mentions, land for which his father had paid £3 or £4 a year, was in 1549 let at £16, almost to the ruin of the tenant. Thirdly, the large land-owners took from the poor their common lands by an unscrupulous system of enclosures. Wolsey had in vain endeavoured to stop their doing this, for he had sagacity enough to perceive how it would pauperize the labourers and others who had valuable rights in such land. But enclosures and evictions went on in spite of his enactments, with the inevitable result of social disorders. The most important of these risings took place in Norfolk, where enclosures had been made upon a tremendous scale. Ket, a wealthy tanner of Norwich, took the lead (in 1549) of a large body of some 16,000 tenants and labourers, who demanded the abolition of the late enclosures and the reform of other local abuses. The Earl of Warwick defeated the petitioners in a battle, put down the rising, and hanged Ket at Norwich Castle. The farmers and peasantry were thus cowed into submission. § 7. OTHER ECONOMIC CHANGES—From these facts it became evident that the old mediæval industrial system was breaking up in England. The new life created by the Renaissance caused a keener and more eager spirit among all classes of men. Competition began to operate as a new force, and men made haste to grow rich. The merchants were becoming bolder and more enterprising in their ventures. The discoveries of America by Columbus (1492) and by Cabot (1497), and of the sea-route to India by Vasco da Gama (1498), had kindled a desire to share largely in the wealth of these newly accessible countries. At home the lords of the manors no longer remained in close personal relationships with their tenants. The tenants were no longer villeins, but were nominally {90} independent, and had certain rights. But the lords of the manors had small respect for rights that were only guarded by custom; and evicted or oppressed their tenants to such an extent that multitudes of dispossessed and impoverished villagers flocked to the towns. In fact Sir Thomas More tells us that the tenants “were got rid of by fraud or force, or tired out by repeated wrongs into parting with their property.” Many labourers, too, could be found wandering from place to place, begging or robbing. The old steady village life, with its isolation and strong home ties, was undergoing a violent transition. Constant work and regular wages were becoming things of the past. The labourer’s wages would not purchase the former quantity of provisions under the new high prices caused by the debasement of the currency, and the discoveries of silver from 1540–1600; for wages, though they ultimately follow prices, do so very slowly, and not always even then proportionately.