2
Such, indeed, was the devastation committed by the Yorkists andLancastrians, that no fewer than sixty villages, within twelve milesof Warwick,* some of them large and populous, with churches andmanor-houses,t were destroyed and abandoned, besides many strong andsuperb castles; and their noble owners, who might have rebuilt them,either killed or ruined. The number of artificers, too, who fell, was sogreat, that this class became exceedingly scarce, and the price of labourvery high. And from the restrictive acts \ which had been passedagainst apprenticing boys to trades, for the promotion of agriculture, §this deficiency could only be supplied by the importation of foreigners.
The scheme of Henry the Seventh’s policy, says Hume, consisted indepressing the barons, and exalting men of new families who were moredependent on him; and there scarcely passed a session || during hisreign without statutes against engaging retainers, and giving them badgesor liveries. “ But the increase of the arts,” says that historian, “ more
gifts of friends, and spoils of enemies, being disposed in order along the walls. And there hesat with his children and guests about him, listening to the song and the harp of his bards ordaughters, and drinking from cups of shell.”
t A law was enacted during the reign of Henry IV, , that no man could bind his son to anapprenticeship unless he were possessed of twenty shillings a-year in land.
§ The state of husbandry was so low in some districts of England in the 15th century, asto cause ordinances compelling farmers to till and sow their own lands. There was one whichcommanded that every man should sow at least “ fortye beanes.”— Black Acts.
|| Douce, in his “ Illustrations of Shakspeare,” says, that “ the practice of furnishing ser-vants with liveries may be traced in some of the statutes ordained in the reign of Richard II. ;and that in the reign of Edward IV . badge and livery were synonymous, the latter word beingderived from the French term signifying the delivery of any particular thing. The badge wasthen, as at present, the armorial bearings, the crest, or device of the master, executed in clothor metal, and sewed to the left sleeve of the habit.”
Queen Mary granted thirty-nine licenses of retainer during her reign ; Elizabeth, fifteen.