incompatible with it. Now that Panurgus, in abating the power of
the nobility, was the cause whence it came to fall into the hands
of the people, appears by those several statutes that were made
in his reign, as that for population, those against retainers,
and that for alienations.

By the statute of population, all houses of husbandry that
were used with twenty acres of ground and upward, were to be
maintained and kept up forever with a competent proportion of
land laid to them, and in no wise, as appears by a subsequent
statute, to be severed. By which means the houses being kept up,
did of necessity enforce dwellers; and the proportion of land to
be tilled being kept up, did of necessity enforce the dweller not
to be a beggar or cottager, but a man of some substance, that
might keep hinds and servants and set the plough a-going. This
did mightily concern, says the historian of that prince, the
might and manhood of the kingdom, and in effect amortize a great
part of the lands to the hold and possession of the yeomanry or
middle people, who living not in a servile or indigent fashion,
were much unlinked from dependence upon their lords, and living
in a free and plentiful manner, became a more excellent infantry,
but such a one upon which the lords had so little power, that
from henceforth they may be computed to have been disarmed.

And as they had lost their infantry after this manner, so
their cavalry and commanders were cut off by the statute of
retainers; for whereas it was the custom of the nobility to have
younger brothers of good houses, mettled fellows, and such as
were knowing in the feats of arms about them, they who were
longer followed with so dangerous a train, escaped not such