Wherefore his secret jealousy, lest the dissension of
the nobility, as it brought him in might throw him out, made him
travel in ways undiscovered by them, to ends as little foreseen
by himself, while to establish his own safety, he, by mixing
water with their wine, first began to open those sluices that
have since overwhelmed not the King only, but the throne. For
whereas a nobility strikes not at the throne, without which they
cannot subsist, but at some king that they do not like, popular
power strikes through the King at the throne, as that which is
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.
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