way of exchange, of sale, of leasing, and sub-letting. By
the end of the fifteenth century the different elements
in rural society are spread, as it were, along a more ex-
tended scale, and there is a much wider gap between those
who are most, and those who are least, successful.

Taken together these changes mean, on the whole, an
upward movement, an increase in the opportunities possessed
by the peasantry of advancing themselves by purchasing
and leasing land, more mobility, more enterprise, greater
scope for the man who has saved money and wishes to
invest it. They mean that custom and authority have
less influence and that class distinctions based upon tenure
are weakened. But the upward curve may turn and
descend; for they imply also a tendency towards the
dissolution of fixed customary arrangements and of the
protection which they offer against revolutionary changes,
a tendency which in the future, when great landowners
and capitalists turn their attentions to discovering the
most profitable methods of farming, may damage the very
men who have gained by it in the past. In the next
two chapters we shall glance at the first point, and pause
at greater length upon the second: first, the economic
condition of the mass of the peasantry before the great
agrarian movements of the sixteenth century begin; secondly,
the signs of coming change which may react to their dis-
advantage. We shall try to maintain the standpoint of
an observer in the early years of the sixteenth century.
But economic periods overlap, and Northumberland is still
in the Middle Ages when Middlesex is in the eighteenth
century. So we shall not hesitate to use evidence drawn
from sources that are in point of time far apart.

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