6. Maps and charts, which had been known to the Greeks and Romans, now began to be much improved, though they were still incorrect, as you may suppose.
7. However, all these new discoveries, together with the invention of printing, made people think more about learning, and less about fighting than they used to do; especially as the nobility were beginning to live more in the way they do now, and to have handsome houses in London, instead of living always in their gloomy old castles.
8. Their domestics were no longer slaves, but hired servants; their tenants were not villeins, but free farmers, who paid rent for their land; and the poor peasantry, no longer in bondage, were at liberty to go where they pleased, and were paid for their daily labour.
9. You remember that in the feudal times all the land in the country belonged to the king, the nobles, the knights, and the bishops, and abbots.
10. But Edward the First made a law in favour of the sale and purchase of all lands except those held immediately of the king; and Edward the Third gave his own vassals leave to sell their estates.
11. Other laws were afterwards made, by which landed property was made liable to seizure for debt, and might be given by will, or sold at the pleasure of the owner. And Henry the Seventh, by another law, further encouraged the sale of land, and the consequent division of large estates.
12. Then many of the nobles, who had more land than they wanted, sold some of it to wealthy merchants and others, who built large mansions, to which they often gave their own family name, as for instance, if the name of the proprietor happened to be Burton, he would probably call his residence Burton Hall.
13. These country gentlemen formed quite a new class of people in England, and they have ever since that time continued to increase in wealth, rank, and importance.
14. A strange thing happened in the reign of Henry the Seventh, which has made some people think the sons of Edward the Fourth were not put to death in the Tower, as is generally believed, but you shall hear the story.
15. A young man, called Perkin Warbeck, came to Ireland from Flanders, and declared he was the younger of those two princes, and the lawful heir to the throne, as his brother was dead.