But the end of the fifteenth century brought the great geographical discoveries and the beginning of a world trade.  “The possibilities of a world commerce,” says Dr. Lindsay, “led to the creation of trading companies; for a larger capital was needed than individual merchants possessed, and the formation of these companies overshadowed, discredited, and finally destroyed the guild system of the mediaeval trading cities.  Trade and industry became capitalized to a degree previously unknown....  This increase of wealth does not seem to have been confined to a few favorites of fortune.  It belonged to the mass of the members of the great trading companies....  Merchant princes confronted the princes of the state and those of the church, and their presence and power dislocated the old social relations."[22]

This enormous increase of wealth manifested itself in every form of senseless luxury.  Of refinement there was little; pleasures were coarse, indulgence was beastly.  “Preachers, economists, and satirists,” says Dr. Lindsay, “denounce the luxury and immodesty of the dress both of men and women, the gluttony and the drinking habits of the rich burghers and of the nobility of Germany.  We learn from Hans von Schweinichen that noblemen prided themselves on having men among their retainers who could drink all rivals beneath the table, and that noble personages seldom met without such a drinking contest.  The wealthy, learned, and artistic city of Nuernberg possessed a public wagon which every night was led through the streets, to pick up and convey to their homes drunken burghers found lying in the filth of the streets."[23]

Such were the manners of the house of mirth at the beginning of the sixteenth century.  It might be supposed that when luxury was so riotous the poor would have plenty, but that is never the case.  Profusion at the top of the social ladder means poverty at the bottom.  The world has never yet been so rich that waste did not work harm to the neediest.  Even if the poor had been actually no poorer in these flush days than they had been when manners were simpler, the glaring contrasts would have been maddening.  But multitudes of them were, no doubt, not only relatively but positively poorer; the destruction of the guilds of labor, the displacements in industry, had left great numbers not only of the peasantry and the artisans but also of the poorer nobles in practical destitution.  The organization of society was giving strength to the strong and weakness to those of no might—­thus exactly reversing Mary’s prophecy of what her royal Son should bring; and those who were thus dispossessed and scattered felt, and had a right to feel, that the social organization under which such things could be done was antichristian.