CHAPTER V.
REORGANISATION OF THE GILD-SYSTEM.
Reign of Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, on her accession, found that immediate reform was imperative in almost every department of state. The whole trade of the country was in a condition of agitation. Everything seemed unsettled and insecure.
Economic disturbances and industrial activity.
For the social upheaval which the Reformation had brought about came in the train of a long period of economic disorder. The changes in the mode of cultivation had thrown the mass of the country population out of work. These were driven in large numbers by stress of circumstances into the towns, which were consequently overstocked with hands. At this juncture came the breaking down of the social police within the towns by the weakening of the Gilds, while in the rural districts the dissolution of the monasteries took away from the poor their main hope of sustenance. The evils which such a policy of mere destruction must inevitably have brought upon the nation were averted through the national growth of wealth which the same period had witnessed. In the country parts the ejection of the easy-going old abbots had at least favoured the adoption of newer and improved methods of cultivation, so that a greater number of labourers came in time to be required on the estate[124]. But far more satisfactory for absorbing the surplusage of labour was the development which the period witnessed in manufacture. The woollen trade in the west, the worsted trade in the east, the iron trade in the south, and unmistakeable signs of the cloth trade in the north already showed how the foundations of England’s wealth were laid.
The writers of the period abound in notices of the unparalleled growth of trade and commerce. Harrison laments “that every function and several vocation striveth with other, which of them should have all the water of commodity ran into her own cistern[125].” Ample openings for capital broke through the old prejudices against the taking of interest. “Usury” as it was called—“a trade brought in by the Jews—is now perfectly practiced almost by every Christian, and so commonly that he is accompted but for a fool that doth lend his money for nothing[126].” The English workman too was growing rich and lazy in the sunlight of prosperous times, so that “strangers” were frequently preferred to native craftsmen as “more reasonable in their takings, and less wasters of time by a great deal than our own[127].”
This was the commencement of the period of Shrewsbury’s greatest prosperity. Edward IV.’s erection of the Court of the President and Marches of Wales (1478) was a material cause of the advent of peace to the Borders. Henry VII. could gratify national sentiment by tracing his descent from Owen Tudor: he gave it a practical turn by placing his son Arthur at Ludlow as ruler of the principality. The Welshmen had thus begun to feel that their union with England was a real one before Henry VIII. finally incorporated the country with the English kingdom.