eighth, one of the noblest princes that ever reigned in
this land, lamented oft that he was constrained to hire foreign aid, for
want of competent store of soldiers here at home, perceiving (as it is
indeed) that such supplies are oftentimes more hurtful than profitable
unto those that entertain them, as may chiefly be seen in Valens the
Emperor, our Vortiger, and no small number of others. He would oft marvel
in private talk how that, when seven or eight princes ruled here at once,
one of them could lead thirty or forty thousand men to the field against
another, or two of them 100,000 against the third, and those taken out
only of their own dominions. But as he found the want, so he saw not the
cause of this decay, which grew beside this occasion now mentioned, also
by laying house to house and land to land, whereby many men's occupyings
were converted into one, and the breed of people not a little thereby
diminished. The avarice of landlords, by increasing of rents and fines,
also did so weary the people that they were ready to rebel with him that
would arise, supposing a short end in the wars to be better than a long
and miserable life in peace.

Privileges and faculties also are another great cause of the ruin of a
commonwealth and diminution of mankind: for, whereas law and nature doth
permit all men to live in their best manner, and whatsoever trade they are
exercised in