, there cometh some privilege or other in the way which
cutteth them off from this or that trade, whereby they must needs shift
soil and seek unto other countries. By these also the greatest commodities
are brought into the hands of few, who imbase, corrupt, and yet raise the
prices of things at their own pleasures. Example of this last I can give
also in books, which, after the first impression of any one book, are for
the most part very negligently handled:[201] whereas, if another might
print it so well as the first, then would men strive which of them should
do it best; and so it falleth out in all other trades. It is an easy
matter to prove that England was never less furnished with people than at
this present; for, if the old records of every manor be sought (and search
made to find what tenements are fallen either down or into the lord's
hands, or brought and united together by other men), it will soon appear
that, in some one manor, seventeen, eighteen, or twenty houses are shrunk.
I know what I say, by mine own experience. Notwithstanding that some one
cottage be here and there erected of late, which is to little purpose. Of
cities and towns either utterly decayed or more than a quarter or half
diminished, though some one be a little increased here and there, of towns
pulled down for sheep-walks,[202] and no more but the lordships now
standing in them, beside those that William Rufus pulled down in his time,
I could say somewhat; but then I should swerve yet further from my
purpose, whereunto I now return.

We had no parks left in England at the coming of the Normans, who added
this calamity also to the servitude of our nation, making men of the best
sort furthermore to become keepers of their game, whilst they lived in the
meantime upon the spoil of their revenues, and daily overthrew towns,
villages, and an infinite sort of families, for the maintenance of their
venery. Neither was any park supposed in these times to be stately enough
that contained not at the least eight or ten hidelands, that is, so many
hundred acres or families (or, as they have been always called in some
places of the realm, carrucats or cartwares), of which one was sufficient
in old time to maintain an honest yeoman.

King John, travelling on a time northwards, to wit, 1209, to war upon the
King of Scots, because he had married his daughter to the Earl of Bullen
without his consent, in his return overthrew a great number of parks and
wa