If England, however, did not for more than half a century turn the new discoveries to material account, wealth and prosperity did increase greatly in the towns, and the country recovered her lost position among the commercial nations--partly from Henry's policy directed to that end, partly from the comparatively settled conditions of life which gradually prevailed. In the agricultural districts, however, this was hardly the case, owing to the increasing tendency to substitute pasture for cultivation. The country had no difficulty in producing sufficient for its own consumption; and the development of the woollen manufacture made sheep-farming in particular much more lucrative. But sheep-farming called for the employment of many fewer hands; proprietors dispossessed small tenants to make large sheep-runs; migration from the rural districts to the nascent manufacturing centres was not a simple matter; and thus there was no little distress, and a great multiplication of beggars and vagabonds. The monasteries, which in the past had been progressive farmers, had degenerated into landlords easy-going indeed but without enterprise. The wealth of the gentry increased, but unemployment increased also, and labour at the same time became cheaper. The evil was to a great extent realised; in the Isle of Wight, which was rapidly becoming depopulated, an attempt was made to improve matters by limiting the size of farms; the heavy export duties on raw wool were doubtless intended actually to restrict the output as well as to divert it to English rather than foreign manufacturers; but since this did not effectively check the growing demand at home, the production of wool remained so lucrative that it continued to be more attractive than cultivation. Attempts were made to transfer labour from agriculture to manufacture by interfering with, the restrictions imposed by the trade-guilds (which always aimed at making themselves close bodies), the object of such legislation being quite as much to prevent idleness as to relieve distress. Nevertheless, the evil grew. Sir Thomas More in his introduction to the _Utopia_, written early in the next reign, gives a vigorous sketch of the prevalent vagabondage just before the death of Cardinal Morton, adding to the causes above mentioned the number of lackeys employed by the wealthy who when dismissed became a useless burden on the community. He also charges the land-owners, expressly including many abbots and others of the clergy, with causing depopulation and misery by forcing up rents. From him too as well as from other sources we learn of the frequency of crimes of violence, attributed by him to the reckless employment of the death penalty for minor offences, encouraging the fugitive criminal--already doomed if caught--to take life without hesitation. [Sidenote: The Church]