atins call it _Centesima_, for that in the hundred month it doubleth
the principal; but more of this elsewhere. See Cicero against Verres,
Demosthenes against Aphobus, and Athenaeus, lib. 13, in fine; and,
when thou hast read them well, help I pray thee in lawful manner to
hang up such as take _Centum pro cento_, for they are no better
worthy as I do judge in conscience. Forget not also such landlords as
used to value their leases at a secret estimation given of the wealth
and credit of the taker, whereby they seem (as it were) to eat them
up, and deal with bondmen, so that if the lessee be thought to be
worth a hundred pounds he shall pay no less for his new term, or else
another to enter with hard and doubtful covenants. I am sorry to
report it, much more grieved to understand of the practice, but most
sorrowful of all to understand that men of great port and countenance
are so far from suffering their farmers to have any gain at all that
they themselves become graziers, butchers, tanners, sheepmasters,
woodmen, and _denique quid non_, thereby to enrich themselves, and
bring all the wealth of the country into their own hands, leaving the
communalty weak, or as an idol with broken or feeble arms, which may
in a time of peace have a plausible shew, but when necessity shall
enforce have a heavy and bitter sequel.

CHAPTER IX

OF PROVISION MADE FOR THE POOR

[1577, Book III., Chapter 5; 1587, Book II., Chapter 10.]

There is no commonwealth at this day in Europe wherein there is not
great store of poor people, and those necessarily to be relieved by
the wealthier sort, which otherwise would starve and come to utter
confusion. With us the poor is commonly divided into three sorts, so
that some are poor by impotence, as the fatherless child, the aged,
blind, and lame, and the diseased person that is judged to be
incurable; the second are poor by casualty, as the wounded soldier,
the decayed householder, and the sick person visited with grievous
and painful diseases; the third consisteth of thriftless poor, as the
rioter that hath consumed all, the vagabond that will abide nowhere,
but runneth up and down from place to place (as it were seeking work
and finding none), and finally the rogue and the strumpet, which are
not possible to be divided in sunder, but run to and fro over all the
realm, chiefly keeping the champaign soils in summer to avoid the
scorching heat, and the woodland grounds in winter to eschew th