During the reigns of Henry VII., Henry VIII., and Edward VI., an undue preference was given to grazing. Acts were framed to put a stop to this mismanagement, which was fast ruining the country, by driving people from it. Henry VII. exempted Norwich from the penalties of the law, on account of the decay of manufactures from the want of hands; and shortly after the whole county of Norfolk obtained a like exemption in regard to some branches of the woollen trade. The practice of depopulating the country, by abandoning tillage, and throwing the lands into pasturage, had run to so great an extent in the time of Henry VIII., that an enactment was made, whereby the king became entitled to half the rents of the land where any farm-houses were allowed to fall to decay. The number of sheep in a flock was at the same time limited to two thousand. Hume conjectures, in his _History of England_, that unskilful husbandry was probably the cause why the proprietors found no profit in tillage;--thus leading a farmer to keep a flock sometimes of twenty-four thousand as expressed in the statute. This had the effect of increasing the price of mutton, a remarkable coincidence, which parliament attributes to the commodity having gotten into few hands, though Hume ascribes it to the daily increase of money, thinking it almost impossible that such an article could be engrossed. At the commencement of the reign of Edward VI., the people were still sadly deficient in a knowledge of agriculture--a profession, which, as Hume wisely remarks, of all employments, requires the most reflection and experience. A great demand having arisen for wool both at home and abroad, whole estates were laid waste, while the tenants, regarded as a useless burden, were expelled their habitations, and the cottagers deprived even of the commons on which they fed their cows; no wonder there was a decay of the people!