Miles listened patiently enough while another old friend expressed his views in the same way; but at last he said, "You may have heard from my father that we did not see eye to eye in these matters."
"Aye, aye, we heard all about that pretty little quarrel, but you are old enough to know better now—to know that the old way of dealing with the land is not profitable; and being one addicted to the new learning, which is just now so fashionable, you surely will not keep to the old way of managing the land."
"I am, as you say, addicted to the new learning, which teaches a man to think and judge for himself in many matters, but he must judge righteously. He must follow the law of Christ, and do to his neighbour, though he be his tenant or his hind, as he would have them do to him. In the matter of my father's funeral I have carried out what I know would have been his wish. I have not stinted candles, masses, nor baked meats. There has been free bed and board for man and beast for whoever liked to come to honour him; but, having done this, I must be free to live my life, and deal with my tenants, as God shall guide me. I have taken a wife, and propose to live here on the land, as my father did before me, but what riches I shall gather for the sons and daughters who come after me, God knoweth, for I must seek first the good of those He hath placed under my hand, and I must be free to do it in the way He shall show me; but I do not think it will be other than the old way of growing corn by which yeoman and hind can live as well as their master," added Sir Miles.
"Do you mean to say you will keep on those lazy, grumbling beggars, whom your father would fain have turned off the land years ago?" fumed one of the old men.
"I do not wonder that they have grumbled when their rent has been raised, so that they have well-nigh starved, sometimes, because they could give so little to the land to raise a good crop," said Miles, indignantly. For he had heard all about this charge of laziness, which had its root in his father's mistaken policy, and prevented the tenants from getting a fair crop from the land.
He tried to explain this, but they bade him cut short all his vexations about tenants and cottages, by clearing the land and keeping sheep to supply the markets of Flanders with wool.
"I am not going to sell my sheep," said Miles, "nor my wool either next year, but I am going to send for a steady craftsman from Ghent, who can teach my people to use it for themselves; and then there will be employment for men, and women too, in the winter. If it will make the men of Flanders rich, as it does, to buy our wool, and weave it, and send it back as cloth, why should we not learn to do it for ourselves, and so do away with something of the bitter poverty with which all are now afflicted. It was taught and practised here in England in the time of Wickliffe, I have read, and if our people would take to it again we might rightly and truly be called 'Merry England' once more. Now, however, the merriment is only for the King and his Court, while the rest of the people sigh and languish for want of work and want of bread; and no man's life is safe if he stirs from his own hearthstone by reason of the crowds of beggars and robbers that we make by our laws, and our unjust dealing with the land."
Of course such a speech as this could not fail to make a sensation, and the news that Miles had mentioned the name of Wickliffe was carried to the monastery by a monk who was one of the party.
He did not know much about the matter himself, but he had heard that somebody of that name was an enemy of the Church, and so it would be wise for the brethren to keep their eyes open to the doings of this young man. At present they could find no fault with him. He had provided a funeral for his father which they fully approved. There were to be plenty of masses, and plenty of candles, and as the monastery supplied both, there would be a nice little sum added to their coffers over the business.
The monk was not disposed to grumble if Miles did give up the growing of sheep for the growing of corn. With a populous village of well-to-do peasants, the Church could reap a much richer harvest than from the enlarged green meadows, with a silent alehouse, and the mud-hovels of the village dropping to pieces from decay; so that in his design to bring back the tenants to the land, Miles was not like to meet with any opposition from the Church. It was only when her rights and privileges were threatened that the Church bestirred herself; and so if they had received any news at the monastery about Cicely, they were careful to keep it to themselves, and the coming of Sir Harry Guildford placed the young couple out of the way of idle questioning which might have arisen if it had been known that they were not married when they first arrived.