[331] Schanz, _Englische Handelspolitik gegen Ende der Mittelalters_, Band II., "Zoll und Handelstatistik," pp. 1?-156.
[332] Unwin, _Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries_.
[333] See _e.g._ the account of the East Anglian woollen industry in the _Victoria County History_, Suffolk (Unwin's article on "Social and Economic History").
[334] G.R. Lewis, _The Stanneries_, pp. 214?-215, and quotations from Lansdowne MSS. 76, fol. 34, given there.
[335] _Hist. MSS. Com._, Cd. 5567 (Report on the MSS. of Lord Middleton).
[336] W.R. Scott, _Joint-Stock Companies to 1720_, vol. ii.
[337] For a description of "The Exchange and What It is," see T. Wilson, _Discourse upon Usurie_ (1584): his remark, "The second kind of bill ... may be called sicke and dry exchange, and is practised where one doth borrowe money abroad ... not meaning to make any real payment abroad, but compoundeth with the exchange to have it returned again," illustrates what is said above. See also Camden Society, _Dialogue or Confabulation of Two Travellers_ (1580): "The said Hans had provided £10,000 for the Prince of Condy upon five in the 100 at interest, and if I would have the like he would help me unto it. Then I ... pondered what benefit it would be to me to let it out again at ten in the hundred to some nobleman in England." Down to about 1560 at any rate the English Government was constantly in the hands of foreign capitalists. See Gairdner, _L. and P. Henry VIII._, and Burgon's _Life of Gresham_.
In the second place, the social arrangements of England are such as to make it certain that this increasing activity will react almost immediately on agriculture and on agrarian relationships. There have been countries where a sharp line has been drawn between trade and agriculture, where the landowner could not engage in trade without degrading himself, where the tradesman could not buy up the noble's land.[338] But this has never been the case in England. In that precocious island the Lombards had hardly settled in Lombard Street, when Mr. Pole's daughters discovered that the fine shades flourished their finest in country air, and there was a market for heiresses among the English aristocracy long before Columbus had revealed to Europe the Eldorado of the New World. From a very early date the successful merchant has bought dignity and social consideration by investing his savings in an estate. The impecunious gentleman has restored the falling fortunes of his house by commercial speculations, of which marriage into a merchant family, if not the least speculative, is not the least profitable. At the beginning of the sixteenth century both movements were going on simultaneously with a rapidity which was before unknown, and which must be explained as the consequence of the great growth of all forms of commercial activity. The rise of great incomes drawn from trade had brought into existence a new order of business men whose enterprise was not confined to the seaport and privileged town, but flowed over into the purchase of landed estates, even before the secularisation of monastic endowments made land speculation the mania of a whole generation. Great nobles plunged into commerce, were granted special trading privileges, and intermarried with the rising middle-class families who were often better off than themselves. In all ages wealth allies itself with wealth, and power with power. As soon as the appearance of rich merchant families creates a fresh and powerful interest in society, the old social system and the new[339] coalesce, and each learns from the other--the merchant how to make a display as a landed proprietor and a Justice of the Peace, the old-fashioned landlord how to cut down expenses and squeeze the utmost farthing out of his property in the best City manner. Even if the political and economic environment had remained unchanged, the mere formation of commercial capital and of a moneyed class could hardly have failed to work a slow revolution in agrarian relationships.