Such was the bright side of the picture, the side which first claims the attention of the casual observer. A more critical examination of the state of the country, however, reveals an undercurrent of discontent, which was almost lost in the crowning years of Wolsey’s greatness, but which did not fail to make itself felt at a later day, when the allegiance of so large a part of the people had been alienated by the affair of the divorce. The surest proof that Henry and Wolsey were aware of this latent hostility is afforded by the infrequent assemblings of Parliament. Seldom did the King dare to face the representatives of the nation with the demand for a subsidy; he preferred to veil his oppressive financial exactions under the name of an Amicable Loan. The poverty of the nobles was notorious; and the distress of the poor people daily increased owing to a succession of bad seasons, thin harvests, and a few outbreaks of a devastating plague. Economic and agrarian changes contributed to swell the universal discontent[170]. The break-up of the old manorial system, the increase of enclosures for pasturage, and the substitution of convertible husbandry for the old three-field system all served to displace labour, and so temporarily to diminish the demand for it. Great distress among the agricultural poor was necessarily the first result of these changes: unfortunately economic science was not sufficiently advanced to enable men to discern that it was but a passing phase, and that as soon as labour had adjusted itself to the new conditions permanent advantages to it were bound to ensue. The country-folk contrasted their own wretched condition with the many reports which reached them of Henry’s sumptuous and luxurious Court: small wonder if the government was wrongly blamed for a large share of the misery which was inevitably the first consequence of sudden and great economic development. Finally all malcontents were united in opposition to the King’s attempts to gain a divorce from his first wife, during the closing years of Wolsey’s ministry; so that the maintenance and further strengthening of the powerful monarchy established at the accession of the House of Tudor promised in the near future to afford a problem of even greater difficulty than before.