11. SURVIVALS OF VILLEINAGE (pp. 74, 79)--Of course an ancient and universal custom could not die out all at once, but its decay after 1381 was certainly rapid. Dr Cunningham (_Growth of Industry_, p. 360) quotes cases to prove that villeinage existed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but he himself says that Fitzherbert (_On Surveyinge_, 1539) “laments over the continuance of villanage as a disgrace to the country”; and Fitzherbert would surely not have spoken thus if it was a recognized institution, instead of a decaying survival. Again, in 1574 Elizabeth enfranchised all bondmen on her estates; and she would hardly have done this if it had been the universal custom to retain villeins in their old bondage. We may readily admit that there were plenty of survivals of villeinage, although the old institutions were practically obsolete. 11_a_. MONOPOLIES (p. 102)--These had been used by the crown partly in order to raise money by their sale and partly as a convenient method of paying or rewarding ministers or court favourites. Thus Elizabeth’s favourite, Essex, had a monopoly of sweet wines. But by Elizabeth’s time they had become so unpopular, and people saw so clearly the taxes which they inflicted on all articles thus monopolized that Parliament demanded (in 1601) their abolition. So determined was the House that the Queen gave way, though she was no doubt within the legal limits of her prerogative. James I., however, used his prerogative to create so many new monopolies that Parliament again protested (in 1609), and he also revoked them all. But after the suspension of Parliamentary government in 1614 monopolies were granted again, till in 1621 their revocation was one of the main points mentioned among the grievances which the House {247} of Commons proceeded to redress, and monopolies were then once more abolished. The three patents (or monopolies) chiefly complained of were those on (1) inns and hostelries, (2) alehouses, (3) gold and silver thread. The Act abolishing monopolies is the 21 Jac. I. cap. 3 (1624). This Parliamentary struggle about monopolies shows very clearly the beginnings of the great fight between Parliament and the Crown, the former trying to regain rights which had for some time (especially under the Tudors) been in abeyance, and the Crown to keep prerogatives which had hitherto been exercised unchecked. 12. ELIZABETH’S POOR LAW (p. 107)--There is no doubt that the original intention of the Act was beneficent, and its framers are not to be held responsible for the use made of it in later times. The ACT OF APPRENTICESHIP, incidentally fixing wages by assessment, was mainly concerned with the relations of masters to their journeymen and apprentices; and enacted also that no person should exercise a craft or trade unless he had been apprenticed to it for seven years.