The artisan class had, however, grown in wealth, and they were greatly strengthened by the removal from France of large numbers of workmen in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. These prosperous tradespeople became landowners by purchase, and thus tended to replace the LIBERI HOMINES, or FREEMEN, who had been destroyed under the wars of the nobles, which effaced the landmarks of English society. The liberated serfs attained the position of paid farm-laborers; had the policy of Elizabeth, who enacted that each of their cottages should have an allotment of four acres of land, been carried out, it would have been most beneficial to the state. The reign of this family embraced one hundred and eighteen years, during which the increase of the population was about twenty-five per cent. When Henry VII. ascended the throne in 1485 it was 4,000,000, and on the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603 it had reached 5,000,000, the average increase being about 8000 per annum. The changes effected in the condition of the farmers' class left the mass of the people in a far worse state at the close than at the commencement of their rule. VII. THE STUARTS. The accession of the Stuarts to the throne of England took place under peculiar circumstances. The nation had just passed through two very serious struggles--one political, the other religious. The land which had been in the possession of religious communities, instead of being retained by the state for educational or religious purposes, had been given to favorites. A new class of ownership had been created--the lay impropriators of tithes. The suppression of retainers converted land into a quasi property. The extension to land of the powers of bequest gave the possessors greater facilities for disposing thereof. It was relieved from the principal feudal burden, military service, but remained essentially feudal as far as tenure was concerned. Men were no longer furnished to the state as payment of the knight's fee; they were cleared off the land, to make room for sheep and oxen, England being in that respect about two hundred years in advance of Ireland, though without the outlet of emigration. Vagrancy and its attendant evils led to the Poor Law.